full image - Repost: I just need a space to vent (from Reddit.com, I just need a space to vent)
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My life fell apart months ago but it's just starting to sink in now. I wouldn't say I didn't feel it before but I didn't feel it like THIS before. I have this sinking feeling of dread and disgust with me at all times and it never goes away. There's nobody to turn to and that isn't my head getting to me, there really isn't. I can't tell you how hard I've searched for therapists. So many have long wait lists and those who don't have high price tags I can't reach. There was one, a SINGLE THERAPIST we could find in the past 3 months and she refused to see me and instantly saw me the same way everyone else does. Pure hatred and disgust.I don't understand it to be honest. I know I hurt my husband and I have immense amounts of regret about that whole situation. I'm not saying this justifies anything I did, nothing ever will, but I see so many people who have done so much worse and yet... They have support and hope. I have received nothing but pure hatred from anyone on all sides. And I don't understand why.I tend to word vomit on the internet when I can't bottle up my emotions anymore. I've said a lot surface level but I've never shared my full story. It takes a lot of time and space to do so. Prior to the disaster my husband and I are now in, I had a "friend" who complained frequently about me not getting to the point quickly enough when talking about things. Everything I say feels extremely relevant to me but I don't think it is to everyone else. I don't know how to cut through that to get to the appropriate points. So what happens instead is I start talking about something, get maybe 50% of the way through if I'm lucky, and then the conversation has moved on. And I don't want to be imposing so I just fall back and stop talking. It's a problem 1 on 1 but it's even worse in groups because everyone is dealing with something. But then when another part of the story comes out later people are angry and assume the worst because I just didn't talk to begin with. But then when I try to speak up I'm either ignored or brushed off very quickly. In group conversations again it's very easy to see this, comparing responses to me vs others in the group. So what is the correct course of action here? Do I shove information down people's throats unwillingly? Or do I keep quiet and then take the hits when people are angry I never spoke up? I still don't know the answer to this and I think I'd rather take a third option -- just not be in the position where I have to speak to begin with.Growing up my brain always went a different direction from others. People often teased me for it, finding it endearing when I vastly misunderstood what people were trying to communicate with me and we would laugh it off. But it isn't funny anymore when it involves serious situations in your life. And again I'm left unsure of what to do. On one hand I think people want me to take ownership for the misunderstanding, which makes complete sense and I'm completely willing to do. But on the other hand they don't want genuine ownership from me. They want me to take ownership as if I was coming from their perspective. I can do that, but it doesn't resolve the issue to begin with and only addresses dishonesty with more dishonesty. There is no right answer here, other than me not being involved.I'm afraid now. I feel like I'm suffocating from the pain and loneliness. But there is no answer. Most people don't want to talk to me. Those who do more than likely have ulterior motives, and even if they don't my husband can never be sure due to my infidelity. My parents kicked me out at 15. My only sibling is never sober and lives states away. My husband hates her so closing that distance is impossible without making things even worse with him. We are both pretty emotionally messed up due to our childhood anyway, so I don't know that it would be helpful for either of us. All of my friends either hate me because of the infidelity or my husband hates them, or a combination of the two, so there is nobody on that front. And support groups are useless because I don't make sense.It's not sex addiction. Im borderline asexual. Sex is a weird thing for me anyway because when I was cripplingly poor at 18 I learned people would give me things if I slept with them. Sex became my currency. It was the only currency I had. It also became my medicine to give out to other people. I've always been in a lot of emotional and mental pain and I always wanted to lift others up even if I was drowning. People could probably tell. They would tell me they were going to kill themselves if I didn't sleep with them, so I would and would think that maybe I saved a life. I look back on it all with absolute disgust.I struggle to hurt others, even when it means allowing myself to be hurt. I never called any authorities when my ex raped me over and over to the point of me bleeding while I was passed out in a diabetic coma. I still struggle to even talk about the situation because I don't want to impact his life negatively. I started to catch feelings for one of my coworkers as this was happening and I recognized the signals that my relationship was long gone. I ended it. People say once a cheater, always a cheater but I don't think that's true. I made the right decisions in the past when it was obviously clear to me what the right decision was.I care deeply for my husband. I fear ever saying I love anyone again as that word seems to have other little strings attached to it depending on who you say it to, and I'm not smart enough