On discovering your spouse’s affair, at some point, you’ll go through an ‘existential crisis’. This crisis happens when you start looking for meaning in all the pieces and fragments that you discover. When your marriage gives your life meaning, when it is in trouble, your life suddenly changes.
You wonder what it means, who the affair was with, and more. You wonder what the length of the affair means. You wonder what the affair itself means.
Things really get twisted when their affair is with their ex-spouse who never let go of them. In those cases, they’re held hostage inside prison they thought they’d escaped from.
Part of you may compare yourself to the lover in terms of attractiveness, sexuality, personality or a host of other variables.
The length of the affair only shapes the depth of your wounding. The longer the affair, the deeper the wound. There are many other aspects of the affair that you consider in making sense of what happened. You need answers about many things. You want to know what role you played in the affair, if any.
One of the most difficult things to discover is that your spouse never really let go of their former spouse. In fact, they may have been pining for them all along. It can feel like you were nothing more than a placeholder in their life.
That search for meaning is part of the natural response to infidelity. Part of it is about the affair and part is about where you fit into the situation. You’ve been displaced. Now you want answers. That search for answers takes your mind and emotions to places you never considered before.
The questioning is natural. How you deal with those questions makes a huge difference in how well you recover from the whole mess.
You can’t change what happened, but you can change what it means. What it means can also change several times as you go through recovery. That’s part of the healing process.
Your mind and emotions are struggling to deal with the situation. They need a narrative that makes sense to them. They need a narrative that helps you make sense of it all.
As you search for answers and a narrative, it’s important that you don’t lose yourself in the process. It’s easy to do that. The focus on your spouse and their affair can take over your entire life if you let it.
You need to find a balance between taking care of yourself and getting the answers you need. It’s a difficult balance to find, but it’s necessary.
In the video “Getting Past the Affair Crisis”, I address many of the challenges, questions and concerns that come with the discovery of the affair. Rather than letting that discovery ruin your life, take steps that keep you from staying in that victim role.
Click and download your copy today.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
