It’s a very common occurrence, that when a spouse is trying to heal from either their own infidelity or their spouse’s, they try to make decisions about the future. On the front end, there would appear to be many strikes against them. From the nature of the affair, to the length of the affair, to multiple affair partners, to having to work with the affair partner: the issues can be mind boggling. Many still think Samantha is mentally imbalanced for staying with me.
Many times spouses will utter phrases to me like “There’s so much going against us, how will we ever make it?” Or, “Our situation is so different,” and quite usually it’s not, but they are trying to get an idea of what the future will look like. They’re also pondering whether there is a future at all with their...
Of course they are, is the harsh, straightforward answer.
The cold hard truth is, they are in an affair, and they are in their own mind, happier when they are with their affair partner. Most definitely they are comparing you to their affair partner.
However the fact is, you can’t win in this game. It’s destined for failure.
The reason you can’t win is you are competing with a fantasy, and in our own fantasies we get to play God. Both in life and in fantasies we can’t beat an all sovereign God and in the mind of an unfaithful spouse, they are typically captivated by the emotional or sexual component (or ‘hook’) that the affair partner has in them. They play God and design their own euphoria.
To compare a spouse who has other responsibilities and real life...
As I was responding to a comment on my previous blog, I felt the need to bring more clarity to just what is going on in the mind of the unfaithful and what emotions go through their head when thinking of their AP.
Early on, when things are difficult and you both are wading through the insanity of it all, (the fighting, the anger, the venom, the confusion and the chaos) the unfaithful may be thinking of the AP wondering if this marriage can be saved. Things are so rough and so uncertain they may be thinking about how doing the right thing is harder than doing the wrong thing.
Early on, they may be having trouble breaking free from the romance of it all, but that is early on.
As the process gets harder or tougher, they still may have thoughts about them, but they...
The short answer is yes. The longer answer is, yes, because you cannot have a relationship of that magnitude and simply turn it off. It’s a process to break free. It will take strategy for sure and it will take rock solid commitment to the process. There will be ups and there will be downs, as there is when healing from any life changing event. However, it’s more than possible for your spouse to break free from the hold of their AP.
It’s been 8 years since our own F5 tornado touched down in our lives. We call that D Day. For the first 6 months or so post disclosure, I played with my phone almost every day, all day out of habit. My AP and I texted all day every day and life after the affair was radically different. Samantha was not in a place to talk to me that often...
In recovery, as my previous post indicated, you’ll have some needs that must be present. Alternatively, there are some things you just don’t need. Call them principles, mindsets or approaches if you like, but if they are present, I can assure you they will make things very difficult and probably even exacerbate the already excruciating process.
Continuing our approach, here’s what you DON’T need in recovery:
1. You don’t need pride. As indicated previously, you’ll need courage like never before. But pride likes to say “I shouldn’t have to do this.” Or, “This is your issue….you go fix this. I’m not doing anything.” The problem is, those mindsets assume a betrayed spouse has nothing to take ownership of. Please keep in mind, as I have...
Navigating the process of recovery after infidelity is not for the faint of heart. There are some crucial dos and don’ts that need to be applied if there is any chance for success. Success in this cauldron of trauma is not just ‘moving on.’ It’s about finding hope, finding healing, and giving you and your spouse the best chance at restoration. Keep in mind restoration may happen now, one day in the future, or possibly never if they prove to be unsafe. I’ve put some thought into some universal needs that you may want to consider implementing in your recovery plan.
1. You’ll need courage. The future of your marriage and your family is definitely uncertain. Even if your spouse says they will do ‘whatever it takes,’ it’s easier said than done. When the rubber meets the road and...
A couple of days ago, Samantha and I had a major meltdown. It was the wrong day, the wrong moment, I wasn’t feeling well, and the perfect storm arose. I felt like Samantha had just scolded me. I wasn’t having it, and the night went from a peaceful night with a book to all hell breaking loose and me ending up out of the house, in an ice storm, trying to cool down. You’d think after so many years in recovery we’d be above this and that we never even argue any more. Come on. We are healed and healthy in ways we never imagined we could be but we’re still people fighting for our marriage every day. I never promised perfection in this blog, but real life instead.
It wasn’t infidelity related at all. In fact, there was no residue in the fight from...
It’s a common question I hear from spouses: can my spouse really change?
The easy answer is YES.
The harder answer is, if they want to and if you take the right steps.
The most difficult answer is, if they want to, and if you take the right steps, and there are no guarantees even if you do get the right help; but it’s probably worth the journey to find out before you end it.
