During his affair, when faced with hard questions about his relationship with the AP, my husband lied. Every. Single. Time. After D-day when I asked him about that, he acknowledged he feared if he ever admitted the truth he would lose me, so he resigned to take the truth to his grave. When I asked how he could lie to my face during all those years even after the affair ended, his explanation was pretty simple. He said he knew if he played dumb and consistently denied everything, the conversation would end and we could go back to “normal” relatively quickly. In his mind, that meant very little disruption to our life. However, he definitely wasn’t thinking about why I kept asking those questions all those years, and what kind of turmoil I was in to continue to bring it up. He was just thinking about saving himself, preserving the marriage...
Keyword definitions:
Shame: a self-perception of being unacceptable that overwhelms the nervous system when triggered by emotional distress. Shame is associated with judgment, comparison, social isolation, impaired empathy, and self-harm.
Guilt: an experience of regret or remorse that can lead the individual to take reparative actions for their behavior. Guilt is associated with sadness, repair, and is relational by nature.
"I just want to talk about the affair, but you just get angry at me or dismiss what I am going through."
"I just want to talk about what I'm feeling, but it is...
My emotional walls went up when his affair began, and had been reinforced from all the deception and mistrust. There was no easy way to sandblast them down; instead, they were chipped away as trust was built - trust in him and trust in myself. I didn’t trust myself anymore after having “allowed” everything that happened. I felt stupid and weak for not having done more to catch him in his lies, stop the affair, and protect myself. His repeated false reassurances (more on those later) only reinforced the walls.
I felt very guilty about this for a long time. He demonstrated in many ways that he is now a very trustworthy man. So I shamed myself for not just dropping my defenses, but it didn't matter - I just couldn’t let him get too close. I was continually guarded, waiting for the next shoe to drop. If it took so long...
View Part 1 here.
Hi, I'm Rachel, and this is part two of my series around caring for your body during your recovery from infidelity/cheating, which is an essential but often overlooked part of this journey. In the last video, I talked about the impact of stress and trauma on our bodies and how it can throw everything from our appetite to our sleep patterns to our immune systems off the rails.
Today in part two of this video series, I want to share specific ways and easy tips for caring for yourself and supporting your body during this difficult time.
I can remember in the days, weeks, and months after my D-Day just how badly...
To fully comprehend infidelity, we must acknowledge and understand many different influential components, not the least of which is secrecy. Secrecy plays a huge role in the wayward spouse's absence of guilt when violating commitments or morals. "No blood, no foul," right? When people pursue a course of action that benefits them but harms others, they try to minimize the consequences or altogether avoid looking at the harm they've caused. If minimization fails to work, then they will distort the consequences or choose not to believe the evidence. "As long as the harmful results of one's conduct are ignored, minimized, distorted, or disbelieved, there is little reason for self-censure to be activated."1
It takes a brave stubbornness to stay the course of truly believing you will never...
Imagine you walk in the door to your house. You hear a noise coming from upstairs… sounds like chewing and tearing. You go to investigate and discover the source of the sound is your dog eating your brand-new shoes! You give your dog the appropriate scolding and send him on his way while you survey the damage to your kicks. Your dog gives you the saddest puppy eyes as he skulks from the room.
Fast forward a few hours… your dog is cozied up next to you on the couch while you watch your favorite television programs. At bedtime, he takes his prized position at the foot of your bed when you settle in for the night. You give him a loving pat on the head and wish him a good night, as is your routine every...
Let’s talk today about recovery work, what it looks like, and why it’s so darn important.
I’m going to give it to you straight…I’m going to assume if you’re reading this article or watching this video, that either you, or your partner, pulled a pin, and tossed a grenade into your life. You’re standing in the rubble, assessing the damage, wishing, hoping, praying, this was all just a nightmare. I’ve been there….and I know…. It’s a living hell.
The crushing reality is that the trauma that has been caused by infidelity isn’t just a jail sentence that we can just wait out until the crippling pain and anger subside.
The passing of time, in itself, isn’t enough to combat the magnitude of what we’re...
Discovery of your spouse's affair or sexual addiction usually triggers a tidal wave of intense emotions. After the initial shock and confusion, most betrayed spouses struggle for quite some time to regain control over the turbulent emotions brought on by intrusive thoughts and reminders. In fact, Patrick Carnes, a pioneer in the treatment of sexual addiction, says that infidelity can be as traumatic as sexual assault.
When recovering from infidelity, it's important to understand how and why the experience changes our brain and our behavior. I'd like to talk about what betrayal trauma might look like for both the betrayed and the wayward spouses and how this shared trauma can result in unhelpful patterns—sometimes called trauma bonds.
The trauma from betrayal creates the same symptoms as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD...
Because the body is (at least in part) the location of our trauma—the body must also be a location of healing.
~Aundi Kolber
About a year after discovering my husband's affair, my body started to capsize under relentless waves of sickness. An illness would hit. I'd recover and feel decent for a few months. Then, another surge of sickness would seek to drown me again.
My husband had betrayed me, but now my body seemed to be doing the same.
I began to understand firsthand that infidelity's impact on a person could be more nuanced and complex than I had initially realized. The thing was,...
Post infidelity, I found myself in a new world filled with all sorts of triggers. Not only would reminders from my marriage and husband trigger me, but I was also triggered by reminders of my AP.
One notable occasion was a breakdown at a diner. The waitress asked, "what type of toast would you like? We have white, wheat, rye, and sourdough." Sourdough bread. Did she just mention sourdough bread? Memories related to sourdough bread rush to the forefront of my mind. Immediately, I'm cascading down a shame and grief spiral and can no longer hear what the waitress is saying, let alone respond. My mood instantly turns dark, and I am flooded with negative thoughts. I'm quickly reminded of the tumultuous ocean my life has become since D-Day; the pain so great that I'm unsure how to continue to bear it....
