Why did it take me a year for something to process and hit me hard

Hey everyone. I’ve been struggling to process something that happened in my marriage, and I’m hoping to get some outside perspective.

I discovered that my wife had been communicating with another man while hiding his identity under a woman’s name. From what I found, she was flirting with him and trying to make plans to see him. At first, I had a difficult time fully processing what I was seeing. I later discovered that this was someone she had previously been intimate with. In her past

What affected me even more was finding that she had sent him a picture of our daughter. At the time, she apologized, and I chose to stay and try to move forward because I believed her apology and wanted to give our marriage another chance. Looking back now, though, I’m realizing that an apology alone wasn't enough to address the damage that was done.

Over the past four months, being unemployed has made me look at everything differently. I've been in one of the lowest and most vulnerable periods of my life, and instead of feeling supported by the person I'm with, I've often felt like I've been kicked while I was already down.

I've been trying to tolerate a lot of it because I finally got a new job and have been telling myself that once I start working again, I'll be in a better position to make decisions about my life. But some things have really opened my eyes. I was even criticized and made to feel bad for asking for $10 so I could get to a job interview while I was unemployed and genuinely struggling.

I think that's part of why everything from the past is hitting me so hard now. It's not just about what happened a year ago anymore. I'm looking at the bigger picture and realizing how I've been treated during one of the hardest periods of my life.

It took me a long time to process what happened, and I'm still trying to understand why. Maybe I wasn't ready to face the reality of it at the time. But now that I'm looking back with a clearer mind, I'm realizing that there were things I accepted because I wanted to save my marriage, and I'm not sure I can continue I just want an honest outside perspective on whether it's normal for these feelings to surface this long after something happened, and whether staying because someone apologized is enough when the underlying issues haven't really change