to know what those are. He is one of two people I have met in my entire life who I feel safe and happy with at all times. I want to protect him and do anything I can for him at all times. Nobody believes that because I was unfaithful but it has always been true.I'm definitely an extrovert. I struggle with being alone at all times. Alone for a little while is okay but day after day, I feel my sanity slipping. Unfortunately having people in a close proximity isn't enough. I need to talk and interact with others. This may be a trauma response to childhood neglect and abandonment. I'm not sure, but therapy doesn't make it go away unfortunately. My husband is the exact opposite. He is an introvert and prefers to withdraw from people. Under normal circumstances he could handle being around me much more than the average person but we got into a car accident where that all changed. On the outside I was significantly more injured than him, but I'm pretty mentally resilient I think. He had a head injury, and the doctors said he was fine but I don't think that's true. I also had gone through a lot of stuff up to that point and so it was minor for me in comparison, but this was a major life event for him.I don't know why, you could probably blame the injury, but he didn't communicate with me. He completely pushed me away, didn't want to spend any time with me or talk to me or anything other than sex for 2 years. He told me he was okay and had recovered from the accident about 6 months in. I actually pushed against what he was saying because he was completely different but he snapped back at me and I'm basically incapable of reading emotions so I took his words at face value. That's all I can ever do with anyone. I can make some assumptions of things being wrong based off actions being different, but I can't come to conclusions on my own. All I can do is take the things I noticed to the person and hope that they tell me the correct conclusion. My husband didn't.Through all this I had a single "friend" in my life. We have to take a massive step back to look at this situation fully. I was raised in an extremely strict religious environment. I started to fall away from it as my family relationships fell apart, but didn't completely. I still believed, I just wasn't as naive or optimistic as most others around me. I had a full ride scholarship to a college centered around this religion. You could probably figure out what it was just from that, and I took it up to continue my education from a financially smart standpoint. Within a couple days of me being there everyone knew I was different. I was immediately sent to counseling for having too "dark" of a spirit. There was another kid there who fit in much better than me but internally was the same as me. He didn't believe in the religion at all though while I still did. Because of this he thought I was going to be okay with some sexual things that I was not, but Im not a confrontational person and at the time I didn't know how this kind of stuff happened, so I just cowered. He sexually assaulted me, but in his defense I really didn't do anything to stop it. I genuinely don't think he meant to either. Growing up in that kind of extremely strict religious environment you aren't taught what is and isn't appropriate. He apologized when I finally talked to him about it, and he never did anything like that again.I went to counseling for the whole situation but I foolishly did it through the school. Within 2 weeks of being there I was kicked out for breaking the rules. Despite my protests I was told I didn't fight back hard enough. In a lot of ways I believe they were right, but that doesn't mean it didn't further ruin my life or that this was something I wanted. They also kicked him out, and he tried to kill himself. After recovering in the hospital we were both stuck and alone. I hadn't had the support of my family long before this, and he didn't due to the circumstances and our families religious beliefs. We were in a bad situation, and the only way to get through it not completely alone was together. He ended up wanting more from me sexually and since I was already out of school anyway I gave in consensually this time. I immediately became pregnant. We were again very sheltered and dumb and didn't realize how pregnancy worked.It was scary and a nightmare. We were extremely impoverished. My first trimester I ate nothing but a single tub of peanuts. I didn't have anything else, I was literally starving. We were officially dating after getting kicked out of school but officially broke up 2 months in. We didn't make a good couple, and only clung to each other due to circumstances. Despite not being together though, we stayed living together. I couldn't handle being completely on my own and he didn't have anywhere to go.There is a reoccurring theme in my life from this point forward where I try to take care of people and let them take advantage of me. He worked for a month or two but couldn't keep a job, so I ended up working two or three to try to keep myself afloat. This is when I learned sleeping with people would get me things. My work pretty much only paid for my medical supplies as a diabetic, and my utilities. I couldn't pay for rent or food or anything else, so I got help by sleeping with people.My third trimester was a disaster. Poverty and diabetes and pregnancy aren't a good mix. I was in the ICU for weeks before being transferred to a hospital for the remainder of the pregnancy. I obviously couldn't work, and healthcare in the US is a nightmare. It gets even worse because 2 days before my induction date my child passed away. Again, diabetes