With the therapist on vacation I’m somewhat left to my own devices and whereas I’m not in session I think it’s important to keep writing and do something. Recently, I was given a number of website and Reddit pages to look at discussing various emotions of each member of an affair and what recovery looks like from each perspective. I only have the one perspective but I wanted to kind of give my reaction to some of the major points.
One of the message boards described a person a year after finding out about an affair and how they are able to be ok and happy some days but other days feel stuck and sad and not sure why. It’s hard to respond to all these points because there are so many questions I don’t know the answer too but here I go. She refers to herself as almost clinging to the pain and I think this is very relatable. Often I’ve had conversations with the woman I love that have dragged down in arguments and gotten pretty bad but we don’t stop talking because we don’t know we’d ever talk again and therefore can’t stop talking. It’s a scary thought to not know what’s coming next. Pain sucks but she’s learned it and how to live with it. It can overwhelm her and she talks about selfishly punishing her husband. She talks about keeping them stuck afraid that the affair could happen again. This must be excruciating. I’m having a similar problem rebuilding trust especially in a situation where she knows I go back to a wife and listens when I say there’s little to no interaction and my intentions to be done with that relationship are clear but of course something gnaws at the back of her. In this instance the couple tried counseling but it didn’t work and she lists two reasons. Both sound valid but are very much filled with bad signs. The first was she didn’t like the therapist or think the therapist was very good. This happens. People don’t always interact well together and if the style of therapy doesn’t fit with who you are then the therapy is worthless. No doubt and you need a new therapist. The second was that her husband wasn’t a natural talker and didn’t respond to therapy. Potentially this explains the entire post. All the work to rebuild trust cannot be one sided and if he didn’t like to talk (same here with emotions) than you have to wonder if she feels stuck because of a lack of contrition. How hard is he working and this is a difficult question. I’m constantly faced with what am I doing to show remorse and show her she is my priority and the answers are often difficult. Often it’s mental work, and selfish mental work because if I don’t fix myself I can’t fix the relationship but the concern is often that I’m doing that for me and would do it regardless of who I am trying to be with. This part doesn’t feel entirely true. Some people make us want to be our best selves. Some people make us want to do the work to be better. Maybe that’s a personal deficiency in me, I certainly have a lot of those. Recovering from an affair certainly has a lot of visual aspects. A comment on the post talks about asking attacking questions or trying to trick her spouse into lying about things in order to cause pain and get a tearful response. Trying to transfer her pain to him and in turn ensuring that he is feeling pain. Have definitely dealt with this and whereas it sucks it’s also understandable. She constantly worries that I’m going to get the person I want and therefore learn my behaviors were ok because there isn’t any consequences. It can be hard to see I’m living in a world awash in consequences from my actions. Filled with downward spirals that go so very far downward. We learn as children not to judge others because we don’t know their story and it’s worse in this instance where the pain and anguish often don’t have physical manifestations. And when the signs get physical it’s so much worse.
Another article is from the betrayers perspective and deals with one of the great questions that is almost an impossible reconciliation. I absolutely love the woman I want to be with and consistently made choices that caused her pain. How can that be? There are a lot of short answers. I was selfish, I put myself above her, I thought this was the safest option, and I thought it would work out and just needed time to figure out what to do. These are all true but also all a weak smokescreen of excuses. I did put my feelings above her and did it a lot and didn’t even realize it most of the time. Why? Because I never doubted my love for her. But that was just an emotion and lacked all action and love needs to be both an emotion and an action. There was a lot of personal pain and blindness. It only made me focus on what I thought I could be and what I thought I could achieve. I wasn’t even in the want versus need argument they get to in the post because I was blind. I thought I needed a safety net because of the depression and worthlessness that I never resolved. My ability to compartmentalize is amazing. None of this was good. None of it lined up with who I wanted to be or who I thought I needed to be and that caused a lot of damage.
The author Linda McDonald in her book “How to help your spouse heal from an affair” lists 15 behaviors that need to be followed in order for a relationship to survive. Some of them I think I’m pretty good at.
Examine motives without blaming partner – this takes a lot of work but I do feel like I’ve accepted responsibility for my behavior and I’m working a lot on the motives. They go deep and deal with many issues and a twisted way of thinking so it’s slow and hard work but I do believe it’s going well and in therapy it’s important to celebrate victories.
Seek to assure partners of your love and commitment to fidelity – I’m working hard on this. I do love her very much and tell her often. Perhaps I could say it more, I think it’s always a dream to be told to say “I love you” more often.
Some of them I need to work more on…
Respect the betrayed partners timetable for recovery – I’m horrible at this and I’m working on it but it’s tough. Depression makes me feel forgettable and I feel like taking the back seat to allow her to grieve will simply lead to her knowing she’s better off without me. It’s a hard thing to balance. I don’t doubt the importance but how do you believe that someone will remember you when you feel like nothing about you is good. The obvious answer is that it doesn’t matter. I can’t force her to recover on anything but her timeline and without recovery I’ll be nothing to her anyway so I need to improve. A lot of messages talk about accepting you’ll be ok but that’s hard when nothing feels ok. Sometimes I know I will sometimes I don’t. It’s scary but I’ll get better. At least I know it’s a problem to face.
What happened in therapy? 