Survivors Blog: 

Lisa

Who is your confidant? Who do you reach out to when you need to talk? Not just for friendly chit-chats about the latest movie or daily frustrations over child care. But who do you pour out your heart to when you're sad, lonely, scared or angry? More importantly, who listens to your deepest fears, heartache and pain over the betrayal you're living with? Have you found a confidant that you trust, that special someone who is there when you need to cry, mourn, yell or just sit and be held? Susan was that person for me. She drove twenty hours over two days so I wouldn't be alone in those first dark days after learning about my husband's affair. She kept me sane and grounded. Susan made sure I ate, listened without judgment, and held me when I cried. She didn't leave until she was sure I would be okay and then regularly called to ask how I was doing."How are you" wasn't a rhetorical question to Susan. She really wanted to know. She was the only one I shared my deepest fears, thoughts and emotions with. As the weeks moved into months and my husband and I started recovery Susan and I might not talk for a month or two but when we did we shared the fun and interesting things in our lives plus the frustrating and painful. Only Susan knew everything that happened before, during and after the affair. I told her things I never told my siblings. Not even my mother knows the details that I told Susan. It's important that you find a confidant after d-day. Do not think you can go through this agony alone. Women especially need to talk through their pain until it doesn't hurt anymore. Make sure that the person you choose to be your confidant isn't judgmental but will support you, your spouse and your marriage. This person must also support whatever decision you choose to make about your marriage without inserting their own opinions about what's "best" for you to do, which is a decision only you can make. The talking you do with your confidant is separate from the very important talking that you do with your spouse in order to heal your marriage, if that is what you choose to do. Your confidant is for you and you alone. It's for working through your innermost thoughts and feelings. To make sure that you don't keep them bottled up inside but get them out, work through them, and heal. Recently Susan's husband called and said that she was in the hospital. I flew out the next morning in time to say good-bye. It was a sudden and unexpected illness that took my dear friend. The only blessing was that she went without pain. As I write these words I can't stop the tears. I feel Susan's loss on a level that's difficult to explain. Yes, I lost a friend that can never be replaced. But I lost so much more.I lost a person who accepted me without question and loved me without judgment. Susan was genuine. She lived her faith in a way that few people are capable of doing. This isn't a negative reflection on others but a testament on the amazing heart of my treasured friend. Everyone needs a friend, a confidant, like Susan. If you haven't yet found one, reach out to someone and develop a friendship that is safe enough for you to feel comfortable sharing all of you with, not just the "safe" parts. It can be your mother, father, best friend, sibling, or anyone you trust to be there when you need to open your heart to them. For your mental, spiritual and emotional health, as you work through recovery, you need a Susan. Good luck and stay strong. You are not alone.

My husband and I have maneuvered the quagmire of recovery for well over three years now.  We’ve had some deep lows and amazing highs but overall a slow and steady healing and maturing of our marriage and relationship. During this time I’ve often wondered how two people could have been in the same stale, boring marriage yet made such wildly different decisions. I know others have pondered the same question. There are times when the “why” of a partner’s affair can about drive the betrayed bonkers.             When I stumbled upon the Affair Recovery website in my desperate search for answers I was stunned to discover a site founded and filled by people of faith yet all suffering the same raw pain I was feeling. For me, a faith-based approach was necessary.  In my ignorance though,  I figured people of faith would be more immune to the temptation of adultery. After all, it’s one of the Ten Commandments, “Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery.” Marriage is taught to be a union that is to last “till death do us part” and adultery is listed in the Bible as the only reason why two believers can divorce.  Obviously betrayal doesn’t discriminate, nor is faith or willpower a magical shield of protection against infidelity. People of faith have a strong ally but unfortunately for millions of people it’s impossible to pray or will one’s self to fidelity.             Faith and willpower have important roles to play in maintaining faithfulness but there must be more to an authentic, honest and happy marriage. If that’s all it took then the Affair Recovery team would have been out of business before even getting started.             Over the last couple of months this weighs heavily on me because for some reason the further past D-day we get the more I fear my husband will betray again. It’s not a constant, paralyzing fear but rather a niggling, irritating thought on the fringes of my mind that makes me wonder, will he or won’t he? But I refuse to allow this thought to put a damper on my marriage recovery. Yes, even now, as I count down to the fourth year after D-day, I still consider my marriage in recovery mode. Perhaps I always will and that’s not such a bad thing.             No marriage is affair proof but hard work can help. After infidelity in addition to faith and willpower many people add general marital counseling, read books on marriage, use accountability partners, and of course take advantage of the classes, articles, forums and other tools available on the Affair Recovery website and others like it. Having trouble with communication skills? Do an internet search and find help. Practically anything you want to learn or solve you can find on the internet. There are so many things couples can do in order to rebuild their relationships and my husband and I did a variety of them.             Today I regularly remind myself that my marriage is much stronger than it was four years ago. We’ve made structural changes and gave our marriage the support it was lacking. One extremely important change we made was we did not go back to the same old habits and routine. We hold hands, go out to breakfast together every Saturday, try and eat lunch together during the week, cuddle on the couch, and stay connected. A few months after D-day we moved to a new home and town and both started new jobs. We’ve recently decided that 30 miles wasn’t far enough since there are still too many memories in this area. No job, no house, no financial reason, no attachment is worth the marital stress. We’re going to move again and this time it will be to another state hundreds of miles from where all the triggers are. No more driving past the old town, watching the same local news, shopping in the same stores. We will have a true fresh start. Another structural change we’ve made is in how my husband reacts to my fears. Instead of becoming angry or defensive, as he would have in the past, he listens to me. Recently, when I worried about a new female co-worker and asked him to keep it professional he didn’t get upset but agreed with me. He seems to understand the need for proper boundaries.             Most importantly we’re acutely aware that in the past we allowed ourselves to become disconnected from each other. We didn’t nurture our marriage and treat it with care. We took each other for granted and didn’t cherish the specialness and uniqueness of our love. We neglected to communicate our wants or share our needs with each other. We didn’t treat each other as the most important person in the world.             Never again. Never again will our marriage be allowed to be stale, boring and unloving. I’d rather live alone. But luckily I don’t have to because my husband and I are continuing this journey together, one day at a time, using all the tools at our disposal. It takes more than faith and willpower to rebuild a marriage. Thank goodness for sites like Affair Recovery that gives us some of those additional tools. Stay strong. Stay connected. Remember, there’s hope.

Last May was our three-year anniversary post D-day and as I anticipated, it hardly caused a ripple in my emotions. I knew the day was nearing but we were in a good place and we breezed through it without drama, triggers, or setbacks to our recovery. I believed we were finally through the worst that my husband's betrayal could throw at us. We had made it through the fire and while scarred were at last in a better, stronger, safer place. Then from out of nowhere and without warning, ambivalence hit me like a punch to the gut. It came as a shock this far into recovery. Ambivalence is normal and part of the healing process and I had a lot of it in the months before we took EMS Online. But I thought ambivalence only happened in the early stages of recovery. How could it strike me more than three years later? Ambivalence is the state of having mixed or contradictory feelings about something or someone. You're of two minds wanting to go in opposite directions. It strikes both the betrayed and unfaithful. Samuel has an excellent article titled "Ambivalence". In it he states,"In many ways, ambivalence can be a cancer which eats away at both sides of the marriage. It's been said the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference, or in this case ambivalence." I was suddenly afflicted with the cancer of ambivalence and it was eating at the fragile stability of my trust, gnawing at my emotional well-being and chewing at the hard fought victories I had made in recovery. I didn't care if I stayed in the marriage or not. I wasn't happy. I wasn't sad. I wasn't angry. I wasn't good humored. If my husband wanted to go out to eat I didn't care one way or the other. Movie? He can choose. Sex? Whatever. I was blah, going through the motions of my day without emotion or care. I was withdrawn, only talking to my husband when necessary. I knew I should do something but couldn't figure out what and couldn't muster the energy to care enough to start. And what made it worse was that my husband totally ignored that something was going on. He wasn't oblivious. He couldn't be. He just chose not to reach out to me. It was painful. One day, several weeks into my malaise I called my mother and begged her for help. She asked me if I wanted a divorce. The answer was no. Then she told me what I already knew I had to do. I had to talk to my husband. He admitted that he knew something was wrong but didn't know how to talk to me about it. I told him that I needed his help to get through my ambivalence. I was specific in my requests. I needed him to reach out to me with more hugs, touching, and affection without it leading to sex. I required him to reassure me that he's thinking about me and needing me throughout the day with texts. I needed him to reach out to me when I'm withdrawn and keeping to myself. He tried but it only lasted a few days and my ambivalence raged on, engulfing my every waking moment and overwhelming me with its intensity. I quit reading everything related to Affair Recovery thinking that being exposed to the pain of others was adding to my problems. I tried forcing myself to be intentional in my actions towards my husband which had always worked in the past. I did a lot of self-reflection attempting to figure out where the ambivalence was coming from. I gradually began to connect with a separate incident that was happening at the same time with my ambivalence and the pieces finally came together. My husband had told me early on during recovery that one of his reasons for betrayal was that he felt a lack of intimacy in our marriage. That lack of intimacy was directly related to the fact that years ago when he gained weight it caused him to snore. He started occasionally sleeping in the spare room which eventually led to sleeping there every night. Over the years our intimacy suffered and so did our relationship. After D-day, we started sleeping together again and I bought earplugs to help me cope with the snoring. He eventually lost enough weight that the snoring rarely became a problem. But now he had gained the weight back and suddenly he's sleeping in the guest room, just like before. This is a huge trigger for me. The longer he sleeps in the guest room, the more worried I get about losing intimacy and the negative repercussion this could have for our relationship. I have mentioned my fears to my husband several times but he doesn't seem to care. If he's not concerned about our relationship, why should I be bothered? After working this out in my mind I talked to my husband again this time explaining that I believed my ambivalence may in part be coming from the fact that we're not sleeping together again. I got nowhere. I wish I could say that my husband stepped up and fulfilled my needs helping my ambivalence disappear quickly. Unfortunately, that's not the case. Was I asking too much of him? Possibly. Unrealistic and unmet expectations can be another cancer that eats at a marriage. But what I will tell you is that he hasn't used these past months as an excuse to be angry or frustrated or hateful to me. He's given me the space that I need to work through my emotions. And while he's not been supportive in the way that I had hoped he has been solidly supportive by always being there without judgment. We aren't sleeping together yet but he has finally decided to lose weight. There's progress. Not as fast as I would have liked but progress. The ambivalence has been slowly seeping away like fog as the brilliance of the sun burns it off. There are still wispy tendrils left, sneaking around in low spots, trying to wrap around and hide in dark corners of my heart. But the sun is doing its work one day at a time and I can finally see the horizon. I've learned that just because we're years down the road since D-day, that doesn't mean my or our recovery is perfect. We had become somewhat complacent but have discovered that it's important to be prepared for anything as we navigate the quagmire of recovery. If I hadn't been committed to my goal of a better, more honest, more respectful marriage I may have given up. If my husband had allowed my ambivalence to cause him to be impatient or frustrated with me he may have given up. It would have been easy for him to say it's been three years, get over it! Luckily he didn't. I recommend reading Rick's superb articles, "The Paralysis of Ambivalence: Part 1" and "Part 2". Ambivalence is normal but it doesn't have to be a deal breaker. There is hope.

