After the affair rocked and shocked your world, somehow you and your spouse survived. With the survival comes a willingness to ‘make it work’. You may ask, what is the next step? Each day that the two of you are together is another day of progress, even though it may not feel like it, being together is an achievement.
There are many things to do, much more than one post can cover. One of the first things is recreating intimacy in your relationship. Although I address this in the Picking up the Pieces e-book, when you have moved to the ‘recovery’ mode, you will need a rebuilding and recreating of the intimacy in your marriage. As you rebuild, you will also have to accept that the marriage is different. It has a different foundation and a different dynamic. Although you may be tempted to assume that you have your ‘old marriage’ back, that is a mistake. You have your spouse back, they have you back, yet the nature of your relationship and how you relate to each other has changed. You can not recreate what was there before. You have something new, with new opportunities and new lessons to learn.
Realizing that what is ‘new’ is not a repeat of the old sounds simple. Realizing it involves acknowledging and accepting that the relationship has changed. That means you can not ‘put new wine in old bottles’ so to speak. The two of you have a new outlook that will require the commitment of both of you. Your marriage came to the brink, if not fall over it a bit and managed to avoid total destruction. There are strengths in your marriage that need to be acknowledged and celebrated. If you do not know what they are, then you may want to start making a list of them so that you can acknowledge and celebrate them. By doing so, you will be changing your mindset. With a new foundation, you need a new outlook. Easter is a time of renewal, and may provide you with ways of making a renewal in your marriage.
Best Regards,
Jeff Murrah
7 Responses
Interesting photo Jeff …especially considering the subject matter of this site…..half a person ….
My husband has made every effort to stay away from appearing to be ‘married’ even before I discovered his adultery. He is proud of himself in that he is a ‘self made man’ and so does not intend to go seeking forgiveness from GOD . He has decided that he is going to go to Hell and he is hard as nails to most of us now.
I see the old softer man when he speaks of his children from the OW ….
Recently our daughter went to him to try and get him to make sure our son and his guest would not have the unpleasant experience of feeling that they were moving someone out of their room …asking him to come back to sleep in our bed so our guest could have the bed that is supposed to be the ‘guest room’ .
He utterly refused despite this being his favorite child of OUR family . He simply hardened his heart and told her that we would have to figure out some other arrangement and that he was not going to give the false impression that he and I were OK and going forth with a healed marriage. My daughter was well balanced and composed in her approach , She was logical with her words and very well controlled considering he was ‘fencing’ with her about this .
She was so hurt . She rarely cries but even her tears did nothing to melt him . He was stalwart in his defense of sleeping anywhere but in our bed! This was astonishing . It is worse still because he felt he was being logical and even smiled and tried to get her to lighten up!
I found this simply amazing in it’s demonstration of selfishness and lacking in love for his family and care for the discomfort of our guest.
I find it difficult to realize that when scripture talks about the hard heart it is really a true thing! I probably would not have believed such a demonstration of someone who is supposed to be so compassionate as he has often displayed with people outside our family …to see his lack of care for our own family members.
His family of origin still know nothing of his ways of life….I had told him I would not be the one to ‘out him’ so that whenever they might learn of it it would be GOD who had orchestrated that ….I pray that it does happen though ..NOT to be mean to him but so that he might learn that his sin will indeed be found out and then perhaps he will experience how his extended family would react.
This may not matter to him either since as he began his adultery he saw less and less of any of his family…and now most of the elder members have died. Still I think he would find a great reaction of sorrow, shock and dismay . Most of our marriage I think they thought I was the person who caused us to not show up often at family events…Nothing could be farther from the truth …He seems to enjoy hiding behind me and our godly children for his public image.
I know some would say I should divorce but I do not view this as an option for me .
Zaza,
I found the photo fascinating.
In terms of your husband, it breaks my heart hearing how he hides things from his family of origin and the public. I see a similar situation with a family member and it grieves me to see it happening. Reading your experience hits very close to home.
The hiding is a sign that the cheater knows what they are doing is wrong. They know it deep inside. Despite knowing the wrongness of the affair, they continue clinging to their hiding and appearances. For them it is all about appearances. Somehow they think if it looks acceptable, it is acceptable, even though the only person they are fooling is often themselves. That shell game seems to give them some comfort in a strange way.
Today I got a traffic citation in the mail. It had my name, address and birth date . But It was not me behind the wheel of my husband’s car! He said he did not know who it was either . He parks his car in a garage and leaves the key with the attendants so they can move it around if they need to . The date and time of the traffic photo indicates it was not me either as well as the photo , though distorted , looks nothing like me.
He did not want me to call the police about it because he did not want the parking garage attendants to lose their job ….nice…he wants to ‘get to the bottom of it ‘ …I asked if it was the OW or another OW and he said he did not know her. I did not jump to this conclusion but after he was so concerned about the attendants I thought about it and it came to mind perhaps it was another OW …
I am not going to hunt this down …I just don’t want a ticket or a court date on my record so I will try to deal with this by way of the system.
It is so difficult to live with someone who has been so dishonest yet continues to believe he does everything right!
I told him that this is yet another example of his demonstrating concern for others while not being particularly concerned about me. It has been a lifetime of being set aside and put last in his way of behaving.
Always concerned about the other people.
Zaza,
That is pretty wild. I can not say I have heard of that happening before, although his wanting you to ‘get to the bottom of it’ does fit the pattern. At this point it sounds like there is more concern about what others (the parking attendants and their boss) think and problems related to it rather than doing what is right. For a cheater to be more concerned about others than doing right or fulfilling their responsibilities does fit the pattern.
Well it seems that it turns out he had had a breakfast business meeting at a hotel in town with some of his company from out of town, He left the keys with the hotel valet. I spoke to the police about this and they said that I am not going to be held responsible for the ticket. My concern is that if the hotel has a valet service that is careless or worse , taking advantage of the cars entrusted to them they need to know it .
The woman who did this drove 45 in a 25 road work zone..that is a tripled penalty in our state. I thought , what if she had hit someone or wrecked the car …..the hotel needs to know about this even if the police said that they will not be pursuing it .
It is certainly a terrible day when it seems to be more and more frequently we see people doing things right out in daylight that are outright flaunting disregard for others, others property and the law!
But then we who have suffered infidelity from our spouses , the closest ones that we trusted should not be at all surprised at the hubris of strangers!
It is indeed a dark time in the history of our planet!
‘…we should not be surprised at the hubris of strangers’
That is a great statement and observation. The hubris of cheaters is only paled by the hubris of strangers.
mmmmhmm