is a bitch to deal with. I had to give a natural birth to an already dead child. His skin literally tore off through the birthing process.After that I just wanted out. I was finally sick of supporting the father of my child while getting nothing back. But, he was still my only friend. So we kept in contact as he moved to another state and I moved in with a coworker. He was my only friend. We had shared interests and shared trauma, so despite the toxicity of our friendship we stuck together. It was not a romantic thing since long before the child was even born. I met my current husband 4 years after these events took place, and this individual was the only person I kept in contact with through that entire time, so we had known each other for 6 years by the time the accident took place. As I had mentioned before, we had a somewhat toxic friendship, though it became significantly better with space than it was when we first knew each other. Despite that we would still occasionally get in fairly large fights, and one of these happened a few months after my husband and my car accident. As I was talking to my husband about the fight he gave me an ultimatum to never talk to this person again or our relationship was over. I did cut him off for a bit of time, but I owed him money from a previous situation where he has helped me with some work and I opened contact back up to pay him bectI felt it was the right thing to do. This unfortunately opened up occasional communication as a whole that I never talked to my husband about. It was infrequent and impersonal, but it was there despite the promise I had made.My husband and I got engaged the day before the accident. Even though our day to day life was completely different now, overall we were still on the same page about life goals and priorities, and although we never spent time together I still felt safe with him. I didn't want to relationship to go away, so I tried to focus on me. I started going to school full time to eat up the remainder of my time after my full time job, just so I wouldn't be bothering my husband anymore. This was our lives through the wedding a year and some months after the accident, and through us moving to another state. When we moved we were in a much larger place than where we lived previously, which resulted in us setting up camp on opposite sides of the house and literally never seeing each other other than to have sex and sleep each night. I was still in school full time but wanted his attention on the weekends. He still couldn't offer it to me.I had talked dreamily for the entire time we had known each other about stepping into online content creation. I didn't think it was something I could quit my job for, but it definitely wouldn't ever go anywhere if I never even tried. My husband pushed me to do that to eat up the remainder of my free time. It wasn't a very hard push as it was something I wanted to do anyway, but I wouldn't have done it without his push still as I had a ton of self doubt. That self doubt ate away at me as I began the journey, constantly bringing myself down in my head. There were two people who found my content though and threw all that self doubt out the window. They adored me and my content. My friend from before also created an entirely new online persona to maintain our friendship through this medium.I was, intentionally, extremely busy but they went out of their way to be part of my life in any way they could. I'm going to focus this on the people I didn't know IRL as my old friend was still very infrequently involved at this time. They both lived on the opposite side of the country so it was all online, but they made every effort to befriend me. One of them I connected with a lot, the other kind of bothered me. I mentioned everything that bothered me about the other person to the one I was close to, and it turned out to be a disaster. They started heavily bullying the one I didn't like as much, which leaked into other random people also bullying him. I wasn't super fond of him, but my protection instincts stepped in and I tried to do damage control. I reached out directly to this individual to let them know I didn't condone what was happening and try to be kind to them. This person ended up being my AP.They about 3 months into me knowing them confessed that they had feelings for me. Looking back, I should have shut things down at that point but I didn't. I took the completely wrong approach in fear of hurting them. Instead of pushing them away I opened up more private means of contacting me. I told them they could talk to me about anything at any time and I wouldn't hold it against them, and I didn't hate them for their confession. I made it clear to them that I loved my husband and would not leave him for them, but allowed them to still tell me how they felt about me. I think this is when my husband would say the affair started. I struggle to wrap my head around that as I made it clear where my priorities were, so I will often say it was an isolated event, but this is why our stories differ.A month after that the first friend who I was very close to came out and visited me IRL. They were going through some personal trauma and wanted an out for a bit, so we met up. It was an unpleasant experience for me. We had bonded over a shared love and opinion on video games which is my number one hobby, but meeting in real life forced me to acknowledge what they were like as a person and I didn't like them very much. This along with them lying about something online in an attempt to appease me ruined our entire friendship. We still keep in contact but it's much more distanced from what it was