Imposter Syndrome

I just returned from a glorious vacation with a few good friends and Child. I had not gone on a vacation since my honeymoon, and someone offered me a free weeklong stay at a cabin in the woods. To say going back to work today after a trip like this was difficult is an understatement.

On the trip back home, my friends and I listened to some podcasts, one of which was about a syndrome called Capgras Syndrome. It is a rare mental disorder, usually caused by traumatic brain injury, in which the person believes that a person or people close to her are imposters. In other words, it looks like her husband, talks like her husband, and dresses like her husband, but she believes that it is not actually her husband, but an imposter. The hosts of the podcasts described how these people have a disconnect between their physical memory of this person and their emotional memory. In other words, they see the person and recognize who it is, but because they do not feel the emotional memories tied up with this person, they think it is not actually the person.

As I listened to the podcast, I had a lightbulb moment. I don't have a traumatic brain injury, and I certainly don't have Capgras syndrome, but this is sort of what it feels like to be married to a sex addict, especially after D-Day. I remember in the early days after discovering Husband's secret life, I would have entire conversations with him in which I would forget what I had just discovered. We would carry on like we always did, sometimes even joking around, and then there would be a moment, a painful moment, where I would realize that the person I thought I knew is not actually the person with whom I am having a conversation. He felt like an imposter, trying to convince me that he was my loving husband, when in fact he was an adulterous liar.

I've since become more well acquainted with this new version of Husband that I now know to be the real version. But there are still moments where I question whether I am talking to the real Husband, or if he is just an imposter.