Along the road of recovery there will be immense frustration. Frustration at your spouse, frustration at circumstances, and hopefully, yes I said hopefully, frustration at even yourself.

I hate to be a downer but if you think recovery and the pursuit of restoration is always this joyous, redemptive season of renewed love and compassion, I'm sorry but it's far from that. If you also think you can go back to business as usual, friend, you are sadly mistaken. You and your spouse have just experienced great turmoil and destruction, and life doesn't just pick up and move right back on. (side note: life doesn't bow down to a desire to recovery either. Kids still fight, bills still come, sickness still happens, and peripheral drama amongst loved ones, family and work all still roll on.)

There are days you are flying high enjoying the grace, forgiveness and cool air of redemption. However, there are days where you feel like you're walking through a desert, in 110 degree heat, with even hotter wind blowing against you, with no water in sight, and only dark voices telling you to quit, give up and throw in the towel as it's just not worth it.

It's easy to get frustrated with your spouse for an innumerable amount of reasons. Them not getting it, not understanding your heart, not realizing what you truly felt and meant, not moving beyond a certain memory, etc, etc. The list is endless.

But an area of frustration I hope you experience is frustration with yourself. Yes, I meant to say it, frustration with yourself.

Both betrayed and betrayer, I hope you both experience frustration with your own habit patterns and response cues. This recovery road is just as much about the hurt spouse as it is the unfaithful. Yes, the unfaithful had the affair. But this situation is an opportunity for growth, transformation, and ultimate life change for both of you despite who was the betrayer.

I've been more than frustrated at myself for a number of stupid things; thought patterns, choices I've made, a destructive self-image, selfishness, lust and selfishness, you name it....I have had many hopeless days about my marriage, but also about me. It's more than OK to love yourself, but if you only see the good in you, I think you may have a problem. If we're not frustrated with ourselves at times, I wonder if we are growing, or attempting to grow, or attempting to tackle some of the underlying issues which have led to the affair in the first place.

Failure is proof we've tried and frustration is proof we have a vision and an idea of what we want to be like, feel like and live like and if we can't have it now we experience frustration and that's OK. It's more about HOW we handle that frustration and what we let that frustration teach us and tell us.

If you're frustrated today, I'd like to invite you to take a deep breath and maybe even write down why you're frustrated. Then write down what steps you may need to take to help care for your own frustration and then think, meditate, pray, and get actual feedback and insight from someone you trust to help you deal with YOU.