Rick Reynolds, LCSW
by Rick Reynolds, LCSW
Founder & President, Affair Recovery

Why This Hurts So Much...

Below is information taken directly from our Harboring Hope coursework.1


We hope it provides an example of the type of recovery work betrayed spouses do while they pursue healing.


Our society does not deal well with grief. It is the normal reaction to loss, but because our culture does not handle grief well, you may have never learned to deal with it. You may have unresolved grief from earlier losses that is compounded as you deal with this new tragic situation. It's important to realize that it is normal to feel intense grief after betrayal. Betrayal is loss. As a matter of fact, it is actually a whole list of losses.

Recognizing the losses associated with infidelity and giving yourself permission and ample time to grieve those losses are both critical to a successful recovery. This is true whether there ultimately is reconciliation in the marriage or not.

Infidelity results in numerous losses:

  • loss of identity,
  • loss of the person to whom you believed you were married,
  • loss of the idea of your marriage,
  • loss of safety or security in your marriage,
  • loss of trust in yourself as well as your mate, and
  • loss of hope for your marriage and/or dreams for the future.

Your current reality is much the same as someone who is experiencing the death of a loved one, except your loss is much more complicated. You likely have little or no support compared to someone who lost a loved one. That's because your type of grief is called: "disenfranchised grief." This type of grief is much more challenging to navigate. Disenfranchised grief is connected to a loss that is unrecognized by society at large. It is the loss of something that people may not know about, or even if they do know about the infidelity, they might view either partner's pain as "deserved" or "not that bad."

Join other betrayed mates on the path to healing with our life-changing Harboring Hope online course and start a better, brighter chapter.

Learn More | Harboring Hope

Whether you have shared your loss(es) with a few trusted friends or not shared it with anyone, you may feel as though people look down on you and see you as deficient in some way. Not sharing your loss may feel safer and less embarrassing, but it is not beneficial for your recovery. There are crucial aspects of grief and loss, and they are a necessary part of working through it. You cannot sweep the infidelity pain under the rug even if you try! And as many of you painfully know, trying to avoid it only prolongs your recovery.

Also, it is not unusual for past hurts and unresolved grief to resurface when one experiences losses associated with infidelity. This phenomenon occurs in normal grieving. One loss can trigger grief for other losses that were not adequately grieved previously. This may include deaths or other significant relationship losses experienced in the past. It's very common for the pain of childhood sexual trauma to resurface when infidelity is discovered.

The Bible encourages us to count the cost before we begin something—not as a discouragement, but so we are empowered to make plans, make wise decisions, and end conflict. Please spend the time you need to learn to grieve well. Consider the full cost of the infidelity, not just to you, but also to others and your wayward mate as well.

What is Normal Grief

The way we grieve is affected by many factors: the family we came from, the way grief was modeled, our own history of loss, our basic personality and gender, our relationship, the magnitude of the loss, our particular culture, and whether we tend to be more thinkers, feelers, or doers. The way we have (or have not) grieved previous losses affects how we approach the losses associated with infidelity. Some of us come from families in which tears were not acceptable—or worse, punished. Others of us come from traditions where it is okay to be sad, but only for a brief moment.

Grieving is an individual experience; there is no right or wrong way to grieve. Some people grieve by crying openly without embarrassment. Others cry only when they are alone and behind a closed door. Some people grieve by "doing." These people are not avoiding their feelings but rather expressing them through actions. Many people grieve through anger. Misunderstandings among family members often spring up because people don't grieve the same way.

No matter your grief style, it is not linear. Some of the models listed in grief materials have stages, but grief does not always happen in a step-by-step manner. It is important to understand that grief is not a successive order of steps.

The grieving model I find most useful was devised by a man named J. William Worden. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross also has a five-stage grief model that is very good. Please know that the model you use does not matter as much as your active commitment to allowing yourself the time and space to grieve!

While both partners may see the need for the betrayed to grieve, often guilt and shame can tell the wayward partner they have no right to grieve. Realizing the losses and transforming the pain is, however, necessary for both spouses and also an opportunity for both to provide empathy to the other.

Worden's model uses "tasks" instead of "stages" or "steps," because he believes that grieving must be a proactive process. The first task in his model is to accept the reality of the loss.2 Shock, numbness, and disbelief are usually experienced initially after a loss.2 Many times, others mistakenly look at someone in shock and think they are being strong. The emotions that come after the shock and numbness wear off can feel like a huge wave—a whip in the face they never saw coming.

The second task in Worden's model is to WORK THROUGH (PROCESS) THE PAIN OF THE GRIEF.2 Normal feelings include sadness, anxiety, anger, isolation, loneliness, guilt, relief, and even feelings of craziness, and/or hallucinations.

