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I have had nightmares about my WH's infidelity ever since Dday (22 months ago).We are in MC and trying to reconcile. We have made progress and he has changed a lot. He has done the work and so far, his behavior has been impeccable.

Nightmares occur from about twice a month to nearly 3 to 4 times a week. They are always the same: I discover the AP is still in the picture and he tells me he can't give up on her. They love each other and decides to pursue a relationship with her. He has no intentions of abandoning me, just plans to have the cake and eat it too.

I have had nightmares nearly every night this week and I feel exhausted. Sometimes I wake up sobbing because I begged him in my sleep to just kill me as I can't take it anymore. A few nights ago I dreamed I was choking him. The night before yesterday, I had a graphic and violent dream involving the OW. I slapped her, punched her, bit her, pulled her hair and banged her head against the wall. I felt horrible the whole day yesterday.

I ocassionally talk about it in IC. My therapist thinks my brain is trying to process the trauma. I am on mood stabilizers and antidepressants to manage anxiety and depression.

When I look at my life, I see I have made progress in healing. I am on the right path and deal with the pain and betrayal in therapy. I read a lot, focus on myself and try to enjoy the little things in life.

But I can't help but feel utterly sad when I see how profound the damage is. I have been traumatized by the one person I trusted with my life.

Please tell me I am not alone in this.

The nightmares probably are you subconscious working on all this. It IS a trauma. A big one.

I wanted to do absolute vile things to the AP. That was because I couldn’t wrap my head around my WS being the one who actually hurt me. So my brain wanted to give her the same pain I was going through. This tapered off over time, and obviously I did not take any action other than talking to her once (wasn’t worth it).

I will say that you should sit with whether you think there is some piece of information you still don’t have or piece of the puzzle that doesn’t fit right. Maybe your gut is trying to tell you something. Or maybe not. Keep looking at it in IC. Be honest with your self and see what happens.

Glad to hear your WS is doing the work. What does he do when you have these nightmares?

Oizys

I had them they seemed hyper real and they often woke me up and changed my thinking patterns for the entire day.

It was strange the violent ones didn't bother me. They felt like resolution.

The ones where WW quietly told me she she would never tell me what really happened and it was in the past and we need to move on did bother me.

There was also a sense in the dreams that my WW felt pity for me, that the OM was a wonderful experience in her life she could never explain to me. And what I lost was never to be restored

Much of the content derived from things WW said trivial to her, but staggeringly heavy to hear.

[This message edited by survrus at 3:47 PM, Friday, May 16th]

I sorta miss the dreams where I was beating the hell out of AP. I still have one dream and you don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to interpret it.

We are in our bedroom and I am dressed in shorts and a tee shirt. She is getting herself ready to go out. Makeup, hair, and primping in the mirror. She puts on this cotton dress with a green, black, and red tartan. She has never had such a dress but I have a favorite shirt in that plaid, a shirt that she bought for me. She looks stunning. It is how she looked 45 years ago when the affair was new. I don’t know where she is going and I don’t ask. But I follow her. She takes a sheet off the bed and holds it around her neck, letting it drape on her shoulders and down her back, like a bride’s train. When she goes outside I pick up the sheet/train to keep it from getting dirty on the city sidewalks. In real life we have never lived in a downtown area with sidewalks and heavy traffic in the street. But in the dream we are in a Manhattan-like place. She walks ahead and I follow. Eventually she lets the sheet drop from her shoulders and I stop to pick it up and fold it. She keeps walking and puts a little distance between us. I quicken my pace to catch up, but even though I am a much faster walker than she is, and even though she doesn’t seem to be walking any faster than before, she is widening the gap. She gets to the corner and walks with the light across the street to a plaza where I can see young bare chested men dancing and striking poses. They are all younger, taller and better built than I am. When I get to the corner the light has changed and I can’t cross. She doesn’t stop in the plaza with the dancing men but then I lose sight of her as buses and trucks pass through the intersection and when the light finally changes she has disappeared into the city, maybe a plaza building or alley. I go home bearing the squared-up folded sheet in front of me like a ring bearer holding his cushion.

Additional facts: her AP worked in Manhattan. When she was back east "visiting her mother" she would go into the city to meet AP for lunch. The AP is shorter than I am and weighs 135 lbs, so he’s not one of the dancing men. But she’s definitely on her way to a tryst while I am holding remnants of our marriage and dumbly wondering where she’s going. I know this is an anxiety dream spurred by my fear of abandonment. I usually don’t remember my dreams and when I do I only remember buts and pieces and feelings. They never make any sense. This one is vivid. 29 years after Dday, this dream does not bother me anymore. It is amazing how much detail my subconscious managed to put into this script. I think your therapist is right. The dreams are you trying to make sense of your life and to cope with your new reality. Time does not completely heal a broken heart, there is always a scar. But time is your best healer. Hope you get to dreaming pleasant ones again.

In the first several months, I had nightmares that he was getting back with his AP. That shifted after dday4. And somewhere around 1.5 years after dday1, I had a really vivid nightmare of us sitting in our old house hallway, and WS was ripping the flesh off my limbs and eating it. The flesh would grow back, and he would do it again and again, while I sobbed and begged him to stop because it was hurting me.

Pretty sure what my subconscious was trying to tell me with that one. WS is not an actual monster (he is generally a good person), but after repeated ddays and disregard for my needs, my core had decided he was a monster to me. Bottom line - I was scared of him. Not long after that, I decided to stop working on R and just endure the marriage for kid and convenience. I just couldn't open myself up to that kind of pain again.

Slight T/J, but have any of you told your waywards about your nightmares? I think I told mine about the first time I thought he was back with his AP, but nothing after that.