There are many ways of starting an affair. These range from lewd, suggestive comments, flirting looks, seductive clothing or a nice smile. The whole process is then supercharged with the introduction of drugs or alcohol. Although there are multiple options for starting them, getting over an affair is different.
Getting over an affair is made worse with alcohol or drugs. Things like lewd, suggestive comments, flirting looks and seductive clothing also make the getting over worse as well.
Getting over an affair is not like going out on the town, it is more like cleaning up and taking out the garbage. You’ll need to remove all reminders of the affair and the lover.
In removing them and that chapter of your life, there will be some grieving. Although some people will want you to ‘just move on with life’, it is important to grieve as part of the process. The grieving involves you letting go of the emotional attachments.
Like other wounds, getting over an affair will take time to heal. Moving on with life without grieving only invites trouble.
The embers of old flames are easily brought back to life. Using grieving to let go removes those incomplete emotions.
You’ll need to treat the affair like a death. They are gone, that chapter is gone and needs to be laid to rest. You will need to let them die emotionally and relationally.
Since dead corpses don’t react to people, you’ll need to have the same kind of none response to the lover. Imagining the lack of response to the lover may help you keep in mind the kind of change you want to happen in this area.
After the house and heart cleaning and the grieving comes the hardest part. This next step is ‘learning to hate the affair’. This is why grieving is important.
If you haven’t grieved and let go of all the feelings, you’ll not be able to hate the affair. If you still view the affair with fondness, you will have a hard time getting over it.
That fondness or tenderness toward the lover can easily be switched back into an affair. When you only hate the consequences of the affair and not the affair itself, you are setting yourself up for problems.
One of those problems is that your heart will start reaching for the affair. When you only hate the consequences, you will start trying to find ways of circumventing the consequences.
This is where many of you who have had previous affairs have messed up. You have to hate the affair itself. You have to see it as black as sin, and want to avoid anything to do with it. Anything less opens the door to incomplete healing.
The video “Help for the Cheater: Starting the Road to Recovery” goes into further detail on changes needed in getting over an affair.
Best Regards,
Jeff
5 Responses
Very true….one of the aspects of my husband’s audultery and the lengthiness of it was having not one child and not by accident but by having two. He SAID that he had not wanted the second child and while watching the first one born he had a sick feeling in his stomach.,..I am not so sure that these ‘disclosures’ were not just for my benefit somehow in his mind.
He STILL departed because there was no way he was going to ‘move on ‘ in terms of the children born …even as he was told by the OW that she did not expect marriage and was intending to be a ‘single mom by choice’ as one of the popular cultural ‘norms’ puts it .
This whole thing is an orchestration by the deceiver to break apart healthy relationships and destroy the lives of no just the married spouses and children of a covenant marriage but to fragment the whole society by way of many generations now growing up without experiencing what it is like for two opposite gender people to learn to live and love each other as God designed them to do within the boundaries of marriage.
The damage done is ongoing and does not often show up until a child of divorce who may even be an adult at the time of the parents divorce is finding out how much disinformation they were living with in a family where there is still no actual marital function that is what God has provided us with the information and ability to have.
In my own life I had always thought the way my parents functioned was normal and right….I took many of those ways they seemed to get along into how I functioned with my husband who was then able to live ‘free’ of any kind of complaint that he had a ‘nagging wife’ . I was careful to try to learn what I could about marriage and my role as a wife …especially from Proverbs 31.
The trouble was I did not believe he would turn from growing in the Word and being teachable. His change in co workers, work environment, and friendships which began to take over and my own lack of knowledge of how the jurisdiction of marriage SHOULD contain both people’s concern about the protection of the marriage led to him getting to do whatever he wanted and me trying to take stock of why his impulsiveness and random attitude and independent attitude was bothering me .
As with many cheated wives they think the ongoing offenses are just themselves being too demanding…too sensitive….too selfish themselves ! But this is not the case . Many women are godly or trying to live in their marriages with men who are still immature and expect everything their own way .
So anyway …even as an adult I had not realize how much the way my own parents functioned without their having any interest in biblical living effected how I viewed getting along in marriage.
This was even some of what was encouraged from pulpits where the men there were just as biased against learning what Jesus told the leadership He was putting in place.. that to be a good leader they needed to learn obedience to HIM and to serve others ..in marriage the husband sets the tone and if he is impulsive and selfish and above all secretive in relationship to his wife and marriage he will be difficult to turn.
The bottom line in my understanding is the very reason Jesus told us to marry believers if we are His. These days with so much mobility in communities we have little opportunity sometimes to KNOW the family and lengthy way a person lives . Trustworthiness is a very rare commodity it seems to me.
Offering trust to people with just a short span of experiencing their true ways and not knowing all of the ways to vet a person is more and more difficult.
I am learning from the Word and a lengthy lifetime of allowing the Lord to instruct me and to show me where I have been deceived.
Sad to say. Moving on or past the adultery became too much for my husband since he refused to ‘kick’ the children of Adultery “to the curb”…because he sooner kick me to the curb.
Those were the terms he used about telling the OW he was done with her …though he was and is….I think he find relating on any deeper level with honesty and accountability too confining for him , yet he is not happy alone …so he got a dog!
Way to help save finances so badly needed now for things our family must deal with! But HE has what HE wants …so it’s just too bad for the rest of us!
I am thankful he still pays our bills but many of the household needs are not met because he now supports the OC …then his own place AND DOG….and then us.
The Word speaks so clearly about priorities and jurisdictions that make all of those choices so simple IF someone is willing to heed them!
