Quite often when I talk to couples in crisis due to infidelity, one of their paramount questions is, can it ever be the same again?
Honestly, my answer is a frank, but delicate, NO, it will never be the same again.
But I immediately follow up with, “But why would you want to go back to what you had, when you’ve now discovered (or come clean about) what you then had was a lie?” Why would we want to go back to the settings which allowed for and created the affair in the first place? It’s a harsh answer I know.
Don’t get me wrong….before you push send on that ‘leave a comment’ button, I’m never going to say that the affair was the betrayed spouses fault. It’s just not that easy, or realistic, or true. But what I do want to communicate is the infidelity has ruined...
"I can't make you NOT have another affair. If you're going to cheat, you're going to cheat."
About a year or so into recovery, Samantha very calmly told me those words in Rick's office. I immediately saw Rick's eyes light up, followed by a gentle smile that showed Rick was very pleased with the new insight Samantha had arrived at.
It was a significant moment for her, to realize she needed to let go, trust God and even trust me (in developing levels of progression) that if I was ever going to have another affair, she in her own power couldn't prevent it.
After all, I was a great liar. If I want to, I still can be.
The difference is - I don't want to.
And I don't have to.
Samantha realized that if I wanted to have another affair I could,...
A toxic response mechanism in recovery will always be defensiveness. Defensiveness communicates to the betrayed spouse that we don't "get it", are not sorry or empathetic over what we've done and that we're just not safe in general.
Just recently Samantha and I had a significant breakdown over some financial decisions I had made in the past, and I quickly became both angry and defensive. I felt as though my decisions were the best that could have been made at the time of the recession, and that if she truly understood the entire picture she would have made the same decision. To be reminded of her interpretation, time and time again, upset me pretty significantly. Now, several years removed from my affair, I remembered I needed to take stock of my emotions and ask myself why I...
If there was one issue that was probably one of most difficult issues for me to overcome personally, it was shame. I was truly ashamed of what I had done and how I had hurt both Samantha and so many other lives. There was, however, a bit of a time release to my shame though and you'll probably only understand this if you are an unfaithful spouse. What I mean is it didn't hit me all at once. If it did I think I would have ended it all. Were it not for my kids I think one night I would have committed suicide with all the sobriety that began to come crashing down around me. Don't worry, that's not a cry for you to feel sorry for me, it's just a bit of a window into the mind of the unfaithful.
As the days and weeks would go by, and as we began to get the right kind of help, the...
It's been several years since my affair was disclosed and life took a turn for what felt like the end. Almost every time Rick writes an article it hits me in one way or another. This newest one was no exception. The fact is, time doesn't permit me to share the enormous litany of reasons why, if anyone shouldn't have been having an affair, it was me.
If anyone was in a position of authority, integrity, and alleged impeccable character, it was me. Yet, the numbers of people affected by my moral failure (more like moral disaster) is no short list, and to this day lives still show the residue of a leader who failed them and left a sea of disoriented lives a drift, looking for direction and hope.
Today I'd like to talk about how I disengaged from my moral compass and...
Not too long ago, Samantha and I were having an incredibly difficult time. If you're on this site, and have gone through this nightmare which necessitates recovery, when I say an incredibly difficult time,' I know you know what I mean. I felt like I just couldn't win and couldn't gain any ground. To say I was frustrated is a severe understatement.
Looking back, what I truly was feeling was hopelessness. Walking out your recovery from infidelity (or your spouse's infidelity) can seem impossible. It can also seem as though nothing you do works, no action taken produces any fruit, and no matter what road you take it just never goes the way you want it to go. It's a toxic combination of anger, bitterness and frustration and it can lead you to a place of "Why even try???"
I...
Not too long ago, I was talking with a therapist who explained to me what it means for a couple to relapse. I was immediately thrown for a bit of a loop when I heard him say that even the betrayed spouse can relapse. It basically boils down to not doing what both spouses did early on in their recovery. If you're a betrayed spouse reading this, I can hear your blood boiling, but please let me finish before you get too angry with me.
Now, does it mean the betrayed spouse has an affair of their own? NO, absolutely not. Nor does it mean that the unfaithful spouse has another affair. It also is not meant to suggest that the affair was the betrayed spouse's fault in the first place.
What it does apply to though is allowing old behaviors and old mannerisms and old ways of...