I’ve seen very tough cases over the years, and I truly have seen change, breakthrough, and yes even miracles you’d have never thought possible.
But it almost never comes by doing the same thing over and over again. It usually requires a different approach and it usually requires the motivated spouse who is trying to see change, to take some either drastic or calculated steps...
One of the most vivid memories I have of my father is when he took me fishing with one of his clients. It was off the coast of California. It was a smaller fishing boat, but not cheap and it was big enough to have some fun. The weather wasn’t perfect, but they decided it was fine to venture out. I think we were out about an hour when the storm finally hit us. Finally, my dad and his client (both of them decorated Vietnam War Veterans) decided they needed to humble themselves at the impending doom that was coming our way and pull up the anchor.
Here’s where it gets interesting. The anchor was caught, and true to their profile, they were going to get it unstuck. I think we did circles, and all sorts of ridiculous maneuvers in this boat (which I had grown to hate) to free the...
Oddly enough, when my affair became public, I had an immense amount of internal anger. I didn’t know it yet, but it was there. However, I didn’t dare express MY anger. After all, I was the unfaithful spouse.
My affair in large part (though of course not completely) was in direct result of anger I had towards Samantha, which had grown over the years. Sadly, my affair partner knew of my anger and it only fueled the affair in more ways than I can count. Unmet needs, physical rejection and disrespect all made a nice recipe for perceived rejection and my anger, though unprocessed, was off the chart.
Like most unfaithful spouses though, when the affair becomes public, we usually don’t address our anger. We are waiting for the storm and the chaos to blow over and settle...
Some of the biggest trouble I’ve gotten into in life has been due to reacting. Whether it’s been in professional sports, relationships, marriage, or child rearing, when I’ve merely ‘reacted’ rather than responding, I’ve usually blown it big time.
Here are some key differences, then we’ll talk a bit more about it.
To react is usually defensive. When we react it usually means we feel we are at a disadvantage or out of control. We’re mainly operating out of fear, backed against the wall so to speak.
When we’re reacting, we’re typically emotionally driven or, to put it bluntly, a slave to our emotions.
Emotions, without much of a reasoning process at all, are what drive our reactionary behavior. The outcome is typically counter-productive, as we are reacting...
I was talking to a gentleman the other day and sharing some experiences from the past, and I remembered a time I wanted to share with you all. It’s a bit of a difficult one, and will be controversial to some I’m quite sure, but I never said I wouldn’t be honest here. My hope is that my story and my pain may explain your spouse’s behavior, or give credence to what you may be fighting today.
Years into recovery, WE had relapsed and I was not happy with the way things were going. I felt like Samantha was retreating away from what she had agreed to work on, and I felt as though we were going backwards, fast. It was as though the new found dedication Samantha had to our marriage was nowhere to be found, and I had worked harder and harder to change and let the focus be on me. Add...
“If you’d do your part, then maybe I’d work a tad bit harder at doing mine!”
“Well, if you didn’t DO what YOU did, we wouldn’t be here in the first damn place. It continues to be all about you doesn’t it! You remain such a ……………”
Actual dialogue between Samantha and I while we were in recovery.
It’s not an entirely uncommon thing to be stuck, or feel like only one party is doing more work to try and move forward than the other. The fact is, you don’t have to have it all figured out to move forward. You can move forward, albeit somewhat incrementally, even if your spouse is hesitant or stuck in their own pride, shame, hurt or pain.
“If they won’t then I won’t” is a recipe for disaster as it means that perhaps your pride...
"If you weren’t so cold and unloving, I wouldn’t have had the affair,” he yelled.
“So now it’s MY fault you cheated and blew up our lives?!” she screamed back at him.
It happens time and time again. Almost all of you at some level could finish the dialogue above. It’s pitiful how many blame their affairs on their spouse, and many won’t take any responsibility for the marriage.
I love what Rick says: “The marriage is 50% your responsibility, 50% your spouse’s responsibility. The affair is 100% the unfaithful spouse’s responsibility.”
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: there was a litany of things I could have done before I had an affair.
Forever it will be my fault I had the affair, and forever it will be wrong. There’s just...
When my affair was exposed, Samantha was far more hurt than she was angry. Initially what showed were hurt, shock and overwhelming grief. Our youngest was roughly 4 weeks old, so she was in the process of breast feeding and caring for an infant as well as processing the trauma of it all. Life was absolutely turned upside down. As she regained the ability to function and started to get her wits about her, she became angrier and angrier. As the realization of what happened for two years began to set in, hurt began to surface and be revealed, and then anger became the expression of that hurt.
