Anxiety

[Quicksilver77]

Not sure if this is the right forum or not but I will give it a try.

 

About 3 months ago i found out that my girlfriend had cheated on me. She broke up with the guy about 2 weeks before I asked her to marry me.

 

I don't know who else to reach out to but I have been to counseling and it seemed to help for a bit but now I seem to be digressing. I am constantly anxious. I have lost like 15 pounds since this happened which has dropped me to about 147 if you can believe that.

 

I sit at work every day now for the past couple weeks and seem to be back in my old mood of anxiety and constant fast heartbeats. I think i am on a constant anxiety attack.

 

Do any of you guys have any advice for me? We are still together and the relationship is very good. I will tell more if you guys care at all. I can't talk to my friends.

[Lyssa]

Hey there Q77! Have you talked to your gf about her cheating episode or have you both been avoiding it? Could be you're having anxiety attacks because you both haven't really talked about it and you're afraid it might happen again.

 

You should really take care of yourself. I know it's hard when things like this happen but you should look after yourself..

[Cobra_X30]

More to the heart of the matter... Why did she cheat on you?

 

Do you know?

[Quicksilver77]

Hey Lyssa,

 

yes we have talked about it alot. She seems genuinely remorseful and cried alot about it. I was no saint in possibly causing it to in that we had a long distance relationship for almost 2 years and would only see each other on weekends and she told me a few times that she felt I could take her or leave her. She says that her biggest mistake was not voicing to me how much that bothered her and that the reason she had the affair was that she was looking for attention.

 

Now we live together and may possibly get married but I have not given the ring back yet. I just can't yet. I have to look deep inside to make sure I can trust her at some point.

 

My anxiety both comes from the fact of the affair and that I may have had something to do with it. Now will I ever take full responsibility? Of course not..I am not that naive but lately i just feel lost.

 

My self esteem was destroyed and even with the women who flirt with me once and awhile I feel unmanly sometimes because I just didn't walk away and say f-U to her.

[Lyssa]

yes we have talked about it alot. She seems genuinely remorseful and cried alot about it. I was no saint in possibly causing it to in that we had a long distance relationship for almost 2 years and would only see each other on weekends and she told me a few times that she felt I could take her or leave her. She says that her biggest mistake was not voicing to me how much that bothered her and that the reason she had the affair was that she was looking for attention.

 

It's a good thing that you both talked about it.

 

She seems genuinely remorseful - that's good.

 

Now the part about being in LDR - that could trigger the affair but if I was in a 2 yr r/ship, I wouldn't want to get any attention from other men besides my BF. Now, that is just me. It's different if you both were only together for about 1 yr or less... then I would understand the need to seek attention from someone else. Well, at least she admitted it was her biggest mistake for not voicing it out. That is why it is always good to talk about your feelings and what not - let it all out. It makes a r/ship better - it worked for me - still does!

 

Now we live together and may possibly get married but I have not given the ring back yet. I just can't yet. I have to look deep inside to make sure I can trust her at some point.

 

If I was in your GF's situation, I don't blame you for not giving back the ring just yet. In fact, I would tell you to hold onto it until I have fully proven myself and to you that I would not cheat again. I need to love myself first, get to know myself again and only then I will be able to be with someone for a long time.

 

Now will I ever take full responsibility? Of course not..I am not that naive but lately i just feel lost.

 

You should not have to take full responsibility on anything at all.

[Cobra_X30]

I'm glad you have not blamed yourself too much for this.

 

So you are in a situation where if you ever slip up and do not provide her the attention she desires then you cant really trust she wont do this again.

 

Do you feel that this may be the case? Or do you think that she will stand by you now... even when the chips are down?

 

Also have you hit the anger stage yet? At some point you should start to feel just an animal rage come over you!

 

Why didnt you just walk away? Is it because you feel like you had a part in causing her to cheat? Because there is nothing you can do to make someone an honest person... they either are or are not.

[Quicksilver77]

I'm glad you have not blamed yourself too much for this.

 

So you are in a situation where if you ever slip up and do not provide her the attention she desires then you cant really trust she wont do this again.

 

Do you feel that this may be the case? Or do you think that she will stand by you now... even when the chips are down?

 

Also have you hit the anger stage yet? At some point you should start to feel just an animal rage come over you!

 

Why didnt you just walk away? Is it because you feel like you had a part in causing her to cheat? Because there is nothing you can do to make someone an honest person... they either are or are not.