before. My AP at the time then wanted to also visit me, but knowing how he felt about me I immediately shot that down and clearly outlined why. Things proceeded as normal from that point forward.Before I get to DDay I also want to clarify what was happening with my old friend. We started communicating much more frequently through his new persona at around the time that my AP confessed his feelings for me. This was primarily because he helped me with a big event I had put together for my online content, but even after the event the frequent communication continued from that point forward, to about the same point it was prior to the ultimatum. Now let's get to DDay.DDay was my APs birthday. He called me that night and said he wanted to see my boobs for his birthday. Under normal circumstances I wouldn't have done it, but it was a special occasion and in addition to that my husband and I had a passing conversation months before about this kind of thing. He out of nowhere said if he was a woman on the internet he would send his "simps" nudes. We talked about how ethical that was or wasn't because I was surprised at the comment. He brushed it off as something that wasn't a huge deal and in the age of OnlyFans was super common. Remembering this conversation I made the split second decision to do it. My husband walked in. Shit hit the fan.The rest of that night he spent yelling at me and I spent crying and begging his forgiveness. It wasn't fun for either of us. It was a sleepless night resulting in me taking off work the next day. We were then both kind of zombies. there were a lot of tears shed and I started going into a depressive spiral. I accepted all of the awful things my husband said about me without fighting, and to a certain extent I think that's the appropriate thing to do but I think I also took it too far. I started agreeing he deserved better than me and that I was a worthless piece of trash. I know he sees this as me giving up on the relationship. In a way I suppose I was but I wasn't intending to. I was giving up on myself.He wanted me to shut every piece of social media I had down. I said I would but I was drowning emotionally and I broke my promise. I snuck and talked to the other friend I had. Not the ultimatum one or AP, the one who I wasn't as close to anymore. She was safe at least from a moral perspective, but I still broke my promise. My husband caught me and was extremely upset. He said it was over, yelled about how much he hated me, and left. I believed him. I shouldn't have but I did. I ended up talking to AP and the ultimatum friend at that point. I cried a lot about how much I hated the situation I was in and just wanted my husband back. I reached out to my husband begging for him to come back. At first I didn't think it would work but I guess it started to. We started talking again, my husband unblocked me. I said goodbye to AP, but I foolishly said in my goodbye that I didn't expect things to work out between my husband and I. I was still depression spiraling.When my husband came back we talked a lot. We decided on a full honesty policy even if stuff hurt. At this point I never talked about the ultimatum friend, not because I was trying to hide it but because my entire world was just this AP situation. My husband was unhappy that I still had feelings for AP. At the time I said I loved him, and I also loved my husband. Looking back I never loved AP in the way I'm sure my husband believed, but I did feel protective of him emotionally. He would tell me about cutting and suicide attempts and I always wanted to be there to help. The conversation then turned to how I could possibly hate him the fastest. We thought of the situation with my other friend and how the friendship dies when we met in person. I said I suspected the same thing would happen here from what I knew about AP and my husband asked me to go out and meet him immediately. I pushed back, I said I didn't want to. My husband asked when I would be ready to and I answered I didn't know if I ever would. My husband said he thought our relationship was for sure over if I didn't because he couldn't handle me still having any kind of attachment and asked me to go right away. So we purchased plane tickets and I went.We live in the middle of nowhere. There is a small airport near where we live, but flights to and from that airport and few and far between depending on your destination. That was the case for where I was going. I was out there for exactly one week. The first day or so of me being out there (the timeline is a tiny bit fuzzy) my husband started going through all my messages. He always had access to my stuff and I didn't lock it down during all of this. He soon found out about the ultimatum friend and was extremely upset. I hadn't taken time off work for this trip so I spent the majority of my time out there doing my job. My husband was not doing okay back home and we texted and talked on the phone frequently. They were not pleasant conversations. I also spent a lot of time curled up crying. I did do some recreational things with AP. We visited one tourist location where he used to work. The only other thing we did was eat food. I'm a pretty big foodie and wanted to try local spots. I ended up spending a lot of money doing that as a form of escapism. I was staying in the guest bedroom at APs house which I know is sketchy but it is what it is. The illusion was broken between AP and I. He depression slept most of my time there away and I had my own stuff I was doing anyway. AP did kiss me at one point. I told my husband when it happened, which didn't help anything but I promised honesty. AP was like