What usually occurs after the pain sets in is a bouncing back and forth between overwhelming feelings of betrayal and moments in which the individual goes back into disbelief and numbness. I believe this is God's grace in action. It is keeping one from experiencing the enormity of all these feelings at the same time. This part of the healing journey can take some time, so be patient with yourself. Enjoy the moments that are not filled with overwhelming pain and recognize it takes a while for the pain to truly get better.

  • Be patient with yourself.
  • Enjoy the moments that are not filled with overwhelming pain, while recognizing it takes a while to truly get better.
  • Seek expert care while you're grieving. Knowledge will be a form of power for you.
  • Find Community. Our courses are an excellent source of support for your unfolding journey

Grieving infidelity is complicated. It is not a normal sort of grief. It is a stigmatized, disenfranchised grief. It's common for people to have very strong opinions. Please seek out those who will empathize and not bring judgment. Remember that our culture is downright terrible at accommodating those who are grieving, especially those who are grieving infidelity.

As a society, we make few allowances for pain or feelings anyway. We are a pain-free, death-denying culture, and as a result, an individual grieving may get only a few days off to deal with what has happened. And someone who is grieving a betrayal does not get any time off at all! You may be in a position where you have to let loved ones know what you need.

If you'd like to find community, consider our Harboring Hope course. You can also find support and expert help for your recovery by joining our Recovery Library. It's a monthly membership, a "go at your own pace" recovery without having to commit to a year or any other length of time. Simply take it month by month as you find help for grief and direction for your recovery efforts.

  1. The Harboring Hope Course is authored by Hardie, Leslie, LCSW, and Haney, John Mark, Ph.D., LPC, Harboring Hope, (Austin: Hope for Recovery, 2008).
  2. Worden, J. William, Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy: A Handbook for the Mental Health Practitioner, (New York, New York City: Springer Publishing Company, Inc. 2008).
  3. For additional reading on this topic of grief, consider reading: Lewis, C. S. A Grief Observed, (San Francisco: Harper, 2001).

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Comments

PTSD Experience?

So, 33 years ago I experienced betrayal by my then husband who committed infidelity, a year long grueling experience after I became aware of it. He was a police officer. I was subjected to ridicule at police department parties, where my husband was gifted with a monkey, to signify his "monkeying around", I guess, along with other snide inside jokes. The woman was a police dispatcher. How convenient!
I tried my best to mend the marriage, but he refused to go to counseling or to change his behavior. He walked out the first day of school. My son was a fifth grader, my daughter was in junior high. He paid no child support and I waited 3 months to file for divorce to get some teeth into my claim for child support. He did not answer my petition for divorce, so it was drawn out as long as he could possibly extend it. BTW he STILL owes me a substantial amount of money from the divorce settlement, this many years later.
My children, now all grown up, flock to see him on a regular basis, which I find hurtful. He didn't give a flip about them when they were young but now they find it so necessary to see him?
I have been married twice since. One marriage my son absolutely resented. I find my current marriage to be much more respectful and calming.
Here's the thing: my grandson is approaching the age my son was when this all took place, and my son is the age my ex husband was when he abandoned us. It seems like the memory of all the gut wrenching pain is crowding into my brain and preventing me from sleeping well at night. When I said anything to either of my children, they said to "get over it; move on." While I know that is the thing to do, how do I remove that painful experience from my brain? At the time it happened I was shamed and shushed by my church, because NOBODY gets divorced. Once married, always married. And now I get shushed by my own children.
Move on. Get over it. It's like being stabbed in the heart all over again, like I am a nothing and my feelings and experience matters to no one.
Now if he had DIED, and a strong memory of him came back people would be empathetic. I am hoping that the recurrence of the pain will pass and has happened only because of s similar type of circumstances in my family. My son is NOT behaving like my ex, but the age is similar, sort of like a PTSD memory.

Grieving betrayal and death

My husband of 16 years I came to find out he was unfaithful to me 10 years in and trickle truth and I decided to stick it out was a rocky road to say the least all the trust issues my own self esteem crashed I'd always be wondering it took such a toll and I loved him so very much couldn't imagine my life without him after all than 6 years later we actually started communicating better things got better and the unthinkable happens and he gets killed in a tragic car accident on his way to work his last words were i love you babe. And my nightmare began than when searching his phone for pictures for the funeral I find more evidence to betrayal from very recent and here I am juts three months in to grieving his loss and still going thru betrayal. Just when you think........

it still hurts

All of these comments are me. I go through stages. it's been 13 years since it ended . He cheated with his boss. it does take months for everything to be revealed. I feel like he was more relieved to not be living a lie anymore than he was sorry. now 10 plus years since I found out and I still have that emotional roller coaster ride. the one I feel like I should be done with after so many years. The days got less frequent but now are coming back again more often. Trying to work through your own emotions is hard when I don't even know who I am anymore. I feel like it destroyed everything I thought I was.