As I wrote in my previous blog article, “Is He Worth It?” my husband is capable of both enormous deception and immense change. So the other day when he contributed to a trigger I could have sat and fumed about why I put up with his actions. But instead I did something that I’ve been doing for three years post D-day. I acted intentionally. After asking myself for the hundredth time why I put up with him I then answered myself for the hundredth time with my personal recovery mantra: My husband is worth another chance. My husband is capable of great change. I’m stronger than I think, braver than I believe. My husband is a cheater. He committed what could quite possibly be seen as the most selfish act a husband can do to the woman he promised to cherish forever. How can I not look at him as a cheater? That's what he is. But that's not all he is. If I’m committed to recovery, fully committed, and my husband is too, then I can't let the "cheater" label define him. I remind myself over and over again that he's not just a cheater. That past “cheater” is a husband, father, brother, friend, lover. He’s hard working, funny, sexy, and thoughtful. He’s also bone headed, stubborn, opinionated and at times inflexible. My husband is so much more than a cheater! When I look at him, I remind myself to see all of him. Before D-day, I would sometimes tell people if I focused on my husband’s negative character attributes hard enough I could talk myself into a divorce. Who couldn’t? Yet I intentionally chose to focus on his positive attributes. After D-day when I fully committed to giving my husband and marriage another chance one of the hardest things for me to do the first weeks and months was to focus on the positive. The negative was glaring at me, challenging me to embrace the cheater label and tattoo it on my husband for the entire world to see. It would have been so very easy to talk myself into a divorce, and at times, I struggled to talk myself out of it. I had to intentionally choose to view my husband as a wonderful man who made a horrible mistake and deserved another chance. It’s not easy to act intentionally, especially when your heart is breaking and your world crumbling. As intentional as my husband was when he set out to betray me, I’ve become equally intentional in recovery. After living with his AP for eleven days post D-day my husband didn’t move back home on a whim. We didn’t begin the process of reconciliation, recovery, and change half-heartedly. I made a conscious, thoughtful,l and intentional decision to give him another chance. We both made the intentional decision that our marriage was worth saving, and our nearly 25 years together was worth the work it would take. My husband did something I still think of as shocking; through his intentional actions he became a better man. How is that possible? In the Expert Q&A video below, Rick is asked “How can we stay out of our old ruts?”. They feared that old habits and ways of connecting would become a detriment to them. Rick’s advice, don’t try to recapture the old relationship, create something new and different. Expert Q&A Preview: How Can We Stay Out of Our Old Ruts? That can only be accomplished by acting intentional. My husband and I allowed our relationship to stale for years through neglect and passivity. No more. We choose to connect on a more intimate level in all aspects of our relationship, not just sexually. We intentionally meet for lunch as much as possible, hold hands in public, sit next to each other on the couch and cuddle, make romantic over-night trips, and so much more. Do you want that better marriage Rick and his team proclaim is possible? I sure do! Rick quotes psychologist Anders Ericsson in his article “Mastering Marriage”: Mastering Marriage Part 2: Practicing the Process of Marriage and Recovery Why do some couples manage to thrive while others don't even survive? It just so happens that those who rise to the top do so through something as basic as deliberate practice. Deliberate practice, for me that means being intentional. I choose to view my husband as more than the cheater who broke my heart. I choose to not only focus on his wonderful character attributes but embrace them. I choose a better, more honest, more intimate and much more fulfilling marriage. You can choose that as well. Good luck to you in your recovery journey. There is healing and hope. Grab it. Embrace it. Make it yours.

Eleven days after D-day and moving in with his Affair Partner my husband returned home so we could see if our marriage was worth saving. For a couple of hours that evening we sat together reading old letters and looking at old pictures. The tough conversations would come later but that night while reminiscing about our past we connected in a way we hadn’t in years. My husband and I met our sophomore year of high school when I was 15 and he was 16. He was the first boy I ever dated. We went our separate ways and dated other people but after graduation, we reconnected freshman year of college and were engaged. Sure I was only 18 and he 19 but we were meant to be together, or so we thought. Yet six weeks before our wedding he pulled a stunt that forced us to cancel our carefully made plans. Over the next couple of years, the post office was kept busy with our letters and cards going back and forth. But we eventually called it off. I went overseas for a couple of years. We each had other relationships. Four years later we reconnected. Six months later we were married. That was nearly 25 years before D-day. I thought our marriage was forever. We had a “storybook” romance. We were meant to be together and nothing could come between us. People thought we had the perfect relationship with a romantic background story.    Then it all came crashing down and I was left wondering if my marriage was a sham, just a big joke. What was real and what wasn’t? Did he really love me? Why did he marry me in the first place?  So eleven days after D-day as I read old letters of him professing his love and dedication to me all those years before I couldn’t help but ask myself, is this man that I married worth the effort of recovery? Have I been naively blind to who he really was? See 30 years before D-day when we called off our wedding it wasn’t because he had cheated on me, or fallen out of love with me, or changed his mind. No. Six weeks before our wedding he was put in jail and would spend the next six years in prison. After two years of faithfully writing, visiting, and sharing my love with him my then fiancé cut off all communication. His reason? He decided that he wasn’t good enough for me and I deserved my freedom. A decision he gave me no part of. His years in prison are a secret we’ve told fewer people than those who know about his betrayal. And those letters I sat reading eleven days after D-day were sent to and from prison. In them he professed his shame and remorse for destroying my life. He promised never to hurt me again. He proclaimed that his love for me was forever and he was eternally grateful to me for not leaving and standing by his side.           The two worst days of my life were caused by the man I gave my heart to at the age of 15. And now, more than thirty years after that first “betrayal” of my love I was again faced with the agonizing choice, should I stay or should I walk away?           Was this relationship, this man, worth the effort of forgiveness and reconciliation?            When he was released from prison and we reconnected my family was terrified that he would pull another stupid stunt and hurt me again. My mother told him that he better take good care of me and not ever hurt me again. He assured her that yes, he would cherish me and that he would never hurt me again. He had a lot to prove to a lot of people. I’m sure he felt the pressure yet over the next few years with hard work and determination he showed everyone that he could overcome his past. He took the job he found on work release from prison and turned it into a career. Over the years he moved up the ranks becoming a manager and earning enough money for me to stay home with our children. He proved himself over and over again. My mother learned to love and appreciate him, grateful that he was in my life. Proud that he had proven himself worthy.            Now, eleven days after D-day I had to ask myself, was my husband capable of proving himself again? Could this man who had wounded me to my soul, twice, demonstrate he was worth fighting for?          Was he even worth the effort?         I remember asking my husband the night he came back home why he married me. At the time, all those years ago, when we saw each other again after four years apart I was just coming off a bad relationship and he was currently in one. Why, after so much time, did he want me again?            I knew why I wanted him. He was my first and only true love. Even when I was with someone else I thought of him, wanted him. When I saw him in our driveway after eleven days with his AP my heart skipped a beat. He was so handsome, so appealing, so sexy. And even though my head hated him my heart soared with joy at seeing him home, with me. His betrayal could not kill my love.            But why, all those years ago, did he want me? His answer was that it seemed we were meant to be together. I was crushed. I had wanted him to say that he realized he couldn’t live without me; that he loved me more than he thought possible; that his life was nothing without me; that I was his one true soul-mate. Where were the words I so desperately needed to hear?         Now, after nearly three years of Affair Recovery including EMS Online, I realize that his answer encompassed all those things. We are meant to be together. I’ve always known that fundamental truth. It took my husband two betrayals to realize it for himself.            Maybe, once I gave my heart away that first time so long ago, there never could be anyone else for me. Who knows? But what I’m sure of is that he proved himself faithful once. And if he did it once he can do it again.      Is he worth it? For me the answer can only be absolutely. For nearly three years now he’s been proving it over and over again, changing in ways that I never thought possible. When Affair Recovery promises that post-affair your marriage can be richer, more rewarding, more honest and more fulfilling than before, they know what they’re talking about. My husband, my marriage, is proof that it is possible to move beyond the pain and anguish of betrayal and come out the other side with a new marriage. A marriage that is worth the fight. 

John Gray wrote Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus in 1992 and subtitled it “A Practical Guide for Improving Communication and Getting What You Want in Your Relationship.” The book highlights the differences between the way men and women respond to stress and stressful situations. With more than 50 million copies sold Gray obviously hit on something at the heart of relationship problems: Men and women think, react and respond differently. The truth of that fact was front and center for me on D-day and in the months and years since. I would be screaming in anger and pain while my husband would stare at me, mute. Then I would dissolve into a shapeless mass of tears and agony while he again would sit, mute. On other occasions, I would beg and plead for answers while my husband would stare at me like I was an alien, seemingly emotionless. There were times I wanted to shake him into showing me emotion, any emotion. I wanted to see him cry, hear him beg for forgiveness, feel that he hurt over his deplorable actions. An article in Science Daily, January 20, 2015, gave the highlights of a scientific study about the emotional differences between the sexes. “Men and women process emotions differently” according to the study. The article stated that “the researchers were able to demonstrate that females rated emotional image content – especially negative content – as more emotionally stimulating than their male counterparts did.” Earlier studies have shown that the more emotional a situation is the more likely a woman is to remember it compared to a man. Maybe that’s why when betrayed women beg for the answer to the question “why” or we ask for intricate details about the affair, our husbands say over and over again, “I can’t remember.” It’s more than having the ability to compartmentalize, as mentioned in my previous blog article. Men are simply wired differently than women are. We are wired to remember, feel and relive the pain of discovery. Maybe they are wired to forget. Or maybe they’re choosing to not remember or relive it as they don’t’ want to cause us more pain. According to Gray, “Not only do men and women communicate differently but they think, feel, perceive, react, respond, love, need, and appreciate differently.” No wonder we feel as if we’re from different planets! Those male/female differences can only be heightened when the trauma of infidelity is brought into the relationship. I remember reading in my EMS Online class that when women are traumatized we need to talk and talk and talk about the trauma until talking about it doesn’t cause pain anymore. Unfortunately, this makes our unfaithful husband feels as if we’re “throwing” the affair in his face or attempting to shame them when most of the time, we’re really attempting to process our pain. Their response often times is then an understandable defensiveness. Gray states that “When a man can listen to a woman’s feelings without getting angry and frustrated, he gives her a wonderful gift. He makes it safe for her to express herself. The more she is able to express herself, the more she feels heard and understood, and the more she is able to give a man the loving trust, acceptance, appreciation, admiration, approval, and encouragement that he needs.” That’s a lot to ask while navigating the quagmire of infidelity and recovery. In fact, it’s almost impossible to keep all the pain nice and neat. I vented my pain, fear and disgust to my husband so many times it’s amazing that I still have a voice. I’m amazed that he rarely became defensive. The EMS Online class helped him see that defensiveness will only exacerbate things between us. While I work to refrain from shaming him, he works to minimize his defensiveness. Both of our instinctive responses not only complicate the entire process, but they also frustrate the heck out of us. It’s human to expect our husband’s to react and behave the same way we do. I’m paralyzed by my pain so how can my husband go about his daily tasks as if nothing has happened. I need to talk and learn and discuss and figure out his motivations so how can my husband simply shrug his shoulders and barely utter the words, “I don’t remember”. I’m a trembling mass of tears so how can my husband just sit there looking lost and confused. I can go on but you get the idea. Men might not be from Mars but they can definitely hide in outer space emotionally at times, especially during the emotional pain of affair recovery. We may not be from Venus, but we can absolutely appear from another planet in the way we process our pain and trauma. Understanding that this is natural and normal has helped me a lot over the past nearly three years of recovery. I hope it can help you as well. As I’ve said many times, you’re stronger than you think, braver than you believe. Stay strong in your recovery and remember; you are not alone.

