Fiance's Past Infidelity Aggravating My Anxiety, How Do I Learn to Trust Myself?

I need help not with telling myself that he will not do it again but with trusting myself and not feeling afraid of what I cannot control. I need help trusting myself to be ok no matter what.

I feel like I am losing it and just need a little help. I am obsessing over it.
He was unfaithful emotionally about a year ago following a rough patch. We've tried recovery through accountability, transparency and therapy but as we are long distance and I have abandonment issues related to my parents I am truly paranoid of him relapsing and it is ruining my sleep, moods and more.

The only way to deal with this is to decide to react to problems as they occur, and not in anticipation of their occurring. Picture this - you lose sleep over something that ends up not happening. Was it smart to lose sleep over it? No. Now picture that you lose sleep over something that ends up happening. Was it smart to lose sleep over it? Still not smart, because your losing sleep over it did not prevent the negative event from happening. See - losing sleep over it isn't smart either way.

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Thank you, I really appreciate your response. You're right, losing sleep won't help either way. What should I do about the anticipation of being hurt and the anxiety it causes? I literally prepare everyday to be hurt. I can never really know what he does in another state. For tonight I am taking your advice and focusing on how losing sleep will not help me.

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What are in general the ways that help you to unwind and sleep, and, also, to quell anxiety? I am sure you have some, so use them!

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I have been in your shoes. I think a good deal of your struggle might have to do with control. To me, control issues and anxiety go hand in hand. I had my own epiphany when I realized that no amount of hand-wringing would cause my husband to not stray, or to stray. The choice was all his. I had NO control. Not having control is a huge relief, in many ways, because with control comes responsibility. How could you be responsible for someone else's actions? You can't.

And beyond that, I told myself that no matter what he did, be it stay faithful, or stray, I was going to be okay, NO MATTER WHAT.

Between those two things...recognizing that I did not have control, and recognizing that his actions did not change who I was as a person, that I was good and worthy no matter what, I was able to let go of a great deal of my anxiety.

What do you mean by he was unfaithful emotionally?

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Right now I'm not using any. I'm working on creating some with my new therapist. I've been going to bed at around 4am every morning and getting up late then repeating the cycle. I've also thrown my eating schedule off and this all makes my anxiety worse.

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Your post really resonated with me. I truly heard you. I am very invested in control because I'm always trying to ensure that I can keep my anxiety manageable although I haven't been doing so well lately. I need to have certainty and guarantees to feel ok and you're right, that is loading a ton of responsibility onto my plate and I can't deal. I can't make him do anything and he says all the time " you can only control you, focus on that and you'll be fine." Still I do things in an effort to get certainty though I don't snoop or any of that as were almost a year out from it.

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He saw someone else for a few months. No sex or physical intimacy but he was seeking emotional fulfillment. He thrives on that validation.

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How do you know this? Did he tell you?

It was almost a year ago now. Too painful to rehash just working on feelings now.

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Maybe try to look at the lack of control over what he does or doesn't do as a GOOD thing. It is a huge responsibility (and an impossible one) to try to control others. He will do what he will do.

As for you, you can learn to set yourself some limits, without judgement. If you are in a long-distance thing and cannot feel safe in the status of your relationship, then your relationship isn't serving you well. A relationship should enrich and fulfil you, not deplete you, which is what i am hearing. It is not a question of fault- that is to say, it's not your "fault" that you can't trust and feel safe. It just is what it is.

If he is committed to repairing what has happened then some circumstance will have to change, on his part too, not just yours. Why does all the work of trusting and forgiving have to be on your plate? I am not sure how long you will be apart but that right now isn't working for you.

Just my thoughts...

I'm sorry but that sounds like a bait and switch to me. Why'd you bring it up if you didn't want to talk about it?

