For most of us, whether we are betrayed or unfaithful, thinking back to D-day conjures vivid images of shock and horror, feelings of shame and disbelief, and a period of suspended animation. We recall falling off the edge of the world as we knew it and into a pit of numbness and despair. I remember too. It took the breath right out of me.
As painful as that experience was, looking back I have a different perspective on D-day. I see it as the day my husband finally let me in. Despite shattering my world, he finally gave us a chance to truly know each other and the potential to experience unconditional love. Prior to D-day that was not possible. He had been hiding from me, wearing a mask, keeping his secret and shutting me out. I was married to someone I did not really know. That was not fair to either of us, and would never have allowed us to be real in our marriage and realize our true potential....
Part 1: Understanding the Paralysis of it Part 2: Have you Been Dishonored? Part 3: Surviving Infidelity Isn't Enough Part 4: Four Ways to Stay in it
This week I'd like to take a closer look at a common obstacle to recovery: Shame. If you've been unfaithful, the appropriate question probably isn't, "Are you dealing with shame," but more aptly, "How are you handling the shame of it all?" If you've been betrayed and your spouse seems extremely uncooperative or ambivalent, your spouse may be feeling imprisoned by shame and not even realize it.
It's...
4th Annual Hope Rising Conference Watch On Demand!
A clumsy work ethic by the unfaithful provides little hope, stability or evidence that the unfaithful really wants the relationship. It provides even less hope and motivation for the betrayed to do the work necessary to try and reconcile. Interviewing and talking to betrayed spouses over decades has revealed...
The absolute last thing anyone needs after the personal discovery or experience of infidelity is more shame and isolation. However, two of the most commonly experienced emotions after infidelity has been discovered are both paralyzing shame and decimating isolation. At affairrecovery.com, we use this phrase quite often: “everyone says what they will do when infidelity happens... until it actually happens.” It’s just not that easy to make a decision. After all, you could be giving your unfaithful partner a chance to wreck your heart and life all over again. Conversely, you could be missing out on a potentially wonderful miracle of restoration that changes your lives, and the lives of witnesses to your marital reconciliation, forever. These decisions cannot be made in a vacuum of inexperience, primitive coping mechanisms, and outright ignorance....
Intimacy avoidance remains one of the most challenging aspects of both short-term and long-term recovery from an affair. Whether four months into repair work or four years in, the couple that remains impinged by intimacy avoidance struggles to gain any lasting momentum at all. Without a strategic, infidelity-specific plan to address both the infidelity and the intimacy avoidance, ultimate failure remains a potential and quite tangible outcome for the relationship. The good news is, intimacy avoidance can be addressed, managed, and healed while the overall cause for infidelity in the relationship can be additionally treated. For many, understanding the cause of infidelity remains a unicorn that is seldom found, discussed or remedied. With expert help from both survivors and multi-certified experts, these challenges no longer present the...
Part 1: The Darkness that Nearly Swallowed Me Up Part 2: Finding My Way Out Of The Dark
Warning - this post is about self-harm and suicidal thoughts and may be intense or triggering. If you need help, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, available 24 hours, at 800-273-8255 or https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/.
If you are reading this, you fully understand there is nothing quite like the feeling of unravelling after D-day. I felt that too. After the numbness and disorientation subsided, the searing pain was constant. There was no reprieve. Day and night, this obliterating pain and confusion was derailing...
"Will my marriage or relationship ever be the same again?" This is one of the most common questions when a couple enters a therapist's office, wondering if they can actually survive infidelity. There are no easy answers, but there is tangible hope when the right guidance and pathways are provided to couples in crisis. While infidelity is extremely traumatic for a marriage, it doesn't have to be the end, or figuratively cremate the relationship while the couple makes mistake after mistake wondering why nothing is working. It is vital that both partners are willing to do the work to heal, from either their own mistakes, or the mistakes of their spouse. "This is your problem... so you are going to do the work and I'm not doing anything" speaks to the pain of the betrayed, but does not remedy the palatable trauma lurking in the heart and mind of...
Harboring Hope Registration Opens Soon!
In the fall of 1980, I took a course on problem solving at the University of Denver. At the time, I found it difficult to believe there was enough material to teach about this subject to warrant a three-hour course. In hindsight, however, it was one of...
Psalm 139:14 I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well.
I have always considered myself a fairly even-keeled person. I am normally logical and practical. My kids (all boys) commented over the years that they thought it was weird to...
"Can a marriage recover from an affair" is one of the most popular questions we are asked at affairrecovery.com. The answer is a resounding YES, if both parties are willing to do the work and commit to the process. Today, Alumnus Samuel shares practical and refreshing insight into answering that question, and how to do it. Rebuilding a marriage that has been ransacked by infidelity or addiction is no easy task, but it IS possible, when both parties have a proven blueprint for their own individual work, as well as that of the relationship. Upon early repair efforts, couples can become frustrated, angry and slip into a tangible hopelessness. Enter outside advisors who've never been through infidelity before, or well-meaning friends and family who often give unsolicited, unproved advice, and it's a recipe for disaster. After an affair, couples...
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