My daughter and I have been watching a series we found on Netflix named Dexter.  Dexter is a blood spatter analyst by day and a serial killer by night. His adopted father was a cop and recognized Dexter’s “dark passenger” at an early age. He taught Dexter how not to get caught and to only kill those who deserve to die. So Dexter is a vigilante who only targets other killers, especially serial killers. The show puts the viewer into the mind of Dexter by letting us hear his thoughts. The conflict between his “good” and “bad” personalities becomes even more contrasted once Dexter marries a woman with two children and then they have a child of their own. One episode we recently watched the question was asked, which Dexter will show up? Will it be the husband Dexter, the father Dexter, the serial killer Dexter, the blood spatter analyst Dexter or any other persona that Dexter has? I immediately thought of my husband and his actions not only during his affair but for several years before. I never knew which man would come home from work. Would it be the faithful spouse, loving father, angry husband, annoyed lover, frustrated boss, sneaky betrayer or a variety of other personas my husband used during that time? There were days that I wished he’d just stay at work so I didn’t have to guess what his mood would be. As a matter of fact, I didn’t even recognize all of his different “sides” until his affair was discovered. Only then did I realize that for years my husband lived a life of dysfunction and deceit. The way he was acting at the time had nothing to do with his family and everything to do with his guilt and shame over his adulterous activities. Countless times I’ve asked myself how I could not know what my husband had been doing behind my back. Yes, I had suspicions. I knew something wasn’t right. Yet I truly believed my husband wasn’t the “type of man” to cheat on me. I’ve asked myself even more times how my husband could betray. How could he kiss me good bye, look me straight in the eye and lie about where he was going? How could he sit in the same room with me while sexting not only his AP but other women as well? How could he call me from the AP’s house and lie about what he was doing and when he would be home? How could he stand in front of our house with her and her two children weeks before d-day and lie to my face about who she was and what she was doing there? And for me one of the worse questions was how could he stand in front of her at the deli counter ordering his meat and cheese with me by his side week after week knowing their shared dirty little secret? It boggled my mind.  Talk about in-your-face. I wondered not only how he could be so deceitful but how I could be so gullible, so trusting of the man I thought I knew so well. Thanks to  Affair Recovery’s EMS Online course and the Recovery Library I learned the word “compartmentalize.” Somehow men are able to compartmentalize their lives. The Merriam-Webster dictionary definition is “to separate into isolated compartments or categories.” Their example uses a male pronoun, not female. Compartmentalization is usually an unconscious psychological defense mechanism used to avoid mental discomfort and anxiety caused when a person has conflicting values, emotions, beliefs, etc. So, if a cheating spouse can separate their actions, emotions, and behaviors into separate compartmentalized identities; their conflicting morals and actions can easily co-exist. Just like the TV show character Dexter can keep the “dark passenger” side of his life and his married life separate, cheating spouses keep their family and married life separate from their “other” life. Compartmentalizing isn’t usually something women are very adept at accomplishing. We compartmentalize a different way.  That’s probably why we have such a difficult time understanding it in our husbands. Rick stated this in one of his archived Expert Q&A answers, “How do men compartmentalize?” One of the most life changing pieces of recovery for my husband has been that it has forced him to see his family as a complete part of his life. There’s no room for compartments in a marriage built on honesty, respect, and integrity. Luckily, once a man fully commits to recovery with time it becomes more and more difficult for him to compartmentalize his life. I’ve watched my husband struggle with this for nearly three years now. It’s been very hard for him to allow me to be a part of every aspect of his life. There have been times I’ve wanted to just give up and permit him his compartments. But that would negate all the hard work we’ve accomplished since d-day. So I push him and thank goodness he also pushes himself to be honest and open about his life. We’re a work in progress but never again will I be compartmentalized, only a part of the whole. If there’s one thing we’ve learned on this journey it’s that honesty and openness in marriage is a daily choice. I’m grateful that we are not alone on this journey and that the Affair Recovery community understands our struggles. 

The day my husband’s AP showed up at our house and told me that I needed to know “what kind of man I had married” one of my first thoughts was that our marriage was over. How can a marriage survive this type of destruction? I had always said that if my husband cheated I would leave. Some things are simply unforgivable. After screaming, crying hysterically, and begging for answers my husband moved out of our home and into hers. That was on a Saturday. On Monday I contacted a lawyer about divorce and filled out paperwork to get temporary custody of our 15 year old daughter. A judge granted my request on Tuesday. Then after eleven days of heartbreaking ups and downs my husband moved back home and we began the slow, sometimes excruciating process of recovery. During those eleven days I “knew” that after nearly 25 years of marriage I would have to start over. My husband has always been the financial supporter of our family. For 20 years I was a stay-at-home mom. I gave up a career to raise my kids. On D-day I was working but for barely over minimum wage, certainly not enough to support myself and our one child still at home. One day when my husband came to the house to bring me money I screamed at him that he had forced his daughter and me into poverty with his selfish actions. My family pressured me to make decisions. I should move near one of them. I should go back to school. I should stay in the state so we could share custody. I know they were well intentioned but I could barely survive one day, one hour, one minute. How could I make decisions that would impact the rest of my life? I was petrified of starting over. Then my husband moved home. A couple of months later we sold our house and moved to a different town for a fresh start. I started a new job making more money but still not nearly enough to be on my own. You can’t imagine how many times I asked myself in those first few months of recovery if I stayed with my husband out of fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear to start over. Fear of living in poverty. Did I really want to save my marriage or was I too afraid to start over at my age and limited income. Some family members encouraged me to start fresh. Others told me to stick it out. But always in the back of my mind was the question, if I was financially independent would I have made a different decision? If I won the lottery, would I choose freedom? EMS Online convinced me to wait at least 18 months to two years before making any long-term decisions. I threw myself into not only marriage recovery but marriage renewal. I would have a better marriage, a more honest marriage, a thriving marriage. At the two year mark my husband had made great progress in personal growth. Our marriage was stronger and more fulfilling than it had been in years. Yet still the nagging question, if I was financially independent what would I do? We’re just past the 2 ½ year mark and recently I received a promotion that came with a nice raise. Suddenly I’m in a position that if I wanted to I could live on my own. It would be tight but I could get a small place and call it mine. I could have freedom. Freedom from living with my betrayer. Freedom from working on marriage recovery. Freedom to put the last 2 ½ years behind me and start fresh. Then I realized, I didn’t want this ‘freedom’ that I kept hearing about. I’ve put a lot of effort, shed a lot of tears to make my marriage work. So had my husband. And now that I have the means to free myself from this new normal and new marriage I was now in, I just didn’t want to. I can’t imagine throwing the hard work and determination away. When my husband and I started affair recovery I couldn’t imagine that more than two years letter we would have a better marriage. Yet today the ties that bind us are stronger than at any time in our 27 plus years together. Our love is more honest. Our marriage is based on a foundation built of respect and openness we never truly had before. I think back at the desolate wasteland we once called our marriage and can’t believe we ever lived that way. It shouldn’t have taken the shock of betrayal to wake us up to what we could have had together. But it did. I’m glad I didn’t have the financial means to walk away 2 ½ years ago. I’m grateful, whether it was fear or actually hope, that kept me in my marriage.  I’m glad my husband truly changed.  Our relationship changed and yes, even I changed.  I’m grateful Rick and the Affair Recovery team are here to guide us every step of the way.

Only a few short days after discovery, I started searching the internet for answers. I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for, I just randomly entered search phrases such as “my husband had an affair” and “how can I survive my husband’s affair”. It still boggles my mind that there are literally millions of internet sites to choose from on the topic!  It’s staggering, shocking even and so incredibly sad to realize that adultery is so prevalent. I was haunted by the weight of the numbers. With so many sites to choose from how would I ever get the answers that I was looking for? Then I discovered Affair Recovery. It seemed to be the site that had what I needed. I soaked up the blogs and recovery library, searching for anything that could soothe my agony. But the ability to post questions, receive answers and hear from other betrayed wives is what kept me coming back.           Expecting to find insight into my husband’s actions I took the affair analyzer. Rick outlines the six types of affairs and gives a short explanation of each.   Types of Affairs 1. One Night Stand. This is an affair of opportunity. A spouse is traveling away from home. Maybe had too much to drink and didn’t say no when opportunity knocked. The affair wasn’t sought out and is not an ongoing relationship. 2. Fallen in Love.  The unfaithful is infatuated with the other person and believes they’ve fallen in love. They believe their marriage will not make them happy and are willing to sacrifice their family for their lover. Yet out of guilt or duty, they swing back and forth between home and lover, incapable of making a decision about what to do. 3. Sexual Addiction.  Unfaithful who suffer from sexual addiction have a habitual pattern of extramarital sexual behaviors such as strip clubs, pornography, compulsive masturbation, prostitution and multiple sexual partners. They want to save their marriage but are compelled to look elsewhere to fulfill their “needs”. If you or your spouse are struggling to decide if the unfaithful is fighting this addiction, you can find clarity by completing a Sexual Addiction Screening Quiz such as this: https://psychcentral.com/quizzes/sexquiz.htm 4. Wanting the Marriage and the Affair. The unfaithful want the benefits of the affair but have no intention of giving up their marriage. Sometimes the AP believes the unfaithful mate will leave their spouse to be with them. Before D-Day, the betrayed spouse believes their spouses’ defects are outweighed by the positive characteristics of their mate. Marital satisfaction is often high and the unfaithful is a good spouse. After discovery they will choose their marriage over the AP. 5. Emotional Affair.  While there is no sexual involvement in this type of affair the unfaithful still permits the AP to enter intimate areas of their life that should be reserved for the spouse only. Marital boundaries are violated and the unfaithful feel emotionally closer with the AP than they do their spouse. 6. Love Addiction. Unfaithful in this affair move from relationship to relationship seeking love, that never lasts. They are usually women who are ambivalent about their marriage. They overvalue the person they are infatuated with and are incapable of judging the negative in their AP. They may feel that they’ve married the wrong person. Unfortunately, my husband’s affairs didn’t seem to fit neatly into any of the categories. He didn’t have a one night stand and didn’t fall in love. He isn’t necessarily an addict and the affairs were sexual in nature, not emotional. The first was a sex worker that he visited once a month or so. Years later when he had a five-month long affair he tried getting out of it within a few weeks of starting. His AP threatened to expose his actions and he felt stuck. He was unhappy in our marriage but didn’t want out. On D-day, he told me he was trying to get out of the affair and get counseling. He would decide in the future whether or not to tell me the truth. As I outlined in a previous blog my husband was looking for intimacy. Our marriage had grown stale. We were living as roommates instead of lovers. So when I took the affair analyzer and discovered that my husband didn’t fit neatly into any of the six categories I was frustrated. I desperately needed answers! I started to compare my pain to that of other betrayed spouses. (Stay with me here….as I get vulnerable and honest) “Thank goodness my husband wasn’t a sex addict. I don’t know if I could handle that.” “What a relief that he hadn’t fallen in love with his AP. It was easy for him to let her go, a relief actually. I dodged the bullet of him being emotionally entangled with his AP.” “What a nightmare it would have been if my husband fathered a child with his AP.” “I’m “lucky” my husband’s affair wasn’t as “awful” as those I read about on AR.” These and more are all thoughts I would have as I read about the pain of others. I’m ashamed to admit that I judged the anguish and pain poured out in the postings. “Your husband only had a one night stand, one time! What are you complaining about?” Well at least your husband was only emotionally attached to the other woman. You don’t have to suffer the pain of sexual betrayal.” Yeah, I’m disgusted with myself. In trying to place my husband’s betrayal in a nice, neat category I completely minimized the pain of others. It took me a long time to understand that in the end, it doesn’t matter what type affair my husband had. Sure, having a category to place his betrayal in would have been helpful. Getting advice from those whose husband or wife committed the same type of actions makes a huge difference. But betrayal, no matter what type, causes the same pain. The loss of trust is the same. The overwhelming agony is the same. The fear, despair, loneliness, heartbreak, and deep sadness are all the same. We suffer together regardless of how we got here. Affair recovery takes the same steps, no matter the type of betrayal. I’m grateful for Affair Recovery in so many ways. No matter where I’ve been on this long journey Affair Recovery has been right by my side. The message boards have been a source of comfort and hope. As I’ve written many times, you’re stronger than you think, braver than you believe. Don’t give up. There is hope and healing. Grasp it and never let it go.

