Filling in the holes

I realized something today that I thought was interesting and I wonder if anyone else has had a similar experience.

A few weeks ago I was in Manhattan and saw something that triggered very intense emotions for me. At the time, I wasn't really sure why. I started to cry and my chest tightened and I just wanted to walk away from the reminder as quickly as I could, without letting on to anyone that I was with that anything was wrong.

I've thought about it a few times since, trying to figure out what was going on there. It was something sexual, yes, but nothing that relates to my particular story (at least as far as I know). It made me think of Scabs, as it was more closely related to her experience than my own.

I feel a little silly that it took me so long to figure out why I kept relating to Scabs' story, and why that was affecting me so much, because now it seems obvious.

I don't know much about the woman my husband had an affair with. I asked a few questions, needed to know about their "courtship" and put together some pieces that hadn't added up at the time. But I got to a point where I felt I knew enough and just wanted to let it go without adding more and more details that would just be that much harder to forget. Their affair was in a different state. Aside from thinking about that state, I don't think about places they have been together or see reminders of her, because I just don't know it.

I was essentially taking a piece of Scabs' story and making that be a thing that triggered my feelings of hurt and betrayal regarding my husband's affair.

Has anyone else experienced anything like this before? Taking someone else's experience and filling in the gaps in your own with their details?

Dreams/nightmares

There have been so many times I have thought of something I wanted to write on here, blog posts I started in my mind or even an actual post online. However, we are in the middle of an international move and quite frankly, I haven't been able to dedicate as much time as I'd like to recovery activities.

Last night, after 2 very busy days of moving out of our apartment, we crashed into bed at our hotel at 10, which is about 3 hours earlier than we've gone to bed in a week. I was exhausted.

I woke up sometime in the middle of the night after a horrible dream. In it, I had just discovered my husband acting out. When I was shocked that he didn't seem too broken up about breaking his streak of sobriety, he just laughed and said I was foolish for believing he hadn't all this time.

I'm not one who feels like I get inspiration from dreams necessarily. But it was just a vivid enough dream that I can't shake it from my mind. It just reminded me that I have reason to doubt him. I am trying to rebuild trust but in the back of my mind I am often worried that I am going to discover that my trust has been broken again.