How to ever move on

I’m in the exact same place. I feel like you took the words that go through my mind so often. It assisted as though I was finally doing better, then out of the blue I feel like I’m at square one. Intrusive thoughts and images almost daily again. I’m completely lost, destroyed. I don’t know who I truly am, the woman I was is a ghost, invisible. Everything I thought, believed and knew is gone.

Agreed, Need Help Moving On ...

I could not agree more. There are spaces of time when I think I've made such progress, and then bam - back to the horrible feelings. I heard myself say out loud a few weeks ago that I've lost who I was. Wondering if a small course devoted to grieving and helping to get a sense of self back could be offered. This might be a good follow-up to those who took the Betrayed Spouse course where each subject was only briefly touched on in a one-focus per week scenario.

I can relate to this

I found out my wife was pregnant with another man's child. Not a day goes by that it's not on my mind.

Feel - and Echo - Your Pain

Agreed on all accounts. I have often wondered if mine had been or was more profusely sorry about all he did and said to her, then maybe I would be able to move forward better. Definitely would appreciate some sort of course devoted precisely to grief and how to move forward ...

Feel - and Echo - Your Pain

Agreed on all accounts. I have often wondered if mine had been or was more profusely sorry about all he did and said to her, then maybe I would be able to move forward better. Definitely would appreciate some sort of course devoted precisely to grief and how to move forward ...

“It still hurts” I can

“It still hurts” I can imagine how much pain you’re in, especially after that many years and feeling so lost about how to move forward with so much pain. I understand similarly, and have been through many years that brought up wounds from even earlier in my marriage that we did not manage well back then. Unfortunately, my spouse had emotional affairs years earlier and we did not know how to handle them back then, so at the time, we basically swept them under the rug until those emotions from the past would bubble up to the surface in anger and I would just lose my temper, somewhat like a volcano. So when the truth came out that he had been involved with someone for over 3 years, I was shocked to say the least. I had no idea how to deal with my past emotions, after not grieving earlier, then added another major layer of pain on top of old wounds.

I think the biggest help for me now, after years, was finding AR’s videos, because they have so many helpful resources that helped me better understand a more valuable way to identify how I was feeling, which helped me realize what I was going through, and that what I was feeling was normal and understandable, given what I was trying to deal with. Another huge additional help was when we went to EMS weekend with AR, because they helped both my spouse and myself to express what we were going through, and that we were not alone. The tools and skills we learned through that course have been incredibly healing. Which was naturally a huge relief, especially since we had tried several different marriage counselors before, including in the immediate aftermath of learning about his long term affair. Recognizing that I must’ve been in shock at first, made so much sense to me. Learning so much more about infidelity has helped me too, but I think for me the best way for me to know what to do, or how to move forward has been one of the greatest words of wisdom from another woman at the retreat. She said to me, “don’t listen to his words, watch his feet” which has been incredibly comforting to know the difference. So many times in our past my husband would make empty promises based on his emotions, without recognizing what needed to be done, at the time.

Since EMS, he has realized he needs to dive deep into true recovery work, and has recognized that he could no longer promise things to me, without knowing what was involved in those promises. He has learned that while he wanted to be faithful, without seeing that he needed help to learn from his past, he now knows how much work, and what can be done, to make sure he is keeping himself safe, with the right help to give him the strength to overcome what he didn’t learn in his childhood. He has been given a gift of reconciliation and is doing everything he possibly can to make sure he is worthy of that gift. When before he acted as if I was crazy for being so hurt by his online emotional affairs, and thought he automatically deserved my grace, and now he knows how wrong that thinking really was. The actions he’s taken since then have really helped me know what to believe, and when his words matched up with his feet (actions), I knew I could begin to trust him slowly again.

I will say that once we finished the EMS program, we both enrolled in the H4H, and HH courses respectively. I found so much se full knowledge about grieving in that course. I know it was a short 13 weeks, and while they mentioned several times how important the grieving process is, but to keep going back through the work to recognize the full cost of the betrayals, and make sure to take it slowly while working through all there is to process.

I have only been done with the HH course for a few months, but I know I just pulled out my book, and reviewed quite a bit with some additional grieving this time, from more lies to process, and information that came out later. Knowing that I can process fully, at my own pace, and without being rushed by my spouse, has been super comforting as well. He has given me as much times as necessary to work through so much, and I appreciate not feeling rushed with my processing that I need to do, because there was just so much pain added together. It’s so comforting that we can discuss everything calmly now, what we were both going through back then, during the affairs. He’s also continued to diligently work on his own recovery, which I am appreciate for, as I know that any marriage is work, especially one with any infidelity.

Anyway, I am truly sorry for all you’re going through, and wish you full healing, as you process your spouse’s betrayal. I know it’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. But luckily now, with a good roadmap of how to work through it all. I am definitely feeling more positive about our relationship, and learning to trust my husband, and myself again. Please remember your emotions are valid, and give yourself time, and grace to properly grieve. As cliche as those words are, I can attest to how true they really are. Good luck, friend!

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I would highly recommend giving this a try.
 
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