This is the question I asked my counselor. I was the one who had been unfaithful and wanted to know how long it would take for my wife and me to recover from what I had done. It had been a week since she had found out about my affair and I wanted to know how long before the end of the pain. I wanted a date. A small measure of time. Preferably something in the area of a few months. I would have even been all right with six months. My counselor was silent. I had a sneaking suspicion that the longer the silence the longer the recovery would be. I asked again.
She paused a little bit longer and said that things would be better in 90 days. We both would feel different. And in six months we would feel even better. And in one year we would feel even better.
...
I stared at the email. My head began to throb as my blood pressure soared out of control. I was short of breath. My arms went numb. I don’t know what a heart attack feels like, but it felt like I was having one. My wife had just received an email from my affair partner (AP) telling her what had been going on. My wife then forwarded it on to me with the question above. I thought I had ended things with my AP with the understanding that we would not tell anyone. Obviously, she had other ideas.
My wife was totally blindsided and was devastated. I was devastated. I had let myself believe that I had narrowly missed catastrophe. I had done everything I could to “manage” my situation to insure to keep my life as-I-knew-it intact. And now, the end of my affair...
