About the time I think I’m near catching up on responding to questions coming in, a new one arrives. This time a reader wants to know “Can I have a mental break down from my spouses affair?”
For someone to ask such a question tells me that the hurt they’re going through is massive. Although some of you take your spouse’s affair in stride, there are some of you who it devastates.
I recall talking to an associate who told me about how when his best friend found out about his wife’s affair, it not only devastated him, he was never the same afterwards. The associate went on sharing more details about how massively his friend changed.
The changes were so dramatic, he wasn’t the same person he was. His thinking changed, he had a different outlook on life, and changed his whole way of living, going from being vibrant to somber. Even the way he dressed changed.
It was as if someone stole his friend and substituted a worn-out shell of a man. Even when he was with him, his friend always seemed to be ‘somewhere else’ mentally and emotionally.
He wasn’t cowering in the corner speaking gibberish, but he definitely wasn’t the man he once was.
Whether or not his friend had a ‘mental break down”, I don’t know. What I do know is that you can have very intense reactions to your spouse’s affair.
As part of your reaction, you can experience depressed moods, lose your joy of life, experience mental confusion, shortness of breath, heart palpitations, obsessive thinking, sleep disturbances or gastrointestinal distress. I’m not sure what the reader meant by ‘mental break down’.
I know that many of your mental and physical systems no longer work like they did. The extent of your reaction has a great deal to do with your level of functioning beforehand, your resiliency and your history of surviving traumas.
If you’ve been through several traumas or near-traumas in your life, your spouse’s affair quickly depletes your ability to recover. The chemicals responsible for helping you bounce back are quickly depleted, leaving you ‘wiped out’.
Although the affair knocks you down, you don’t have to stay there. If the affair wiped you out, or if you’ve been wiped out for more than six months, the Affair Trauma is getting the best of you.
There are things you can do that move you past the affair trauma. In my video on “Overcoming Affair Trauma“, you’ll discover techniques designed for moving you out of that place you’re in.
You don’t have to stay broken any longer. You can do things that get you back.
Yes, your spouse’s affair can break you down, but you don’t have to stay down. Getting better doesn’t mean you don’t love them. Getting better puts you in a place where you can work on your marriage if you want to.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