Several times I’ve mentioned in my blog articles that I’m amazed at the positive changes my husband has made since D-day, changes I never thought possible. I’ve made changes as well. Both of our changes have benefited our relationship in constructive ways. But recently he did something that was a huge trigger for me and had me questioning if it was truly possible for him to change so that I could feel completely safe in our marriage. When my husband was actively sneaking around in his affair he told me that he had made changes to second shift at work and he had to go back and ensure things were running smoothly. Because of the nature of his job I never questioned him. My biggest worry was that he returned home in time to get a decent night’s sleep. As I’ve said previously, sleeping in separate rooms because of his snoring certainly made these late nights possible without arousing suspicion. Fast forward more than two years and one evening a few weeks ago my husband said he had to go back to work to close the louvers. No big deal, right? But it seemed to take longer than it should. I know he gets sidetracked so I didn’t think too much about it. Then it happened the next night and the next and the next. By then I was deeply suspicious. I have the app “Find Friends” installed on our phones so I began checking. He was definitely at work. At least his phone was. So then my mind went places I had hoped it would never go again. He was having an affair. He either left his phone at work and went to her or had her meet him there. I wanted to trust. Oh how I wanted to trust! But I was convinced, no, I knew that he was up to something. I was right. After several agonizing days he sat me down to confess. My heart began to pound. My ears were ringing. I was prepared for the worst. It’s amazing how many thoughts ran through my head in the few seconds it took him to tell me what was going on. He wasn’t having an affair but he had been lying all along. He had lent money to an employee to purchase a dog and then due to unforeseen circumstances he couldn’t take the dog home. She was living in a kennel at the shop and my husband was going back in the evening to feed and play with the dog. I was furious and not very nice about it either. I felt betrayed all over again. Yes, it was betrayal on a smaller scale but betrayal just the same. His excuse? He “knew” I would say no about lending the money, not a small amount, so he just did it behind my back. And herein lays the root of the problem. In order get what he wants my husband will lie, either outright or by omission. He doesn’t trust me or our relationship enough to have open communication. During our heated discussion he further excused his actions by saying that he did this as a child as well and proceeded to give me a couple of examples that “turned out great” in the end. Not a good move on his part. Being deceptive is a way of life for my husband. During our EMSO class he admitted that he can justify anything to get what he wants. I can list many times during our marriage that he has deceived me in various ways. Post D-day I thought he understood how destructive his actions are to our relationship. Evidently not. So the heartbreaking question for me to ponder is whether or not my husband can change an ingrained trait. If not then do I leave or live with it. Neither option is very attractive to me. Change is part of life. Nothing is stagnant. Jobs are lost, loved ones pass away, children grow and move on, life changes. In his article The Mystery of Change, Rick says, “Betrayal forces change. This is a problem because few of us know what to do with the change, especially when that change is facilitated by one of the most gut wrenching, life altering events known to a marriage. Whether we like it or not, change is an inescapable part of life and it behooves us to learn how to use it productively, even in the case of marital betrayal or addiction.” Learning of my husband’s infidelity certainly changed me. The obvious is that I’m less trusting, not just of my husband but of people in general. I second guess peoples’ motivations in ways I never have before. In my marriage I demand respect in ways I never had the courage to before. My husband responds positively instead of with anger. He’s less defensive. I’m trying to be less judgmental. His infidelity has changed us both. In his article Is Change Really Possible?, Rick states, “Infidelity certainly has the potential to create habit change.” You can either return to old, bad habits such as drinking in excess or you can change bad habits. He goes on to ask the question, “So where do we begin? The problem with habits is that they are unconscious.” The first step has to be desire to change. Either you’re willing to put forth the effort necessary to rewire your brain and change a bad habit or you’re not. In Part 2 of his article Rick explains the steps necessary to change a habit. It doesn’t happen without effort. I read somewhere that it takes at least three weeks to change a habit. That’s three weeks of constant effort. When I discovered that my husband had deceived me again I was completely honest with him. I don’t know if it’s possible for him to change. I don’t even know if he wants to. I wasn’t very nice about it. Sure, he’s made a lot of positive changes but these were the easy ones to make. They didn’t take as much effort. Can he make the big change necessary for me to feel safe?  Our entire marriage I haven’t confronted his behavior towards me. No more. That’s a change I’ve made for the better, in my opinion. Affair Recovery says over and over that they want to do more than just save marriages. They want to help those of us “affected by infidelity find extraordinary lives of meaning and purpose.”  Rick and Affair Recovery seek to “let the crisis created by the infidelity serve as a catalyst for positive change…” This takes targeted action. I am no longer willing to settle for mediocre. I demand better for my marriage, for my life. My husband and I will either change for the good together or he’ll stagnate alone. My desire is that he wants to change, not for me, not for our marriage, but for himself. It’s up to him just as it’s up to you to make positive change. Remember, you’re stronger than you think you are, braver than you believe.

Lately I’ve been pondering something my husband said to me on D-day when I begged him for the reason why. Why? Why did you betray me? His answer at the time was that he missed intimacy. How well I remember my reaction! Intimacy? You miss intimacy so you have sex with an erotic massage therapist and then an affair with someone from Craig’s List? That’s intimacy? Intimacy has many definitions. Before D-day for me it meant being comfortable, warm and familiar with my husband. I regularly shave the back of his neck. I know his favorite foods, his favorite color, his likes, and dislikes. I know his family, his roots. We raised two beautiful children together. We’ve lived in four different states, bought and sold houses, made financial decisions, and enjoyed friendships,  together. We’ve seen each other through surgeries. We’ve laughed, fought, reconciled and loved together. Everything that I considered “intimate” we’ve done together. But for my husband, intimacy meant sex. What he was really missing in our marriage was sex. First, he tried an erotic massage therapist. Next, he actively searched for sex outside of our marriage. When he found his AP on Craig’s List she asked what kind of sex he wanted. His reply? Just straight sex. Nothing kinky. Sex is what he wanted,  it didn’t matter who it was with. I’ve explained in previous blog articles how our sex life had withered to practically nothing. We slept apart due to his snoring. We had become roommates instead of lovers. So instead of talking to me about his needs my husband explored sex outside of marriage for “intimacy”. He is not a sex addict. He is not addicted to pornography. After years of sleeping in separate beds, our sexual intimacy had dwindled to the point that we only had sex a handful of times a year. I was concerned only to the point that I know a man needs sex. So, I convinced myself that he would never cheat and was taking care of his needs in the shower. Stupid. I know. How did we get there? It undoubtedly didn’t happen overnight. Certainly our poor communication skills played a huge part in how dysfunctional our marriage had become. Rick has an excellent article titled The Anorexic Marriage: A Void of Intimacy.  He explains that marriage has three entities, me, him and us. He warns that if both spouses don’t engage with one another there won’t be a healthy sense of “us.” It’s Rick’s next point that finally expressed, in part, how our marriage had lost intimacy. Rick explains that anorexia is a Greek word meaning without appetite. Bingo! I was a sexually anorexic, completely without appetite for my husband when it came to sex. As Rick states, “The sexual anorexic has a lack of desire for a relationship of a sexual nature.” I could care less whether I had sex with my husband or not. As a matter of fact, I really didn’t want sex. On those rare occasions when he would come to my bed seeking sex I never said no but I certainly didn’t encourage him either. Now I’m going to be brutally honest. From the time we were married sex with my husband was pretty much about him and his needs and desires. I remember in the first few years thinking that sex should be more than just making him happy. I was unfulfilled. Bored. Wishing for more. It got to the point that I just wanted it done and over with. We became masters at the quickie. I never told my husband how I was feeling. As we continued sleeping apart we were also having sex less and less. He never communicated to me his needs and desires. I was thrilled we were having less sex. I figured as long as he didn’t ask I didn’t have to offer. Yes, we were definitely disengaged not only from our own emotions but from the well-being of “us.” As my sexual anorexia progressed my husband developed ‘marital anorexia.’  In his article Rick defines this as “…a marriage where either one or both partners lack or are without appetite for the marriage." In other words, it’s a marriage where one or both partners compulsively withhold themselves from the marriage.” Rick’s article lists six characteristics of the anorexic marriage. My husband developed attributes of all six characteristics but the one he struggled with the most is his unwillingness to share his most intimate feelings. He does great sharing his day to day home and work concerns and frustrations but when it comes to his most intimate thoughts and feelings my husband hides himself from me and the world. As a matter of fact, my husband started his affair looking for sex but it became an excuse to try and get out of the marriage. He didn’t communicate. He had checked out physically and emotionally. What’s ironic is that Rick’s article warns about the anorexic marriage after discovering infidelity. It’s normal for the betrayed to hold back engaging in the marriage. But couples should not stay stuck there. For us, D-day and Affair Recovery woke our anorexic marriage up. EMS Online also helped us tremendously. My husband is working on learning to communicate on a deeper, more intimate level. His own ‘marriage anorexia’ slowly faded away. He engages in our marriage in ways he never has before. Before D-day my husband had stopped calling me sweet pea, an endearment he had used since our marriage nearly 25 years earlier. Now he uses it daily. He had also quit wearing his wedding ring. He couldn’t wear it at work because of machinery but he stopped wearing it on weekends as well. If asked why his answer was always the same, “I forgot”. Now, with a different job, he always wears his ring. Since D-day I’ve struggled with my own marital anorexia but nothing compared to the wasteland our marriage had become before. It’s been difficult to find the courage to trust again. Sometimes self-protection seems wiser than full engagement. Yet I made a conscious decision to forgive my husband’s infidelity and have a stronger, healthier and yes, more intimate marriage. As for my sexual anorexia, it’s gone away as well. Again, being brutally honest, for the first time in our marriage my husband is just as concerned about my sexual gratification as he is about his own. We actually communicate about our needs and desires in ways we never have before. Not just sexually but in many aspects of our relationship. Part of me wonders why it took an affair to wake us up to our sexual and marital anorexia. Why did it take the agony of an affair to shake us from complacency?  I cannot change the past. But I can embrace the future. The closing paragraph in Rick’s article states it best: Whether the problem (marital anorexia) existed before the infidelity or was triggered by the infidelity, it has the potential to affect your most significant relationships for the remainder of your life. Please have the courage to come out from behind the wall of self-protection and begin to take the risk to both love and to let someone love you. If you or someone you know may be struggling from marital anorexia EMS Online is a great step by step process to begin healing and building a new type of marriage. Please do not spend the rest of your life robbing yourself of intimacy which we has humans so desperately need. I second Rick’s admonition. You deserve true intimacy. Now is the time to reach out for help.  Stay strong. Have courage. You’re braver than you believe. Stronger than you think possible. Good luck.

