The discovery of your spouse’s affair was troubling news. It likely triggered many reactions inside of you. making it through that part of affair recovery is challenging.
Once you come to the reality of what they did, you’re faced with another challenge. This challenge concerns facing the impact of what they did. You know it affected you, and you want them to know what you’ve been going through.
The challenge is that they can only know the full extent of the impact if you tell them. In order to tell them what that impact was, you’ll need to discover what the impact was. Unfortunately, this is a step many couples skip or rush through.
Much like any major construction project requires an impact study and statement, your marriage needs one as well. Before making major changes, the cheater needs to know how what they did impacted you and the family.
In order for them to know, you have to tell yourself the truth about how the affair impacted you. The best way of doing this is writing it down.
You’ll need to identify and write out all the nausea, nightmares, loss of security, fearfulness, anxiety, self-doubt and other symptoms you have gone through. Many of these, you may have put aside, thinking that once you went through it, it’s over. You adjusted to your circumstances.
If you want your spouse to know the FULL impact, you’ll need to identify and write out the many ways their cheating impacted you. The impact has to be communicated to them.
In communicating it to them, you’ll need to convey the impact to them without overloading them. There are ways of doing that. In the video, “Let’s Talk: Hurting People and Healing Questions” I share with you ways of communicating with them without overloading them or putting important items aside.
They need to know what the impact was, and what that means. If left to their own interpretation of things, it can go awry.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
