The shock of D-Day is massive. You’re fortunate if you get through it with a minimum amount of symptoms. The physical symptoms are bad enough, yet it’s the psychological ones that I want to address today.
The one that concerns me are self-degrading questions like “If I was so terrible, why did you marry me?” Whether or not the cheater intended on hurting you, what they did was devastating.
The devastation comes from the rejection of you and devaluing that comes with it. At one time, they told you they valued you and cherished you. With one act, they cancelled all that out. They may not have called you trash, but they certainly treated you like it. They built you up, used you, then devalued you.
When you believed them, it made you vulnerable. Once your heart opened up to them, then what they said and did built you up or tore you down in ways no one else could.
They may say “It was a mistake”. The problem is that their mistake cuts right into your heart. There is little to no room for those kind of mistakes in a marriage.
They may expect you to turn around and warm up to them just because they admit what they did. Feelings don’t turn on and off that quickly. It takes more than admitting to the affair or being honest about it to turn things around.
They created the problem with the affair, not its’ up to them to start doing something about it. Whatever led up to the affair, they made the final choice of going through with it. In going through with it, their action sent a HUGE non-verbal message that you are no longer wanted, needed, valued or cherished like you once were.
It leaves you feeling like you have an expiration date. Although you don’t have an expiration date, it feels like it. They rejected you and now you face the temptation of rejecting yourself as well. They did you bad, and now you’re tempted to reject and devalue yourself as well.
What they did left a wound. Wounding yourself physically or emotionally only makes things worse. Instead of damaging yourself, do something that short-circuits that pattern.
This is a time when you’re most vulnerable to being hurt by yourself. This is also a time when emotions blind your ability to see a way out.
When you refuse damaging yourself, it begins shifting the burden of the pain. This is one of those weird dynamics of relationships. When you quit carrying the hurt, it shifts elsewhere.
I go more into how the pain shifts in my video, Forgiveness; Stop the Pain, Tear down the Wall, Remove the Roadblocks”. It goes into ways of getting past the pain. It’s NOT about sanctioning what the cheater did or letting them off the hook. They NEED accountability. Reducing the accountability is not productive to affair recovery.
If you want a way to reduce your burden, click and download the video today.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