I agree with leomama, and suggest the following exercise for you to do startint at midnight and ending at 4am: think back to that, for one, and picture the worst case scenario in your mind. Say, in that other state that he is at, three women become hopelessly in love with your bf, and although he doesn't reciprocate their feelings, he sure likes the incredible ego stroke he gets from listening to their love confessions. One woman has stunning red hair and outlandishly beautiful green eyes. Another has big blue eyes and natural dirty blonde tresses, and the third one has black hair, clear olive skin, and alluring deep brown eyes. ..

Etc. You see where I am goi going? Picture your worst case scenario - you won't die from doing so.

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It's not a bait and switch at all. If I wanted to discuss the particulars I would be asking for help on SurvivingInfidelity. It feels a little like you just want something to dissect or some entertainment and I'm not interested in offering that up as I'm already struggling to recover at almost a year out. If you honestly feel like offering advice requires the particulars of his infidelity then I don't think my question is one you can help me with. Chromegirl was most helpful and seemed to understand what my concern was. In fact, I led with the fact that I was looking for help for me and not looking to address his behavior so that forum members could see - in thread preview- that I was interested in healing myself and not convincing myself of anything about his behavior. When you realized that I wouldn't be going into detail it would have been fine to not comment.

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It is certainly well within your right to not want to offer up details to others, but if you cannot bear recounting them within your own mind, that might very well be the culprit, the reason why, a year later, you are struggling so much.

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I agree that it is a problem and I'm planning on sharing this with my therapist. I think you bring up a good point. Still, I didn't like how no advice was offered only questions about particulars, that's upsetting to me and it felt cold.

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I see.

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Also, the strategy I offered (picturing what you fear) is called desensitization.

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I think your strategy is exactly what I need. My therapist has been working with me using mindfulness and it works wonders for non relationship stuff but I feel like desensitization would be very helpful here. I had a phobia that was treated with exposure therapy, I think I could respond well to it. It's absolutely not normal that almost a year later I'm still feeling this way.

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@chromegirl- Tapatalk keeps crashing when I try to quote you and respond but I want you to know that your advice has been spot on. It is pretty freeing to think that I don't have to worry about controlling what he does. I'm not happy and I think the distance means I need to really rethink things as it's stalled my recovery - well that and my anxiety which it aggravates. He's been accountable and done work but I don't feel I'm getting better. I may not be cut out for moving on from something like this. Anyway, thank you for your very thoughtful advice.

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Great - if you responded well to exposure therapy for your phobia, then desensitization should do the trick because it is along the same lines and based on the same concept, except that all the work happens within your mind.

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Even without an emotional affair taking place, long distance relationships can be very difficult. I would also find it very difficult to move on from this in a long distance scenario. If you do decide that this situation aggravates your anxiety too much, there is nothing wrong with ending it. There are other fish in the sea, and more comfortable relationships to be had. I would not be with a partner who aggravated my attachment issues; I simply see no reason to do so when there are other people out there that I would feel more secure with.

But assuming that you are still in this, desensitization would be a great thing to talk about with your therapist.

I actually wasn't interested in detail. It's against my policy to give advice as per my 12 step recovery. I would say if he aggravates you break up with him, but I believe the last poster covered that point. I was asking leading questions.

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I think this is good advice, in that we can only control ourselves and nothing outside of us.

I do not have anything to add as I know how it feels to be cheated on. Trust that is broken no matter how you look at it, is hard to rebuild when soemthing like this happens. In my opinion it is UP TO HIM to fix this and do everythign he can to repair the damage of the trust between you two. It is not on your shoulders to fix this and if he does nothing, I question his commitment and how serious he takes the whole thing. I don't know what he's doing, only you can say but release yourself of the burden that it's weighing so heavily on you.

For you, again, you take care of you and be independent so that no matter what he does do, you will be ok. If he makes amends and does the right thing, and you stay with him and make it through, being on your own feet, independent is still better than leaning on him and depending on him too much for your own self worth. if it doesn't work out and he messes up again or doesn't do anything to fix things, you're still better off because you're depending on yourself for your self sufficiency, worth, etc..