No one likes to be stuck. Not in financial duress, not in health trouble and certainly not in marital crisis. Its one thing to be stuck on a math problem but it’s another to be seemingly paralyzed unable to take action in either direction, simply reacting to your spouse’s behavior. When a spouse, particularly an unfaithful spouse, is exhibiting a behavior that is not only confusing but hurtful and indecisive, it only drives the knife in deeper. Their inability to take action causes more and more pain for everyone around them, none more so than the betrayed spouse. What are you to do? How do you get unstuck? Do you have any options? What can you do to cause change?
The question we have to ask ourselves is, what are we willing to do to cause change in our spouse’s behavior...
As I alluded to in my last post, sometimes a couple ends up addicted to being stuck. Your first inclination might be to say “Samuel, you mean the unfaithful spouse is addicted to being stuck, right?”
Unfortunately, no. In order to be addicted to being stuck, the old saying “It takes two to tango” has never been truer. For a couple to be stuck, both spouses have to be locked in a paradigm that simply isn’t working.
This feeling of being stuck is a common occurrence when neither spouse does anything different than the pattern they have been exhibiting for a considerable amount of time. What’s a considerable amount of time you might ask? I’d say usually anywhere from 6 months to as much as 6 years. The fact is, if you’ve been doing the same thing with the same results, and...
Yesterday I was talking to a betrayed spouse and their question was “How do I know he really wants to be with me?”
My humorous reply was “Well, he’s there with you now, taking the heat isn’t he? He could be with her, but he’s with you, trying to get it right, riiiigggghhhhhht?” She laughed and thought about it for a bit, and we continued our dialogue. It didn’t settle the issue once and for all as many infidelity related issues are not settled once and for all in a mere sentence. However, it did point her down the road to a better understanding of some things the more we talked.
Reality is, for the most part, if the spouse didn’t want to be there, he/she wouldn’t be. Yes, if the affair partner was married and wanted to work on their own marriage, they may have had the...
There are several factors that will sabotage personal as well as marital healing. Unless you’ve been through infidelity, you won’t’ easily identify them and may even encourage a few things which are actually saboteurs in disguise. Unfortunately, therapists can even fall victim to these errors which end up completely undermining the entire process of recovery for both spouses as well as unnecessarily creating yet another wall to have to leap over in recovery.
I liken these saboteurs to another name, roots. Roots are not easily seen and very easily hide beneath the surface. A tree has an insane amount of roots to it, yet we see so few, if any, besides its trunk. The longer I do what I do, the deeper I understand that infidelity is a life changing trauma. It doesn’t mean it can’t...
The older I get, the more life throws at me and the older my kids get, the more I understand that life is filled with pain. Some is intense and at the top of the scale like infidelity, shame, moral failure and the destruction our choices create. Other pain can be smaller like the pain of rejection from a child, or a failed business deal, or the inability to provide the way you’d like to for your family.
I like to deaden my pain. I really do. One of my favorite books I’ve read in the last 10 years is Shattered Dreams by Larry Crabb. I highly recommend it. Take for example a quote of his:
“People who find some way to deaden their pain never discover their desire for God in all its fullness. They rather live for relief...
Often times, the unfaithful feels stuck: stuck between two people, their spouse and their affair partner.
One is a life of illusion and fantasy and their needs seemingly being met anytime they choose.
One is a life of responsibilities, conflict, unmet needs and you know real life.
It’s not uncommon at all that the betrayed spouse will chase the unfaithful spouse. Whether it’s to woo them or win them the fact remains they are pursuing their spouse. Who wouldn’t? It’s the normal knee jerk reaction and we’re not playing cards here. This is real life with often times decades of marital history involved and what was supposed to be ‘till death do us part.’
Keep in mind, the unfaithful is also being pursued by their affair partner. Many, not all, but many...
This is a tough one. A short blog makes it impossible to be exhaustive, but I’ll be as specific as space and time allows.
Fact is you don’t make anyone have an affair. An unfaithful spouse cheats because of their own inability to face up to their marital situation and perceived dissatisfaction and handle it a better way, the right way.
Yes, my marriage had some vulnerabilities. Samantha admitted she rejected me emotionally and sexually pretty frequently. She also admits that she was disapproving and I was treated like a second or third child depending on what year of marriage we were in. I felt like I was treated like royalty everywhere outside of my home, but inside my home I never could do enough or be enough. I was frustrated. I was selfish and self-absorbed. Yep: I...