Rick’s newest article once again, kicked me right in the teeth. Let me quote from it briefly, and if you’d like to read the whole thing, you can go here to read it:
(To have an affair) “Deceive yourself into believing you’re as wonderful as your Emotional Affair Partner sees you to obtain maximum benefit from your new found relationship. Always believe the lie that they’re better than your mate and that you’d have been far better off if you’d married them. Marriage partners are the makeup mirrors of our lives. They highlight every flaw and blemish. Emotional Affair Partners are vanity mirrors. We look amazing in their eyes. Approval seeking requires we suspend reality and imagine ourselves as seen through our EAP’s eyes....
Looking back upon my affair, and the justification of my affair, I can now see how blind I was. It’s neither an excuse nor a justification, as I did what I did and it’s no one’s fault by my own. But I was blind to so much, and in hindsight I can see just how that blindness fueled my actions and behavior. My blindness is what helped to enable the complete selfishness and self-absorption that had taken my life captive. What helped to keep me in my affair were both the emotional AND sexual components working together to what I thought would meet my needs, when in reality all it did was fuel the monster. But what was I blind to, you may ask. Well, here’s a list and it is by no means exhaustive:
A few months ago my husband Wayne and I were laying on the hammock in the back yard enjoying a rare quiet evening together. I remember it being an unusually still evening, so much so that we could hear cars rushing by on the highway near our home. After about half an hour of relaxing and talking, the peaceful setting was disrupted by a horrible crashing sound. I was so surprised my armpits itched! (I realize this is probably an over-share, but what can I say… my armpits itch when I am scared.) My back was turned to the tree that had fallen, so I had no idea what had caused the unexpected noise. Hardly daring to breathe I whispered, “Fireworks?” Wayne shook his head no. “Pecan Tree” was all he said, but I could hear the disappointment in his voice. When we bought our land a few years...
My affair was both emotional and physical. When asked which was worse, I'm not really sure what Samantha would leverage as the worst side of it. It was highly sexually charged, but we also communicated and worked together every day and the emotional component was off the chart.
It deepens the pain I feel for what I have put Samantha through, as it was a "double whammy," if you will, of both emotional and physical intimacy. The pain has been immense, but with the right methods and help, time, and the absolute grace of God we have healed in ways I never thought possible.
A new understanding about my past has helped me to live with a new approach. I call it "Living in Light of What I've Done." What I mean is, I understand my propensity to be, as Rick would say, a human...
Somewhere along the way, I remember coming to the painful yet life-changing realization that everything I wanted was here in my marriage; I just didn't see it or recognize it. It was a 'painful' realization as it only reinforced the personal shame I felt for allowing the affair to happen in the first place. Keep in mind, shame says I am something bad, when guilt, grief, or conviction simply says I've done something wrong and there is a country mile of difference between the two perspectives my friends.
I had let life, kids, marriage, ministry pressures and all sorts of less important things get in the way of taking care of what was supposed to be most important all along, and it was no one’s fault but my own.
While last week I talked about restoring and reconnecting...
At its worst, endeavoring to reconnect physically after my affair was nothing short of a cauldron of exhaustion and frustration. However, when we were able to sift through the wreckage and actually re-engage, the joy and elation and reward that would result is almost indescribable. If you too are dealing with this type of pain and in the middle of this process, believe me when I say Samantha and I have been there before and feel your pain.
Though we are not there anymore, we still remember the agonizing chore it was to communicate through the hurt. For several years now we have enjoyed a wonderfully rich sexual relationship with little to no residue of the past. We never knew it was going to be as hard as it was to reengage, till we got right in the middle of the process and...
If I had to pinpoint one issue of our recovery that was the most difficult to overcome, it would have to have been our sex life. My affair was highly emotional and highly sexual from the start and sharing the details with Samantha was gut wrenching for her. She was the type of spouse that didn't want to know all the intricate details of it all, but wanted to know the general truths about what went on, what we did, what we didn't do, and for how long. My situation was extremely unique as I had to give up specifics to the situation with absolute clarity as there were some individuals coming to corroborate my story the next day.
My affair had been very public, with an unfortunately large audience, and it only added to the shame and embarrassment for both Samantha and myself. If I...
When I was a little girl I received a lot of forgiveness. Somehow at a young age I discovered that if I confessed what I had done wrong before I got caught, my parents were much less upset with me than if I waited to be discovered. So I told on myself often. After a while I began to do it more out of a desire to be free from the guilt than from a desire to receive a more lenient punishment. I really cannot begin to imagine how many times I went through the process of doing something wrong, feeling terrible, telling on myself, then being forgiven.
While I cannot count the number of times I received forgiveness, I can say for sure that it was enough, because when I found myself in the position of a betrayed spouse I was able to reach deep into my heart and find enough forgiveness...