 

Well I think she will tell me if she ever feels that way again. I know I have changed from being withdrawn and putting a wall around my heart (due to past relationships) to becoming wide open with my heart and how I feel for her. I feel she will stand by me if the chips are down.

 

Yes I have hit the anger stage. The weird thing is that I was not angry when I first found out. I was quite calm due to shock probably. Since we have moved in together I have had 1 evening of pure anger where I wanted to lash out at the world. That is the evening that she also cried very hard when I was angry...probably a normal reaction but in all honesty it made me feel better to know at least that she has true remorse.

 

Believe me I am not naive about the situation I have put myself in and understand the consquences of what I am going through. I just want to feel good again and maybe I am expecting too much in only about 3 months. I have my good and bad days. She is very attentive to me and calls alot during the day. I dont' want her calling out of guilt or wanting to re-assure me I want her to be genuine about wanting to communicate with me.

 

I didn't walk away because I do take some of the blame. My heart was never open to her and I feel that I could have given off the air of "take her or leave her". Do I feel that is an excuse for what she did? NO I will never use that as an excuse but I guess I may be using that as a crutch to get through this.

 

I am sorry I rant on like this on an internet forum but really I don't think anyone I know personally woudl understand the way I feel or would just give me cliches.

 

I appreciate your guys (and girls) posts and I look forward to more opinions.

 

Jason

[Cobra_X30]

 

 

I know you feel like this is partly your fault for bieng closed off... but please dont stay with her because you feel guilty. Your right that it has been a little too early to expect the pain to go away... however just realize that it may never go away... not completely.

 

Did you discover this or did she come clean? I assume that you found out after you proposed.

 

I suggest you read this! I think you will identify with most of the feelings here. Realize that there are great men that have also suffered this. You are not alone.

 

http://www.loveshack.org/forums/t40398/

[new_stella]

Posted in the wrong thread.

Sorrry!

[Whyme_wtf]

Hi Quick,

You truely are not alone. I have been dealing with the trust issue over similar and it is almost a year.

http://www.loveshack.org/forums/t130169/

It is not about being unmanly or anything. It is about caring, but having the pain sting you continually when you least expect it.

For me it is about finding new little things that she never let go of and it stares me in the face again. It is hard, so hard.

You have great times, yet you wonder when you are apart if it will.

I hope the remorse she felt was not because you were angry. I hope it was true because of how she felt knowing and seeing you hurt by it.

Has she vowed to never do it again in an unsolicited way.

She sure as heck should have shown remorse and a promise to not do it again.

In my case, now after a year and still feeling it and still finding new little things that put things in my face or seeing her in a mostly selfish light, I am hoping to be able to tell her this weekend that I just still dont trust her and if she wants to know why, I will unload them all again. I did the mad part and walked away only to get sucked back (or tried to fix it).

I know now that I should have walked away each time. I said the words and disconnected or regressed only to find my way back to "nice, nice" again somehow.

I am working up the right madness over it to tell her and walkaway and IMO you may need to as well. It is the hard part when they follow or plead you to stay.

May the Force be with you through this

[Quicksilver77]

I don't think i am ready or able to walkaway at this point. Love is a strong feeling and I want this relationship to work. I know I have changed since this happened and am much more loving towards her. I do try and keep a bit guarded and not let my pain run my life in terms of always wanting to be in contact with her.

 

My anxiety is getting the best of me these days though. With constant pains in my stomach and not being able to think about anything else other than what has happened has made my life a bit of a living hell. I ma hoping after more time I can start to be normal again both in my mind and my heart.

[Lyssa]

The fact that you realised bits of how you were before helps to make this relationship work.

 

You will be normal again. At the same time you're working on your relationship, work on yourself to feel better as well. Don't forget that..

[cj1988]

I also lost weight, went from 130 to 110 in less than 2 months. I would cry at work all day and have to go oustside to take a breath.....smoked a pack of cigarettes a day......this has been going on since December 1st. Yes, I am a lot better than I was ( I am up to 119) and still with my H who has not admitted it (read my threads) I have my days when I am MAD as hell and ready to go home and leave, then I have my days where I cant wait to see him. My mind races all day long sometimes ( you have to find a way to stop it and you will I promise ) thinking about her and him, will he do it again, why did this happen, what did I do wrong, the list goes on......BUT one thing you have to realize what she did really had NOTHING to do with you. Yes, you could have and should have done things differently sometimes, BUT that is no excuse for her to cheat. She did it because she was being selfish and wanted to do it for whatever reason.