To tell or not to tell is a huge question for any couple in recovery. Whether it’s been a few months or a few years, couples always wonder if they will tell anyone, ever, in their life. Some truly want to heal, move on, and never talk about it to anyone ever again. Others want to find a stage and tell the world and see others heal. I understand both positions and have operated within both of them.
For Samantha and I, we’ve been very open with our story. I would write this blog under my real name, but the executive leadership at AR has asked for our names to be kept private for those that are uncomfortable telling anyone their story. I get it.
However, I have found an incredibly equal playing field in life when I share my story or a version of our story with people...
It’s very common. As a betrayed spouse learns of whom the affair partner was, the lights start to come on a bit. If the affair partner was a good friend or best friend of the betrayed spouse, the whole situation becomes a ‘double betrayal’ for the hurt spouse. They’ve now been betrayed by both their spouse and their friend. It really is one of the toughest situations to face within the world of infidelity.
Eventually, the betrayed is faced with raging emotions and a sense of violation. Often times the affair partner will not quit or go away quietly either. It’s at this point that the betrayed many times will start to tear down and trash the affair partner. Don’t get me wrong, they may deserve it, but it’s a no win situation.
In what seems like a knee jerk...
One of my favorite movies since our own D-Day is Cinderella Man with Russell Crowe. It’s a classic tale of a man who loses everything, pushes through the recession and rises again to be a championship fighter. I cry every time and I feel like conquering the world after I watch it. I highly recommend it for both betrayed and unfaithful spouses as a bit of a journey into the world of ‘coming back’ and finding hope and faith again. During a pivotal scene James Braddock, played by Russell Crowe, utters a line I’ve found myself saying over and over again sometimes during tough times…..
“I didn’t always lose…..I won’t always lose again.”
As a business man, I’ve lost a ton of deals and even more money. It hurt like hell every single time. I’ve also had some wonderful years and...
First of all, most affairs are based upon fantasy, and a fantasy is always more alluring than reality, especially when you add about the years spent together, the resentments that have built up, and the responsibilities pulling you in multiple directions to that reality. Add kids, mortgages, mood swings, PMS, menopause, financial pressures and you have a recipe for potential disaster if help is not sought out soon enough. Affairs are based upon another life that is free from the pressures of life and reality. It’s easier (albeit selfish and cowardly) to have an affair than it is to do the work to fix your marriage or yourself.
The grass always looks greener after about 5 or 10 years of marriage, and we don’t make the connection early enough sometimes that if we’ll nourish...
(From the Current Series Nagging Questions)
Quite honestly, I hope you (the unfaithful) will not ever be the same ever again. I hope this would be the change you didn’t even know you were looking for, but have finally found.
I’m also quite sure your spouse is probably hoping you’re never the same again either. They may secretly want to go back to the way life was before the affair, or even before the affair was known, yet reality is that life is gone. We’ve taken from them the illusion that that life was perfect. It wasn’t perfect, because we hid a great secret from them. It doesn’t mean life is now void of meaning or joy though. It can and will one day return again, and the sooner you get serious about recovery, the sooner the joy and new normal will arrive.
...
(Nagging Questions Continued)
For some, the question finally arrives: why not just divorce my spouse and move on?
I’ll never forget, Samantha and I were in our room talking, and she launched out into a pretty good rant about how angry and hurt she was. In a defining moment, through tears of very defining sorrow she said to me “if we didn’t have kids, it would be easy: we could just divorce and move on. But now, I don’t know…..”
It not only hit me like a ton of bricks, it sobered me up a bit to the reality that she was considering all options, including separation and divorce. I didn’t want her to consider all options. I wanted her to simply say “I want to work it out. Let’s ride off into the sunset of ‘Another Chance’ and be happily ever after.” Nine years...
(Nagging Questions continued)
One of the biggest struggles for Samantha was reminders, particularly during sexual intercourse of any kind. They were unrelenting initially, and seemed to take forever to dissipate. It was not uncommon at all for her to retire to the bathroom to cry and try and get herself together, in hopes of returning to the bedroom. I hated every single minute of it. She hated it even more.
Then there were the triggers from TV shows, or comedians, or movies or… you name it. I had to become an expert in reviewing movies to make sure that there would be no hint of infidelity in them before we saw them. For I believe 9 months or so, we barely saw a movie if it wasn’t a Disney flick. Because my affair was highly emotionally and sexually charged, her...
(Nagging questions continued)
It’s a valid question: can you and your marriage have what your spouse and the affair partner had? To attempt to cover all bases I’ll approach from both sides of the marriage.
