Healing from breakup and flashbacks
I know it’s going to take time to heal from the loss of my 26 year relationship from infidelity. Broke up September 2024.
Read so much to understand what’s happening in my mind and been through talking therapy for 8 weeks and 12 weeks of Domestic Abuse awareness support.
I keep hitting a brick wall though when I get flashbacks of photo and video images from his phone. Details below.
I don’t know how to deal with them as when they pop up, it’s as fresh if not more painful than when I first viewed them.
I know I needed to see the evidence of what my daughter kept telling me (Dads cheating) but the footage hit me harder than I could ever explain. I felt totally violated.
I’m 51 and just want this to stop so I can move on and show up for my 14 year old daughter and 20 year old son. I feel so weak that this is still bothering me when everyone else just moves on.
Any ideas?
I found on cctv outside our house (him kissing the barmaid who drove him home) which he said he was drunk it was nothing, and the videos I found on his phone which he’d made when with prostitutes and naked masseurs giving him happy endings, also the women he paid for to go on a lads weekend to Benidorm; along with a history of chats. The texts to two other women while on our family holiday (which my 13 yr old daughter alerted me to!
Texts about the sex he was planning and having with the barmaid literally on the same days as with me the week after the holiday.
Obviously I ended us and asked him to leave, he denied it all and told me to stop listening to people, I never told him how I knew and left out the prostitutes as was scared how he’d react if he thought I’d been through his phone.
He is still providing financially as joint homeowner and he is the main earner, we never married.
@redOak1856
Im sorry to read how your relationship ended. That's a huge and painful loss of trust.
Try to be kind to yourself. It's less than a year, you are grieving the loss of 26 years. That doesn't happen overnight. I think everyone tries to put a brave face on it, and looks like they are getting over it "just like that", when actually, they are struggling internally, just like you.
Its great that you want to move on and focus on making a future for your children. This is a great motivation. But it's also OK to take a bit of time to process the past.
Regarding the specifics of how to deal with the images, I wonder if a trick a mentor taught me might help. It was for a different reason, but I think it could work similarly. The trick was to take a picture and to write out every thought that came up about it. Not to think about whether they are useful, good or bad thoughts, just to write them down. Then, when you have run out of thoughts, to take a look and see if there are any common themes, or anything is particularly meaningful to you. It can really help at getting at and releasing the underlying gut feeling of the situation or moment.