On the day I married Stephanie, I swore I would love her till death do us part. I wanted to be a man who loved his wife, a man who would protect her and provide for her. I wanted to be a good father and a man of great integrity. I never fathomed that I would ever dishonor or disrespect Stephanie. My heart was to love her to the best of my ability. That sentiment reflects my true heart. At the core of my being is a heart that loves and is compassionate, kind, concerned, and caring. However, I have other parts of my being that want and need to be loved. I want and need to feel good about myself.

I say that in an attempt to help those of you closing the door on infidelity understand why throwing away the key is a necessity. The other side of me that wanted the affair is both crafty and cunning. While my true self wants to return home, there's a good chance the part of me that entered into the affair may still crave those feelings of affirmation.

If you've betrayed your heart and fallen into self-deception, self-sabotage remains an eminent threat. This leaves you as your own worst enemy. Avoiding self-sabotage requires guarding your own motivations and actions. Here are a few pitfalls that can unintentionally sabotage our resolve when ending an affair.

Guilt and Shame

Feelings of guilt and shame generated by terminating the relationship create temptation to contact the affair partner (AP) to let them know how badly you feel for disrupting their life. While the thought of trying to help their pain might seem noble, the basis is self-centered. Telling them you feel badly for hurting them only fortifies your image in their eyes and reinforces their attachment to you. Pretending to be the good guy may help with the guilt and shame, but it does little or nothing to help your AP move on. You don't need them to tell you that they're hurting any more than you need to tell them that you're hurting, because you're already aware of that reality. This temptation to let them know how you're doing is only a dimly veiled attempt by your other side to sabotage your recovery.

Four years after my affair, I remember telling Stephanie that I still felt badly about what I'd done to my AP. I asked what she thought about me calling her and letting her know how badly I still felt for hurting her and her family. "Haven't you already done that?" she asked. "Why do you feel a need to do it again?" As I thought about it, I realized that even after all those years there was a part of me that was still vulnerable to the temptation of contacting my old AP. I agreed with Stephanie and never made the call.

I now realize that part of my problem was a failure to forgive myself for what I'd done. As long as I failed to accept that I was forgiven, as long as I had that unmet need, I was in danger of allowing guilt to serve as the key for unlocking that door of communicating with her again.

Wayward partners, you don't need your AP to forgive you, nor do you need them to be okay with what's happened before you move on. You must fully let go of that relationship to move forward. Circumstances have changed for you both and you each have equal opportunity to make new choices and find new beginnings. The temptation to tell the other party how badly you feel is especially strong if you played the role of rescuer in your extramarital relationship. It's time to let go of the self-deception that tells you they can't get along without you.

As much as the truth hurts, your AP will very likely do much better without you. Maybe you helped for a time. Maybe you didn't. Either way, it's not your responsibility anymore.

A technique to move beyond this temptation is to write yourself a letter as if it's from your AP telling you how well they've done since you've both moved on. The story you tell yourself doesn't have to be one of doom and gloom. It's far more likely they'll do well! Allow that reality to be a part of the story you tell as you write the letter.

The "Someday" Vision

Eliminating the belief that maybe someday, "life will bring us together," is critical in throwing away the key. If you hang on to the dream that you might someday get back together, you'll never fully move on. Tell yourself this relationship is permanently over and always will be. The future has to be rewritten.

Typically, those in affairs create an illusion of a future together. That dream of how life will be is often the most intriguing part of the relationship. While things might be miserable now, we imagine how wonderful it will be when our dreams all come true. In reality, tomorrow never comes. Since circumstances account for only 10% of happiness, even if we had the life we've created in our head, it most likely wouldn't satisfy. If you can't do it today, you certainly won't be able to do it tomorrow. Even worse, believing that someday you'll have the right circumstances to make you happy will impede your motivation to do the necessary work to find your own internal source of peace.

Failure to do so hinders your ability to dream and cast a new future. Even if your current relationship doesn't work out, the dynamics that made that relationship appealing will no longer be in place. Let it go. While it's scary letting go of that fantasy, it's a must. You'll never experience new beginnings as long as you close yourself off to new possibilities by clinging to a fantasy. Once you accept that it will never be, a whole new world will open up to you. Self-sabotage will become far less likely.

Breaking the Ties that Bind

Eliminating secrets is essential to throwing away the key. It's not that your mate needs to know all the gory details, but you at least need to bring to light the secrets involving your AP.

If there's contact of any kind, let your mate know. Even if it's them attempting to contact you, it needs to be brought to the light. Maintaining any type of deception leaves you vulnerable to heading back down that path.

Intimacy with your mate is crucial to rebuilding trust and shifting the loyalty in your heart. If you hold secrets to protect your AP, you'll never fully break the tie. That secret will leave you forever in a covert relationship with your AP. Breaking the code of silence frees you from having to protect the AP and allows you to move back toward your mate.

Living in the Past

The final pathway to self-sabotage is the euphoric recall. Life happens in the moment, not in some past event. It's tempting to dwell on ecstatic moments generated during the period of infidelity. (Have you ever noticed how it's not tempting to fantasize about the lousy moments the two of you had together?)

One way to combat this temptation is to ask yourself what you've done lately to create that sort of delight for those in your family. To throw away the key, your focus has to be on how well you're loving others rather than evaluating how well others are loving you. You have to maintain a heart of compassion and concern rather than seeing others as objects you need to manage in order to get your needs met. Essentially, it's rooting out that selfish mindset and patterns of behavior that will help you love your family.

Living in either the past or future will rob you of life's reality and leave you incapable of loving others. Ending an affair requires learning to find enjoyment in each of life's moments. It requires being awake and aware of life's blessings on a daily basis.

Once you've thrown away the key by fortifying yourself against self-sabotage, there's only one more step: let go and move on.

At Affair Recovery, our hope is for you to find an extraordinary life of meaning and purpose. Believe it or not, your (or your spouse's) infidelity can serve as a catalyst to move you to better places. Don't let what's been the worst part of your life cause you to believe life will never be what you want.