A very dear friend recently shared the story of her crumbling marriage with me. She told me that her husband had come home one day and told her that he no longer felt anything toward her and was going to move out. A few weeks later he filed for divorce. My heart ached for her as she shared with me her feelings of confusion and abandonment. She said she felt used up and discarded. When her husband had originally moved out she had held onto hope for reconciliation, but with each passing day that hope got fainter as she faced the end of a part of her life that she had thought would be there forever. My heart breaks for her a little bit more every day as I watch her go through the motions of a dance she never signed up for. She had dreamed of forever, but for reasons completely out of her...
When my wife found out about my affair, I was quick to repent and do what was necessary to reconcile and make amends. One of the principles I learned from Affair Recovery was that I needed to be totally honest. That means every time my wife asked a question, I was to answer it truthfully.
Now this was new behavior since I had been lying for over a year. It was very hard to tell her some of the details of my deception. And yet, I understood that if I was going to rebuild trust, I needed to do so. And so I answered her every question – no matter what it was.
It seemed like all the questions were difficult since every answer revealed what a self-centered, self-involved, low-life scumbag I had been. But the truth was the truth and now I was choosing a different path. And so...
When I talk to people who are thinking about pursuing recovery, many times they ask me if wanting to stay just for the kids is actually enough. Adamantly, I almost always agree with a resounding “YES, it is.” It may be imperfect motivation, but it’s motivation enough. It’s an impetus to get one or both spouses into specialized help, to see if the marriage can be saved. In fact, sometimes it’s the best motivation, as our feelings fail us quite often and on any given day we can feel so much differently about our spouse. It’s just not worth trusting emotion. Especially in the middle of absolute chaos and emotional trauma, to use our feelings for any sort of rudder is to everyone’s detriment. However, with our kids, short of some disappointments here and there, our concern and love for...
I was 18 when I started college and began studying to be a respiratory therapist. I was a young 18. I had lived a very purposefully sheltered life as a home-schooled girl, so there were a lot of thoughts and ideas that I ran across while in college that I had never heard while growing up.
I will never forget the first day I was in a clinical rotation at one of the local hospitals. About half way through the day I turned to the therapist who had been assigned to mentor me and said, “This is a great day!” She gave me a look of sheer horror and said, “What are you doing to me? Don’t you know not to say that? Quick! Knock on wood!” At my look of confusion she followed it up with, “And don’t say it is quiet either. All hell will break loose.” I soon discovered that just about...
How can you go through “the happiest time of the year” after having your world destroyed by the revelation of infidelity? How can you celebrate the birth of Jesus when all you feel like doing is mourning the death of your marriage? Is it even possible to have some sense of a Merry Christmas when triggers abound and all you feel is pain and misery?
These were all questions that plagued my wife, Jill, as we headed into the holiday season after I had admitted to my year-long affair on October 1. We had gone to the EMS Retreat the first weekend of December and I felt like we had received some great coaching. We both wanted to believe what they told us – that we could experience healing over time if we practiced recovery principles.
However, that didn’t change the fact that...
What would you think if I told you that you hold the power of life and death in the words that you speak? Would it come as a surprise to you? Think back to when you were growing up. Perhaps a parent or teacher saw a quality in you that they praised, such as: “You are a kind-hearted friend.” Hearing their praise spoke truth into your heart, encouraging you to be that much more kind and friendly. On the other hand, maybe you remember hurtful words: “You are so much bigger than your sister. All you want to eat is junk food.” These hurtful words have the ability to follow a person all the way into their adulthood, making food and weight a lifelong struggle.
Words don’t just hold power over us when we are kids; they affect us as adults as well. I did not understand how much power...
When my affair became public, many so called “Advisors” came out of the woodwork, as they say. To this day, I still shake my head at some of the things that were said to me and to my wife Samantha, about me, my future, our marriage, our family, and my overall mental health. Looking back now, until we actually found a couple that would help support and lead us, as well as Rick Reynolds here at Affair Recovery, all of them gave us ridiculous advice or assessments of what they thought needed to happen or had genuinely happened to us. I don’t think one of them really acted in love at all, but more out of shock and disappointment from the events they heard had happened. What did in fact happen was truly heinous and grievous. Yet, the gross rumors and wicked gossip about this untruth and...
“If my husband ever cheated on me I’d leave him in a heartbeat.”
This is what one of our friends blurted out in reference to the news of some celebrity’s infidelity. The woman who made this comment didn’t know that I had been unfaithful to my wife. This was not the first time we heard someone say this – and it would not be the last.