 

When I finall y realized that if my H really did something and it had nothing to do with me, I was MUCH better. I am still a basket case in a sense, but I am thinking more about me now and what I can and cannot take in my life. I love him with all my heart, but sometimes that is just not enough for some folks to make the hurt go away. I am not sure if I can live with the thoughts and doubts, so I take it day by day and pray about it all the time.

 

You will notice when you are with them you are a lot better. When you are at work or away from them you get anxiety and start thinking about it and cannot stop. You will see in time this will lessen more and more, but nvever really goes away. As you can see I am on this website now typing away. But, I am still ok, not like I was even 2 months ago. I believe that with every bad thing that happens something good comes out of it and that is the way I look at it now. I have been with my H 13 years now, but maybe this is a sign we do not belong together and there is another life out there for both of us. Maybe it is a wake up call for our M, who knows. Only time will tell....just focus on you and not so much her if you can and what you want....I am 41 in 3 weeks and have a kid in college, so life is just waiting for me choose !

 

If you need to talk let me know and I will give you my private address....my heart is with you baby I KNOW what you are going through !

[Quicksilver77]

cj that is exactly what i am going through right now. When I am with her I am fine but away from her I am anxious and wondering what she is up to. Like I said she calls me all the time and seems to want to make me feel less anxious. I know that time is the only healer but its still hard. I went golfing for the first time last sunday with my friends as a way to get away from things and to show myself that i don't need to be monitoring her all the time. I have also stopped checking her email and cell phone about 3 weeks ago. Each day helps but like I said anxiety is still running my life. I would love to talk to someone privately about this and if we can help each other out that would be great. Not sure how to get your private address though. I see there are no provate messaging functions on this site.

[Darkzen]

It's not your fault. People have free will and they chose to do the things they do. She made a conscience decision to cheat. You feel anxiety

because deep down you know that she had no excuse and you're worried about taking her back. For fear of you being deceived again.

 

She hasn't changed, I can tell because she made excuses as to why it happened. She isn't taking responsibility by doing this. If she would've said, "hey, I did you wrong and will do whatever I can to make things right", then she'd have changed. The "I messed up, but it's because I wanted attention" line is justifying her action in her mind... meaning that if she feels justified, she do so again. She doesn't believe cheating is wrong... if she has a justification to do so. She has to believe it's wrong to not do it again. There's no conviction otherwise.

 

 

I would suggest that you move on, you're always going to have that doubt because there's no conviction in her remorse. Frankly, you deserve someone that has conviction enough to not lie and cheat. Plus, over time things will only get worse... you'll get withdrawn and guarded. You're not right now because the fear of starting over outweighs your desire to continue the doomed relationship. You'll really hate yourself down the road when she's robbed you of your youth, love, and trust. Get out now IMHO.

[cj1988]

Quick, trust me I know what you are saying. I stopped checking the minutes he used everyday ( I would check to see how many times they talked, my situation is a little different than yours) anyway I stopped 4 weeks ago. I was checking it up to 8 times a day......so as you can see I know how you feel. I do go out now without him, not much because we are always together now (95% of the time) and it is fun. I go have a beer with a g/f and I can relax now. It will take time, trust me I thought I was going to die......I called my friends crying constantly, they were all shocked because in their minds I can do better anyway. They love him to death, but they know the story....most still tell me they do not know how I stay at all.....but love is blind my friend, you know that...

 

 

Do you have another e-mail address that I can contact you....I would give you mone, but I am at work and it has my name and everyone would see it....if you have a bogus one (hotmail or something) I will e-mail you alone and help you !

[Quicksilver77]

Actually she has stated many times that she did something very terrible and will do anything to make it right. She has also said she would never do anything to jeopardize our relationship again. She stated the reason of seeking out attention after I asked why and how she could do that to me. I do know she takes full responsibility.

 

I know the above paragraph may seem like I am defending her but I am not. I will never ever defend what she did. It was wrong and that is the end of it. I am just trying to cope with it. I think by coping with it I must try to understand why she did it and also the way i was before. isn't that the smart thing to do?

[cj1988]

Quick, you will never know why she did it completely. Bottom line she did it because she wanted to no matter what, they all do (cheaters) I have cheated before and I did it (not on my H, it was long ago) because I was full of myself and wanted to and it was so very stupid and wrong. She can tell you all day long she wanted attention and she is right and that is F-uped ! That is by far the worst reason to cheat, but most of them cheat for that reason.

[Quicksilver77]

My email is quicksilver1493 at hotmail.com

[Lyssa]

Reading your recent post made me think about my situation few weeks back.