For the Unfaithful: I’ll never be able to have with my wife what I had with my affair partner. What I had in the affair was more fantasy than reality. Very little responsibilities, the ability to come and go as I pleased with little to no expectations, the newness of the physical intimacy, no kids to get in the middle of our time together, no bills to pay, and no ‘real life’ pressures. I was only around for the great parts of the affair partner and was celebrating the top 20-30% of her personality, not the entirety of her as a person. In an affair, I’m simply using...
Over the next few blogs I’m going to be tackling what I call some “nagging questions” that many ask me (and Rick) consistently. They will all be featured in my book so this will be a great way to polish them and obtain necessary feedback from you all as well. I always enjoy constructive feedback on the blog, especially from those in the trenches.
Will my spouse ever be the same again? The short answer is no. If you’re the unfaithful spouse, I would hope you do not want to remain the same, but pursue recovery to find the person God has created you and your spouse to now become in light of all that has changed. This whole nightmare may be the very impetus that begins the process of transformation in your life that both you and your spouse have been looking for.
For the...
In a conversation the other day, an unfaithful spouse said to me “I really do want to want to save my marriage…..but I’m so deep in, I feel lost.”
He expected me to be angry or upset with him, but I simply affirmed him and said I’m thrilled you want to want to. After all, at least you’re being honest with someone after 4 years of back and forth, in and out of your marriage, two different affair partners and a litany of excuses and lies.
Coming clean and getting healthy is always messy.
“I want to want to” sounds like a cop out. It is, to some extent, but we, the unfaithful do not know that yet. It’s like we’re saying, I want to do what’s right, and I should know what’s right, but poor me, I don’t have the “want to”. ...
Often times the betrayed spouse is infuriated by the ambivalence of the unfaithful spouse. The very fact that they do not know who they want to be with, their affair partner or their spouse, is enough to incite feelings of rejection which eventually spill over into rage, hopelessness and eventually deep despair. My question for the betrayed is, “Why wouldn’t your spouse feel ambivalent?”
It requires a bit of an exploration into the mind of the unfaithful to understand the ambivalence. Remember, the unfaithful has been living in a bit of a fantasy world. Affairs create the possibility for an unfaithful spouse to construct a new reality: sex as often as you want, no responsibility to care for the mood and desires of the other, no rejection or hard work to connect, non-stop...
It seems like not a day goes by I don’t talk to a spouse who is dealing with a spouse who is ambivalent or undecided about where they want to be. I wish it was limited to just the unfaithful, but it happens to both spouses alike, unfaithful and betrayed. You just aren’t sure what you want to do or where you want to be.
The unfaithful become ambivalent about where they want to be. Should they pursue the illicit life of the affair with what seems to make them happy and fulfilled or should they return home to see if there is a future and a hope with their spouse?
The betrayed wonder if they can ever trust their spouse again and is it really worth it in the end? Should they be willing to expose their heart and vulnerabilities all over again, only to be raked over the coals...
It was commonplace that Samantha would ask me a ton of questions about the affair. Did I love her? Was I really trapped? What did we do, how often, when, where, what did you feel? I hated all of it and I’m quite sure she hated it more.
It was very common that during these types of conversations I’d pull back. She called it retreating. I hated to talk about it and hated to recant the details and feelings of my affair(s). I felt horrible. I hated myself, hated what I had done and didn’t want to keep reliving it. Early on, I would hesitantly give details and offered them up somewhat freely as I had to. As we got further along, a few months in, I’d get edgy and irritable when pressed with questions and concerns. Further down the road, after we found Rick, I would gladly offer up...
If you’re a regular on my blog, you’ll note that I make no excuses for my infidelity or anyone else’s. Bad marriages don’t cause infidelity, bad choices do. Betrayed spouses often believe if they would have just had more sex with their spouse, or paid attention to their needs, they wouldn’t have cheated. That reasoning is flawed entirely. Sure, sure there may have been vulnerabilities within the marriage, yet the fact remains, we cheat out of selfishness and dysfunction.
It’s at this point however that we must note the battle the betrayed must fight. It’s a battle against seduction. Typically, I see the betrayed seduced by bitterness, anger and resentment. Don’t the betrayed have a right to be angry? Absolutely. However, what I’m speaking to is the seduction to be...
Our affairs are selfish in nature. I hope it gives more credence to that fact since I’m a former unfaithful.
I’m certainly not proud of that, but I am elated when I can talk to other unfaithfuls and help walk them through their own situation and struggle. I’m sure we all love it when we have community we can relate to and that understand our own struggles, because they are dealing with it themselves.
