You may be wondering “How long does it take to heal?” Some of you ask the question for rhetorical reasons, some of you actually want a specific number of days or hours it will take to heal.
In our day of supercomputers and fast speeds, you will want fast answers and fast healing. You’ve grown so accustomed to email and instant messaging, that you’ve developed expectations of instant healing.
There hasn’t been technological brreakthroughs in the area of instant healing. Healing still requires time.
The deeper the hurt, the longer the time. The more you pick at the scab, the longer the healing will take.
Sure, you can used alcohol or drugs to ‘numb’ yourself to the pain, but it doesn’t speed up the healing. If anything, it slows it down.
Each day, you will feel pain pinging on you. There will be reminders of what happened, and what you felt. You’ll have a daily choice of “Whether to incite more hurt or to get on with the healing”. The choice between hurting and healing remains there day in and day out.
When you choose inciting more hurt, you may make your spouse or others to feel pain. You ‘remind’ them of what they did, and how it left you feeling. You may even push them for MORE answers, even when you don’t need them.
There will be the temptation to hurt them the way they hurt you. As you feel the hurt associated with the healing, the temptation will be there to get better by hurting them.
You’ll have to resist this temptation. It only pushes them away and spreads your pain outwards.
When you spread your pain, there is the relief from letting off some pressure, but that is not real healing. It is temporary cathartic relief. It feels good to ‘let it out on others’.
When you do this, you run the risk of pushing others away from you. It strains your support network. The only exception to this is when you spread your pain to God in your prayers.
This can be done with imprecatory prayers, emotional release prayers, or broken hearted prayers. Whichever type or prayers you choose, there are benefits, and it does not alienate your support system.
With physical healing, it takes time for nerves, tissue and muscles to mend. It takes time for them to restore their strength and function. They start off weak and grow stronger and more stable over time.
In a similar manner, it takes time for emotional wounds to heal as well. It takes time for the nerves, neural pathways and emotional responses to change. They start off weak and grow stronger and more stable over time.
With physical wounds, you can see the healing process. With emotional wounds, you can not see the healing. Sure you can see the effects of the healing, but not the healing itself.
You’ll have to give yourself permission to allow time to heal. Healing does not occur on a human timetable. You can not schedule when the healing will be done. There are too many variables for that to happen.
When you give yourself time to heal, you also have to allow your expectations to change. Many times, it is the expectations and the self-imposed timetables that cause you more pain and discomfort than the healing process itself.
If you need more help and support, consider the support community at Restored Lifestyle, where others hurt by affairs share and find answers. You’ll also gain access to the videos, ebooks and resources we have for affair recovery.
Best Regards,
Jeff
2 Responses
Healing does take time. In my case, it’s been three years since suspicion two years from initial discoveries and one year since real DDAY of a physical affair. The cheater has a big influence if reconciliation is the goal. Hearing “get over it”, “move forward”, and “God has forgiven me why can’t you” does not speed the process. Showing remorse and repentance, changing the susceptible behaviors, showing honesty and empathy greatly improve it.
Untold,
Thank you for your comment. You are spot on, “Healing does take time”. I also appreciate you bringing up the topic of the comments “Get over it”, “more forward” and “God has forgiven me why can’t you”. Such comments often come across as condescending and do not help the process. If anything, they slow it down. One aspect of healing is how the pain of the trauma often ‘freezes time’. Yes, the clock and calendar say that time continues moving, yet emotionally, the wounded are still ‘stuck in the loop’ of the pain. Time for them is frozen.
The comments about moving on, etc. try to push the wounded ahead, without any regard for their being frozen in their pain. For this reason, they often have to go through a thawing out before they can move forward. The comments you shared do not convey warmth, or understanding, which on keeps the wounded stuck. Such comments can come from a spouse or from others who do not want to touch your pain. It is a way for everyone to avoid the real issues and get on with life.
The comment “God has forgiven me, why can’t you” is an interesting one to consider. Years ago, I worked with a counselor named Robert Magee who wrote the book, “The Search for Significance”. He had a presentation on how “God never forgave anyone, so why should you?” The title had a lot of shock value. His point was that forgiveness is not an ‘erasure’ that wipes everything out, although many in today’s culture view it that way. He also went on addressing the reasons we need to forgive and excuses often given for not doing so. Often, people have to be shocked in order to wake up out of the numbing of their complacency.
It is also worthy to note that in a marriage relationship, the relationship the spouses have with each other impacts their relationship with God. Saying that God has forgiven them when their spouse has not has some problems with it. They may say that, but if there was ‘true’ forgiveness, you would see repentance and a changing of their ways. The way you presented it sounds like a spouse is using that phrase as a way to ‘force’ you into forgiving them, in which case the supposed forgiveness is being used as a club to beat you into doing it their way. That is not true forgiveness. True forgiveness would have them making amends and repairing the damage that they brought into your life. Your statement of “Showing remorse and repentance, changing the susceptible behaviors, showing honesty and empathy” would be signs of ‘true’ forgiveness.
-Just a few of my thoughts on those matters about healing taking time and snippy remarks about moving on.