At almost 6 months out from d day the intrusive thoughts are becoming more infrequent for me, but I had a bit of a meltdown yesterday when unexpectedly triggered while showering with my wife in the morning, and it ruined most of the day for us.
We had a normal, pleasant beginning to our morning, and as we usually do when we have a day off together we were in the taking shower together. I was admiring my wife's body when I was suddenly triggered by the thought that I'm not the only one who who got to see her that way. I'm not the only one who's gotten to touch her and experience her in that way. I got suddenly quiet. I wanted to punch a wall. However, in the interest of not beating a dead horse I was just going to stay quiet, suck it up, and wait for it to pass, but she knew something was wrong and insisted I get it out. I asked/warned her, "do you really want to know what's bothering me right now? Are you sure?"
At that point she knew it was something related to the A, so she braced herself and said "we're being transparent, open, and honest now, right?" So I let it out. I didn't hold much back. I really drilled it in just how much it kills me still just thinking about the physical aspects of her A. I got a few more details, not trickle truth type details, logistic details I just hadn't thought to ask about before like "did you undress or let him undress you?" type questions that I probably didn't really even need to know the answers to. Like I said, it was a rough day from there out with lots of crying, "I'm sorry," and "please don't leave me" from her until later in the afternoon when I calmed down and we started really talking about it.
We ended up going to bed peacefully, intimately, and reassuring each other, but it was a rough day for us both. I still sometimes get stuck in a loop of reliving memories, both real and imagined, and it gets to be overwhelming for me, which then can become overwhelming for her. I think we handled it well in the end, and I know common advice is to "feel the feels" to be able to process them out, but I question if I'm properly dealing with this, or am I unhealthily flogging the proverbial dead horse and not being constructive?
After a rough first couple of weeks since d day she has been, and still is on a mission to demonstrate that she's a changed person and wants to be the best wife she can be. She's been in counseling for a few weeks now and seems to be responding to it very well. We've made huge, gigantic improvements to our communication. There was a time where she would have happily swept my mood change under the rug and avoided discussing something like that like the plague, but this time she insisted I talk to her about it. That's a seismic shift from the old Mrs Pogre. I just... man. I got really stuck in it yesterday and had really hard time letting it go. This isn't the first time we've gone through this.