The unfortunate reality is, we the unfaithful, think we’re heroic when we say “let’s move on and let’s heal.” We think we’re giving some sort of encouraging word that our betrayed should grab hold of and shout “Oh thank God….I’m so glad that my knight in shining armor is NOW ready to heal. My life can get back to normal again.” We think it takes great courage to rise up and...
As I’ve written before, recovery is a journey. It’s been nine years and I’m still learning. Rick said just last month at one of our EMS Weekends, “It’s been almost 30 years and I’m still learning.” Recovery, I believe, is a progression as we return to understanding and a sense of ‘wholeness’ after our demise. If we’re open and malleable, I believe we’ll find healing for all of our wounds we’ve encountered in life, including infidelity and even childhood.
It’s a terrible childhood memory which is my backdrop today. It certainly ties in to my approach post-infidelity but some background will serve a purpose first.
My father and mother divorced when I was about a year old after he returned from fighting in Vietnam. My father would remarry a couple times till his death when...
Yesterday I was listening to a Ted Talk by Debra Jarvis, a female chaplain to those who are both terminally ill with cancer and those who are going through chemotherapy. It was as uplifting as it could be considering the topic. A cancer survivor herself, she had several wonderful things to say. She made a statement after losing one of her breasts and going through her own excruciating story which I found to be so true for all types of recovery. She charged her listeners to ”claim your experience and not let it claim you.”
Yes, I can hear you already….how the hell do you claim your experience when you’ve just had your heart, life, and reality for the last several years ripped out right from under you? How do you claim your experience when all you’ve ever known to be stable or...
Life caters towards pity parties. There seems to always be something going wrong and there is always someone to blame. Part of me says if we’d blame ourselves a bit more, we may take more responsibility for our own actions and the world would be a better place.
However, I have met and pastored and talked to hundreds who blame themselves too much and in an arbitrary way. Blaming ourselves for too much can be equally destructive. I’ve blamed myself for a ton in life to the point where I’ve had to realize life is not always about me. There is a sort of false humility which is not enjoyed by anyone, least of all our spouses. Shame is also a dark and deceptive culprit which likes to make things all about us.
Early on in recovery, a man I met encouraged me to say to myself...
Many wonder if the unfaithful spouse ever returns to normal after their affair. Do they ever regain a sense of their own former personhood or do they ever get back to their former selves?
If they obtain the necessary help to heal, the answer is fortunately no. They don’t just go back to being the same person that will inevitably repeat the same mistakes; they become an even better version of themselves.
How is that possible? Well, when the right help is found, an unfaithful spouse finds two principle factors in their recovery: remorse and clarity.
Everyone loves a comeback.
The problem with comebacks is that they are hard as heck to pull off. Anything worth having is worth working for, and I’ve learned the things that matter most usually are hardest and require the most grace to pull off.
Just yesterday an old staff member of mine reached out to tell me how moved he was to see pictures of my kids and our family stable, strong, and healed. It encouraged him about life, marriage, recovery and even God’s grace. It’s not come easy but small moments like that make it all worth it.
"We cannot bear a pointless torment, but we can endure great pain if we believe that it's purposeful.”
I was reading this morning and thinking of so many of you. Day after day I talk to many who are in such crisis and confusion. Finding hope at this new ‘ground zero’ can feel impossible sometimes.
Yet, in the somber moments of our struggle, we have to ask if we truly believe the pain we are experiencing is purposeful. If we believe it’s not, our hope diminishes and we circle the drain of despair and perceived pointlessness to our recovery and even our lives. However, if we believe this pain and this...
When we undermine ourselves, we end up being angry at ourselves for not doing what we said we would. It launches us into anger and, at times, a temporary self-hatred. Time after time betrayed spouses will feel an even greater sense of anger towards themselves as they feel like their unfaithful spouse is deceiving them yet again.
The fact is you don’t know what you don’t know. You’ll need help to know whether or not it is safe to reengage with your spouse. Quite honestly, sometimes it’s great and much needed to be vulnerable or even physically intimate with your spouse even while in crisis, yet in other situations, it’s one of the worst things you can do....
I often hear a betrayed spouse talk about allowing their spouse to come back home, or being intimate with their unfaithful spouse, or having a good weekend, and suddenly things go south. Just the other day a woman was discussing with me that she feels like she is undermining herself when she is nice to her previously unfaithful husband.
It’s even more apparent when an unfaithful tries to describe his betrayed spouse’s behavior. “It’s like she turns on a dime,” they’ll say. “We’ll have a great week,...
