Grief and Affairs

Although the topic of affairs is often associated with secrets, to the point where they are often viewed as going hand in hand, the same kind of relationship exists with grief and affairs. You often find affairs and grief going hand in hand as well.

The relationship between ‘grief‘ and ‘affairs’ is worth taking a closer look at. Grief often happens both before, during and after an affair.

Some cheaters use their own grief as a driving force that takes them into an affair. They believe that something in the marriage has died or is lost. They may even only imagine that the grief happened or that they do not deserve any better.

The death or loss can be either actual or imagined. It can be in the present or the future. In the mind of the cheater the actual and the imagined often blur as does the present and the past.

In many cheaters minds, both what they imagine will happen and what has happened are interchangeable. Within the mind, fantasy and reality often switch places. Let me remind you that the rules of external reality are very different than the reality of the mind, so the rules are very different.

The situation turns into what some refer to as a ‘self-serving crisis‘. In a self-serving crisis, behaviors which are not acceptable by themselves are transformed into being acceptable.

The cheater may not have previously viewed an affair as a ‘good thing’, yet when they consider their grief or loss, it somehow makes the affair acceptable.

In their attempt to deal with that ‘grief’, the affair is presented as a solution to their problem. This solution is viewed as a ‘option’ to fix a problem in their lives.

The problem may be totally self-serving and a creation of their mind, yet to them it is very real. The more real they see the problem of the grief, the more appealing the affair becomes as a solution to their condition.

When the affair is approached as a solution, it takes away much of the sting of the relationship. When an affair is the solution to their problem, they do not feel so guilty. In the cheater’s thinking, the affair is a deserved way of balancing out the grief.

The grief may be directly related to something in the marriage or a peripheral issue. The potential cheater may feel ‘stressed’ at having to deal with circumstances that have high pressure (e.g. severe financial problems, caring for a handicapped family member, caring for an aging parent, dealing with a major health issue, etc.).

The high pressure situation often brings some loses with it. In grieving over those loses, they consider an affair as a viable option. The high pressure situation often puts them in such a frame of mind that they see opportunities for an affair that they were previously blind to.

When objects are under high pressure for a long enough period of time, they change. The same hold true for people. When your spouse is under high pressure for an extended time, they will change.

Although you hope that the change will be for good, there is the possibility that the change will be potentially bad as well. Grief is an emotional reaction to a loss. High pressure situations bring loses or threats of loses with them.

It is in their efforts of dealing with grief, that affairs begin to be seen as options for their situation. The affair is then viewed as a ‘solution’ to their problem.

The unacceptable behavior has been turned into being acceptable. In their mind, the change is almost magical. The once taboo relationship is now viewed as a logical solution to the painful state of grief they are enduring.

Although grief is sometimes seen as a precursor to an affair, more often it is encountered again with the discovery of the affair and again at the termination of the affair. Each of these encounters has its own challenges.

The discovery of the affair brings many changes. With those changes comes loses and the associated grief. Although it may sound harsh to say “affairs are for losers”, there is truth to that sentiment. With an affair everyone loses. With everyone losing, everyone is going to have to face those loses and grieve.

When you are the one who was cheated on, there are many loses that you will suddenly have to face. The loss of emotional security, the loss of being special, the loss of love, the loss of the spouse you thought you married and many others. In dealing with those loses, you will have to grieve.

Grieving takes time. Each loss requires a period of readjustment. Although it would be ideal to be able to grieve over each loss, when affairs are discovered, you will often be faced with choices before you have had time to grieve.

In making choices before you have finished grieving, it may leave you with the feeling that things are undone. Those unresolved grief reactions, when ignored are at risk of turning into resentments.

One of the dangers of when grief turns into resentments, it that resentments often move you to action. The actions often associated with resentments are revenge and retribution.

These acts are used in attempts at bringing closure to unresolved matters. The turning of grief into resentments can happen with both the cheater and the one cheated on. Both of you are at risk for this happening.

Besides grieving needing time, each of you will be grieving. Since grieving by its very nature shifts your focus to internal matters, there will be less of you to attend to your spouse.

Not only is your emotional availability limited during grief, so is your flexibility. You may need structure and order during your grieving. Having external order and structure often brings a feeling of stability that you can then internalize.

Besides needing structure and order, you may also want to have some time alone. Somehow when you are alone, you are better able to identify what you are struggling with and what you can do about it. Needing to be alone does not make you weak. This is part of the dealing with your grief.

When going through grief, you may also find yourself being hypersensitive to emotional matters. Part of this hypersensitivity is related to you having to deal with raw, unprocessed feelings.

These include feelings of loss, anger, sadness, confusion and others. When dealing with such an array of emotions, you may find yourself going to extremes in behavior. These extremes include both lashing out or withdrawing.

The extreme behaviors are often a reflection of the extreme emotions that you are experiencing internally. When in such a state, you may find yourself distorting or exaggerating matters. Emotions have a way of increasing the intensity of your experience.

That hypersensitivity can work for you or against you. When your emotions are amped up or hypersensitive, you may pick up on subtle emotions being expressed. It is as if your emotional radar becomes highly sensitive.

When you are like that, you will be able to pick up on subtleties and emotions much easier. For this reason, you will have to be careful not to personalize emotions as if they were all intended for you, or that the emotions you pick up on are related to the topic at hand.

Just because you pick up on an emotion does not mean that it is your problem.

Another danger of misapplying the hypersensitivity is that it can turn you into a ‘rejection sponge’. This happens when you focus on the negative emotions and view them as ‘all about you’. This is especially true when unresolved grief is allowed to turn into resentments.

The third place where grief is dealt with is the end of the affair. At the end of the affair, everyone has to grieve. For the loyal spouse, the grief may be more of a relief than sadness.

For the cheater, they have lost a relationship along with all the hope and dreams that went with it. It is as this time that they have to deal with the kind of grief that the loyal spouse experienced on discovering the affair.

The challenge with post-affair grief is that it is often hard for the loyal spouse to hear the cheater talk about their grief. It is hard for you to validate feelings and experiences that you did not approve of.

Although you may not want to validate and acknowledge their grief, it’s better if you do. When they have to carry it all inside, it often remains unresolved. That unresolved grief, as you know can turn into resentments later on.

When you refuse giving the cheater space to grieve or acknowledging their grief, you may be planting the seeds for an affair relapse. (I talk more about “Affair Relapse” and ways of dealing with it in the video, ‘Preventing Affair Relapse‘).

Hurt is always harder to deal with when you face it alone. When that hurt comes in the form of grief, it remains a struggle. Those struggles are easier to manage when the two of you share your grief and work through them together.

The grief and how you handle it can either bring the two of you together emotionally or distance the two of you emotionally. Grief is still grief. How you handle the grief makes all the difference in terms of whether it is a relationship builder or destroyer.

Best Regards,

Jeff