In my last blog post I wrote about how betrayal has roots that run deep in my family. My parents and their four children have all experienced being either the betrayed or the unfaithful in our marriages. Some have experienced both. I mentioned that my brother’s wife has betrayed him multiple times. He had a revenge affair after one of these episodes. My brother places part of the blame for his wife’s infidelity on her chaotic and dysfunctional upbringing. But what’s so incredibly sad about my brother is that he also blames himself for his wife’s actions. She wouldn’t have been compelled to stray if only he had been a better husband, father, friend, bread winner, lover, companion, or whatever noun he can come up with to denigrate himself and justify her actions. In reality, he’s justifying his own lack of action in forcing change either for himself or his marriage. There has only been one conversation between my brother and myself about my husband’s affairs. It occurred in the first confusing, pain filled days after d-day. I was in no shape emotionally to fully comprehend what he was telling me at the time, much less respond in any kind of intelligent, coherent manner. But I do remember my dismay and despair over what he was telling me. Every time my brother and his wife are intimate he sees the faces of her affair partners. They don’t talk about the affairs or their marriage. He’s convinced she will cheat again. Listening to my brother talk it was obvious that he’s incredibly unhappy yet refuses to get help. Later, after I discovered Affair Recovery, I sent him the link so he could understand that there is hope. As far as I know he hasn’t logged on. My brother encouraged me to have my own revenge affair. I was shocked by the thought that he would suggest such a thing. I even told him that he obviously doesn’t know me very well if he thinks that I’m capable of such an action. Then my brother said something that baffled me even more.  What’s the big deal he wanted to know? It’s just sex.             It’s just sex. At the time my emotions were exceptionally raw. I was still grasping the fact that my husband had cheated not once but twice, first with an erotic massage therapist and the second time a five month affair. I was barely surviving day to day. I had yet to understand the ramifications of how my husband’s actions would impact my emotional well being beyond the current pain I was enduring. But still, the words of my brother that “it’s just sex” somehow seemed wrong. Now, more than two years later, I definitely understand that betrayal is much more than just sex. In our EMS Online class we were asked to define what betrayal meant to us. My answer? Betrayal is giving to someone other than your spouse what should only be shared between the two of you.  In their FAQ’s about infidelity, Affair Recovery  defines an affair as “a betrayal of the marital relationship, for it violates the covenant that two people made.”  During our first week of EMS Online, we learned that Infidelity, as Frank Pittman, MD (one of the leading authorities in the field of infidelity and the author of Private Lies) says, is nothing more than the keeping of secrets. In my mind betrayal is sharing intimacy with someone other than your spouse. That intimacy is sex, yes, but oh so much more. Its desire, emotions, touch, laughter, tears, and whatever else should be reserved for your spouse but is given to another. Betrayal is giving a part of yourself to someone who has not promised to love, honor and cherish you till death do us part. Betrayal is sharing of secrets with someone other than your spouse. It’s giving your intimate thoughts to another. It’s handing an outsider marital and personal information they have no business knowing.             Betrayal is sexting even if there is never any face-to-face contact.             Betrayal is flirting with someone other than your spouse.             Betrayal is pornography, spending time with images instead of your spouse.             Betrayal is speaking negatively about your spouse to justify your behavior.             Betrayal is lies, deceit, sneaking around and knowingly hiding your behavior.             Betrayal is taking time away from your spouse and kids and giving it to strangers.             Betrayal is selfishness so intense that consequences do not matter.             Betrayal is lack of respect not only for your spouse but for yourself and your marriage.             Betrayal is catastrophic to the betrayed on so many levels and in so many ways. Betrayal is knowing that your spouse dishonored you and your marriage by choosing intimacy with someone else over you. Betrayal is all of the above and so much more. To the betrayed spouse betrayal is anything that disrupts the marital intimacy and breaks the marital vows, which I wrote about in a different blog post. The unfaithful is definitely aware that their actions are wrong because no matter how much they justify their misdeeds in their minds they keep them secret from their spouse. Their pride and selfishness impel their actions. Their shame and guilt keep them silent. Betrayal is so much more than just sex. Maybe if my brother understood this incredibly important concept he would be willing to get help for himself and yes, for his wife. Sadly, until he opens his eyes and sees that betrayal is so much more than just sex he will never heal. Thank goodness I’ve discovered Affair Recovery and many other resources that have helped my husband and me navigate the quagmire of recovery. The last two years have seen both of us grow and change in many positive ways. I’m amazed at the constructive changes my husband has made. I’m definitely grateful for a marriage that is stronger, more honest and more cherished than ever before. We have a long way to go but I can honestly say my marriage is better, healthier and more intimate because of Affair Recovery. If only my brother would get out of his fog and understand that there is hope.             And that betrayal is much more than just sex.   Pittman, Frank, Private Lies: Infidelity and the Betrayal of Intimacy. New York: W.W. Norton, 1990. Print.

For a variety of reasons after D-day I became disconnected with my family. In a way it surprises me. After all, I come from a family of betrayers and betrayed. I have three siblings. Two have been both unfaithful and betrayed and one has been betrayed. I have been betrayed. Four for four. Our parents were both unfaithful and betrayed in multiple marriages. That’s six for six. My husband, unfaithful, has one brother, unfaithful, and one sister, betrayed. That’s nine for nine. I believe his parents were both faithful (his father died before the age of 40 but his mom appears to have had a solid second marriage. But as we all know, looks can be deceiving.) That makes nine out of eleven unfaithful/betrayed just in our immediate family.            We’re proving the national statistics on infidelity to be accurate.        So with all the infidelity in my family, I expected to have plenty of shoulders to cry on and ears to listen when my own personal agony started. Surprisingly, I was wrong. As a matter of fact, none of my siblings called me until my mother chastised them. Even then, I only heard from them the one time.            I’m sure my siblings could come up with many reasons why they’ve chosen to distance themselves from me over the past two years. They’re busy with their own lives. They don’t know what to say. They’re afraid to make me feel worse.         But I believe that one reason is they don’t want to relive their own pain. Their affairs were years before mine and resulted in broken marriages for my sisters. My brother is still with his wife, a multiple betrayer. For his part, he had a “revenge” affair, something he suggested I try. I ignored that piece of advice. My siblings are living in their own pretend normal and don’t want my pain shaking their hard-fought security. If they don’t acknowledge my heartache they don’t have to step outside their comfort zone. Hence I’m disconnected from my siblings at a time I could use their support the most.           In a way, I don’t blame them. Pretending to live “normal” lives protects them from acknowledging the worst in themselves or their spouses. I understand. After all, I chose my husband. I chose the person who betrayed my heart. Pretend normal is safer than acknowledging the truth. My husband showed up at my work the other day bringing with him a nice large diet caffeine free Coke with a cherry splash. I hadn’t asked him for it but every once in awhile he just brings me one because he knows it’s my favorite. He knows I only drink pop from a fountain and then rarely. It’s a nice treat.   There are six of us women who work the front office of a medical clinic.  These women think I have the best husband in the world. Why wouldn’t they? He’s funny, handsome and charming. He has a way of making people laugh and feel good. My co-workers also believe I have an amazing marriage. Again, why wouldn’t they? I have mastered the art of pretend normal. I’m sure you’ve read about it over and over again on the AR web site. If you did EMS then you definitely learned about pretend normal. There are times after my co-worker remarks about our great relationship that I think to myself, “if only you knew.” Pretend normal keeps me from telling my co-workers the truth. Our neighbors don’t know. Most of our friends don’t know. Except for close family members the rest don’t know. Am I ashamed? You bet! Am I afraid of what they’d think of both of us? Of course! Do I feel obligated to protect my husband’s reputation? The answer is yes. By protecting him I protect myself. I have wondered if telling my story might help those around me with their own personal struggles. Yet I pretend normal with all but a select few. Is this self preservation? Maybe. But for me what matters most is that my husband and I no longer pretend normal with each other. The world sees a solid, loving marriage that’s lasted over 26 years. Thanks to Affair Recovery, what the world sees is what we are becoming.

