When your spouse cheats, you will be hit with many emotions. Some of you have described it as an emotional tidal wave that hits and overwhelms you. The stormy weather which has wreaked havoc across the midwest may likely be a picture of what is happening inside.
When such a ‘blast’ hits you, it is overwhelming. You may even find yourself not wanting to get out of bed. Dealing with the many emotions is a major challenge. There is the anger, the hurt, the fear, the rage, the betrayal, the sadness, and others as well. With such a mixture of emotions, one answer is not going to accommodate each of the emotions. How to deal with them also varies with how soon after D-Day or ‘news of the affair’ hits. What you do in those first days is about surviving. If you are further along, the focus may need to be on ‘telling yourself the truth about what is going on and what you are feeling’. If you are well on the road to rebuilding, the focus will be on how to put things behind you.
Although you may want a one size fits all skeleton key answer, it just does not exist. Each feeling will call for different ways to handle it.
Anger calls for one type of solution, sadness for another, betrayal for a whole different solution, etc.
With each feeling, it will be important to identify what it is telling you. Strong feelings like anger often tell you something (the message is NOT- I need to go kick someone’s butt). Thoughts of violence are natural, acting on the violence is never the answer. Find out what it is telling you. It could be that your body knows something that your head does not.
Here is a general emotional first aid kit:
1. First, survive.
2. Identify what you are feeling.
3. identify what the feelings are telling you. (write it down. Once it is written down then you can sort out if they are rational or irrational messages)
4. Take care of yourself first, before you start fixing others.
5. The problem is not the problem, the problem is the solution. Often the affair is someone’s solution to a situation. It is not a good solution. What you see as the problem, or problem feeling may actually be a wrong solution and not the problem at all.
6. Abstain from violence
7. Be careful what you say
I saw an interview that other day that inspired me. The British singer Adele discussed how that many of the hurts and songs about hurt that she is known for were inspired by one sour relationship. She took the hurt she felt and used that hurt to inspire her songwriting. Now she is flying high in the charts with best selling songs, and the boyfriend who inspired them by hurting her has been left behind. There are many creative ways of dealing with the hurt and emotional pains.
Best Regards,
Jeffrey Murrah
