Cheating leaves wife ruminating

Dear Amy: Almost 20 years ago when my husband and I were just 19 years old, he cheated on me.

Twenty years on, I’m still having a hard time trusting him.

What can I trusting him?

I feel likeIhavesomeform of PTSD from it. He says he was young and made a mistake, but is that even a legitimate excuse?

I am constantly accusing himof things that turn out to be nothing.

We have five children together, and he is awonderful dad and husband.

I knowI’ll regret it later if I don’t get it together now.— Suspicious

Dear Suspicious: Twenty years is an extremely long time for you to live in a state of “high alert,” and for your husband to tolerate youraccusations.

It is a testament to your commitment to each other that your marriage has survived.

Constant rumination paralyzes your problem-solving skills, distracts you from the positive tending of your relationships, can affect your physical health, and is overall very time consuming. Your husband has been forced to react. And I assume you are exhausted fromthis.

A psychologist might diagnose you with obsessive rumination disorder, which can be triggered by PTSD. You might be introduced to mindfulness training, which is basically a technique where you purposefully and consciously yank your mind back to the present. You will be retraining your brain to refocus, and your brain will without prompting.

I am certain that you would benefit from “talk” therapy.

Why were you so traumatized by an event that many others process and recover from? Insight into this will be life-changing for you. Insight and self-knowledge will bring you into a new relationship with yourself, your husband, and your children. do to start