Healing After An Affair: Emotional Flooding & Reminders

Back in the mid-eighties I had a business fail. I guess that’s not unusual in the world of business, but it was new to me. In fact when I went down, I did it up right. I lost just about everything as I desperately tried to save the business. I spent our savings, our retirement, as well as borrowed money, all in an attempt to hold out until the market turned. The only problem was, the market never turned so we ran smack dab into financial ruin. It was so bad, that as a family of five, we actually qualified for food stamps. You might be able to go lower than we did, but that’s about as low as I ever want to go. Thankfully, God was faithful and met our needs and took us in a new direction. As usual he was able to take the worst thing that ever happened and make it the best.

Now you may be wondering why I’m sharing this story, or what this has to do with healing after an affair, but I have discovered that crisis is crisis, and how we respond has little to do with the type of crisis, but rather it’s the impact of the crisis, whatever it may be, that we have to deal with. From my crisis I began to notice some interesting responses. Every time I encountered a reminder of my business, I experienced an emotional firestorm. Each time I drove by a location where I had worked I would emotionally flood. If I ran into someone with whom I had previously had dealing, I became overwhelmed with feelings, (and I’m normally emotionally constipated). There seemed to be reminders everywhere and I continually had to battle my emotions.

The trauma experienced by a couple upon the revelation of a betrayal is no small matter and it creates an emotional firestorm that has to be dealt with by both parties. To be sure, the initial stage of healing after an affair is about grieving. For the hurt spouse the pain of the losses is overwhelming. There is a loss of self-confidence, the loss of the life they thought they had, the loss of their dreams, the loss of security, the loss of their belief in who their mate was and the list goes on. Loss has to be grieved, and the stages of grief cannot be avoided. There will be anger, bargaining, and depression, but ultimately there comes a point of finding meaning and acceptance in what has occurred. The act of grieving does not however resolve the issue of reminders. How does one move beyond the trauma and back into relationship after an appropriate amount of time? Long after affairs have ceased and the betrayer has achieved sobriety from sexual addiction, the battle of the thought life and the impact of trauma is experienced. In many ways, it is this struggle that will determine how quickly (or if at all) a couple will be able to recover from a betrayal. Each party has to make a conscious decision at some point along the way to either live in a past hurtful event or to recommit in the marriage and to focus on what can be; this is paramount in healing after an affair. That decision is even more difficult than it sounds because it’s not just a matter of a choice, but rather it is a battle that has to be fought by the will, often for a period of months (usually about 18 to 24 months), and it takes a great deal of motivation to be willing to engage in this daily battle.

For each partner there can be multiple daily reminders of the catastrophic events. For the betrayed it can be a name, the arrival of a cell phone or visa bill, ads for a topless club, or a betrayal being portrayed in a movie. Even a sighting of a couple seemingly having a good time can be enough to send the hurt spouse down memory lane, which can easily lead to a painful remembrance. For the unfaithful spouse, life is also filled with these reminders. Each time their mate says they want to talk, coming home at night wondering what type of mood their mate may be in, computers, recovery groups, counseling, and many other things can all serve as reminders.

It is at this point that the battle in the theater of the mind begins. The greatest distance known to mankind is the 18 inches between the head and the heart. In fact it takes up to 7 years for truth to move from out head to our heart, but for some strange reason it only takes a lie about 3 seconds to travel the same distance. Maybe that’s because we seem to fall at 32 feet per second (the speed of gravity), but it takes a great deal of energy and resolve to move uphill. At some point in the recovery process, each party has to come to the point where they choose to focus on something other than the betrayal, and to decide that it is not the event that will define or control the rest of their life. There has to be a conscious choice to move ahead.

If you are the unfaithful spouse, you might find this exercise useful. Make an honest attempt this week to list out 40 separate reminders that your mate could have on any given day, which could possibly send them down the path to their personal house of horrors. The reason for this is not shame or condemnation. Rather, it is an honest attempt at conveying your true comprehension of their struggle each and every day. It also is a sincere attempt to convey how you are coming to a greater awareness of their struggle- this can be huge in healing after an affair.

If you are the hurt spouse and you believe your mate is becoming a safe person and has moved into recovery, then choosing to no longer be a victim of painful reminders would by a good step toward health. Healing after an affair requires a willingness to fight the battle by attempting to focus on what is good and pure and noble rather than focusing on the failure, or the perpetual reminders of the failure.

Are you constantly flooding emotionally? Take a peek at both Harboring Hope (hurt spouses) and Hope for Healing (for unfaithful spouses), both of which target this common problem.