Its Not The Affair That Destroys The Marriage
While working through the recovery of the infidelity that plagued my marriage I have had the opportunity to speak with several dozen couples that had to face the harsh reality of an affair in their relationship. Some were mentor couples that tried to assist my former spouse and I heal and begin to reestablish trust and others were friends of friends that sympathized with what we were going through. While my experience is not very scientific or research-based nor as well rounded as experts in the field of infidelity several noteworthy highlights are worth touching on.
When an affair happens the damage to the relationship usually is catastrophic. Trust has been broken and hopes and dreams shattered. This act of infidelity, while crushing, is usually not the most damaging act purported by the unfaithful. Most people can move on past the actual affair or in some cases affairs and for those that do they find their relationship stronger then it was before the cheating. What the betrayed partner has the most difficulty with and what is the hardest to get past is the lying. It’s the slow trickle of information that seems to take weeks, months, or even years to come out. It’s the continual relapses that cut deeper than the last. This is not to say the actual act of breaking your marriage vows by cheating on your partner didn’t violate every single boundary you promised to uphold or that it is not as important as the lying. The infidelity is not to be overlooked as it is beyond devastating.
With the right expert help, most men and women can work through the pain that the affairs caused and eventually forgive their partners. How long it takes to heal and forgive is up to the one that was betrayed and the wayward spouse has no say in the matter as forgiveness takes time. It has been over 2 years since I first discovered my former mate’s affair. Not her first affair but the first one I uncovered. The evidence of her affair was hidden in plain sight on her phone. While I have chosen to forgive her it is still impossible to get past the triggers that make me uneasy and unable to trust anyone else. When we have to interact together, for the sake of our child, and the message tone on her phone sounds off I am taken back to the same day of discovery. Is it the same guy? Is it someone new? Is she cheating on him with someone else? Really why does it matter and why do I care since we are no longer together and have chosen to separate and move forward with divorce. It’s the memories of what we had being shattered and while the forgiveness came the triggers lingered and nagged at me in every unhealthy way.
I tried to work through them alone and with my therapist and progress would be made only to have a simple lie bring us right back to the beginning. When the lying doesn’t stop and the deception continues the progress of healing needs to shift from the relationship to the individual. Some partners will just simply refuse to take responsibility for their actions and will no longer be truthful about anything. Over the weeks and months, little bits of truth eventually emerged and it turns out her deception had lasted the length of our relationship. Hiding evidence, spinning webs of lies and deceiving me had become a way of life and one she simply could not change. I tried to seek answers about her feelings, how many men there had been, how long this affair was, and who she was still talking to on her phone. The answers either never came or were wrapped up in more lies that this became the undoing of our marriage and not the actual affair. With honesty out the window, we were no longer able to be intimate with each other. Honesty creates intimacy and intimacy allows partners to slowly build trust.
If you have had an affair and you are in the middle of trying to save your marriage you need to understand what your spouse is dealing with inside of them. Every continued act of deception you purport will further launch your spouse into a panic attack and create a moment of freeze, flight or fight. If you are delayed in traffic on the way home we need a phone call from you. If you don’t eat supper because you tell us you’re not hungry but the credit card statement later shows you grabbed a burger on the way home we spin that into another reason we don’t feel safe around you. You may seek forgiveness from your spouse but unless you are upfront and honest, about even the most seemingly trivial things, you will not prove to be trustworthy enough to continue to have a relationship with.
If like me, you are on the receiving end of the deception I know it is exhausting, draining and you just want the pain to stop. We feel overcome with emotions that we don’t have control of when we feel deceived. It seems to set back any progress you have made with healing both on a relationship and a personal level. If you are feeling stuck in recovering with your spouse maybe it’s not the affair but the continued deception that is the culprit and I urge you to work with expert help to avoid a similar end like that of my marriage. When I look back on mine it was not the affair that began to unravel the ties that bound us but rather it was the continued deception that sealed our fate. Yes the affairs were wrong and yes they destroyed and permanently changed me but they didn’t end our dream. That belonged to the lies.
