“If I did nothing wrong, why do I feel guilty?” When it comes to affairs, you probably did something wrong. You may not have had coitus, but that does not mean you did nothing wrong.
Giving attention to a stranger that you should be giving to your spouse is wrong. Allowing yourself to enjoy forbidden fruits of someone else rather than your spouse is wrong.
When you do something morally wrong, you’ll experience guilt. It could be that you have only been entertaining fantasies about affairs, thinking that if you limit your infidelity to fantasies, then you have done nothing wrong. The problem is that you conscience will end up telling on you.
You are being told that “Affairs are fun”, “Affairs are natural”, “Affairs are part of the culture” and a host of other lies. Many of these messages are designed to take the moral sting out of affairs.
The intention is to undermine the stability of marriage and the family. By taking the sting of guilt and wrong-doing out of an affair, adultery marketers hope to increase the prevalence of them.
Make no mistake, there are always consequences for actions. There is always blow back from an affair. When you take another man or woman’s spouse, there are consequences.
No matter how much you excuse it, or deny the wrongness of what you did, the guilt of your wrongdoing is still there.
Many lovers and cheaters take on a cavalier attitude regarding affairs. They put on an attitude of “I’ve done nothing wrong”. In some cases, they attribute their cavorting to genetic factors, claiming “I can’t help it, I am just a man” or “I can’t help it, I am just a woman”.
They may even resort to heavy drug or alcohol use in numbing their pain. They operate under the assumption that if they don’t feel the guilt, they must not have done anything wrong. No amount of drugs or alcohol can erase the cumulative guilt affair bring with them.
Affairs are one of those things that you know down in your gut is wrong. Enjoying someone that belongs to someone else is wrong. Sure, you can make excuses about how their spouse does not deserve them or that they deserve someone better.
Such excuses are about shifting blame around to reduce the guilt. You have not magically made the affair ‘right’ by focusing your attention of the deservedness of their spouse.
Some sites talk about how you ‘deserve’ to be happy, then present an affair as a way to indulge yourself. You may indeed deserve to be happy, but an affair only gives you a temporary ‘high’ before plunging you even deeper into the the depths of guilt and pain.
That pang of guilt is letting you know that somewhere you crossed a line (or in some cases, your spouse crossed a line). Rather than dismiss it, you may want to find out what it’s really telling you.
The ebook, ‘Why Wasn’t I Enough?‘ deals with the most frequently asked questions regarding affairs. Learn what the questions are and consider them for yourself.
Best Regards,
Jeff
4 Responses
I love this article. Believe me when l tell you, I have spent hours and hours searching for confident information that actually makes sense….or at least that feels as if it makes sense! This writing went deep enough to actually strike a chord for me. My husband of just under 20 years started a traveling schedule for work (10 days gone, 4 days home) to bridge the gap while continuing to search for a permanent local position. He didn’t care for being away from home from the get go….missed his kids (3), house, pets, neighbors, yard, garage, etc. Basically, the comfortable “routine” was traded for irregularity of what had been “normal” for our family. Temporary situation….we can do this, right? Wrong! Biggest red flag? “I’m lonely coming home to an empty apartment every day”. Meanwhile, the “empty” and totally kick a** apartment was practically on the beach in southern CA, furnished nicely, paid for entirely y the company, and in a beautiful gated community with all the bells and whistles….which sounded kinda nice to me! Anyway, everything changed one fateful day while walking on the beach, apparently. The next few months following the unexpected crossing of paths with an intriguing European woman, was complicated by an old back injury which required he have quite a serious fusion surgery within just a few weeks of having met her. I think I associated the typical “affair signs” with mannerisms common to pain management, lots of narcotics, and surgery recovery in general which was a huge and painful deal. His traveling schedule began after a month of working from home while recovering enough to travel back and forth again. At the 6 month point of having met and obviously fallen head over heals in love for the first time ever, my husband literally blindsided me with “I’m divorcing you”, the night of our little boys 11th birthday party. No