Hello Skye, thanks for getting back to us and I'm please we've been able to shed a little light on the situation for you.
I'm not defending your husband, and he might well take the diagnosis very differently to me. But in my case, getting the diagnosis was an immense thing to deal with. I was diagnosed early this year, after many years of being treated for depression and after a long struggle with alcoholism (we are prone to self-medicaton with booze or drugs or sex - anything to help us find oblivion or indulge the mania).
While I was in some ways glad to have a diagnosis and start treatment, it also made me reassess so many things about my life. Things I had never understood suddenly fell into place - all of them bad. I resented going through so much, putting my family through so much when, if I'd been diagnosed earlier they might not have happened. And, I also had to accept that this was for life. I would always be this way.
It's both a relief and a regret to learn that so that so many things you thought about yourself and about other people, the grand ideas, the certainty that you were right and others wrong, the arguments, the obsessiveness ... were because of an illness ... all my life, and I find out at 53!
So, for me at least, my first responses were all about poor me. But once I got my head around it, the remorse and the regret came. Oh did it come. And it hasn't gone either. I'm learning to handle it, but I know it will probably always be there to a certain extent.
What I'm saying is that it's early days for your husband. Everyone reacts differently of course, but it could be he has a lot to take in and think about, and certainly the infidelity is part of that. But if he's like me, he could well be thinking through a whole lot of stuff right now. It's almost like suddenly finding out you're not the person you thought you were.
Of course you must still make your own way through this, and take care of you. You have to think through what's most important to YOU. But again I'd say if you can, give it time. Learn everything you can about the disorder. Talk to him, ask him to be honest about what's going on in his head. And know that treatment takes time to kick in - he needs to patient with that too. It can be months.
I feel for you Skye. For both of you. Please know you can come here anytime you want to chat. we're here for you.
Kaz
