Hello. My name is Candace. Let's spend some time talking today about answering questions. Post D-Day. I know some of you just broke out into a cold sweat. In this post, I will address both the unfaithful and the betrayed when it comes to answering questions. I'll be discussing a few key rules to follow to keep things constructive versus leading to greater destruction.
First to the unfaithful. Allow me to set the scene. You've either confessed to your partner or your partner has discovered your infidelity immediately after. Here comes the onslaught of rapid fire questions which appear to have no end in sight. And these questions are starting to create a shame storm. You feel like you're drowning....
In my years of being a part of Affair Recovery I have had the privilege of mentoring numerous groups of Men through the Harboring Hope program. One of the best parts of this program discusses the 20 Most Common Mistakes of the Betrayed Spouse. Within the groups I lead, and going through this section I have learned that I currently still hold the record for committing the highest amount of the 20 mistakes in my own recovery process. In my case I committed 18 of the 20 mistakes noted.
In this 2-Part Blog I thought I would go into some details of the errors I made and some of the ramifications that occurred. First of all please remember that these are the most COMMON errors. Don’t beat yourself up over these. Recognize that a lot of spouses struggle with these, committed some (or most), and your “score” does not necessarily mean you have failed...
The discovery of infidelity severely disrupts your life. It is a violation unlike any other. Most experts who deal with infidelity say that the betrayed spouse deals with anywhere from 50 to 100 reminders and triggers per day about their spouse's infidelity. But we have a God who is far bigger than our circumstances.
Those of us who have traveled this road...
Hi, my name is Rachel, and I want to talk about why letting others down and disappointing others is a necessary part of your recovery. Now, listen, I know that this seems like a silly topic, and it's not going to be relevant to all of you, but I really wanted to reach out to my sisters and my brothers who do struggle with the idea of letting other people down who hate the idea of disappointing another human who may tend to say yes often. And who have some people pleasing tendencies, but in recovery is a time in which your mental, physical, emotional, spiritual well-being is just kind of in upheaval, right?
I mean, there's just so much going on. Your world has...
The Triggers Song. Triggers - They can be anything and come from anywhere. Triggers rob us of our time, peace, and sometimes sanity. They are real and a very big deal when navigating the recovery journey of cheating/infidelity/affairs.
In this episode Rodney and Angela start by discussing triggers, how they felt them, how they managed them, how they replaced them, and overall how they navigated them in the journey of recovery. Through her testimony and harmony Angela shares this inspiring, encouraging, and even a little fun song.
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...
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...
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