counseling, no choice….done. Then the projection and rewriting of our entire history began, even though it was another 6 weeks before I finally got him to admit that he’d met someone else. I heard it all. “I love you but not as my wife”, “I’ve never known what true love was”, “She gets me”, “I’ve never loved you, the only reason I married you was because I knew how much you loved me” (that one is my personal favorite!), “You haven’t been meeting my emotional needs”, “You’re not capable of loving me the way I need to be”…etc. This could be a book, so fast forward, 18 months from his delivering the divorce news, 2 years from meeting his “soulmate”, we are divorced. She (only about 6 years younger than he) moved in with him pretty much immediately after he told me he was divorcing me, he at that point considered himself a free man. He is an angry monster to me, will NOT speak to me at all….only very cold and business like emails are allowed I guess, and continues to throw in my face how awful I was to hire an Attorney and drag the divorce out for a year and a half (which was really only 13 months from when HE filed), cost our kids their college education, braces, cars, and on and on. What I struggle with more than anything is….How could he possibly send a wrecking ball through the last 20 years of what we worked so hard to established, throw me (and especially his kids who he adores) away like a piece of trash, and go about his life in complete justification for what his lack of integrity and boundary control (and hers!) has caused? He has no remorse, no guilt, no shame…..until I read something like this article above…..and there it is! Please let it be true. I can’t be the only one who is completely emotionally destroyed down to the depths of my very soul! It’s bad enough that they’re happily sailing off into what should be a firestorm which truly does look more like a sunset to me!!! How many more odds could two affair partners possible beat!!??
Love2b,
Although I enjoy hearing when people enjoy my posts or find them helpful, it is often bittersweet. For I know that if resonates with you, there are some very deep hurts. Reading your account of what happened left me feeling gutted with a cold knife, especially the part of about “I’m divorcing you!” the night of your son’s 11th birthday. With each excuse you shared, it felt like more emotional tissue was being cut through with a dull blade until I reached the part about his complaining about paying for his children’s needs. If it leaves me feeling that way, I shudder to think of how it left you feeling.
I noticed a common theme in all his excuses was the extreme self-focus. Every excuse had “I” or “me” in them, and not in a good way. Perhaps the surgery played a part in shifting his focus to himself, with all the pain. Whether the shift was due to the woman or the surgery or both, he has chosen to stay in that way of thinking. Your description of him suggests a black and white or love and hate duality. Things appear very polarized, with no room in between. He ‘loves’ one person and hates the other. He is functioning in a world of extremes that has little to no middle ground. This is why there is little communication going on. Living in a world of extremes is not a healthy place to be and puts him at risk of developing addictive behavior patterns.
Your ‘choice of the word intriguing’ in reference to the European woman is telling. The word carries connotations of cheating, being en-wrapped, and filled with plots or schemes. Your subconscious may be comprehending or foreseeing more than you realize. I suspect that the intrigues are far from over for your husband. Rest assured that the story is not finished. Whether you call it God’s justice, the universal tao or karma, …the pendulum of fate is still in swing. You ask “How many more odds could two affair partners possibly beat!!??” the answer is NONE. They may have what appear as short term wins, but things will catch up. You are not the only one destroyed down to the depths of your soul. You are the only one feeling it right now, but that pendulum is always in motion and can not be cheated.
I admire your courage in writing to me and sharing your struggles.
Best Regards,
Jeff Murrah
love2b,
Your situation is heart-breaking. I made a blog post addressing one of the issues that you had to deal with (http://www.surviveyourpartnersaffair.com/blog/2014/09/22/covering-all-the-bases/). I think it will help you with start sorting out and making sense of the mess that has happened. I will have to think through the rest of your situation before replying further. There is just so much…as I am sure you are aware of. I hated hearing how he did what he did to you. It will take a while before my blood settles down to where I can address it.
