I took a nap yesterday. Nothing I haven't done before in my life, but this time was different. I laid down because my husband was tired after a late night out and an early morning rise for a sporting event. We were out in the cold and rain for hours and the combination would leave most any adult tired. My body was pretty achy from running around the course so while my brain was ready to go go go my body was feeling tattered.
We laid down and my husband gave me some rubs on the tight muscles in my calves, neck, and back. This is an almost instantaneous way to knock me out. I get so deeply relaxed that I cannot keep the eye lids open.
I woke up an hour later, alone in a cold bed. I was confused and disoriented. I thought I had overslept and missed my deadline for my work reports. I thought I had slept through the entire evening, but it was just 4:30pm.
Suddenly I was overcome with feelings of distrust, anger, and resentment. Why was I alone? The main reason I had laid down was so that my husband would rest. He tends to fight sleep when I am up. I feel like I have to lie down with him, much like a child, to get him to rest.
I then realized why I felt this way. When my husband was having an affair I was very pregnant and tired all of the time. He would wake up hours before me, or get out of bed when I was fast asleep, to email his Mistress. I didn't find out about the situation for months...not until the baby was born, and I found out quite by accident. I had no clue. I missed all of the signs. I was devastated.
This deeply embedded memory somehow resurfaces from time to time. I never see it coming. It just hits me like a ton of bricks and suddenly I am lying in our bed wondering where he is and what he is up to. No good, I suspect. I immediately feel no trust for him, and the feeling lingers for hours, and sometimes even days.
It's amazing to me how humans can carry one act with them for so long, and even the rest of their lives. It's because of experiences like this that I try to be mindful about what I do unto others. I'd sure hate to make someone else feel like a prisoner in their mind with only their thoughts and fears, like I do.
I suspect I will be skipping any co-napping opportunities for a while.
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Oh, wow, Lety. I hope this is something you share in counseling because it is a really good example of the damage that exists. I wish I could say that I can't imagine how you are feeling... but it's how I lived in my first marriage. So I get it. And you've put words to it exactly. I wish I had an answer- I got out of tha tmarriage because of the trust issues and lying and so on but we didn't have anything between us besides debt so it was pretty easy to break from it in the grand scheme of things. I admire so much your openness and honesty and that you are working on these problems for the sake of your kids and yourself.
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