Around this time 2 years ago, I was with the man I thought I would spend the rest of my life with. I was married to this man for 3 years. I remember I was so thankful for the love that I had. I gave all my all faith to my partner and loved him with every ounce of my heart and soul. And so I thought, he was The One.
We had our wedding reception 2 years after we were married. Just weeks before our wedding reception, my partner made a poor and destructive decisions that breaks everything we had into pieces. He cheated on me with his coworker. He lied to me on his secret meetings and blamed me for being paranoid. It was a blurry lies and followed by a painful slow discovery that the person I admired and adored, wasn't the same person that I knew.
Of all my previous postings, I purposely didn't mention the reasons I annulled my marriage because I needed some time to heal and to process my feelings before publishing this post. Neither would I want to make this seem like I'm doing it for a revenge. It has taken me a lot of courage to share this personal experience with you because I felt shamed on what happened.
Yes, all of us knew everyone makes mistakes. It is not the mistakes that defines a person's character but the matter of how they react to it. Somehow, I hoped he would redeem himself. That he would be accountable for his actions, work for my forgiveness and try whatever he could to make things right. I hung on to the faith that he would step up be the man that I thought he was. But, he didn't. That was the most disappointing part of all.
I was still living with him for the next 6 months after I found out he cheated on me. My health was deteriorated and I had lost 5 kilograms in matter of weeks. I experienced my first panic attack. In that period of depression, I was in such ultimate low where I was not rational nor I could see the end of my suffering. My mind was filled with destructive thoughts. It felt as the world had collapsed.
Regardless of the support from friends and family, I still felt terribly alone. To have your heart breached and wounded feels like there is dark clouds of misery which follows everywhere you go. It's still with you no matter how hard you try to distract yourself. Even in your sleep, you cannot escape and it haunts you in the form of nightmares. You feel trapped because there is nothing you could do to make it go away. During this time, I reached out to him for help. In his own pain, he didn't know how to handle me. Instead of responding with compassion and care, he had ignored me and I felt like an inconvenient bother. I watched the man that I loved, I shared deep secrets and sacred moments with, treated me like I was nothing to him. As if one day I was the world to him and the next, I was simply irrelevant.
Two years aftermath, I have worked very hard to pick up every little pieces of me. Turning my pain into inspiration to be stronger, smarter and wiser. I've come to an understanding that pain is only a temporary feeling. It's just like the feeling of hunger. When you feed, that feeling will be gone. There goes the same with pain. You have to allow yourself to be vulnerable and it is okay to break down and cry. You will begin to realize that moment of pain soon will be gone.
I would still allow myself to feel whereby in the moments of sadness, confusion and anger creep upon me, I would break down in tears. These tears go way beyond the experience of betrayal and it stem down inside of me. That makes me wonder if I will ever be worthy of love from a man.
Perhaps he wasn't capable of showing me the care I expected. Perhaps I was such an emotional wreck at that time that he felt any efforts would be futile. Perhaps he had lost all hope and cutting me off was the only solution he knew how to deal with the situation. Perhaps I lived in denials during our relationship and I lived in a fantasy I created in my own head. I don't wish to paint him as bad person. Sure he is someone who did something bad but deep down in my heart, I knew his intention was not to hurt me. What has happened came from an unhealthy choice of mine and I have to take accountability to the fact that I attracted to him to my life in the very first place.
I have no idea how he felt, what he thought or how he handle his pain and shame. I was one of the few people he let in his life and I'm sure it wasn't easy for him either. I'm pretty sure there are some deep-rooted issues of his own which caused him to make the decision he did. Although I am the one who was betrayed, there is a different sort of pain he has to dealt with - guilt. I'm not sure which is worse but likely that both are awful to experience and I doubt he would have the courage to share his part of story.
Feeling betrayed, is a dark place that could control your thoughts and behavior. In the process of dealing with the pain, I dehumanized him. I lost compassion and I forgot that his actions came from a place of his own darkness. I dismissed that he was trying his best to cope as he knew how. All the great memories, the times we laughed, the special moments have became blur in the bitterness. And that was shame, just because the ending was bad, it doesn't dilute the incredible moments we once shared and to look back only to see the bad ending was an unfortunate and a disservice to myself.
The ego in me feels frustrated, two years later and I still feel the remnants of that heartbreak. Sometimes it comes in wave whereby I feel like I have made no progress at all. And sometimes I look and thankful that all this happened because I've grown so much from the experience. There are ups and downs, and I am proud to say there are more ups now. And slowly that real authentic love does exist is starting to return.
It would be a lie to say I don't miss him. I am reminded of him often, from the food I eat, the places I visit, I pictured him there. Behind the anger, the hurt, the betrayal, there is still love and care that remains. That love will eventually fade, just like memories will and one day, so will the pain. I never felt him so alive and yet so dead at the same time. As if you are mourning for the dead because he wasn't available to me since then. That is how I classified the infidelity pain would be.
When you feel pain and suffering, it is difficult to see the light or the how the experience fits into the bigger picture of things. Hitting such a low was not an easy feat, however I feel as if it helped me mature. I am healthier both physically and spiritually than I have ever been in my life and there's a lot of positive momentum in my career and self-growth. On and off, I've given myself permission to be vulnerable and have allowed myself to process the plethora of emotions and old wounds that were triggered from the event.
I recalled some of darkest moments after I found out he cheated on me. I felt like I was completely broken and I wanted him to fix me. Now, I realized I wasn't broken. I was just wounded. And those wound, though gentle care, eventually heal. I look back and think about that little girl, sobbing as if it was the end of world. I know now, the world was not ending, rather, it just had to hit a low in order for it get a lot better. And I did.
These struggles which I experienced, I see it as an opportunity to heal and to grow. There is no growth without change. You've got to let go of some old stuff. And that can be hurt. Often when I'm in the most pain, I realized it's coming from my trying to control everything or resisting the changes that come with the progress. But when you see the light, that beautiful next level and that's what you have to focus on. Surround yourself with those people who makes you laugh, who can see the essence in you and who loves you.
If you are experiencing something similar, you would go far beyond this stage by allowing yourself to go through the process of infidelity. Things will get better and the feeling of suffering will eventually ease. It is important to feel the sadness. Old feelings of remorse, regret, hurt and anger often have to come in in order to be released. You will be a better person, capable of a happier life, who you are when you are no longer burdened by the buried feelings that weighed you down or the self-defeating patterns that the pain produced.
Keep in mind that if you don't process the experience and allow the wound to truly heal, you will only endure the same suffering in some shape or form in the future.
Endure the pain, enjoy the gain.
