As you work through the grime after finding out about the affair, time may moves very slow. Pain has a way of bending and distorting time. You may feel like you are in low gear.
Day by day, you make progress, some more than others. Eventually you find yourself not wallowing in pain each day. During that time, there often comes one day when “BAM!” you feel the pain all over again and feel like you have had a setback.
You may not have thought about the affair for a while. Now your mind is flooded with thoughts and feelings come flooding in even though nothing has happened.
With many spouses, that reliving of the pain is associated with anniversary reactions. It is common to find that on anniversaries of key events in your marriage and in dealing with the affair, that you re-experience feelings and thoughts.
Some may be good, while others are unpleasant. You’re not loosing your mind. ‘Anniversary reactions’ are part of the healing process.
Whether you and your spouse work things out, you will still experience the reactions. Although your mind may have moved on, you body and heart move slower. They often take longer to heal.
The problem is that you often do not see any physical handicaps. There are no crutches, or casts that make your broken state obvious. Although they are not obvious, that does not mean that they are not real.
You and I know those feelings are very real. The intensity of the sensations fades over time. It is hard to invest your heart and soul in someone and there not be reactions to having lost the kind of relationship that you once had with them.
Anniversary reactions are a part of recovery you can plan for. Those reactions don’t have to trigger fights or send the cheater back into the arms of the lover.
When handled correctly, they become a temporary reminder of what happened, rather than a re-living of it.
My video on “Overcoming Affair Relapse” guides you through anniversary reactions and triggers along with navigating you through high risk situations. You can have a plan in place for dealing with each of these situations rather than being caught off guard.
Best Regards,
Jeff
One Response
One of the most hurtful things that stabs me now and then is the disassociation my husband has contrived to live as if we are ‘just friends’ and not too close at that . He makes plans with our daughter without any discussion with me …or our oldest . Both still live with us and contribute to our family lives . We used to do all things together and he seldom did anything just with me …but now he has focused upon our youngest . He seems to be charming her. even as he denies me and does not spend any time focused upon our oldest who used to be his closest until he started his adultery.
It grieves me to see this as it hurts our oldest but she has taken the position that his changed behavior and his dismissal of her concerns and points of view about all of his various choices seems to have the effect upon him of being uncomfortable around people who he cannot fool.
He tries so hard to live his life as if he is ‘now being good’ just because he is not having sex with the OW but his making his life more and more private and separate from his marriage has left me completely outside the loop.
I have been going to a great church fellowship which offers a lot of various activities and fellowship opportunities but I feel I need to be careful about interactions and also about not being at home so he does not have any excuses to say “you were never at home’ …or ‘I thought you were making your own life too”!
He will always find an excuse to abandon the responsibilities of a husband …so he can do whatever he wants without feeling any accountability.
The hard thing is that if I do not speak up and inform him of the ways he is being deceived then I will feel I have not done my best to warn him of the ways he is continuing to be deceived and actually missing out on the good things he could enjoy and I could too if he would truly repent .
His bypassing me in his relationships and activities has been very hurtful in the past but I had excused it as what he needed to do for his work to support our family . I now think it may be his way of trying to get ME to leaved him so he can appear to be the good guy .
This has been a long lonely marriage . I will stick it out not to be a martyr but because there are no real ‘gains’ to leaving and I hold out hope that the Lord may bring some man my husband will respect enough who loves the Lord to speak into his life. So far …even the one guy he does respect who is a believer he has no interest in heeding anything the guy says ..He was an employee . My husband feels above the necessity to keep himself in any kind of moral boundary set by the Lord.
His ‘god’ is his own ‘self’ even now ..even after his ‘self’ let him down. No wonder he is often depressed and in despair. One thing I see in scripture is that when a man refuses to treat his wife as he is commanded to that he makes his own misery. Then blames his wife for his ‘lack’ of joy. I think God explains it well enough even a fool need not err therein but not the man who loves his pride.