Back in the mid-eighties, I had a business fail. I guess that’s not unusual in the world of business, but it was new to me. In fact when I went down, I went down big.  I lost just about everything as I desperately tried to save the business. I spent our savings, our retirement, even borrowed money, all in an attempt to hold out until the market turned.

The only problem was, the market never turned so we ran smack dab into financial ruin.

It was so bad, that as a family of five, we actually qualified for food stamps. You might be able to go lower than we did, but that’s about as low as I ever want to go. Thankfully, God was faithful and met our needs and took us in a new direction. As usual, he was able to take the worst thing that ever happened to us, and make it the best.

Now you may be wondering why I’m sharing this story, or what this has to do with surviving an affair, but I have discovered that almost every crisis has stinging parallels.  How we respond has little to do with the type of crisis, but rather the particular impact of the crisis that we have to deal with and process.  I assure you, there are few things that impact life quite like infidelity, but financial ruin has a few similarities.  After careful reflection, the pain of infidelity is unmatched in its long term effects and reoccurring hurt, pain and trauma.

Emotional Flooding

From my financial crisis I began to notice some interesting responses, hopefully you can relate to them as you are dealing with betrayal. Every time I encountered a reminder of my business, I experienced an emotional firestorm. Each time I drove by a location where I had worked I would emotionally flood. If I ran into someone with whom I had previously had dealing, I became overwhelmed with palatable feelings of dread, insecurity and paralyzing anxiety (and I’m normally emotionally constipated).

There seemed to be reminders everywhere and I continually had to battle my emotions just to barely be able to function in regular life responsibilities.

Itemizing the Losses

The trauma experienced by a couple upon the revelation of a betrayal is no small matter and it creates an emotional firestorm that has to be dealt with by both parties in order to eventually recover.  To be sure, the initial stage of recovery is about grieving. For the hurt spouse the pain of the many losses is in no uncertain terms, overwhelming. Oddly enough, identifying the losses can be a tool to actually work through them and diffuse their impact upon both the betrayed spouse as well as the unfaithful spouse. 

Take for example the list below of practical losses a betrayed spouse feels:

• The loss of self-confidence
• The loss of the life they thought they had
• The loss of their dreams
• The loss of security
• The loss of their belief about who their mate was
• The loss of the future which seemed so certain
• The loss of innocence
• The loss of reputation

And…..the list goes on and on and on. 

It’s pivotal that losses are identified and grieved.  These stages of both loss and grief, simply stated, cannot be avoided.  There will be anger, bargaining, and depression, but ultimately if the right help is utilized and acquired, there comes a point where we find meaning and acceptance in what has occurred.

The act of grieving does not however resolve the issue of reminders.

But How Do You Do It?

How does one move beyond the trauma and possibly back into relationship after an appropriate amount of time?

Long after affairs have ceased and if the betrayer is an addict and had to pursue and hopefully achieve sobriety from sexual addiction, the battle of the thought life and the impact of raw trauma sets in. In many ways, dealing with betrayal is the struggle that will determine how quickly (or if at all) a couple will be able to recover from an affair. Each party has to make a conscious decision at some point along the way to either live in a past hurtful event or to recommit to the marriage and focus on what can be.

That decision is even more difficult than it sounds because it’s not just a matter of a choice, but rather it is a battle that has to be fought by the will, often for a period of months (usually about 18 to 24 months).  This journey of recovery and transformation takes a great deal of motivation to be willing to engage in this daily battle of surviving an affair. If however, the betraying spouse is still not safe, as I’ve said before, forgiveness may be found, but not reconciliation. While forgiveness is a must and is a gift we give ourselves, the time may not be right for reconciliation, or even the initial pursuit of such reconciliation.

Tangible Occurrences

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

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

Leaving The Old, Pursuing The New

Restoration is never about going back to what ‘was’ as what ‘was’ is now, sadly enough, gone. True restoration is about the possibility of something new, and though seemingly incomprehensible right now, the fact is, a saved marriage is, absolutely possible. I can introduce you to many who will testify that their post-affair marriage is actually better than their marriage was pre-affair. Our invitation to you and your spouse is the glory of a restored marriage which will take effort, struggle, expertise, and tangible grace.  However, it will prove more than worth it should both parties remain committed to the process. Trust me, recovery is a process. More than likely your situation didn’t develop overnight and will not be fixed overnight, yet there is a hope that transcends the very heartache and hopelessness you may be facing now.

If you are the unfaithful spouse, you might find it useful to both you and your spouse, to list out 40 reminders that your mate could have on any given day which could send them down the path to their personal house of torment. Your understanding of their struggle, or at the very least, the pursuit of understanding their struggle and sharing of that insight, might just go a long way in helping your spouse to heal. If you are the hurt spouse and you believe your mate is becoming a safe person and has moved into recovery, then choosing to no longer be a victim of painful reminders would be an excellent step toward health. When possible, be willing to fight the battle by attempting to focus on what is good and pure and noble rather than focusing on the failure. Counterintuitive to what we may feel about life, as we walk out our own recovery, we can find meaning in the suffering we are faced with, allowing that suffering to provide a richness to life and a redefining of life we never knew existed. It’s my hope you too can one day see the opportunity for what was the worst thing that ever happened to you, eventually becoming the best.  I encourage you to consider our EMS Weekend.  After completion of the weekend, you’ll walk away with not only a protocol for reminders but a strategic plan on how to minimize any further collateral damage.  New life is available for you in even the toughest of situations.