Anger wasn’t the primary emotion.
It looked like it was, sounded like it was, and felt like it was.
The stuff she threw at me, as well as the...
One of my favorite authors, Richard Rohr, uses a 12 step term called being “present.” To be present is “to know what you need to know in the moment. To be present is to allow the moment, the person, the idea or the situation to change you.” It’s the concept of “simple, clear and uncluttered presence.”
Now that my kids are getting older, I’ve been realizing just how much I wasn’t ‘present’ years before. From traveling, busyness and speaking engagements to just being overwhelmed with pressures and life, I wasn’t present often times. I certainly wasn’t present for Samantha in the least bit once life took off. I sincerely tried to be, but we can be sincere, well meaning, and at the same time just plain distracted and self- absorbed.
Lately though, I’ve been remembering the...
If we are on either side of infidelity, I probably don’t need to tell you there will be pain and disorientation. In the heart of the betrayed however, the hurt will be like none other. Alternatively, with incredible respect for the betrayed, I’m not sure that there will be more dysfunctional disorientation and confusion than in the mind of the unfaithful. They have lost their way, lost their compass, and many would say, lost their mind.
It’s in this cauldron of confusion we make the mistake of letting our hurt set the agenda of our lives. When we let raw emotion, pain and rage set the agenda, we will more than likely make decisions and ultimatums we both may live to regret. The unfaithful will possibly continue to pursue the affair partner, as they want to be affirmed, loved,...
If there is one thing about the crisis of infidelity, it’s that life as we know it changes. Maintaining a “business as usual” approach to crisis is a mistake. The ‘usual’ of our lives has been shattered and at some level, though life and time refuse to stop, it becomes more surreal than we ever thought possible. It’s the betrayed spouse who is forced to wade through the layers of pain (and B.S. from the unfaithful spouse quite frankly) and seek to find some new ground zero.
It’s not that I didn’t try to operate in a business as usual mentality when our lives were turned upside down. I yearned for some sense of normalcy to our lives, as I’m sure you do too, but it was gone. It was gone for quite a while now that I think of it. I see many couples try to treat it as though...
Early on in recovery, life seemed like a wasteland. We had lost practically everything and had to start over. Samantha was flooding and some days completely unreachable emotionally. It would seem like the entirety of my life was dark. Our youngest was 5 weeks old at the time and had trouble nursing, and was just one of those high maintenance children. The other two were somewhat bewildered at us moving so quickly to another state, and asked several times about our old friends and even the affair partner from time to time as she practically helped raise my youngest two. We were stuck paying a mortgage back in California, and had a new apartment we were living in here in Texas which wasn’t cheap, wasn’t large and had what seemed like zero privacy. Yet, there were a few...
Rescue: to free from confinement, danger, or evil.
I’m convinced, as is Samantha, my meltdown and the complete disintegration of our lives was a rescue. If you subscribe to Christ and a Christian worldview, it’s easy to believe it was God rescuing us. Should you subscribe to a different approach to life and an alternative worldview, you too would see the hand of fate reaching out to rescue us from where we were heading. Looking back, with each year that went by, we were picking up speed in the wrong direction and I had my foot on the gas.
Just yesterday I was taken by the fact that it really was our lives, and our marriage and our future being apprehended from where we could have ended up. More than likely another divorce and another broken family in the string of...
Often times, bible stories give us a picture of what is going on in our own lives right now. I’ve borrowed some of Luke chapter 5 (see below) from the new testament for some context. Though a good amount of you who read these blogs are not Christians, I truly hope in this moment, you’ll take the story as mere context for what I’ll share after. Most importantly I hope you’ll not stop reading and push through.
17One day He was teaching; and there were some Pharisees and teachers of the law sitting there, who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem; and the power of the Lord was present for Him to perform ...
The writer of Ecclesiastes 3 makes some startling observations:
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to...
If you’re anything like me, you get fixated on things easily. I know, I know, what man doesn’t?
For the unfaithful spouse, fixating on desire or passion can be overwhelming. If you’re a betrayed spouse however, how can you not fixate on the overwhelming amount of trauma you’re in, not to mention the daily reminders of hurt, pain, betrayal and heartbreak?
At EMS Weekend, Rick shares that we have to “shift our focus and intentionally focus on something different. If I focus on desire, whatever captures my attention will ultimately capture me. I can’t think (fixate) on this stuff and expect to overcome it. I’ve got to begin to think about something very different.”
