A reader’s query struck my attention. The reader wanted to know how to handle being in an unhappy marriage AFTER their affair. This kind of situation poses challenges on many levels.
First, affairs never ‘fix’ a marriage. The fantasy that an affair can fix your marriage needs to be tossed into the trash. Affairs add some drama and distract, but those things don’t repair your relationship.
They may change your focus and routine, but they don’t add intimacy or improve communication or improve cooperation etc.
Affairs don’t bring helpful changes to marriages. The bring changes, but they are not pleasant ones or helpful ones.
The problems that led to the affair still remain after the affair is over. The affair was a painful solution. After the affair, the two of you still have to face the problem leading to the affair in the first place.
Second, neither I nor anyone else can deliver ‘happiness’. Chasing after happiness poses problems.
People have various sources of what makes them happy. Happiness is also fickle. The root of the word itself is ‘happen’.
The emotional state that you experience from things ‘happening’ in your life is what constitutes happiness. Chasing after happiness amounts to a three ring circus where you always have to deliver entertainment, drama, excitement, intrigue or stimulation.
The problem is that with happiness, what makes you happy is always changing. Then there are always some people who want their spouse to entertain them.
When one spouse wants the other to entertain them, you have a big problem with immaturity. It just sounds better to say ‘unhappiness’ than it does to say immaturity.
In some cases, the happiness is actually about you and your spouse not being intimate enough or close enough to each other. You may have to get to know them at a deeper level.
When your marriage is limited to shallow small talk, it is un-fulfilling. When you are unfulfilled, you may call it unhappiness, but it is more about you wanting more out of the relationship than you are receiving, or that you are putting more into it than you are getting back.
This is a fulfillment issue, not a happiness issue. The unhappiness is a secondary emotional response to being unfulfilled.
Thirdly, in the aftermath of an affair, the emotions will be raw. The trust will be low. It takes time and effort in repairing these areas.
It takes time for them to heal. If you expect them to heal right away or that your marriage should pick up right where it left off prior to the affair, your expectations are unrealistic.
The affair will have to be talked about. The emotional issues resolved. The trust rebuilt. Doing this kind of work is not fun.
This kind of work is not the kind of stuff that makes people happy in many cases. You may have to consider whether you wanted healing or happiness when you returned to the marriage after an affair.
The download program “Affair Recovery Workshop” guides you through the work needed in restoring your marriage. You can know what needs attention, how to make changes and where to make them rather than blindly stumbling through them while surrounded by unhappiness.
Best Regards,
Jeff
2 Responses
Me and my husband are going through this and its only been like 5 months since it happened and he keeps saying different things to me when I ask him and its like the truth is in his head but things don’t add up to anything that was done there was no physical activity with someone else it was all texts and pictures that where sent and this behavior is way out of his normal we have been together for 12 years and three kids and in the last 5 years a lot has been done on his half with the phone that I caught in these years and a lot has gone on in the family with sickness etc that has not helped but I don’t know how to get over the betrayal that he has done please give advice on this matter
Jodi,
Thank you for comments and question. Getting over the betrayal will require forgiveness of what happened, letting go of what happened and rebuilding the relationship. Each of you will need to go through these steps for your relationship to move forward. One of the roadblocks to going through those steps is when your spouse does not validate you, your emotions, and struggles. When he dismisses what happened based on their being ‘no physical activity’, even though you experienced the betrayal, there is a disconnect ( I suspect that is what is behind your comment, “…but things don’t add up). What he is doing is a form of denial. It is a way of minimizing what he did. He has not come to grips with how it felt to be betrayed and what you went through.
There are several options for such situations:
-Address the emotional distance that occurred as a result of his unfaithfulness (e.g. you do not feel as close to him as you used to).
-Confront the denial in an effort to break through it. He is denying the seriousness of his actions, assuming that because nothing physical happened, all is fine. It does not compute to him that what he did was a breach of trust. He does not admit to any ‘wrongness’ in what he did. Breaking through the denial about the impact of his actions, and the wrongness of them can be done, but requires some serious work. This is often time consuming and emotionally draining, it can be effective, but it is challenging to do.
-You could do a backdoor confrontation by questioning him on what ‘no physical activity means’. Does this mean ‘no coitus,’ no kissing, no touching, or something else? Follow this up by asking what he thinks is acceptable. Would he want you fantasizing about another man? Would he be okay with you have phone sex with a stranger? what if that stranger was his boss? Would he be okay with you sharing photos of yourself and suggestive texts with another man? In each of these cases, you are not doing anything physical, yet they are not appropriate for someone who is married and committed to their spouse.
This will give you several options. It will be important for him to ‘validate’ you and your emotions in order to gain closure. Once you have closure, then you can move on with forgiveness, etc. Trying to forgive without having been validated is an uphill struggle.
Best Regards,
Jeff
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