a timid animal and I didn't try to hide the entire time, both vocally and with my actions, that my priority was still my husband.I blocked ultimatum friend during the trip, and blocked AP as soon as he dropped me off at the airport to go home. I told everyone I was determined to fix my marriage. I went home with that determination but my husband was angrier than before. He was determined to divorce now. He couldn't trust anything I said because I had lied to him for years about ultimatum friend. We fought about how to split everything. Since we had moved I was the sole breadwinner for our home, so him keeping the house was unreasonable. He wanted to sell but I convinced him to let me buy out his equity. The housing market is a disaster right now and that ended up being much more expensive than I anticipated. We had been trying to get into counseling since before I had left to met AP and most people had very long wait lists. We finally got into one who immediately asked to only see my husband and although I wasn't listening into the sessions, my husband says she told him to leave me. Considering the fact she wouldn't do couples counseling like we had signed up for, I believe it. We also signed up for one of those expensive online programs and the therapist there also immediately jumped to divorce. We cancelled after one month. We couldn't really afford it to begin with though.We filed divorce paperwork, he told me all rules were off. I talked briefly with AP and ultimatum friend again. I immediately blocked ultimatum friend again after one or two days. Speaking with him stressed me out more than it helped. Talking with AP was like talking to a brick wall and I vented my suicidal thoughts for two days before blocking him again as well. I then made it clear to my husband I was going to fight for our relationship. My husband never actually turned the divorce paperwork in, the papers are just sitting filled out in our house.That pretty much leads us to where we are today. There are times things are really good between us. We are actually talking and friends again. But my husband has nightmares. He's scarred. He also can be really angry sometimes. He's said a lot of hurtful things. I'm sure I have too. One reoccurring thing was my adventure into content creation. I put it on hold to deal with this whole situation, but it was something that mattered a lot to me. Prior to DDay when my husband and I weren't talking much, he vocalized how much he hated the "me" that was into content creation. This really hurt as it was something I was extremely passionate about. He brought this up again recently. All I hear when he says that is how much he hates me, as this was something I put my whole heart and soul into. So he liked me as I was working the job I hated from home? Or as I was doing homework or chores? Does he really love me if he only loves me in my misery?When he had left the house he told his family. They also tend to gossip. Everyone knows. Everyone hates me. He made posts asking for help. I did too. Everyone hates me. I can't understand why the responses are as harsh as they are. I know I'm not perfect but I don't think I'm THAT unusual? Being in this position you begin to realize how common infidelity really is. There are so many stories online, and people in your personal life start sharing theirs as well. But nothing I've ever seen ever receives quite as much hate and hostility as we do in our situation. It doesn't make sense to me. Many people I knew online have blocked me, everyone has left. I don't have a support network. I have nothing but my husband and I know deep down inside I likely don't even have him. I know he wants to escape. There are complications with living situations right now but he's trying his hardest to get out.Its difficult to share the full story without taking up a bunch of someone's time. Nobody wants to make friends with a cheater. Even support groups don't really help. I feel alien in them. I'm not some sex crazed person. I sometimes try to talk and feel like it's not well received. People are also angry because my hobbies are online. It's looked down on. My husband and I are both homebodies who love anime and video games but despite that many say my video game addiction killed my marriage. It's not true. Our communication issues and naivety killed our marriage, not video games. But there's rarely any support. Just anger and hatred. The only support I ever receive is if I'm talking about killing myself, and that feels so fake. You'll all sit there and absolutely rip into us (as my husband has received a ton of hate and awful messages about this as well, which is alarming since he's the betrayed spouse!) But oh, when we want to die THEN you care? Yeah fucking right. I honestly can't take it seriously anymore. I don't want to continue just because we are biologically hardwired to.I am partially putting this out here just to record my thoughts. I'm also doing it in case one of those who hates me wants to dive into the full story. It's kind of therapeutic typing it all out. But it still hurts. I know it hurts him too. I have been feeling the pain a lot more recently because I tried to pick my content creation dreams back up and realized just how much my actions impacted even that. That door is closed for me now. I'm struggling to find any glimmer of hope in my life anymore. I don't have friends. I don't have family. I can't find support. I don't have love anymore. And I don't even have a material dream to hold onto anymore. I haven't believed in a god for years. So what else is there? I'm honestly not sure.
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