It’s true for both sides of the equation. We have to shift our focus, but purposefully and...
Continuing our discussion on the gap between where we start recovery and where we want to end up, many have commented the last couple days about the gap they are in. Some have said it’s stretching them and even more have said it’s ripping them apart and some would even say it’s “serving its purpose.”
It’s one of those things which isn't fun, but very necessary. Well, it’s only necessary if you want to heal and if you want a more enriched life and marriage. It is possible to not have much of a gap at all, but after what I've been through, and helping the amount of others I've been fortunate enough to help, I’m convinced there has to be some amount of ‘gap’ in order to provide space for the process to work.
Here are a few more lessons Samantha and I learned in the Gap:...
Anytime we decide to do something, there is a period of time between making that decision and achieving the desired result. Many call this the ‘gap.’ It’s the excruciating process where motives are tried, tested, developed, pruned, purified and shaped to form the end result. In this quotient of gap, it’s many times our marriage and our own attitude and perspective which are refined and, honestly, it’s less than thrilling. If it’s our marriage which is being ‘processed’, it means both my mate and myself are going through this sifting. This in turn makes the future uncertain and unpredictable, as I can’t control whether or not my spouse remains dedicated and committed to the entire process.
But in the gap is where the marriage is either saved and redeemed or...
Lately I’ve felt the waters of my life being stirred pretty significantly. How can I tell, you may ask?
Well, the surest way is I’ve been a pretty big mess lately. From disillusionment with my career, to frustration with a few things maritally (unrelated to infidelity), to financial struggles, to a few health scares with Samantha as well as my daughter; there’s been challenge after challenge to wade through.
If you’re reading this blog, on this site, it’s pretty apparent the waters of your life have been stirred as well. Probably stirred in a way you’d like to never have them stirred again.
Many make the mistake of only thinking this is the waters of their marriage being stirred, and not their life. It’s revealed more apparently when couples come to Rick and he...
At the EMS Weekend we attended, Rick talked about the unfaithful spouse being “selfish with their shame.” It’s an interesting concept, which essentially refers the unfaithful spouse continually making it about them instead of the ones they’ve hurt or betrayed. It’s continuing to wallow in their shame, or continuing to focus on what their choices have cost themselves, and not their spouse. It’s being more concerned with how much of a failure they may appear to themselves and to you, than how concerned they truly are with how hard of a time you, the betrayed spouse, is having due to their choices.
To say it’s dysfunctional is an understatement.
Shame is that way: self-absorbent. It makes the issue about me and not the ones who are suffering. Shame says, “I AM...
I grew up in a very rough part of the inner city. Being raised by a single mom with no dad around, I was forced to become pretty tough for a variety of reasons. It wasn’t uncommon to have shootings by our house and surrounding areas, and we had our house broken into several times growing up. My success in sports in high school, college and professionally was in many ways due to my refusal to quit and raw aggression which was evident in the way I approached the game. I’ve quit very few things in my life.
There is however, a huge difference between giving up and surrendering.
One of the biggest challenges in our recovery was me learning to surrender. Realizing I just couldn’t control how fast Samantha forgave me or got over her pain took what seemed like an eternity to...
I know this question reverberates through the minds of many who are trying to heal, and I must say I too asked myself that same question early on in recovery.
To give you an idea of the furnace Samantha and I were stuck in (and I know yours may be worse), we had lost everything but our kids, our cars, and one friend who decided to stick around though it seemed like hundreds left us. We were in a new city, and shortly after moving to the new city, my best friend (and only true friend, yep, the one who stuck around in the previous line) decided to move to another state to plant a church. The only other friends we knew here in Austin were Samantha’s friends, and they hated me and wanted nothing to do with me. I was in a new career in sales, which only flourishes with relationships...
Webster’s dictionary defines frustration as a deep chronic sense or state of insecurity and dissatisfaction arising from unresolved problems or unfulfilled needs.
I have to tell you, as impatient as I am, and as wired as I am to control, I have experienced incredible frustration; not only in recovery, but in life in general. Even when I was young, I can remember extreme times of frustration and the sense of paralysis I felt at not being able to get the outcome I perceived to be best for me. Anyone else see the glaring pride there? Quite frankly, I’m easily frustrated in life even now and I have to be careful for this particular season I’m in right now.
One thing that helps me is perspective. When I see things in a long term perspective, or from God’s perspective, it...
