How Long Does It Take to Feel Normal After an Affair?

One of the haunting questions associated with affair recovery is, “How long does it take to feel normal after an affair?” and its variants like, “When will life go back to normal?” One of the things that make these challenging questions is the time element.

The time frame for recovery from an emotional shock is found to be about six weeks. Although affairs have an emotional shock element to them, recovery from them takes longer. You may find yourself mentally accepting what happened before you emotionally accept where the affair left you.

Another factor is whether you were the cheater or the one who was cheated on. This is a factor because it determines the amount of control you have over the situation. If you are in control, the time it takes for things to feel normal is shorter than for the betrayed. The betrayed has the additional dimension of loss of control, which makes recovery from the affair take longer.

An additional consideration concerns your stress response system. If you’ve had a history of trauma, it impacts your response to the stress of the affair. When the brain chemicals associated with coping behavior are depleted from repeated stress, it impacts your ability to recover from an affair. The official term used in describing the depletion of your ability to biochemically recover at those times is stress exhaustion.

If you live with a masochistic cheater who engages in serial adultery or in prolonged staggered disclosure, it will take longer. The greater the duration of the stressful situation, the longer it will take to recover from it.

Recovering from the affair is not an analog process or even a straight-line path. You do not go from being unable to recover to being fully recovered in a single step. The process of going back to feeling normal, or creating a new normal, is a process. There will be ups and downs, successes and setbacks. It happens a little at a time. Some days will be better than others. Healing requires you to let go of ‘quick-fix’ solutions. The journey back to ‘normality’ has its setbacks and challenges.

A better question would be, “How long does it take to be able to function again?” since you will be able to function before you feel back to being yourself or ‘normal.’ As you go through the journey of recovering from an affair, you may at times wonder if you’ll ever recover. This is where the video “Overcoming Affair Trauma” comes in. Order it and start your own recovery from what happened in your life today.