In talking to spouses about infidelity, one of the topics that routinely comes up is how the affair leaves you doubting yourself. It takes you from a confident, decisive person to one who’s no longer sure about most of their choices.
Robbing you of your confidence makes any decision a wrestling match. When the cheater uses gaslighting on top of that it keeps you doubting yourself even longer.
Gaslighting, a manipulative tactic where a person makes you question your own reality and sanity, can have a profound impact on your ability to trust your own judgment. It creates a fog of self-doubt permeating every decision you make. This leaves you in a constant state of confusion and insecurity. This cleverly designed mind game makes you second-guess everything, thus breaking down your confidence and self-esteem.
If you experienced childhood abuse or traumas, the loss of confidence turns into an ongoing matter. It was bad enough when you had low self-confidence as a child. An affair happening in adulthood, takes you right back to old wounds and pains.
I was reminded of this by reading a post from someone struggling with their choices. She wrote:
“My husband told me he made a mistake by cheating. He also saw her for 6 weeks planned dates and had intimacy. In my mind, a mistake is an “accident”. He didn’t ‘accidentally’ end up and the same place as her every week. He didn’t accidentally have sex with her. Am I making too much of this or does this make anyone else’s blood boil?”
Her self-doubt has her questioning whether she’s making too much about what her husband did. She’s second-guessing herself about the significance of what happened and what to call her husband’s affair.
When you get to the point where you can’t trust your own reactions, and the cheater is deciding what to call their adultery, you’ve lost your confidence. You’re also at risk for other manipulations as well.
I assure you, anything continuing after an initial one-night ‘mistake’ is planned and intentional. No matter how much ‘fogging’ the cheater does, what they did was planned.
If anything, you’re downplaying the seriousness of what happened. He needs to be tested for STDs and the matter of the affair dealt with, including his trying to pass it off as an ‘accident’.
He’s not assuming responsibility for what happened, and he wants you to not hold him responsible either. Part of you is screaming the truth if you listen and start trusting yourself again.
What you would benefit from is the video “Overcoming Affair Relapse”. It guides you in ways of addressing the issues and holding your spouse accountable in a way that reduces the risk if it happening again.
It would also help if he admitted the seriousness of what he did and came up with a relapse prevention plan that BOTH of you agree on.
Click and download your copy today.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