It was early on in our recovery and this was a major trigger for my wife. My wife was flooded with a rush of emotions. Sadness. Fear. Panic. Along with being bombarded with these feelings, she was also deluged with questions:
About two years into our marriage Wayne’s papa passed away. I will never forget going to his memorial service. After parking near the cemetery, we met his mom and grandma at their car and walked the rest of the way to the grave site with them. I remember the surprise I felt to see his grandma there since his papa had divorced her about 50 years before he had died. As we got closer to the tent where everyone was gathering, she began to get visibly uncomfortable. When we finally reached the small crowd she quietly announced that she wanted to stand in the back and urged the rest of us to sit in the seats that had been reserved for family to sit in. I had only met his papa once, but had spent quite a bit of time with his grandma, so I felt drawn to stay with her rather than follow Wayne...
I recently read a letter to the editor of a magazine that got my attention. It was written by a woman who was at the breaking point in her marriage. She described how she had spent many years working long hours at her job to the point of exhaustion, until one day when she came home to find her husband with her best friend. The quote that keeps running through my head went something like this: “While I worked myself to death, he was off having romantic flings. It just isn’t fair. Suddenly I realize what I am missing in life. I want to have the secret romantic get-away too. I want that thrill of hidden romance for myself.”
Reading her letter got me thinking about desire. Before we were born there were certain desires poured into us. One of the strongest of these is the desire to...
I’ve been in a bit of a funk lately. That happens to me from time to time and I am sure it’s nothing compared to what you must be going through. But what gets me is the advice I keep getting from well-meaning friends and family. If I wasn’t down, I’m sure some of it would be downright funny. So far I’ve been told to “get over it,” “quit my job,” “get rid of my stress” (that’s something I’d like to do, but I’m not sure life will cooperate), “turn my underwear inside out,” “cut lose and get drunk,” “relax more”…
And that’s just for a funk. The advice many of my clients have been given is far more outrageous.
So, in hopes of gaining perspective, we’re going to have a bad advice contest. Just post a few sentences about the worst advice you’ve been given about infidelity....
I have previously shared how I chose to forgive Wayne out of a desire to protect my heart from the burden that unforgiveness brings. While deciding whether or not to forgive him, I sensed that withholding forgiveness was somehow very dangerous for me, so I chose to forgive. As easy as the words ‘I chose to forgive’ may sound, believe me, it was not at all easy. It was incredibly hard. Having said that though, I can now look back and see that as hard as it was, choosing to forgive my husband was not the hardest choice I had to make in the area of forgiveness. Oddly enough, it took more time and effort to forgive Wayne’s dad than it did to forgive Wayne himself. Forgiving his dad for the choices he had made during Wayne’s childhood, and the way they had affected both Wayne and our family...
Shortly after I chose to forgive Wayne, I began to hear several lies about what forgiveness is. Looking back, I can see that the enemy was aiming his arrows of shame at my heart by trying to get me to agree with his explanations of what I had chosen to do. His methods for delivering those arrows came in a variety of ways. Some of these lies were spoken directly to me by ‘helpful’ friends. Some I read in popular magazines. Other times the Liar would speak silently to my heart, painting a vivid (yet wrong) description of who I was, and what I had chosen to do.
The biggest lie that I heard was that I was living in denial. I saw this reaction on several people’s face when I told them that I had forgiven him. I was told that I was nuts and that he didn’t deserve it. Of course he...
I think it was the night after I had discovered Wayne’s betrayal that he asked to meet with me so we could talk. He said he had some things that he wanted to tell me in person. Hoping to get an answer to my biggest question -“why”- I agreed to meet with him. I did not get the answer to my question that night, but what I did get was more pieces to the puzzle. He told me how he had begun to act out sexually when he was 12, then filled in some details from that time to the present. There was a long silence that followed his revelation. As I was trying to make sense of everything that I had just learned he said, “I am so sorry. I know you will never be able to forgive me.”
Honestly, until he brought it up, the question of forgiveness had not entered my mind. I was in a state of...
I have a great Dad. When I was a little girl I looked forward to going to his boot repair shop so I could hang out with him all day long. I remember him being very busy, but never too busy to talk to me as he worked. One thing he told me on a regular basis was “take no prisoners”. His words keep coming back to me as I think about the recovery process that I went through as a betrayed spouse.
I have begun to see my marriage with Wayne as a union that the enemy wants to steal, kill, and destroy. If you will allow me, I would like to show you a picture of how I saw this played out.
When I discovered Wayne’s betrayals I received a very deep heart wound that required healing in a spiritual and emotional ICU. While I was receiving this intensive care, the enemy did not wait...