For years leading up to D-day my husband and I were leading separate lives under the same roof. We weren’t angry with each other. We weren’t making threats to divorce or having screaming arguments. We had family supper together every night. We went on family vacations. We talked about politics, family, the latest national news, friends, and a host of other topics. But we never talked about our relationship. We were disconnected emotionally. We lived a life of pretend normal that was externally the model marriage but internally suffocating. Intimacy was gone, not just in the bedroom, in every aspect of our relationship. Looking back I was deeply unhappy and obviously so was my husband. Yet neither of us had the courage, wisdom, or whatever it would take to shake us awake to our dismal reality. So we continued to live together, yet separate. In the months leading up to D-day our separate lives became nearly unbearable. My husband had become nasty and mean. He would lash out at our daughter and me for the stupidest reasons. He became almost tyrannical in his need to control practically every aspect of our home lives. His anger was always just under the surface. He wasn’t abusive but he became increasingly difficult to live with. On days I worked and he didn’t he wouldn’t be home to eat lunch with me. He would go shopping in the next town without me. I now know that his affair and the confusion, shame, and guilt it was causing were responsible for his actions towards me. But at the time it seemed that nothing I did was good enough for him anymore. After D-day when we decided to stay together our previous pretend normal was no longer good enough for either of us. We would need to have a better marriage and deeper intimacy or recovery would not be worth the effort. So through a lot of hard work, tears and learning about ourselves and each other we’ve come a long way in the past two years. It’s amazing how much he’s been willing to change. I’ve changed. Our relationship has changed and it is now more honest than it’s ever been. Yet at times I still struggle. The other day he purchased a new blender without me. Yes, that simple purchase sent me spiraling downward into an emotional hole that was dark and scary. I thought we were a team. He knew I wanted to help choose the blender. Didn’t he care about my feelings? He was so selfish! I became withdrawn, distant from my husband. I didn’t talk about anything with him. I even began second guessing my decision to stay with him. In my head I ranted that I felt “stuck” in the relationship, forced to stay when I really wanted to leave. I began to convince myself that I had only stayed because we still have a daughter at home. Or I stayed because I had no other financial option. I was trapped. I would be happier alone, away from my cheating, uncaring, selfish husband. I began convincing myself that I really wasn’t happy. Maybe I could just leave and start over. Then it hit me. What in the world was I doing? Was I really trying to talk myself into leaving? Sure, if I wanted to I could make a case for divorce by focusing on the negative. Who couldn’t? My husband could easily do the same with me. I had allowed a simple blender purchase to turn into a major trigger that then made me question the entire past two plus years of hard work. I resolved that it was time to yet again focus on the many, many positive changes we both have made since D-day.  My husband is an imperfect human who caused me so much trauma and grief. But honestly, I’m imperfect as well. If you’re like me, and so many others, when it comes to triggers and reminders you can easily spiral to a dark place. Luckily Affair Recovery has a Protocol for Reminders if you haven’t looked at it you should. Recovery is a struggle. There will be days when you want to just give up. There will be days when the pain of betrayal just doesn’t seem worth the effort of recovery. But don’t lose your focus. Keep your eye on the horizon. Stay strong. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, you’re stronger than you think, braver than you believe. Stand firm and fight for what you deserve. The pain of the process is worth the result. You will struggle. But you will win.

Marriage vows. Promises you make at your wedding ceremony as you commit your life to your mate. You can write your own, heartfelt vows or go the traditional route. On a day full of optimism and hope the marriage vows cement two lives into one. My wedding day was years in the making. I was finally marrying the man I had fallen in love with in high school. We had already been through what I considered at that time the worse that life could throw at us. It had taken us eleven years to reach the marriage altar and promise our lives to each other. We were on the home stretch! Yes, my vows had meaning for me, absolute meaning. Yet at the time of our marriage ceremony their deeper truths were the farthest thing from my mind. The vows seemed so simple. So easy. Love would conquer all. Now I think about those promises made so many years ago and wonder, What exactly do marriage vows mean? I promise to be true to you in sickness and in health. I promise to stay with you till death do us part. I promise to endure with you for richer or for poorer. These 3 are pretty self-explanatory and my husband and I have seen our ups and downs particularly with sickness and health as well as richer or poorer. I promise to be faithful to you, forsaking all others. This, of course, is why we’re all on the Affair Recovery web site. Forsaking all others is apparently not as easy to keep as many of us believe they are. When looking for statistics on infidelity I discovered that they range anywhere from 22 to 70 percent of men and 14 to 60 percent of women cheat. Astounding! It’s hard to wrap my mind around the magnitude of these statistics. But the vow itself is quite simple. I promise not to be intimate in any way with anyone else during my marriage.j  Simple, but not common apparently based on these statistics. I promise to stay with you for better or for worse. Wow! That’s a tough one. What exactly does this mean? The “better” part is not difficult to understand. It’s easy to stay together when times are happy, easy and even fun. But there are a lot of bad things that happen to people which can have a negative effect on the marriage bond. 1.  The death of a child: I can’t even begin to imagine how awful that would be. That would definitely be a worst for marriage. Even 55 years later my mother-in-law would cry about a child she lost shortly after birth. 2.  Not Getting Along With In-Laws: Lots of married couples struggle with familial relationships. Religious differences can put a strain on the marriage. 3.  Having an Abusive Spouse: This unquestionably would be a worst for the marriage relationship. 4.  The Death of Your Spouse: This must be at the very top of the worst list for marriages. My husband was twelve when his father died in an accident. His mother was from Germany and English was not her native language. She was left with three children to raise, a business to sell, and finances she didn’t understand. She had no relatives to lean on for support. The whole family suffered. My mother-in-law lived through World War II and post-war Germany. She suffered the death of a child. But I bet losing her husband at a young age ranked right up there as one of the worst events of her life. I do have to admit that in the first days after discovering my husband broke his promise to forsake all others I wished he had died instead. I couldn’t imagine that the pain would be any worse. If he had died I wouldn’t have felt so utterly betrayed. My Pollyanna belief that he was honorable would have stayed intact. Infidelity, in my opinion, is the worst that a marriage can suffer. The agony, the betrayal, the heartache, the destruction of trust, the loss of stability, and so much more, how can it be worse than that? My marriage, and yours, is struggling with one of the absolute worst, if not the worst, things that can happen. I promised to stay with my husband for better or for worse.  Did worse include infidelity? That’s a question I chose to answer with yes.   According to one statistic: 53 percent of marriages end in divorce. 69 percent of marriages end after infidelity. I do not have to be a part of that statistic. Neither do you. We have hope through this web site. According to a question answered by Rick, 80 to 85 percent of couples who do AffairRecovery.com courses are together at the one year mark.   Of those marriages that do end after the one year mark, Rick explains that infidelity usually isn’t the reason why. Reasons include: Not finishing individual work Not dealing with trauma, Relapse and a host of other reasons are usually responsible for the end of the marriage. I promise to do whatever it takes to have a stronger, better, more fulfilling marriage post D-day. I will use whatever resources necessary, including Affair Recovery, to achieve that goal. I encourage you to do the same. We’ve struggled with the worse, now it’s time for the better.

When my husband’s affairs were discovered just over two years ago I had all the predictable emotions; anger, confusion, agony, and so much more. Eleven days later when we decided to work on our marriage I still had those emotions but now I had fear: What if I let him come back home and he cheated again? What if I couldn’t “get over it”? What if I was wasting my time and energy on a failed attempt at reconciliation? On the one hand, I felt as if it was necessary for me to try and save our marriage for many reasons: We had almost 25 years together. He deserved a second chance. I wanted to look at myself in the mirror five years later and know I had done everything I could to ensure success. But on the other hand I was so afraid of trying and failing. I did not want to go through this pain and heartbreak again. So now that we’ve reached the two year mark I’m amazed at how far we’ve come. I’m asking myself, how did we make it and others do not? We know for sure that one of the couples in our EMS Online class is divorcing. He had a one night stand. Compared to my own husband’s eighteen months seeing an erotic massage therapist for a “happy ending” and intercourse then his five month affair, a one night stand would appear, on the outside, so much easier to recover from. Why did we succeed and they did not? Found in the Recovery Library is Rick's four part series, “Why Couples Fail After an Affair”.  I want to briefly hit the points of this article and compare it to my personal recovery journey. Part One: Not Knowing What Happened He states, “people naturally try to understand the events of their life. Until we are able to make sense of these events, a part of us continues trying to solve the mystery.” In the community forums betrayed spouses have said that they fill in the empty blanks of an affair themselves, sometimes making the situation worse than it really was. There is no trust if truth is withheld from the betrayed. This is what happened to the above mentioned couple. The betrayed wife felt there was more information, important facts, that her unfaithful husband was not telling. But he was adamant that there was nothing else to tell. For months she begged him to come clean. Even after our EMS Online class was over and we were in Married for Life she just knew there was something he was hiding. She was right. Months later she discovered the truth. The fact that he lied over and over to her when she begged him for full disclosure doomed their recovery. Rick stresses that to move forward couples need to understand what happened. This means honest communication. He cites a study that states that 86% of couples who discussed the situation a lot were still married and living together. This is what my husband and I did. We talked and talked and talked. I brought it up regularly and we hashed it out. He was completely forthcoming with answers. He didn’t hold back anything, no matter how embarrassing or shameful.  And this leads to the second statistic of the study, 86% of those whose partners answered all their questions were still married and living together.  Part 2: The Unfaithful Spouse Doesn't Understand What Their Actions Have Caused   They just don’t get it. My husband actually said that he knew what he did would hurt me but he never expected the deep pain, the intense agony, the complete heartbreak that his actions caused me. It took EMS Online for him to truly understand what his betrayal did to me. That changed his perspective on recovery and we were able to move forward much more effectively. Part 3: The Unfaithful Spouse Denies Their Reality. Rick states,  “If you can’t accept where you’re at, you’ll never get where you’re going” Particularly after an affair. Nothing hinders our journey to wholeness more than denial. How can you safely go forward if you can’t first accept the problem and then take action? My husband had to accept that he has a character flaw big enough to justify betrayal. He told me that what he did was the most selfish thing a spouse can do to his/her mate.  He acknowledged that he’s the type of person who can cheat. I had to accept the fact that he’s not the moral person I thought he was. We both had to accept our reality. Affair Recovery taught us that we had been living a life of “pretend normal,” refusing to see ourselves for who we really are. Once our eyes were opened and we saw ourselves for who we really are we could move forward with true recovery. Part 4: Failure to Grieve the Loss. We cannot manage the pain of infidelity by trying to fix it, control it or understand it. We must grieve. I didn’t even know this was a step but let me tell you, grieve I did! I cried. I mourned the loss of the marriage I thought I had. I spent months in sorrow, wondering if there was ever going to be joy again. I finally realized that that my first marriage to my husband was gone. I grieved that loss. But a new, better marriage has begun and it’s more honest than the old. If you have committed to recovery with your spouse, you want to get it right. I sure did. And while success is never guaranteed I have hope that our future will be bright together. I have the same hope for you.

