Hi ladies
I need some serious advice because I’m at my wits ends with myself. My other half cheated on me just after we welcomed our last child & although we’ve remained together & I’ve tried my hardest to move forward (it’s been YEARS) I now find myself in the position of having constant anxiety/jealousy? For example if there’s a bucks party or something I literally pray he doesn’t get invited as it makes me physically sick thinking he would go out where I can’t supervise. I know I sound like a horrid partner & it’s not healthy, how do I move forward and stop the anxiety (I don’t no if it’s jealousy I just don’t no how to express the way I’m feeling) he’s home alot & rarely goes out but when he does I blow up his phone like a psychopath & I don’t want to be known as the psycho wife.
Where can I get help? What do I do?
6 Replies
This isn't anxiety, well, I mean it is in a sense, but mainly this is distrust. Distrust that you have every right to feel!
Anxiety you can learn to manage but trust is really bloody hard, if not impossible in some circumstances to get back. I personally don't ever 100% implicitly trust a person again if they have lied to me or gone behind my back, that's why I could never stay with a man who betrayed me like this because that loss of trust would torture me and no matter how much time had passed, there would always be that seed of doubt in the back of my mind.
You could try counselling or therapy to help you cope with the immediate symptoms of this but you may need to do some big picture thinking as well.
You should definitely get counselling. Something like that would be HUGE to get over, and if you still have trust issues years later, it needs to be addressed or you'll drive yourself crazy.
As above said, it's not jealousy, it's distrust, and it's 100% valid.
I could never get over it. Once I got out of the relationship my anxiety magically disappeared.
His cheating changed who I was in that relationship. I could never ever trust him again, I never felt safe in that relationship again.
I left, I feel so much better.
I tried so hard to undo how I felt. Like worked so incredibly hard. I made myself feel guilty because I couldn’t get over what HE did. I didn’t cheat, but saw it as my job to fix what he created, and I couldn’t.
You need to decide what kind of person you want to be and what kind of relationship you want to be in. Secure? Trusting? Then do it. And if you can’t do it with him, because you don’t trust him, then you need to go and find someone to be with so you can live your best life, you can’t live like this.
Counselling, individual and couples. He has to show you 100% with actions, not words that he messed up and own it, it is not up to you to fix it, he needs to be patient with you and allow space to heal, for as long as it takes, reassuring you and making you feel safe should be his top priority. However if you do decide to stay then at some stage you might need to forgive otherwise that pain in your heart isn’t worth the trouble.
I was the same and we ended up going our separate ways because his infidelity was just the tip of the iceberg. He cheated on me so many times it was just the one I found out about. I found out much more after I left and felt like an idiot. You know him. Is he someone that can be trusted? Does he have an ego that constantly needs stroking? You could try therapy and see if you can get to the root cause of the infidelity to begin with but he needs to make a commitment to work on what led to the behaviour. A good man won't make you doubt him. My now partner is my best friend and he actually prefers to do things with me.