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8 months. The last few days for no apparent reason my brain had been attempting to fill in every moment of time with her with images of what it looked like, what he gave her. 30-40 minutes of physical activity, a couple minutes of his hand down her pants, less than a minute of his mouth on her breasts, a couple of minutes of oral. I was there that night sitting with them before it happened so the images are extremely visceral. My brain is walking me through every minute, he says it looked like what he's done before when with someone sexually so my brain takes our experienced and applies it all to that time frame. I'm trying to figure out what 25+ minutes of unaccounted time looked like, with information such as no breaks other than one.
I'm being tortured by my own mind. I feel like something is wrong with me because so many other betrayed don't seem to be as impacted by the physical aspect... For me it's everything. It's that he wanted it, persued it, stayed in it and reengaged for that timeframe. 10 years of sexual exclusivity and he so easily gave her everything he has ever given me other than penetration... But even that doesn't sooth anything because the progression stopping was only because she was on her period. Everything leads to the fact that he would have given her everything he has ever given me sexually and it destroys me. I just can't get my brain today to stop. It started last night and I cried for 2 hours trying to get myself to stop picturing them. What's the point? Destroy a decade for that? My mind makes me believe that it must have been irresistible because how could he stay in it for so long? How comforting he must have been being with her like that. Our sex sessions rarely go 30-40 minutes and he spent that much time with her? My brain can't make it make sense. The images are horrifying and completely debilitating me today. I hate it. I hate this. I hate that I'm not built like him and sexual intimacy means fucking nothing. To me it meant everything.

I'm rambling and being unproductive in this post. I just wish I could replay it in my head and think "well at least it wasn't like what we experience" but it is, depth or not it's all the same to me. I feel replaced, I feel like our sexual experiences are cheapened, I feel I'll never get the feeling of "this is ours" back again.

This article from the healing library may help: https://survivinginfidelity.com/documents/library/articles/discovery/how-to-stop-mind-movies/.

Personally, I let the movies play to the end. They were all pretty banal.

Well you just described what goes on in my mind almost exactly. Even right down to the no penetration. Only I had 27 years of fidelity with my wife before she cheated on me. Her AP had prostate cancer. Between the operation and treatment he's unable to. I want to say "thank god" but she didn't know that about him until it was go time so the intent was absolutely still there. He still tried, but failed and had to explain why to her.

I know what my wife is like in bed and I know that she loves oral. I do exactly what you do and overlay my experience with her and picture her with him and it's pretty much pure torture. You're not alone in this. 16 months later and I still struggle with it.

For what it's worth, the physical aspects hurt me just as much as the emotional ones. He was in love with her, and he did almost everything physical with her as he did with me. It doesn't matter if your WS claims that it was "just sex" - it's not about him. I'm sure he knew that it would be meaningful to you, and he didn't care enough to stop.

Our minds do this obsessive replaying thing in part because it's a survival mechanism. In order to learn from a dangerous situation, we relive things so that we can do something different "next time" and not get hurt. Your brain is desperately trying to figure out how to prevent this from ever happening again. Unfortunately it isn't always productive, and sometimes we get trapped by these thoughts. It's a trauma response. Some people have luck with EMDR therapy (under professional guidance) to break the cycle.

Sisoon
It's so exhausting, I do a lot of the tricks but these recent waves are so overwhelmingly intense, it's like all the months of compounded snippets of information I'm trying to piece together into a digestible image but it's not only indigestible but incomplete. It's horrific. I wish banal is how I can explain mine but the difficult part is the place (outside on camera in common areas) paired with the specific details of things he has not done with me. Specifically a heated sneaky makeout session lasting so painfully long and the fact that he picked her up multiple times. Things he never had the energy to give me it feels like.

Pogre
I'm so sorry. I relate so much, for me there is an additional aspect. The homeowners, friends who were there watched the footage. I feel like there are too many people who know more than me and I feel a huge injustice that I will never know exactly what happened and witness how much desire he gave to her that stole so much from me. So easily and willingly. I hope these thoughts go away, I despise what they are doing to me.

