Redefining what is “Normal” in your marriage and society

One of the tough questions you will find yourself dealing with when an affair happens is “What is normal?” The uncertainty about ‘normality’ adds to the confusion of the whole situation.

When Nancy found out about her husband’s affair, it rocked her world. She thought she knew who she was, what marriage was and what love was, until her husband had an affair. When that happened, it turned everything upside down.

The man she trusted has shown her he can not be trusted yet claims she is the one with problems trusting. She did not betray him, yet she is the one being blasted for ‘not trusting’.

What makes it worse is that the church she goes to encourages her to ‘just trust’ that things will work out. She just has to ‘believe and trust’ and if she does that enough, somehow things will work out.

At times she wonders if God has betrayed her as well. Even what used to be considered ‘normal’ in the church denomination she grew up in is no longer what it used to be. She finds herself crying at being overwhelmed by all the strangeness parading as ‘normal’.

On hearing all this mixed messages about trust, she wonders if she can even trust herself. Can she trust her heart, her mind or her body. She cries at times she does not want to. Her mood changes are more extreme and she is wondering if there is any place that makes sense anymore.

She is told that it is ‘normal’ for her husband to want to be with someone that he loves.  She thought that was her. He promised to love her, now he ‘loves’ someone else. So, what is normal, to be with who you promised to be with, or to be with your latest love?

She finds herself surrounded by friends, many of whom have their own horror stories about affairs. Each of those affairs has some way out twistedness to it. In each case, they think their situation is ‘normal’. In her mind, she thinks to herself that their situations are anything but ‘normal’.

She remembered something she heard in the “Affair Recovery Workshop” about how she needed to start taking care of herself. Nancy suddenly realized that she was waiting for someone else to make her world normal again. She wanted someone else to take care of her, instead of making her life “normal” herself.

She knew that her world did not spin out of control all at once. That means that it will not become ‘normal’ again all at once. It took time and practice to ‘create’ normal in her life again. It had changed some since the affair, yet now she knew what kind of things she needed to bring up with her husband. She felt confident in knowing what to talk about.

She wanted her husband back, and eventually he came back. Now that he returned, they both worked on their marriage. They found how to build a new foundation for their relationship.

It was not based on promises and good intentions anymore, like before. The new ‘normal’ in their relationship had a different foundation. She also discovered what had been missing in their marriage. Now that they could talk about it, they could work on it together.

Nancy constructed a new ‘normal’ in her marriage that had stronger security and closer intimacy than before. She discovered how to create rather than waiting for others to give her the normal she wanted.

Best Regards,

Jeff

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2 Responses

  1. In my experience with situations like this…. the woman usually blames herself for the affair. She was not pretty enough, not good enough in bed, etc. While she may have had some input to the affair, she is not to blame. It was his decision.

    1. Dad,

      There is often a lot of self-blaming by the one who was cheated on. They believe something must be wrong with them. It is inconceivable that the cheater would actually do what they did. The cheater is the one who makes the decision to cheat. The one who was cheated on may be acting like a self-blame sponge and want to blame themselves for everything, but…they do not have that much power. They also have distorted thinking going on. Anytime you look at a situation through the eyes of self-blame, it distorts what you see.

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