There is HOPE: Negative feelings will fade away

One of the greatest challenges when choosing to stay in your marriage after infidelity is getting over your ego. How do you avoid feelings like anger, disappointment or sadness that accompany the recurrent memory of the disclosure or discovery? How do you "Get over" the fact that your spouse gaslighted you for months or years while having an affair with that coworker who pretended to be a friend of yours?



You can browse through this blog and read about how connecting with other betrayed spouses on Twitter helps you feel that you are not alone, or how focusing on the positives of your marriage is a choice you can make to feel joy during your recovery. A little truce is necessary to recover your strength and keep you going.

Recovering from infidelity is not easy. It is important to remember that you are not alone in your predicament. Hearing from others who are years away from Dday and have written books with a touch of humour about their spouse's affair can lift you up during one of those days that you find it challenging to look at the glass half full.

What can you do when you don't have the strength to focus on gratitude or to push yourself to go to the Pilates class? What happens when you lose your appetite or your will to comb your hair or put some lipstick on to lift your mood?

Remember this: you are not the first one who has been betrayed by a loving spouse and you won't be the last. Infidelity has nothing to do with you.

Esther Perel suggests giving yourself a second chance with the spouse who betrayed you, provided they are a good person and have shown remorse and willingness to recover. You are working on a second marriage with the same person, who is probably the other parent to your children, and a good one. Or the unfaithful partner could have been a good child-in-law to your ageing parents, a good provider for the family or a wonderful home manager. If you haven't listened to her 2015 TedTalk on Infidelity you must do so now. It is the most hopeful twenty minutes talk any betrayed spouse who loves her partner should listen to carefully.

I have seen my own parents stay together in their marriage after infidelity. They are in their late seventies now and feel very fortunate to have each other during this challenging life stage. Someone to talk to as you slow down and start to forget where your sentence was heading is an incentive to work on your marriage after infidelity.

I am almost seven months into recovery after DDay. We have been working purposedly on creating new memories of our "second marriage". There have been triggers that have made my wound bleed again. Husband has been there to remind me that he is not giving up on us yet. The downs have been more scattered as time passes by. We have been able to plan strategies together to face triggers that can arise from socialising with our friends who are unaware of the affair. There are new channels of communication in our marriage.

I can almost think of that recording as a thing of the long ago past. There have been MANY moments of re-connection between me and my husband. I have said what I wanted to tell the other woman. Writing that letter on this blog allowed me to calmly pass on the message to her during a phone call a few weeks ago.

There is hope. Negative feelings will fade away as you rebuild your life with your loving partner.

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