One of the questions that haunt many betrayed spouses is “Did I give up on my marriage too early?” When you start asking yourself this question, it makes for an uncomfortable time. You start wondering if you are having false hopes.
Distinguishing between false hopes and genuine hope isn’t easy. They’re two separate versions of trust and one closely resembles the other.
False hope is when we put our trust in something that won’t work out. It’s when we believe in a person or a situation that isn’t going to give us the results we’re hoping for. On the other hand, genuine hope is based on reality. It’s trusting in something that has a good chance of working out.
One thing I can tell you is that hoping for the marriage you had before the affair isn’t going to happen. That relationship is gone. If that is what you’re hoping for, it’s definitely a false hope.
The affair changed your marriage. It’s possible to still be married with a different foundation for your relationship. The two of you will still need to have some communication, especially if there are children involved. It also helps if the two of you learn ways of solving problems together.
Although you wonder about false hopes, there’s also the danger of ‘throwing away a perfectly good marriage.’ You can call it no-hope nihilism.
With no-hope nihilism, you give up on your marriage as soon as possible. When you view the affair as your chance to escape or start over with haste, you may be giving up on your marriage too early. This is something I see with the ‘once trust is broken, there’s no hope crowd’.
I realize the cheater made a bad choice. They violated your marriage. After discovery, the power position in your marriage switches back and forth. Eventually, it will return to you in the form of whether or not you choose to give up on your marriage. At that point, you are in the power position. You get to decide whether there is hope or not.
The decision you make has nothing to do with your spouse. It’s all about you and how you want to live your life from that point on. When in that position, the choices aren’t easy and each choice has its own consequences. Giving it some time to think through them is worth it. The issues may be solvable.
In my video, Getting Past the Affair Trauma gives you ways of moving past the traumatic effects. Making major choices while you’re in pain makes for hasty choices. I encourage you to work on reducing the pain before making a major choice that changes the direction of your life.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
