Dealing with Reminders

Back in the mid-eighties, I had a business fail. I guess that's not unusual in the world of business, but it was new to me. In fact, when I went down, I 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.

Thankfully, God was faithful. He 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, it has to do with the impact of the crisis and the process we go through to heal. The pain of infidelity is unmatched in its long-term effects and reoccurring hurt, pain, and trauma. I assure you, there are few things that impact life quite like infidelity, but even so, the impact of financial ruin has a few similarities.

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 worked with or known, I became overwhelmed with palpable feelings of dread, insecurity, and paralyzing anxiety (and I'm normally a person who is emotionally constipated).

There seemed to be reminders everywhere, and I continually had to battle my emotions just to barely be able to function in life's regular 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 on both the betrayed spouse as well as the unfaithful spouse.

Take, for example, the list of practical losses below that 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 crucial for losses to be 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.

But the act of grieving does not resolve the issue of reminders.

So How Do You Resolve It?

How does one move beyond the trauma and position themselves for the potential healing of the relationship?

Long after affairs have ceased, if the betrayer is an addict and has pursued and (hopefully) achieved sobriety from sexual addiction, the battle of the thought life and the impact of raw trauma sets in. In many ways, how they deal with their own recovery will determine how quickly, or if at all, a couple will be able to recover from an affair. At some point, each party has to make a conscious decision to either live in a past hurtful event or recommit to the marriage and focus on the life they can have in the future.

That decision is even more difficult than it sounds because it's not just a matter of a choice, but rather, a battle that must be fought by the will, sometimes over months or even years. It takes a great deal of motivation to be willing to engage in this daily battle of survival, recovery, and transformation after an affair.

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 or movie remarks, or news of someone else's betrayal in the news or on a TV show. Even seeing a couple who seems to be out having a wonderful date can be enough to send the hurt spouse down memory lane, which can easily lead to a painful and emotional remembrance.

For the unfaithful spouse, though, life is also filled with these reminders. Each time their mate says they want to talk, coming home from work not knowing what type of mood their mate will be in, using the home computer, or attending recovery groups and counseling can all serve as reminders that might cause the betrayer to flood mentally and emotionally. This is hard for them too. It is at this point that the battle in the theater of the mind begins. The greatest distance known to mankind is the eighteen inches between the head and the heart. In fact, it takes up to seven years for truth to move from our head to our heart, but for some strange reason it only takes a lie about three seconds to travel the same distance! 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 itself. They must decide that it is not this event 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. The couple must break free from that in order to see what is possible in the future.

Leaving the Old, Pursuing the New

What "was" is now, sadly, gone. True restoration is about the possibility of something new. Though seemingly incomprehensible right now, the fact is that a saved marriage is absolutely possible. I can introduce you to many couples who will testify that their post-affair marriage is actually better than their pre-affair marriage. Our invitation to you and your spouse is to work toward the glory of a restored marriage. It will take effort, struggle, expertise, and tangible grace. However, it will prove more than worth it should both parties remain committed to the process; and trust me, recovery is a process. More than likely, your situation didn't develop overnight, and it will not be fixed overnight either. There is a hope that transcends the very heartache and hopelessness you are feeling right now. I hope and pray that you will soon be able to feel this hope.

If you are the unfaithful spouse, you might find it useful to ask your spouse to make a long list of reminders that they could have on any given day which send them to their personal house of torment. Your understanding of their struggle might 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. You'll know when the time is right. When possible, be willing to fight the battle by attempting to focus on what is good and pure and noble instead of focusing on the failure. Counterintuitive to what we may feel about life, as we work through our own recovery, we can find meaning in the suffering. We can allow the suffering to provide a richness to life that we never knew existed. It's my hope that you can turn the worst thing that has ever happened to you into the best.