Two years since d-day. I can’t believe it! When my husband’s affairs were discovered I didn’t think I would survive that first day. The minutes were agonizing. Time slowed to a crawl. I was reduced to pure, raw emotion. There was no existence without pain. I wished I would die. I knew I would die. My heart was shattered and it would kill me. Over the next few days I was in a fog. I took one day off work but that was all I could afford. When I wasn’t crying I would sit and stare. I worked by rote. Zombie. Barely functioning. My emotions were all over the place. I was furious, full of hatred, incredulous, scared and so much more. I walked around numb, in shock, hardly thinking beyond doing what was absolutely necessary. I couldn’t imagine how I would get through the week. Decisions had to be made but all I wanted to do was crawl into myself and never come out. After eleven excruciating days my husband came home and together we committed to working on our marriage, ourselves, our relationship. I had already discovered the AR website and started reading the articles. That’s where I learned that there’s a timeline for recovery.  I didn’t really pay attention to anything on the timeline except that it’s a minimum of eighteen months, which seemed like an eternity on D-day. I could hardly get through the next hour. How was I going to survive eighteen months? Rick has a short article outlining the "Timeline for Recovery" and I decided to see, now that I’m at the two year mark, how my own marriage recovery matches the timeline.     Step I. The discovery stage: zero to six weeks. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, about WHAT happened should completely be exposed to the light of day by the end of this step. It is not possible to move forward without complete disclosure. May 31, 2014 was my D-day. Fortunately, my discovery was over within three weeks. My husband told me the entire, sordid, story, answered every question I could come up with, and gave me more honesty than he has our entire marriage. I didn’t have trickle truth like so many betrayed spouses. Sure, little details have come out over time but I knew the major details practically from the start. Good start to the recovery timeline. Step II. The reaction stage: six months. The hurt spouse needs to feel their mate cares and the unfaithful spouse must do whatever it takes to assure that it’s safe for the relationship to continue. This stage should take us to November 30, 2016. Because we didn’t start EMS Online until the first part of November this step wasn’t complete within the six month time frame. We knew about EMS Online for months but because of financial difficulties, in part caused by the second affair, we didn’t feel that we had the money for the course. But I was not in a good place emotionally. The triggers were constant. I was still crying almost daily. I finally told my husband we would either put the course on a credit card and deal with payments or I would have to leave. We shouldn’t have waited so long. EMS Online taught us both so much. I finally realized that my husband had true remorse, regret, shame and guilt over his actions. He was forced to look deep into his character to find the flaw that allowed him to cheat. He acknowledged, probably for the first time in his life, that he is able to justify his actions in order to get what he wants. By the end of EMS Online there was hope that our marriage not only would be saved but be better, more intimate, and more honest. We were behind on the recovery timeline by a couple of months but still on track. Step III. The release stage: Month 9 to 12. This is where the betrayed spouse is able to forgive what seems unforgivable. Both spouses understand the “why” better. The unfaithful spouse pursues healing that assures the hurt spouse they are truly committed to the marriage. This step for us was February 28, to May 31, 2015. My husband assumed that I had forgiven him already because I let him come home and start recovery. But it took most of our EMS Online class for me to finally let go of enough of the pain and anger to truly forgive. I struggled with the why, especially “why her” which I wrote about in a previous blog article. I was stuck for a long time on the “who” of his second affair. This delayed Step III for me. Because I couldn’t wrap my mind around the “who” I couldn’t believe that he wouldn’t betray me again. It took me a long time to understand that the “who” didn’t matter, it’s the “why” that does. This step probably took us until this spring. Now we’re way behind. Step IV. Recommitment and moving on: 12 to 18 months. This is where the couple decides to move on with their lives together. The affair will not define them but actually can provide the opportunity for growth in the marriage. Step IV would have taken us from May 31, to November 30, 2015. Honestly, I don’t know how we’re doing with this step. When we started EMS Online I promised myself, and my husband, that I would work on recovery for two years from D-day. Then I would decide if I would stay or go. So in a way I “recommitted” early but probably not the way this step meant. That doesn’t mean that we haven’t grown in our marriage. My husband has been fully committed from the start. In some ways he’s been more committed than I have to this process. I can honestly say that our marriage is more honest than it has been in our 26 plus years together. We have an intimacy that feels real, not forced. My husband has made changes that I never dreamed he was capable of doing. We are still in the final stage. When D-day changed my life I couldn’t imagine getting to the two year mark. Now that it’s arrived, I’m amazed that it’s really been that long. I rarely cry. We laugh more together. Joy is coming back. It’s not all roses. Just the other day I had a minor panic attack because my husband wasn’t home when he said he would be. I still have triggers but luckily not as often and, more importantly, I get past them quicker and easier. There are days when I’m just sick and tired of recovery and wish for peace. For the past two years I’ve told myself that I would get to May 31, 2016, and then make a decision on staying in my marriage. Now that the time has come I find that somewhere along the way I already made the decision to stay. We’ve worked hard in recovery. We will continue. As you can see my recovery didn’t perfectly match Rick’s timeline. Neither will yours. Every marriage, every person brings a unique set of circumstances to recovery. If both spouses aren’t completely committed, true recovery may fail. If the unfaithful spouse doesn’t give full disclosure within the first few weeks, give up the AP, and pursue whatever it takes to change, recovery may fail. If the betrayed spouse holds on to anger and refuses to forgive, recovery may fail. Rick is adamant, if you’re way off the timeline or stuck on a step, get help. Recovery is a long process but you should be moving forward. I’m amazed at where I’m at. I can’t wait to see what the next two years will bring.

Life is funny. I’m not talking about laughing till you cry funny, although there are plenty of times I’ve laughed till my cheeks ached and my belly hurt.  I’m talking about ironic, where the heck did that come from, turn your life upside down kind of funny. I’m talking about crazy, way out in left field, life changing kind of funny.            I’m talking about a funny that never causes you to laugh. Long before I married my husband, if the subject ever came up I would boldly and firmly declare to whoever was listening that I would never take back a man who cheated on me. Not only would I never take him back but I would cut off his manly parts before marching out of his life so he could never cheat again. This was an absolute for me. I warned my husband many times that his masculinity was at stake if he ever cheated. As if I could scare faithfulness into his brain. There was no doubt about it, I would absolutely never, not ever, forgive such an unforgivable act. That just wasn’t ever going to happen. Then the unthinkable occurred and out of the blue I was confronted with my own words, my own line in the sand that had been crossed, my absolute resolve to never, not ever, stay with a man who betrayed. Life is funny that way. My first instinct was to leave. It was evening when the betrayal was discovered. I told my husband that my daughter and I would leave in the morning. He said it was his fault and he should be the one to go. I told him he had to leave right then and there. He did. He packed his bags and with nowhere else to go he ended up at her house. Now what? This was Saturday night. Monday morning I see an attorney and start divorce proceedings. She gets a judge to grant me temporary custody of our daughter. He comes over to talk. It will never work he says. He comes over to talk again. Can he come home? He’ll do whatever it takes to make it work. He changes his mind, it will never work. I’ve had days to cry, rant, and ponder. I’m bewildered, numb, paralyzed. I’m full of fear, hate, confusion, denial. Ultimately, I’m confronted with my own words, I will never… My line in the sand is blurring. We’ve been married almost 25 years at this point but we’ve known each other over 35 years, since high school. That’s a long time. After I’ve had eleven agonizing days and even longer nights, now what do I do? I’ve had plenty of time to reflect on the sorry state of our marriage. I hate him. I love him. I miss him. I never want to see him again. I want to chop off his manly parts. I want to throw my arms around him and never let go. Now what? The decision to stay in the marriage or end it is complicated, scary, exhilarating, thoughtful, and so much more.  Samuel, another blogger with Affair Recovery, years ago wrote “The Courage to Stay.”  It takes courage either way. I asked myself, do I have the courage to stay in this marriage? Do I have the courage to face the pain? Almost more importantly, do I have the courage to leave? Do I have the courage to start over? The reasons to stay are many, the reasons to go are profound. Now what? The decision is made. I will eat my words. Bottom line, I’m not willing to give up without a fight. I must be able to look at myself in the mirror five years from now and know without a doubt that I did everything I could to heal, grow and learn from this agony. How will I know my marriage was unsalvageable if I don’t try? My husband comes home and we begin recovery. When it came down to whether to stay or go I just couldn’t give up on the years we had shared. He deserves a second chance. Our marriage deserves a second chance. We deserve to find out if we can have the type of marriage that everyone on the outside thinks we already have. He deserves the chance to make amends. I deserve the chance to forgive. We both deserved the chance to learn and grow. Is it safe to stay in my marriage? Affair Recovery is replete with information on safety. Rick has an article, several actually, addressing this very topic. "Is My Mate Safe?" This one is straightforward and to the point.       The answer is yes, my husband is safe. This was nearly two years ago. My line in the sand was erased. We have fought for our marriage in ways I never thought possible. He has changed in ways I never dreamed achievable. We have come a long way. We have a long way still to go. Now what? I’ve learned that when it comes to absolutes, never say never. But there is one absolute I can positively say, I will never regret giving my husband a second chance. There is still much work to do on our marriage. What’s next? A future that is stronger, healthier, honest, respectful and so much more. A future together.

Is there such a thing as collective guilt and shame? Some would have you believe that there is. For instance, if children are in poverty all of society is to blame. The media would have you accept as true that if one cop is a rotten apple the entire police force is tainted. My daughter has teachers that punish the entire class for one student’s behavior. Everyone shares in their guilt. Rick refers to this as Group Shame or Social Shame where we are dishonored and ascribed the shame from someone else's actions.  He discusses this in detail in Social Shame: Have You Been Dishonored? and Social Shame: Surviving Infidelity Isn't Enough. The first person I called when my husband’s affairs were exposed was my mother. Any betrayed spouse understands the anguish, pain and fear of D-day. We, the wounded, reach out to anyone we think we can depend on to be on our side, understand our pain, commiserate with our anguish. My mother should have been that person for me. Unfortunately, the first thing she asked was if I was giving my husband enough sex. On the worst day of my life I should have been able to depend on my mother for moral support. Instead I found myself on the defensive. I actually felt as if my mother was blaming me for my husband’s actions.             In her mind his shame was my shame. What my mother did was affirm what I had already been feeling. How could my husband betray? Wasn’t I good enough for him? Did he not find me attractive anymore? How could he prefer a skank over his wife? Our sex life was practically non-existent. We had lost intimacy. How could I allow this to happen? What could I have done differently to keep my husband faithful? I anguished over what I had done wrong, what I could have changed, the choices I had made or not made in my marriage.             In my tortured mind his shame was my shame. My mother made me feel worse, not better. It would take me several weeks, months actually, to understand that my husband’s choices were his alone. We were both in the same marriage. He chose disrespect, betrayal, selfishness and dishonor. I did not. Unfortunately, because of my fear over what people would think, for a long time I allowed my husband’s shame to become my shame. Only a handful of people know what we’ve been going through for the last 22 months. He is ashamed. I’m ashamed. What if people find out? No matter how much I intellectually understood that I am not to blame it was difficult not to feel personal shame. If my own mother’s first thought was to blame me for my husband’s unfaithfulness what will other people think? We live in a new town with new jobs. What if my co-workers find out about his affairs? I couldn’t help but wonder what they would think of not only him but me. How would they judge me? Does my husband’s shame reflect back on me? Reading the AffairRecovery.com Survivors' Blogs and Community Forums I realize that I’m not alone in keeping my husband’s shame to myself. Many people agonize over who to tell. There are many valid reasons to keep the knowledge of an affair to a select few. Rick has a revealing and extraordinarily helpful 4-part series of articles on Social Shame. I encourage the reading of these articles. He points out that shame thrives in secrecy. That’s why the AR Small Groups and Community Forums (available with Recovery Library) are so important. They give you a chance to connect with others going through the same experiences and share your story. In one of his shame articles, Social Shame: Four Ways to Stay in It, Rick points out four responses when a person doesn’t deal with shame. The first is self contempt. We loathe ourselves, blame ourselves. Stop! We need to tell ourselves over and over again that as betrayed spouses we are not guilty! Tell yourself, I have self worth. Repeat it again and again until you believe it to be true. The next response is contempt for others. It may seem easy to belittle our unfaithful spouse, put them down, ridicule them, but in the end this only reflects poorly on us. Stay above this type of behavior. I know that my husband already feels enough guilt and shame. Rubbing his nose in his actions will only delay recovery. The third response to shame is to withdraw from life. If I’m not around others they won’t know my shame. I’ve been guilty of this action. I’ve avoided talking with my family and friends. But withdrawing just makes us lonely. It takes courage to embrace life. You can do it! Get out, engage with people, remember that you are worthy of a beautiful life. The last response that Rick points out when someone is unwilling to deal with shame is avoidance. Have you developed a drug or alcohol problem since D-day to “numb” your pain? Are you engaging in high-risk behaviors? You are only masking your problems, not confronting them. Thanks to Ricks insightful articles, blogs and the AR Community Forums I have discovered since D-day that while my husband’s choices impact me in ways I never could have realized those choices reflect on his character, not mine. The way I’ve handled his betrayal reflects on my character. EMS Online and AffairRecovery.com have helped me realize that my husband’s shame is his and his alone. We are wading through the quagmire of recovery together. We are learning to build a more honest and intimate marriage together. We are in this mess together. But he chose betrayal instead of communication. He chose lies instead of truth. He chose selfishness instead of respect. His shame is because of his actions, not mine. It is his alone. If you’ve bravely chosen to stay in your marriage then don’t hammer your spouse with shame. Recovery is only possible if you both let go of the humiliation and dishonor of betrayal. Remember, recovery is hard enough for both of you without hanging on to shame.

