If you’re the victim of a partner cheating on you, you may feel baffled about the cause. Infidelity in all of its forms is baffling, heartbreaking and confusing.
It’s not uncommon to blame the lack of a good sex life as the cause? Or perhaps, you were too involved with the kids. Or, your job required you to travel too often? You may find some obvious reasons to beat yourself up to try and cover the pain. And you may at times want to rage at your partner.
Most partners involved in infidelity cannot believe the amount of hurt and anger that the betrayal causes. While your partner may have gone to endless extremes to keep it secret, trust me, as a therapist, the truth often comes out.
How you discover the truth impacts the intensity of the pain. If you read endless emails of your partner’s undying love for someone else, you may find the words seared in your brain for a long time. The vulnerability of discovering the facts makes you more susceptible to absorbing the pain in a lasting way.
Suppose you are lucky enough to have found articles like this one early on. In that case, you will hopefully follow the advice not to become a private detective, obsessed with turning over every stone to get at the truth. Even so, you may find yourself a relentless questioner of your partner even you know the details. Like a good detective, you may even try to trip him or her up to uncover a new part of the story.
As a relationship counselor working with couples striving to move beyond the pain, I want to make some suggestions for rebuilding your relationship. Infidelity affects every facet of your relationship. Recovery and healing after infidelity will require you to dig in deep to understand both what you’re really feeling and how, if at all, you can repair your relationship.
The following 5 lessons are ones I teach my clients in therapy, and they will help you deal with infidelity as best as you can.
One caveat, recognize that the intensity of your anger represents as well the depth of your attachment and love. I understand that you may not sense this to be true in the heat of your reactive wish to blast your partner. Still, keep this thought in the back of your mind because it may help slow things down so that you do not unnecessarily make the road to recovery more complex.
#1 Remember the other stakeholders in your marriage: your children.
Some therapists begin relationship counseling work by asking the couple to show pictures of who will be hurt if a divorce becomes the only solution. Being a person of faith may discourage separation and may encourage you to stay together long enough to begin your recovery. Similarly, letting yourself imagine how your kids will feel if you tell them you have decided to move apart will help you slow down.
In fact, this may help you keep your emotional explosions under wraps so that your children do not become unduly frightened. This can happen because of an association they have with other friends or loved ones who were divorced. If you know that they have become concerned about your staying together, consider telling your children directly that you are seeking help.
I recommend this step because it will help them relax to think you are seeking the counsel of professionals to work through the problem.
Besides, you are offering good modeling. As they grow into adulthood, they will remember your example. When you need help, you get it quickly and do not wait until it has become too late, and the wounds have hardened into scar tissue.
#2 Take care of yourself
More than anything else, you need to deal with the stress ahead by doing everything you would urge your best friend to do. Get plenty of sleep, eat well-balanced meals, exercise, and talk to people who know your values. Keeping a good balance will offset the tendency to overreact and leap to worst-scenario images.
It would help if you remembered that many marriages are beset by infidelity. Yet most therapists agree it’s one of the most painful experiences to go through. You will find that gathering your best resources for support will stand you in good stead.
#3 Get help immediately
The wisdom of an experienced infidelity recovery specialist will prove invaluable in saving you time and money in the long run. You need someone who can appreciate the wild mood swings and help your partner do so as well. Most therapists agree that this is similar to a Post-Traumatic Stress Experience. Where I live in New York City, it’s identical to what people went through after watching the bodies fall as the planes crashed into the twin towers on 9-11. You may have your own traumatic memory of something horrible or incredibly painful to experience. That qualifies as a fair comparison and is one of the main reasons why you want to get help now. Not later, now.
Trauma results from the brain’s inability to metabolize the shock of the world seeming to fall apart in ways you had not expected. Instead, the impact of the stress gets stored in the body, only to bounce back at unexpected times. This natural yo-yo effect can be helped in therapy.
#4 Understand the nature of flashbacks
Imagine passing by a restaurant or hotel where your partner had a liaison, this can cause you to experience acute anxiety. Your body drags you through a flashback. This means you re-experienced the shock and horror of when you first learned about the encounters.
Both of you need to note this carefully. I am not suggesting that you are simply remembering the time when you discovered the reality of the affair. Instead, you are reliving the panic and that overwhelming sense when you found out about the extramarital affair.
You and your partner need to understand you are not experiencing the upset to bust your partner’s chops. Instead, the leftover stressed reaction stored in your body breaks through into consciousness. This may recur more often than either of you expect or even understand.
A good therapist can help you appreciate the normalcy and nature of these flashbacks. More importantly, you can learn the best way to work through such crazy times. As the hurt partner, you can teach your spouse how to be with you.
You may remember that people who have taken LSD at times needed an experienced comforter to talk them through their paranoid reactions when they became unbearable. Similarly, as your body works through the residue of the stress of the betrayal, you can identify what you will find soothing and reassuring from your partner.
You may need to be held. You may need someone to listen. You may need someone to walk with you as you work off the intensity of the anger that breaks through.
By discovering together what works, the two of you can begin to build a bridge of understanding. You will understand that your partner wants to be there for you despite the betrayal. At the time, if you are the betraying spouse, you may feel deep guilt as you witness your partner’s pain. Let me invite you to hang in there and respond as your partner requested.
One betrayed spouse reported to me that she knew that her spouse loved her as he held her hand through her rage. She said he would never have done that in the past. It helps her know he cared and wanted to get through this.
#5 Expect that the healing process will take time
Let me break the difficult news to you. You need to know what to expect.
Sometimes the time for therapy to help you rebuild your trust, it can take as much as two years. Having an experienced therapist working with you will help you recognize signs of progress. Despite the setbacks and the periods when the hurt is revived, your work with your therapist will help you recognize signs of improvement and hope.
A good therapist can also help you take snapshots when the two of you are healing. Holding these up to each other can help the two of you believe that you can not only have the relationship that you once had. More importantly, you can begin to catch glimpses of a kind of openness and intimacy that you did not know before.
What can you hope for?
Many couples do continue to say even at the end of the therapy that discovering their partner’s infidelity was the worst thing that ever happened to them. However, after their work together during this recovery process, they also share with me that it got their attention. Through infidelity recovery therapy, they realize new and powerful ways to feel close and to trust neither of us will stray again.
If your marriage or relationship is in trouble because of infidelity, I can help you. I am available to help you in the state of New York. Please reach out, my calendar has openings now to support you on your journey. Feel free to give me a call at 914-548-8645 if that’s easier for you.
