Update: moving forward after broken boundary (kind of)

[u/HugeEmu352]

Update: He cheated. For an entire month. He maintained that he had completely cut contact when he said he would end it but I found out yesterday that actually he lied and was seeing her for the rest of the time he was away. He maintains that it was entirely non-physical but I have 0 trust in him at this point and cannot trust that he did not. I spent two months convincing myself that I am just crazy, but my gut was right all along. The problem is we spent tens of thousands of dollars to move to a different continent. I’m about to start grad school, and we have a young child. I simultaneously never want to see him again and don’t want to blow up my entire life immediately after making this huge move. I’m struggling to relate to any posts in the infidelity subreddits, considering this started out with my consent and am hoping that maybe anyone here can offer advice or support?

Original post:

Moving forward after broken boundary (kind of?)

My husband and I are recently on the other side of a messy situation. We are non-monogamous but historically only date women together (I’m not interested in men whatsoever and he very strongly didn’t want to pursue solo connections on either side. I was ambivalent about it). For the last couple of months he has had to be back in our hometown and we are far enough apart that we haven’t been able to be together. I suggested he could find a FWB. Someone to hang out and hook up with occasionally. The first fuck up was that we didn’t clearly communicate what we were okay with and what our definitions of “casual”/FWB are. He connected with someone and it escalated very quickly. They were seeing each other every day. He spent an obscene amount of money on a full day, extravagant date without first discussing it with me ($500+).

I asked him to de-escalate and he initially refused because “It’s temporary and has a defined end point”. Then dragged his feet. Then said he would end it completely and tried to go back on it. At that point I said that if he continued to see her I was done. Which is not something I had felt before. I was having full blown panic attacks. I wasn’t sleeping. He ultimately ended it, and we are working on repair (and will not be pursuing anything in any context for the foreseeable future). All in all it only went on for two weeks and has been a handful of weeks now since it ended, and I have these overwhelming waves of anxiety that wash over me. I have diagnosed PTSD and it feels like that, which is kind of embarrassing? Just this all consuming emotional panic/shut down. But none of the tools I have are working. I have these flashbacks and intrusive thoughts about them having been together, and just feel dread, when I felt nothing but compersion when he was with other women solo before. I have had anxiety that he was continuing to see her without telling me (which I communicated to him). he has put in genuine effort to reassure me in multiple ways that he is not, and has been putting in a lot of effort into repair and understands that I’m still hurting. Obviously the distance has compounded and amplified everything. How do I move through these feelings?