He will never ‘get over’ what he did because though he says it was wrong, a mistake, and he hates the OW ….it seems that none of it is REALLY struck him as of yet the REAL RESPONSIBILITIES he has to all who his first jurisdiction have been in that suffer even now due to his attitude .
The first way that I now see that his immaturity , impulsiveness and careless attitude effected what he HAD in our relationship was it resulted in my not feeling secure in what he would do next and that he did not care about how anything he did or wanted to do effected me and our relationship. I think it really shut down a lot of what was supposed to ‘flow’ …HE refused to share his life with me …but shared it with any and everyone else …only on a superficial level.
When that happens the ‘lack’ in the marriage is because the investment is slim to none.
THAT I will not take responsibility for. He refused to share himself . All his well expressed ideas and dreams before marriage were believable and doable but after marriage he reversed course when it called for him to face some realities and responsibilities that even now he does not take up though he believes he is being a ‘good father’ ….I don’t see that in his choices and actions, It is still all about himself.
Having had those children was a deliberate move on the part of the OW to guarantee her income …she STILL does not work!
It also seems it justified my husband to have his own way in everything going forward with the excuse that he ‘has’ to be ‘there ” for the OC …but he cannot even do that since he is not THERE.
It is all a sham.
Zaza,
Getting over the affair is indeed tough on many levels.
You mentioned some very key points. One was “Offering trust to people with just a short span of experiencing their true ways and not knowing all of the ways to vet a person is more and more difficult.” Sadly, rather than vetting a potential spouse, many people are ‘seduced’ into marriage. I attribute much of this to the cultural mindset modern society has regarding dating. It is often used as a training ground for break-ups and seduction rather than as a time of courtship where two people learn about each other and develop a sense of ‘one-ness’ in the area of emotions and spiritual matters. They assume one-ness is purely physical and hop into things before a solid foundation has been established. Many people do not even know themselves or their own values, so learning someone else is …way beyond what they are capable of.
That being said, my focus is on helping the messes get cleaned up, not so much on preventing the messes. The one-ness can be established, yet it takes commitment from both spouses, as you well know. It can be done with one, but…few people are willing to take on that task.
When people make compromising choices with an affair, to get out of one situation, they often find themselves faced with another situation that they can not compromise themselves out of. Your husband being torn by the present consequences of his choices is a clear example of that. Your statement “Sad to say. Moving on or past the adultery became too much for my husband since he refused to ‘kick’ the children of Adultery “to the curbâ€., is an illustration of that. The compromises did not end with the affair. Now he has the situation of children, where there are no easy choices or compromises to get out of things. It is not going to get any better with grandchildren. Some people have to get stuck before they are willing to cry out and look up.
You are perceptive with your insights. “This whole thing is an orchestration by the deceiver to break apart healthy relationships and destroy the lives of no just the married spouses and children of a covenant marriage but to fragment the whole society by way of many generations now growing up without experiencing what it is like for two opposite gender people to learn to live and love each other as God designed them to do within the boundaries of marriage.” Affairs have a ripple effect that goes through the generations. The sooner they are dealt with, the sooner that relationship can be patched up. Since few people consider the generational impact of their choices, they do not see the BIG picture of the longitudinal impact of their unrestrained passions. Unrestrained passions always boomerang back as unrestrained miseries and turmoil. That is the nature of pain (keep in mind that the word passion refers to when we want something so bad, it hurts, it pains us. Pain has a boomerang path. It is not by accident that when it comes to pain, people often say “What goes around, comes around”.)
It was painful reading the section, “As with many cheated wives they think the ongoing offenses are just themselves being too demanding…too sensitive….too selfish themselves ! But this is not the case . Many women are godly or trying to live in their marriages with men who are still immature and expect everything their own way .” In the search for the ‘bad guy’ or someone to blame, many spouses do beat themselves up and blame themselves. Blaming does not fix matters. It may temporarily give a mental satisfaction, since you have someone/something to pin the problems on, but rarely brings real change. I have seen some spouses spend the rest of their lives blaming and regretting.
I appreciate you sharing. I am glad that your husband still provides financially. I keep hoping that his heart will turn.
Best Regards,
Jeff
Thank you Jeff [ or Peggy?] for your lengthy comment and great insights …I also offer what I am learning as I go through this stuff…from my study of the Word in particular on all things that may be brought up in scripture as well upon all areas of life.
So much ‘catch up’ for adults who come to Christ …and in particular my own generation that came into the faith with a lot of zeal and love for GOD but not equipped to realize many of those who took advantage of that ignorance and enthusiasm …just as we see in today’s ongoing generations being more and more moved away from the ‘need to study the Bible’ ! …all part of the way it is seemingly bringing to pass the conditions upon the world as time draws near for the departure of the church and the last seven years ..
There are many areas where contentions are being brought up to challenge the vericity of the Word and those who do not realize that it IS the SPIRIT of the Lord and HIS ‘voice’ to teach us all things that pertain to this life and godliness will miss out ..or worse be deceived into service to a false doctrine.
Never the less the Lord is patient and long suffering not wishing any should perish but that all should come to the knowledge of the truth and be saved….may people not hesitate ..
Thank you again for your encouragement …my computer was down for a while so I was not able to post ..as you know I seem to always have something to comment on ! Thank you for your continued blog …I am sure it is a help to many who are facing this difficult trial.
Zaza,
You are very welcome. The reply was from me, Jeff. We have had some minor computer problems, so the names sometimes get cross-wired. I appreciate your continued insights. We are all in this together, helping the body.