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At what point would you consider yourself healed?
E.g. Doesn’t interfere with day to day life

And what are reasonable expectations for healing?
E.g. No intrusive thoughts

It’s a pretty open ended question with maybe some needed context for us to be able to address it in a personal way for you. When you are ready I hope you will feel comfortable to share your story.

Generally, there are many stages for healing. I suspect you are asking the question because you are early in this process and are in excruciating pain. Oh, how I remember those dark days. Those won’t last forever- I would say after about six months the intrusive thoughts were some better and that just continued to get better until about a year out. Everyone is different but that will subside.

The process of truly healing after that is less about the affair (though of course that remains a theme). It’s about becoming more self aware of your patterns that do not serve you and learning new coping skills. The majority of the coping skills I use today came from the teachings of Pema Chodron (I love her book "when things fall apart") ans Eckhardt Tolle ("the power of now").

And some of them came from therapy. If you can afford therapy, it a great way to start gaining self awareness.

What I mean by that is often the affair is a symptom of mismanagement of one’s life to the point an imbalance has occurred in some way. By tracing those things and working to be different, it will not only improve your life but it will help you towards the third stage of healing- finding more peace and self compassion.

I think the way I know I have healed is that I love myself enough to conduct my life in a way that creates stable happiness. And when things go wrong I have skills I have learned that reliably help me walk through that too. That all probably feels 100 miles away from you as you sit with the pain I know very well.

[This message edited by hikingout at 3:34 PM, Monday, June 9th]

Is the guilt and regret still a daily battle?

It’s hard for me to look at other couples and families without feeling intense negativity right now.

I want to post my story but my BP isn’t a fan of online forums regarding this, I feel posting it without consent would be a further betrayal.

I think there are several layers of that you will potentially deal with.

Guilt- is about feeling badly for what you did.
Remorse- is having a deep understanding of the damage you inflicted.
Shame - "I am bad"

What typically makes the other two debilitating is shame. I do not know if that is true for you but it seems to be a theme with us ws in general.

And until you can see it, look at its sources and learn to change your self talk, it can last for longer.

I am not sure it’s gone away for me totally, I am 8 years out. But it isn’t something unmanageable anymore and hasn’t been for a long time. I have done what I can to change, make amends, and have a better relationship with myself in general. This has led to understanding where I was in life and how my operation system was faulty. I think it’s as good as it will probably ever be. I will always regret my affair but it’s not consuming anymore. I am happy and have found ways to be in peace far more than I have over the course of my lifetime.

HI there. BS perspective here as there is no stop sign. BUT my answer is universal for BS and WS so I'm hoping this helps you on some level.

At what point would you consider yourself healed?
E.g. Doesn’t interfere with day to day life

I have a friend that is 35 years sober. She will always say she is "in recovery" as opposed to "recovered". I kind of put it in a parallel to that. You'll see posts where I say "healed" for simplicity sake. But I think that healing from such a trauma is a one foot in front of the other type thing. There is always another step to take. And that path is seldom linear. The important thing IMHO is that you are moving forward [overall]. And each day you strive to do/be better than the next.

And what are reasonable expectations for healing?
E.g. No intrusive thoughts

Aaaahhhh....I'm going to get a bit philosophical here. The question isn't so much when do you have no intrusive thoughts. The ultimate question is when do those intrusive thoughts no longer have control over you. Because although I am years out, they still come. Not as strong anymore and not as often - but they do come. They are not so scary or debilitating anymore. Through time and lots of IC I have learned some defense mechanisms for them. I learned how to avoid going down that rabbit hole. I learned how to replace them with positive. I learned how to handle them should they arise when I am driving or in public [having an exit strategy is good]. I learned how to manage them when they hit hard out of nowhere. I learned how to redirect my thinking when they happen at 2am and I can't sleep. I learned not to let them rule me. That took years, practice and lots of IC.

Time, work, practice - that is what you need here. And patience with yourself. This is a process.