 

I can't say that I was in the same situation as your GF but a few weeks ago, my BF got hold of my Myspace account and he didn't quite like what the other guys left on the comments. He thought I had a thing giong on with a couple of guys. What sucks is that we're in LDR so it was hard to convince him, there was nothing going on with any other guy. I can be quite a flirt but for me, I flirt with no hidden agenda. I do not even cross the line. It's just me being friendly by calling guys 'dear, sweetie' but for him, it looked like it was more than that. It wasn't and never was.

 

We talk/chat to each other during the week. 5 days a week. Weekends are mostly phone calls or smses. I work during weekends and it can get very boring so that is usually when I go on Myspace to check on my messages etc. So during weekends, he would feel anxious - thinking what I am up to. Am I flirting with the guys etc. I didn't see myself doing anything wrong because the messages/comments were being passed during the first few months of courting. Plus most of my comments are usually a courtesy to thank them for leaving me comments etc. The whole Myspace thing, also a few emails from one of my past admirers (which did not get too serious) and voicemails.... made him even more suspicious of me.

 

He checked my MSN, YM, Myspace and email account - I didn't blame him for doing all of that because I want him to know everything and I had nothing to hide. He was pretty much in your position. He was not himself. He had an anxiety attack and I knew it was because he was thinking too much about the whole thing. That was few weeks back.

 

Now, everything is back to normal - no... everything is MUCH better now. We're closer than ever. We talk more, we love each other more and we appreciate each other much more. I told him to forget about those comments, it meant nothing... and I know it's hard because the things those guys said and the things I said to them will always be at the back of his head but I assure him that I will always be there because he is the one I want.

 

In a way, I know how you feel. For sure I know how my BF felt when he found out those things but like you said, time is a healer. I really don't think my situation is the same because I did not cheat on him by sleeping with someone else or had anything close to what we have with another guy but I know your GF wants to work it out. What happened probably made her realised how much you and her mean to each other.

 

I know people will tell you to keep yourself on your toes because it can happen again. All we can do is give you some advice, or insights on what some of us went through - at the end of the day, it's your gut feeling that will tell you what to do or is right/wrong.

[Quicksilver77]

To be honest our relationship is 98% better since that time. I am much more open and my heart feels like the wall is gone. It is basically the 2% that is killing me right now with worry and trepidation.

 

I guess I just never saw my life going in this direction. In my mind everything was perfect and that i was going to ask her to marry me and we would buy a house and you know live the fairytale for the most part. So when this whole thing came down i decided to give it a go for my own happiness. I thought if things don't work out than at least I gave it a try.

[Darkzen]

Actually she has stated many times that she did something very terrible and will do anything to make it right. She has also said she would never do anything to jeopardize our relationship again. She stated the reason of seeking out attention after I asked why and how she could do that to me. I do know she takes full responsibility.

 

I know the above paragraph may seem like I am defending her but I am not. I will never ever defend what she did. It was wrong and that is the end of it. I am just trying to cope with it. I think by coping with it I must try to understand why she did it and also the way i was before. isn't that the smart thing to do?

 

The question is why she thinks it was terrible... because she feels guilty about it, because she doesn't want to lose you or because she now realizes cheating is wrong. If it's not because she believes cheating is wrong, it'll happen again if she has a justification. That's the point I'm trying to make.

 

People aren't prone to change, unless something forces them to re-evaluate their outlooks. I constantly reflect on my experiences (no matter how much they suck), it lends conviction to my ideals. This conviction gives me the strength to do what I believe is right, no matter the circumstance.

 

You'll never know how she views things in her head and based on her prior behavior, it doesn't look good. She's not an honest/open person, otherwise she would've approached you when she had her doubts. So, she's probably not being honest again... it's your decision to believe her or not, what makes you want to believe her, that's the million dollar question... you have to be honest with yourself, delve into your thoughts and ask that question.

 

I want to get back with my ex, but it's a purely selfish reason... I'm afraid of starting over and miss the comfort of having someone around... even with all the issues we had. I don't, because logic over rules my emotions.

[Quicksilver77]

Yeah i realize I will never know what is going on in her head. She has stated the reasons to me under both distress and under calm talking about it. I hope I am not coming off as naive because i have gone through enough in my life to not be. I have been in relationships in the past that ended the same way. That is where the wall came from that i built up. From having suicidal tendacies to taking 66 tylenol to escape the pain I was feeling about 10 years ago when it was a much worse situation.

[cj1988]

Quick, I just sent a test message to your other address......check and see if you have it !