A Crucial Step To Surviving Infidelity: How Do I Handle Discovery? Part 1

Why do you really want to know what happened? Why would you want to tell about your infidelity after the affair? Is it really that important for healing after an affair?

Next to stopping the affair or sexual acting out behavior, how couples handle discovery may be the most critical factor in recovery and surviving infidelity. I want to spend the next several weeks exploring the discovery process. Why is discovery so crucial to surviving an affair? Why is it so important? What do you need to know? How can couples handle the instability created by questioning? What are appropriate questions to ask? When is it time to stop asking questions? My hope is to provide you with as much insight into this process as possible, to provide a framework to your recovery despite the pain of what you may be going through.

However, before beginning I want to stress that our goal at Affair Recovery isn’t just saving marriages; rather it’s helping people find better, more meaningful lives. Thankfully, a common result of those who tackle this issue in the right way is a saved marriage. Our community is living proof that infidelity can serve as a catalyst for just that, but if you don’t change direction, then you’ll wind up where you’re headed. Our prayer is that you will have the courage to navigate this process in a way which brings new life and total restoration for you and quite possibly your spouse.

A primary barrier to couples surviving infidelity is “Not knowing what happened”. If you haven’t had a chance, you might want to start by first reading this article. As counter intuitive as it may seem, statistics clearly support that recovery is facilitated by the unfaithful spouse answering all the questions of the hurt spouse. Those answers extend to the hurt spouse much needed respect. But the hurt spouse needs to be the one to determine if they want to know the details and how much they really want to know.

In one of her surveys, Peggy Vaughan found that 72% of hurt spouses reported that they recovered from the sexual activity in the affair before they recovered from the fact they were deceived. It’s the deception during and after the affair that creates the challenge for reconciliation. Deception creates the sense of betrayal and destroys not only the trust toward their mate, but also their trust in themselves. They no longer feel they can trust reality or their intuition. They’re not even sure if they can trust their gut about whether what they see is real. Providing answers to their questions allows them to find footing in their new, albeit painful reality.

If you can’t accept where you’re at, you’ll never get to where you’re going. Discovery is the first step to accepting where we’re at, both as individuals and couples. While it is possible for a couple to continue living together after betrayal, without discovery, they will never reestablish a deep trusting and meaningful relationship. Again- discovery has everything to do with surviving an affair and getting to a better, more joyful place. Couples may live under the same roof, but without trust. intimacy can never be reestablished. Before the hurt spouse will trust their mate, the unfaithful spouse must first trust them with the information and details of the affair. This is the minimum but infinitely important requirement for establishing loyalty.

Time and time again, I’ve heard people bemoan the fact that they never had full disclosure. Without full disclosure, they feel insignificant and quite frankly, foolish. The message, “you are not capable of handling the truth or you don’t deserve the truth” is clearly communicated, which only adds to the hurt they already are feeling. This leaves them feeling even more disrespected and unimportant. Without full disclosure, while they may continue in the marriage after the affair, they will never get over it.

As they say in Alcoholics Anonymous, you’re only as sick as your secrets. Choosing to withhold information perpetuates a pattern of deception. I could never be a decent partner to any person until I could be rigorously honest with self and others. Failure to do so left me vulnerable to repeating patterns that destroyed my loved ones. For unfaithful spouses, if they ever hope to have intimacy with their mate, disclosure is an absolute necessity for healing after an affair.

During my recovery the last thing I needed was to continue lying. I didn’t need to be perfect; I needed to learn how to be authentic. If I ever wanted to have an extraordinary life of meaning and purpose, I had to stop sacrificing myself by trying to please others and instead begin to be honest about who I really was. My biggest fear was that no one would accept me, if they truly knew who I was and what I had done. In reality, my deception was costing me the very love that I so desperately wanted. You can never be loved unconditionally as long as you only conditionally let others know who you are. It was through the process of discovery that I was finally able to admit who I was and what I had done.

The process of discovery realigns loyalty in the relationship. As long as I withheld information from my mate regarding my extramarital activities, I maintained a covert alliance with those with whom I’d cheated. Refusing to give information clearly communicated their importance over my mate. Releasing those secrets, through the process of discovery provides the hurt spouse the necessary security to continue in the process and to continue healing after the affair.

Next week, I’ll give tips for the hurt spouse in moving though discovery. The following week I’ll give tips for the unfaithful spouse and finally I’ll give some guidelines for the process. Surviving infidelity involves really addressing several key issues, and I hope to dissect these over the next several weeks.

For those of you at this stage of recovery, I hope you don’t think I’m minimizing the difficulty of this process. Infidelity creates a pain like no other and you may certainly find it helpful to have a qualified therapist or others who have already gone before you to facilitate this process.

The EMS Weekend Retreat or EMS Online Course is a great way to navigate this process. You’ll find that going through this process with others really helps. Don’t put off your healing. Please get what you need to move forward. It’s not as hopeless as it seems.