My husband was able to carry out both of his affairs without getting caught for a variety of reasons. First, he’s an accomplished liar. Second, even he says that  I was too trusting. And I was. I just refused to believe that he would ever betray me. Third, we were sleeping in separate beds due to his snoring. That reason, in particular, made it very easy for my husband to sneak out at night to meet his AP. I can honestly say that I never once caught him either sneaking out or sneaking back in. One of the biggest reasons he was able to cheat was the nature of his job. He doesn’t sit behind a desk in an office all day. He’s constantly in and out going to various places to get his work accomplished. So when he told me he had to go to a neighboring town for parts, I didn’t think twice about whether or not he was lying. That was his first affair, if you can call visiting  erotic massage parlors an affair.   At any rate, it certainly was betrayal. Then we moved 1500 miles away and my husband’s next job was the same. He was responsible for quality and safety in a production facility so when he told me he had to train a second shift, I didn’t think twice that he might be lying. When he left the house at 8:00 in the evening it was just part of his job, no big deal. And since we slept in separate rooms I had no idea when he returned. This was his second betrayal. As I look back it’s amazing how many lies I swallowed. Once during the first betrayal and once during the second I suspected something was wrong, but I “knew” in my heart he would never betray me. Yes, I was too trusting and too naive. So now that my husband’s  affairs  have been exposed I’m left with the dilemma of the nature of my husband’s occupation. After D-day we sold our house, moved to another town, and we both found new jobs. But he still doesn’t sit in an office all day. It would be so nice if he did. It would allow me to pop over “unexpectedly” and see how he’s doing. If he stayed in one place I could insist that he call me from the office phone several times a day. If his job didn’t require him to travel all over it would be a lot easier to keep tabs on my unfaithful husband. Enter my iPhone. It has an app called  Find Friends. I Love it! I’m sure the app was made for various reasons, but it helps me immensely.  Once set up all I have to do is search my husband’s location and I know whether or not he’s at work. If he’s elsewhere I can see his location and then call and ask  “Where are you? What are you doing?” I’ll know immediately if he’s telling the truth or not. Unfortunately, this has created a whole new dilemma. Sometimes the app doesn’t work and I stress out. When it fails, I have a bit of a  panic attack wondering where my husband’s at, what he’s doing, who he might be with. Or sometimes the app picks up his location but doesn’t show him traveling so it looks as if he’s stopped in one place when he’s actually driving down the street. Then I really seem to freak out.  Sometimes I feel ashamed when I have to check the app.   After all, I’m spying on my husband. Part of me feels guilty, but only a little part. I’m working on trust but it’s a day to day process. Hence my quandary: to spy or not to spy. Some days I don’t check the app at all. Some days I check several times. I’ve even gone several days in a row without checking. Pat myself on the back! Trust. It used to be so easy for me. Rick says that trusting is a choice. I must choose to trust my husband. But before I can choose trust I must feel safe doing so. It’s my unfaithful husband’s job to not only make me feel safe in our relationship but to also prove that he’s trustworthy. Rick also says that until trust is earned back the unfaithful must replace it with honesty and honest communication. If caught in a lie, even a “little” one, then trust is undermined and safety compromised. My husband has done a surprisingly good job of replacing trust with honesty. But I have to admit that there are lots of times when I have myself a sweet little panic attack and begin to wonder. My dilemma, to spy or not to spy, will probably haunt me for awhile. I’m feeling safer, more secure in our relationship, every day. Trust is creeping back into our marriage. But until it’s back all the way, I enjoy having certain safety mechanisms like “Find Friends” to rely on.  

Dr. Phil has wisely said that children should not be burdened with adult problems. My husband and I have always tried to keep our children out of our marital troubles, as for us, we felt it was paramount. As they were growing up we kept our disagreements about child rearing behind closed doors. We always put on a united front when the children were present and then hashed it out in private. We worked hard to ensure that our children were allowed to deal with childhood issues, not adult problems. That resolve was put to the test on D-day. Our son no longer lives at home but our daughter, 15 at the time, was front and center when my husband’s AP showed up at our house and proclaimed that they had been seeing each other for five months. The AP even brought her eight and nine year old children to the event. All three children saw my horrified reaction. All three children were forced to be a part of the shock and dismay of that day. The AP’s children were a part of the affair, spending time with my husband during those five months knowing he was a married man. They were obliged to come to my home on several occasions as the AP tried to force my husband’s hand in her favor. Our daughter’s reaction on D-day was one of personal horror, intense grief, and great pain. She watched as her father, whom she adored, packed his bags and left to live with his AP. She cried buckets with me, felt pain with me, was destroyed alongside me. But worse, she became a participant in the worst days of my life. It was impossible for me to be strong for her when my own life had been shattered. She worried that I wasn’t eating. She worried that I wasn’t sleeping. She worried that I cried all the time. She would hug me, sit next to me, hold me, watch me from afar and fret over me. My precious daughter had become a not only a spectator but a participant in devastating adult issues. D-day was on a Saturday evening. A week later, on Sunday, my husband came over to take my daughter out to eat. I had seen him a couple of times during that long, hellacious week, but it was the first time my daughter had seen her father. She didn’t want to see him. She didn’t want to go with him. She especially didn’t want to meet the AP, something I forbid anyway. But no matter how much I hated him at that time, I was not going to allow my pain to be transmitted and essentially, destroy her time with her father. During the eleven days my husband was gone from the home, I was convinced I was going to have to start over without him.  Yet, I never once considered taking my daughter and living somewhere far away to keep her from him. My mother wanted me to come live with her, over a thousand miles away. My best friend wanted me to come live near her, another thousand miles away. But I grew up without access to my father and I was not going to place that burden on my daughter.             The problems in our marriage and relationship were ours, not hers. When I told our daughter that my husband was moving back home she was angry with me. He had hurt me and she didn’t want him to hurt me again. He had hurt her and she was angry, even hostile towards him. At that point in time her loyalty was definitely planted firmly in my corner. Over the next few months my husband worked hard to rebuild their relationship. He asked our daughter to forgive him. He worked hard to earn her trust again. But whenever I was having a tough time or I was angry or scared our daughter would ask me why I didn’t just divorce her dad. She felt my pain and her loyalty remained strong. It would have been so easy to cling to my daughter and keep her for myself. It would have been easy to allow my daughter’s pain and anger at her father to cause a rift in their relationship. It would have been so easy, pleasurable even, to bad mouth him to her and turn her heart even further away from him. It would have been easy to use her as a sounding board, making her privy to my private thoughts and pain. But it wouldn’t have been right. It would have been too much for her childlike heart.  She was 15 and while she can be very mature for her age she’s still a child. Even today, coming up on two years later, she still doesn’t know the details of my husband’s affair. She doesn’t know that the AP accused my husband of domestic assault and we had to retain a lawyer to fight for truth. (I can honestly say that in our 26 plus years of marriage he has never raised a hand to me in anger. What’s more, I’ve never even been afraid that he would.) Our daughter doesn’t know that I was tested for sexually transmitted diseases, luckily negative. My daughter doesn’t know that the AP came to our home and I had to all 911 to get her to leave. She doesn’t know so much about that time in our lives. She doesn’t know because she’s still a child and she deserves to worry about teenage problems, not adult issues. I would encourage those going through this awful time to think critically about what messages are being sent to your impressionable children. Betrayal causes so much pain that you may do things you never would have dreamed you were capable of doing. However, I’d like to appeal to you that are suffering today to consider not transmitting your pain to them.  Please don’t compound this pain by projecting adult issues on your children. Please don’t make matters worse for them. I especially encourage you to ensure your children continue in their relationship with both parents, whether together or separate, provided they are ‘safe’ for your children.  Please  do all you can to stay away from bad mouthing the guilty spouse to your kids. As much as you probably want to, please don’t keep your children from the guilty. Don’t talk about your spouse in ear shot of the kids. This is a difficult enough time for all involved without burdening children with issues beyond their years that they don’t have the maturity to understand or process.  It wasn’t always easy to do this, but it was worth it every time I denied myself the opportunity to vent to my kids.  As Dr. Phil advises, let your kids worry about their own issues, not yours. Let them be kids.

I wrote this poem about a year ago when my husband and I were going through the EMS Online course, something which I highly recommend. I can honestly say this course was a marriage saver for us. I wrote it when we were barely six months past D-day. My husband was desperate for forgiveness and affirmation; I was desperate for hope and healing. My desire is that it will bring you some of both. Remember, you are stronger than you think, braver than you believe, and worth more than you feel. Never give up. Bold = Words of the Unfaithful Italic = Words of the betrayed   I Am Love   Will you love me as romance is sprung, When love is easy, fresh and young?             I will love you from the start,             When with our vows you won my heart. Will you love me through and through, When life is thrilling and brand new?             I will love you heart and soul,             When we hold hands and through life stroll. Well would you love me as we age, When life gets harsh and turns a page?             I will love you through the years,             When living life brings joys and tears. And could you love me in the dark, When times get tough and there's no spark?             You have my heart till time stands still,             My love is yours, your wish my will. But now that I have broke your heart, Will you love as from the start? I did not honor, did not forsake, I did betray, your heart did break. Can you love through tears and pain, This worthless shell whose heart is vain? Will your love survive my guilt, When I destroyed the dreams we built?             Oh worthless love you robbed my soul!             You trashed my heart and dealt a blow!             My strength is frail, my spirit low,             Naive was I life brought such woe!             You've caused me pain, you've made me cry,             My days are weary, by night I sigh.             How can I live, how can I trust?             When love is twisted, torn and bust? Please love me now, I beg, I plead! Don't go from me, you're all I need!| Oh please don't leave me in my shame, Without your love, myself to blame!             Love does not burn with the flames,             My love is more than fun and games.             I will love you, this I choose,             Pain will not win, the tears will lose.             My love is strong, it will not bend,             My love will last until the end.             You have my love, you have my heart,             Until the end, Till death us part.             I am love, I am not small,             I am love, I conquer all.