'I Want My Unfaithful Spouse to Suffer': Addressing the Pain of the Betrayed Spouse

Samuel addresses the desire of betrayed spouses to sometimes see their spouse suffer for their choices.

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Punishing out of fear

I totally understand this mentality! I lived there for quite a while. Wishing that he and the affair partner would both feel the pain that they inflicted upon both myself and her husband. Both couples have stayed together and are working on both marriages, but due to proximity of where we all live, run ins have happened. It has been exhausting at times to contain the anger and hurt from those interactions, on top of dealing with the actual healing from infidelity. It is hard to believe at times that they could ever truly feel the true extent of the pain, when (in my own mind) they could still draw on memories to romanticize over. So it became what I considered my obligation to remind him of what he did and the hurt he caused in hopes of hurting him.
I would also warn against this! Eventually the feeling are fading for revenge, but it evolved into a crutch. It became an urge that I should constantly remind him of the pain, so that it would prevent him from doing it again. Which also will not fix what happened or prevent it. It took me a while to learn from this. I hope others can avoid that trap! It truly does delay our own recovery and it does nothing to help the marriage. I love your videos and I hope more and more people truly take to heart what you are saying. It’s so much easier to learn from others mistakes or missteps than to recover from our own.

you're so kind...glad the videos are helping

hi stephanie, thanks so much for your kind words.  gives me great hope.  i'm glad you're seeing things a bit differently and moving forward in your own recovery.  your perspective is spot on:  transmitting our pain only makes things worse.  it delays your own healing and it causes more frustration as we're focused on our spouse not ourselves.  but, i do know that it's frustrating as all get out as it's raw pain and anger.  i'm so glad you're here and healing my friend.  

Just what I needed

I sincerely do not want my husband to suffer - but I do want him to realize what he has done. This was an excellent reminder for me to just keep focusing on letting the Lord heal me - as trust HIM with both my heart and my husband. Thank you Samuel

Being Punished....

Thanks for this. I’m an unfaithful and my husband continues to throw it in my face multiple times a day. I know he’s hurting and it kills me that I did this to him. Thanks for helping me understand his perspective and to not give up hope. I love your vlogs.

glad you love them...

i'm so glad they help.  i love doing them, but sometimes wonder, 'is this helping.'  haahahah.  then i get comments like this and it gives me more hope to keep doing them.  what help have you been using and what recovery work have you done...?  getting him the right help will definitely bring about change and healing for him for sure. 

 

He won't get help

YES IT'S HELPING! :) I have been using some online materials to help me... and affairrecovery.com, and reading books of faith and anything else I can read or listen to.... my husband will not accept help at all. He is not open to reading or listening to anything, he is not open to counseling and he will not talk about it with any of his close friends. His anger is eating him alive and I don't know how to help him anymore. He does not pray, either. I want to help him work through this but he will not let me. He continues to lash out at me, call me names and threatens divorce. He said we have an "Open Marriage" now and refuses to try to rebuild what we had. I'm not sure where this is heading, but I refuse to give up hope. I pray every day that God will help us.

Unfaithful not doing any recovery

I’m frustrated by the same thing. I believe my husband, the unfaithful, believes he doesn’t need to work on himself. He is somewhat uncomfortable about me spending time doing Harboring Hope lessons and reading and listening to materials. I do believe I was given this full time job with out asking for it and not getting paid for it, at least right now,(I am hoping and praying that my time spent learning more and more about infidelity will give me a strong marriage in the future) and he acts like he Is being “the good guy” by doing some chores and being pleasant. All talk is superficial and polite. I’m doing my best to be patient! I have sent him a couple of Samuel’s videos and I have to ask him if he was able to watch them. He doesn’t volunteer any sort of response from watching the videos. Are there some specific videos that I can send him that might help him realize that he also needs to be working on understanding the reasons why he decided to have another affair after twenty plus years since his last affair? I don’t really believe we worked out the reasons for that affair, and this time I am diving right in to try and make sense of his actions this time so that I can be at peace. His first affair was with his first wife who cheated on him and they divorced after their 18 month marriage.

very welcome...

yah it's tough robyn.  i mean we want to take things into our own hands and we want to try and make them get it, but God can make them get it in the blink of an eye where in our efforts, for a 1000 years, it won't do what he can do.  i'm glad you are healing and you're seeing things differently.  your heart is safe in HIM and God never wastes our sorrows, EVER.  i'll be praying. 

 

I want healing and redemption

Thank you so much and the prayers are so appreciated. I don't want our marriage to JUST survive this. I want redemption!! I define redemption as: "you take what the enemy meant for your destruction... you get victory and then you use your experience to set others free!!" That's what you and Samantha are doing... and I hope my husband and I will get to the place of being able to do that as well.

Question

Hello Samuel,
I was wondering if you have a private contact address. I had a brief question for you.
I understand if this is not possible as I am sure you receive multiple requests.
Thanks for your very insightful and helpful blog!

no sweat

usually takes 24 to 48 hours to respond sometimes, but you can use samuel@hope-now.com

 

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I would highly recommend giving this a try.
 
-D, Texas