Affair Recovery

Marriages develop patterns, some good and some bad. It’s just what spending your life with someone does. When that marriage has been affected by infidelity, there usually is not only a pattern but a power struggle which emerges.  I’d like to highlight two power struggles, or scenarios if you will, that seem to be very common when dealing with infidelity and ambivalence.

We, the unfaithful, don’t like the emotion of the betrayed. We’d prefer the betrayed to stuff it down and not show much emotion at all. It provides a much more stable environment and doesn’t force us to have to face the fact that we’ve damaged our spouse and made some horrible choices.

I was talking to a friend the other day and she shared about how she had forced herself to be numb for so long, that her latent emotions (from being betrayed) and compressed trauma was finally beginning to come out. For the betrayed, it’s often times like this waterfall of emotion that you wonder how you can control it. It just keeps coming and coming. The triggers happen faster than you can predict and before you know it, you’re a wreck.

I hated when Samantha was emotional. It turned my...

Often times we get into power struggles when we’re trying to get healthy. Time after time a betrayed spouse will force their mate into the power struggle of “choose me or your affair partner, right here, right now.” While I loudly applaud their willingness to not be codependent and I further support their right to draw a line in the sand, it’s just not usually that simple in many cases.

I’m sure if you’re a betrayed spouse, I’ve already ruffled your feathers this early in the morning, and I’m sorry to do that. I only mean to bring about clarity. Let me explain a bit further.

The fact is, if your spouse has been involved in an affair with one person for at least a few months and it’s now a full blown relationship, you’re competing with a fantasy. An illusion. A...

There are a few really impacting definitions of what it means to undermine. Take for example Dictionary.com’s: to attack by indirect, secret, or underhand means; attempt to subvert by stealth.

Or Miriam Webster’s: to make (someone or something) weaker or less effective usually in a secret or gradual way.

So often in our own personal recovery, we undermine ourselves. We aren’t typically aware of it. We don’t usually see it until someone points it out to us or we actually are ‘present’ or ‘aware’ enough to have a moment of personal clarity or revelation.

I undermine myself and the next day’s productivity when I stay up late at night working, writing or just plain watching TV to escape the pressures of life. I...

Suffering or adversity in life is often times treated as though it’s a mistake and shouldn’t happen to us at all. We think it’s not supposed to happen financially or emotionally, and certainly not maritally. Fact is though, what we suffer through in life teaches us an incredible amount about life, reality, God, and ourselves.

My family and I each have a few things we are suffering through.  No we’re not homeless, thank God, and no we’re not in the middle of marital crisis like we were nine years ago. But all of us are in the middle of some tough stuff emotionally and physically. I hate that I have to go through it, that Samantha has to go through it and that our kids must face what they are encountering as some of it seems debilitating. I treat adversity like it shouldn’t...

What happens when the unfaithful is lonely?

As we discussed last time, loneliness can be one of the most excruciating elements when trying to heal from infidelity. Between the isolation and the silent suffering, the pain of it all is only exacerbated when you’re alone in your life’s deepest pain.  It can be dangerous for both spouses in their own ways when you’re alone.

Part of being alone is good as it forces us to process information, wade through emotions and actually hear from God or our conscience. Without this much needed time alone for Samantha and me, I don’t think we would have been able to really find the space and time to decide what we wanted to do. The loneliness provided a backdrop of sanctification and sobriety which although painful, was a necessity...

I’m a control freak by nature and love to, want to, and at one time, felt like I had to be in charge of most things. Surrendering doesn’t come easy in my life but I’ve learned how to be pretty good at it now, specifically because I’ve come to the end of myself so many times and had to surrender. Upon disclosure of my affair, I wanted to control how Samantha was going to respond and what choices we were going to make. Samantha was used to me being this sort of control freak for the previous 10 years of our marriage. To say I had a messiah complex was a bit of an understatement as I did consider myself a bit of a messiah for our family, our church, and our church members. I wanted to be at the center of almost everything and felt like I was the leader who needed to be involved in most,...

I was talking to a woman yesterday who’s been betrayed and searching for answers. She’s doing very well and working hard to wrap her mind around the mess of the betrayal. With a strong grasp on theology and a passion for purpose in life, she’s working to make sense out of this in the eyes of God, the eyes of her spouse and what seems like a thousand onlookers at her daughter’s school.

I was sharing with her that this may in fact be the opportunity for transformation. We don’t always get to pick how transformation is packaged in life. Sometimes it’s packaged in an encounter at church or through a weekend retreat or something of those sorts, and yay for that. Other times it’s packaged in a great counseling session or a book which causes you to see things differently.

But...

My years of experience pale in comparison to Rick’s, however I’ve realized several principles while working for him these past years (and living through my own nightmare) and helping couples and individuals heal from the effects of infidelity. The other day Rick and I were talking and I alluded to something that he confirmed. I was discussing the struggle of a particular couple and asking him for some thoughts on it and he shared with me his perspective from close to 30 years, THAT’S 30 YEARS of treating infidelity and compulsive behaviors. He said “Samuel, most people can get over the affair(s): it’s the lying they can’t get over. It’s the continual discovery of new information they can’t get over.  It’s the continual relapses they can’t get over.”

In no way is that to...

“As the truth of the situation slowly began to penetrate, I found myself overwhelmed with emotions I had never felt so strongly: shock, disbelief, horror, despair, anger, pain, sadness. With a newborn and two small children, I didn’t know how I was going to make it. I switched to autopilot to provide just the essentials for my children. I sifted through the options on an hourly basis, separate, divorce, or stay? All the while, the theater in my mind continued playing the details of the affair over and over again. I didn’t sleep, barely ate, and cried constantly. Every time I looked at Samuel, hate would well up in my heart, and I couldn’t stand to be around him. I got on a plane with all three children and fled to a friend’s house.”

Samantha wrote those words several years ago...

While the situations are not always that HE is unfaithful, I’ve used the title to illustrate the point that in many cases, one spouse won’t show any remorse and another spouse won’t stop talking about it. While some blog posts I write are an attempt to help you move forward, even incrementally, other blog posts are to help illustrate more about what may be going on in the particular situation you’re facing.

It’s about every day I hear a betrayed spouse say, “He isn’t showing any remorse at all. It’s like he’s just swallowed up in justification or resentment and he’s not showing any sadness over what he’s done whatsoever.” If I interview the unfaithful spouse, more than likely they will say to me “she just won’t stop talking about it. It’s all they want to talk about. Why can’t...

Almost every day I talk to someone who is struggling with infidelity in some way and is trying to make sense out of it. A unifying statement I usually say to them or even hear from them is the fact that “No one can relate and no one seems to understand the pain I’m living with.”

I agree about every time, yet follow it up with a caveat that they need to be surrounded by a fellow hurting and grieving community. The nature of infidelity is shame based and is almost never overcome without community support. Without such, they will feel they are off on an island and no one can relate and no one can empathize, and no one can understand what they have to process what seems like each hour of each day. It’s not about commiserating together, rather it’s about normalizing things and being...

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...

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...