Disclosure tomorrow at 2: long one….

Tomorrow is the day, and feel like I’m going to puke. It’s be a year since my initial discovery, and this day was originally going to take place in january. A job loss, and my therapist taking the month of may off pushed it to June 8.

It’s been difficult living in the same house with him and not having a disclosure on our own. He tried to force it one night in march when he was about to begin his new job
It felt like he really Iwanted to unload and unburden before he started in his new work role, without regard for what i wanted but I stopped it. Wanted to do it in a therapist office.

I just re read all of your disclosure experiences/suggestions from January when I was first preparing for this and so many of the recommendations have been incorporated. Thank you all for your wisdom, your willingness to share and for your guidance. Thank you for the site joann, it makes an unbearable situation one that i feel i can survive

Im detailing what our session will be like tomorrow in the case it can help someone for their disclosure:
We are doing it in a therapist office
My therapist will be there
My sah and I had meetings w each to prepare
In his pre work he wrote a statement he will read, explaining the work he’s done w his csat detailing when/how it started, why it started, how it progressed/escalated. He will take responsibility for it and apologize for the damage caused
In my prework: I focused in on how I wanted the disclosure to go, what my goals for it are and why, wrote a list of things i wanted answered, wrote about the anger and pain discovery caused me as well as reflected and wrote about how his behavior affected me throughout our marriage now that I had the missing piece of information
we went through various potential scenarios of things I may hear and how I would feel about each, etc
We worked on a letter of ‘support’ for my sah, and the disclosure process where I basically said I support him in doing the work, that I commit to using it as a place to begin my healing, and for him to continue his. I refused to say I would commit to the relationship because that was a lie. I would not know whether or not I would commit to working on it until we finished the disclosure, I had time to process and he continued walking the walk.

The afternoon will essentially breakdown like this:
We meet w our therapist individually first
We meet all together
I read my statement of support
He reads his disclosure statement
I try not to interrupt and let him get through it
I will have a notebook to write anything that comes up where I have questions or want details
My therapist is going to check in w me through it to keep me present as I tend to space out w too much info or focus too much on one area while missing out on other important areas
She is going to ‘take notes’ of the big items he discloses and review w me to make sure I heard them or if i need or want more detail etc.
I can stop him at any point if I need to
Once he’s finished I will ask the questions I’ve already prepared and any others that come up after his disclosure
We finish w individual sessions w our therapists
We are driving separately
My kids are staying with a friend
I am spending the night at my moms after
I have the opportunity to bring him back at anytime in the future for further questions/ poly
I’ve been very clear about wanting this to be his opp to get it out. He knows there are questions i am bringing to the meeting i want answers to. He knows he can make our divorce a 100% certainty by lying and my finding out the truth later or if he dribble discloses.

And although I feel like I could throw up at any moment, I am relieved this day will be over soon. And I’m grateful we did not do the disclosure any earlier. It’s given me so much more time to come out of my fog, and to feel the pain of this. To focus on my healing, my needs and to not be so concerned about his
It’s also given him time to prepare, to work through his activity, to come out of his fog too
Its opened his eyes the longer hes been working w his therapist, has rememberd so much more (puke) and has opened his eyes to his responsibility for the mess we are in
Even though he was doing work initially, he still held on to blaming me for his acting out until really the past 5 months

I ask for your thoughts and prayers, your strength and support. I need to feel it as I am hearing the unthinkable and taking my life and my power back.
Without this site, without you, I know I would have gone back to putting my head in the sand, to sweeping this under the rug, to not dealing w it bc there is so much pain involved, to not valuing my life and my needs
Thank you from the bottom of my heart
Stacy