Thank you, Jeff, for throwing me a much needed floatation device! I want so badly to believe that your expertise will play out as described….probably because I’ve been squashed into a place of no value on any level in my now ex-husbands opinion, and also because there are so many lies wrapped around his delivery of who I truly am (love/hate, black/white is exactly true!). When this all began, especially after the affair was revealed, he made personal visits and calls to everyone in our lives in order to justify what he was doing by degrading me in every way possible, including very intimate details, which obviously completely confused many of our friends and family. Luckily few fell for it, instead did not give their blessing because they have considered us their “favorite couple”, “the ones who would be together forever”, etc. Anyone who wasn’t in support of his choice has been excommunicated by him as well…..many relationships going back 20 years. His immediate family is all who seem to still be in his court, most likely out of obligation, and they’ve totally pulled away from me. I don’t think it’s because they want to, being that we’ve always had a great relationship, but I feel like they know too much, they don’t want to be stuck in the middle, and there’s nothing they can do about it anyway. This translates for me as even further and deeper betrayal. I feel like not only have I lost “my soulmate”, but another entire family who I’ve loved and been dedicated to for years.
I’m blown away by the multiple swords that my ex has thrown himself on for his new relationship. It almost feels as if he’s doing anything possible in order to not allow their relationship to fail, which far exceeds the effort that he ever made for us! He’s done for her, and with her, so many things he knows I would have loved….romantic weekend getaways (which I was receiving “thank you for your stay” cards for being that his address hadn’t been changed yet, fine dinners at amazing restaurants (which is something I always wanted and was rarely treated to), and the worst would be 2 different trips to Italy, the first only 3 weeks after filing for divorce, to “meet the family”, their treat in flight expenses….which he promptly reciprocated by picking up the tab at ridiculously fine establishments on the Italian Riviera to the tune of $300 meals. He doesn’t live that way, nor can he afford to! We rarely broke $100 on an special occasion outing. He has recently quit the traveling job he had after being relocated to a new project in a miserable location in the Midwest just in time for the worst winter in decades. He moved her there with him, and they lasted 5 months before he landed a new job and moved right back to the area in CA where they met, which clearly is her stomping grounds, instead of seeking something here in CO where his kids are. He lost all of his benefits in regard to living expenses and travel (which was paid 100% by the previous employer…we never paid a dime for anything other than maintaining our own life), and now is feeling the pangs of a tiny 1 bdrm apartment and all expenses that go with it in one of the most expensive locations in the US. Obviously, the picture he portrayed to his girlfriend in their first year together, was not able to sustain itself. But…..they remain together after 2 years now. Is this still considered to be fueled by infatuation and fantasy? 2 years seems like a long time to me, but what is the timeframe, typically, for reality to set in? Now that our divorce is final, will the light shine on the tsunami that has been created?
You surely can tell that I am rather obsessed with the relationship dissolving…and I admit that it’s true. I also recognize it though and, with self study and counseling, am working on that. It just feels like if she were out of the picture, we would finally have some form of even playing field. Obviously our marriage is dead and will remain that way, but I hate that with certainty I can tell you, we were a couple who could have survived if we had gone about rebalancing the dynamics of how our driven life had penetrated the importance of “us”….if my husband hadn’t decided to give to another woman what he should have been putting into his wife byway of honesty and communication. I hate that I now understand many things that I was overlooking in my own mannerisms which could have gone a long way in feeding our relationship too. I didn’t fight or bicker or stonewall, avoid, nag, pout, degrade, etc, but I did become complacent and content due to being comfortable in my life, and as a result was overlooking feeding the passion and attention I should have been putting into my best friend. Now, I just want to be able to relate on a friendly basis through all the future events we will inevitably be experiencing with our kids down the road….and have horrible anxiety over the fact that his affair partner could potentially be present. I don’t want to see her, meet her, and I already know everything that I care to about what type of person she is.