NoThanksForTheMemories
I hate that our brains do this. I completely understand why but it scares me how much they take me out of the now. How much they make me question trying. I currently do emdr therapy but these image loops of the event are so insanely intrusive. I feel like he broke something deep in me and I'll always be searching for a way to lesson the intensity of knowing he didn't care enough to stop. It's a living nightmare.

Raven25, I read this today. If you can take a couple of steps back every now and then and gain this perspective, it can help.

Look around you and find some text. Be honest about what is actually there: shapes, colors, a bunch of perception. Then watch how fast letters, words, a whole language get added on top.

That added layer is a concept. You construct it from what you perceive, so quickly and so automatically that you forget you are doing it. Try to look at a word and not see it as a word. It takes effort.

Some concepts stay close to perception. A dog picturing its toy in the garden is still very perceptive flavored. Or at least that's how I imagine it is for the dog.

As humans we build towers of concepts. Your career, your status, your life story: they fill up your experience until they feel as solid as the physical world.

You take them seriously, and what you take seriously can hurt you. You get attached to it, or you get threatened by it.

So sit for a moment and realize that none of these things exist anywhere in your perceptive experience right now. You are doing them. Take your concepts for what they are: constructions.

During the week:

When you are sitting somewhere ordinary, take a few minutes and come back to your perceptive experience: what you see, hear, and feel right now.

Notice that your career, your status, your life story do not exist anywhere in that perception. You are constructing them.

The thinking will pull you back in, and when it does, notice it and return to what you perceive. Recognize the pervasiveness of concepts in your experience.

Personally, I let the movies play to the end. They were all pretty banal.

This made me laugh a little. Apparently my wife's AP was a bit on the premature side... Didn't sound like the stuff legends are made of.

I feel like he broke something deep in me and I'll always be searching for a way to lesson the intensity of knowing he didn't care enough to stop. It's a living nightmare.

It is indeed a living nightmare, and he did break something deep in you - he broke the bond of trust. It will take a long time to repair that trust, whether you stay with him or leave him. Healing yourself will also take a long time - far longer than you'll want it to, probably years.

The added insult of other people bearing witness to it all is immense. You've been deprived of privacy for your pain and grief. I'm so sorry.

I don't think anything is wrong with you that isn't "wrong" with other people who were betrayed. I'm really glad that you're doing EMDR already, even if it isn't helping right now.

Can you take some time apart from him? It's incredibly hard for some of us to heal ourselves while also trying to reconcile. Perhaps you're like that too. The only way to know is to test it out - even a couple weeks away on a vacation (or staycation) without him (but with friends or family) and keeping contact to a bare minimum will give you an idea of a longer separation would be beneficial.

Raven, this is something I have struggled with a lot, sometimes I still do.

I’ve tried all the tricks in the book but what mostly works for me is interrupting the movies, my brain likes to play mostly the same movie - them kissing in my car parked outside her house. I catch it, and imagine myself walking down the street, opening the car door and dragging her out down to the railway at the end of the street, I sling her on the tracks just as the train passes. Red mist, end of movie. In the beginning I had to do this a lot, several times a day but now not nearly as much. It does get better.

My brain shows me the worst possible images when it’s trying to keep me safe.

I struggle with this too. I always play out the same story, try to fill in the blanks, from what my fiancee told me:

My fiancee has told me when she cheated on me she went to a party, slept with some guy she met that night.

She was angry and gave me all the details. When I asked her why, she said "I don't know... he was looking at me like I was prey and it turned me on" - something to that effect. They were playing beer pong, it was some college type party.

What kills me is that she made me wait like a month, 4 dates or so, before we became intimate.

And with this guy she just gave it up to him at some random party, meeting him the first time.

The worst thing is she told me "I got tested after, and everything turned out OK, I don't have anything" so she didn't even use a condom.

And if you met her she seems like the most innocent good girl you've ever met, not flirtatious or provocative at all.

It's kind of a mind-f*ck.

I found this out after 4 years of being with her, living together etc...

I totally trusted her but after finding that out, I ask myself if I even know who this person is....

Which is why I'm here. Because I thought she was the love of my life. I'm trying to figure out who this person actually is. And whether I should try to make it work, or risk not finding that type of connection again. (This isn't my first relationship so I know how hard it is to find a true connection).