SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

In my continuing effort to dissect my decades old betrayal and bring more clarity to various aspects of it, Ive been turning my thoughts to the allure of denial, especially in the early days after Dday.

Admittedly, I think the early deep dive into denial was due to shock and a complete overload of my nervous system. I went into self preservation mode. I just could not accept that which was undeniably true. It was too awful. Too grotesque. Too horrible to contemplate. My soul froze in place. For a long while I just put one foot in front of the other.

My denial took the form of a lack of strong pro active actions like the 180 after not just the betrayal itself, but the subesequent lack of true remorse and half assed attempts at reconciliation.

I now understand why there is such a emphasis on acceptance for the betrayed to be able to move on. If you cannot accept it, you are in a form of denial. If you cannot accept it, you cannot face it. If you cannot face it, you passively refuse to deal with it. Early on, it is understandable. If you continue on, it becomes a form of self destruction in my opinion. It certainly was for me.

Ive said it before, the fact that I was a young husband and father that had come from a very disfunctional home left me woefully unprepared for such a catastrophic event, but I freely say now that my state of denial as to the scope of the destruction did nothing but prolong the hurt and delay the inevitable end of the marriage.

Beware the river called denial.

Thoughts_

I never thought about my lack of a strong response and even early pick me behavior as being tied to denial, but having read your post it kinda makes sense.

15 months and a few very strong responses later I still have my moments of "I can't believe it happened," but I think acceptance is slowly starting to creep in.

It for sure fucking happened. Now how do I integrate it and see my wife again?

[This message edited by Pogre at 9:56 PM, Monday, July 27th]

I distinctly remember one morning, waking up in bed next to stbwx and being hit by the realization that no matter what happened going forward, nothing would ever undo the fact that he had a multi-year affair. And tears started leaking out of my eyes - I wasn't sobbing or crying in the usual way, but I couldn't stop this endless, quiet, steady flow of tears. That was the moment I transitioned from disbelief (or denial) to despair, to accepting that this unfathomable thing had really happened to me.

There's a very good reason why acceptance is so very difficult for us. It's our brain doing its job.

Denial is the first stage of grief. It's like a shock absorber, preventing the brain from being completely overwhelmed. The amygdala (the part of the brain responsible for our emotions) flipping the fuck out frazzles the frontal cortex (the part of our brain responsible for processing information, cognition and reason). If it were not for denial, the effect would be a bit like a lobotomy.

(Which reminds me. I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.)

IOW, in many respects, denial is a good thing. It protects us from completely loosing our shit.

It's also why so many of us experience the "pick me dance" and hysterical bonding.

The next few stages of grief are anger, bargaining and depression. They're not linear stages. We can experience them as a mixed bag, repeating, recycling, the rollercoaster from hell. Once we've worked through all of these stages, once we've recovered from the shock of it all and begun to heal, acceptance becomes possible.

Be thankful for that "river in Egypt."

Denial is the first stage of grief. It's like a shock absorber, preventing the brain from being completely overwhelmed.

Theres a lot of truth here of course. The problem comes when the betrayed lingers in this state for too long, or, at least, staying in this state for certain aspects of thd betrayal.

I think the faux comfort that it brings becomes a shield, as in, as long as that wall is kept between the betrayed and the depths of pain that is on the other side. Sadly, when it eventually breaks down, the accumulated pain always comes crashing in.

DobleTraicion

If you cannot accept it, you cannot face it. If you cannot face it, you passively refuse to deal with it.

This landed with me because denial can look like doing nothing but sometimes it is your mind trying to survive what your heart cannot fully hold yet and relate to the delayed acceptance part because when betrayal is old but the evidence is new, the mind does strange things with time - part of you knows it happened years ago and another part is standing in the wreckage today.

the accumulated pain always comes crashing in.

Yes exactly this as the pain does not disappear because it was delayed or because life carried on around it - iIt waits in the details, the old memories, the things you explained away and the version of life you thought was real. For me acceptance has not meant being okay with it - It has meant stopping the argument with reality and finally saying this happened, it mattered and I do not have to minimise it just because I survived it...

Thanks all. Another facet of this is progressive self bargaining, as in, Ill accept this but I cant wrap my head around xyz. Then, ik, xyz is a fact that I gotta accept but I cant get to abc.

It becones a slowed devolution into the morasse of the truth of the betrayal. Each step in gets deeper and harder. Then, when it reaches critical mass, you can turn the corner and start to recover.

It also changes if/when you decide to leave the relationship. Once I filed for divorce, I began to detach from caring about a lot of the details, and I found it easier to accept who STBWX really was vs. the man I thought he was. While I was (and still am) saddened by what happened to our marriage, his actions lost the power to actively hurt me. If a fact isn't likely to cause pain, there's less instinct to deny/avoid the truth of it.

It also changes if/when you decide to leave the relationship. 

True, but in my case that too, took far too long. I hung on way too long. Much longer than I should have. Ive posted it here before but I did so many of the things this site warns against.

That said, I eventually remarried a wonderful woman who is slso a survivor of a brutal betrayal. Unlike me, she had the sense and maturity to cut off her remorseless traitor immediately. We have built a fantastic life together, the marriage I had hooe for all of those years ago. She and what we have together is a big reason I can look back objectively and assess the various aspects of my betrayal and how I handled it.

Honestly, one of the things that brought this to the fore of my thinking was reading the accounts of newly betrayeds that are kicking against the full reality of what has happwned to them. It caused more self reflection and I decided to post.

Ive come to determine that, though it doesnt look as bad as other toxic aspects of unproductive reactionary behaviors, it (non-acceptance/denial) may be the most destructive of all.

[This message edited by DobleTraicion at 8:22 PM, Wednesday, July 29th]