Our affairs are selfish in nature. I hope it gives more credence to that fact since I’m a former unfaithful.

I’m certainly not proud of that, but I am elated when I can talk to other unfaithfuls and help walk them through their own situation and struggle. I’m sure we all love it when we have community we can relate to and that understand our own struggles, because they are dealing with it themselves.

The unfortunate reality is, we the unfaithful, think we’re heroic when we say “let’s move on and let’s heal.” We think we’re giving some sort of encouraging word that our betrayed should grab hold of and shout “Oh thank God….I’m so glad that my knight in shining armor is NOW ready to heal. My life can get back to normal again.” We think it takes great courage to rise up and say “Let’s move on. This is over. We can heal.” We think we’re going to be the answer to the issues and the trauma you’re feeling and it only reveals how disconnected we really are from reality and the impact of our choices and infidelity. We have no idea the trauma we’ve caused you and we think that by wanting to save the marriage now, and wanting to ‘move on’ we are back to hero-status. We’re not the hero, we’re the villain.

I remember being on my knees with Samantha, holding her saying “let’s just move on….we don’t need to live here anymore and we can get back to US...not anyone else.” And I wanted healing, and I wanted to get healthy, but I wanted to stop talking about the affair and stop talking about the damage and the pain. I thought it was a defining moment when I said “we need to stop living in the past and move on.” It had only been a week! I was so deceived.

Here’s some of the reasons why so many unfaithfuls (self-included) think we’re a hero:

1.  The world seems to revolve around us. We needed to cheat to get our needs met. If you’d have done what you should have done, we wouldn’t have needed to cheat. So, since the world revolves around us, and our needs, we know what can fix and save this marriage. We can fix you, and us - the unfaithful, and you just need to listen to us. We can make it all right since we’re the ones who cheated. We know all the answers why, so just follow my lead.

a.  The truth is, the last person that needs to be in charge of what recovery looks like is the unfaithful. We cannot fix ourselves, let alone you. We are so disengaged from what we’ve done to you that we haven’t a clue what the answer is.

2.  The time is now. We’re ready, so you should be to. I mean, what is the hold up since we’re finally ready to move on, you should be to. We’ve finally come clean with all the details and you know it all now, so you should be ready to heal. Our lives, our finances, our work schedules, our lives as parents require you to get in line with this timeline of life and hurry up and heal. We don’t have time to keep talking about this. I’ve got us. Just hold on to me and I’ll lead you to the right direction.

a.  The truth is we cannot even connect with the impact of what we’ve done to you. We aren’t even speaking your language, let alone hearing what you’re saying objectively. We think we know what you need, but we don’t really know what we need and we can’t see that we certainly didn’t need to have an affair. We have our own timeline that works only for us, but truthfully, that timeline has been decided upon by us and we’re actually the problem.

Most of the time, we the unfaithful, are trying to mean well. Yet, we’re so unhealthy we just don’t understand what the remedy for all this is. We’re trapped in confusion and in over our head. As soon as we realize we’re not the hero, healing has a chance to begin.