Hello. This is Kristin. As an unfaithful spouse, one may argue that the shame I experienced post affair was expected, while unhelpful to my healing. One would expect that I would be feeling shame, guilt after what happened. I had betrayed the trust of my spouse, of my family, my friends, and maybe most importantly, myself. This type of shame is pretty standard.

However, there are two sides to the shame coin equally damaging, but one is much less understood. The shame a betrayed spouse may be feeling is a real and potentially crippling emotion. Thoughts are flying through your head a mile a minute. Why did this happen to me? What is it about me that caused them to cheat? Why was I not enough?

What are people going to think? What could I have done differently? To be clear, I hope you are not feeling this way. But based on my own experience and in speaking with other people, it's likely that you are having these kinds of emotions. We start to doubt ourselves. We thought we knew who we had married and we thought we could trust them.

And now it's all been thrown out the window. We're devastated. And at the same time, embarrassed. Shame is truly an unhelpful, corrosive emotion. Although difficult, no matter what decision we make to forgive or not to forgive, to stay with them or not to stay with them, it will be critical that we need to heal the shame that we've amassed within ourselves due to this ordeal.

So what should we do? The first thing to do is to think about building back trust within yourself. You may be questioning everything right now, and that's completely normal. You're not sure if you can even trust your own decision making. The key is to start building back up trust within yourself. Start by making a list of all the great decisions that you've made.

No matter how small or insignificant they are. The positive reinforcement will help you mentally work through this barrier. Remember you choosing to be trusting isn't a weakness. It's a sign of character and confidence. The second thing that we can do is to find compassion through community. Affairs are extremely prevalent in our society today. Just nobody likes to talk about it.

However, it's important during this time for you to understand that you are not alone. You are not the first spouse to be betrayed, and you certainly will not be the last. Finding community such as here within Affair Recovery or within a therapist group or maybe within a church organization, can be instrumental in helping you work through any shame that you're experiencing.

You'll start to understand that your story is not atypical. Hearing somebody validate your experience and feelings will help you start on the road to recovery. And lastly, and this one is tough. Understanding that they made their own choice. I won't sugarcoat it. This one's really hard, but it's absolutely necessary. During the midst of my affair, I would actually cry thinking about how much I was hurting my spouse, even though he didn't know about it at the time.

I thought about how unfair this was to him and how horrible he would feel if he ever found out. Spoiler alert: he found out and he felt completely horrible. My choice to have an affair was entirely on me. I didn't do it to spite my spouse. I didn't do it because he was lacking. I didn't do it because of him in any way.

Once you become more self-aware, you realize that the lack inside yourself was the reason that you chose to have an affair.

Now, this took me many years, but I can confidently say without a shadow of a doubt that this is the hard and fast truth. The unfaithful spouse's decision to have an affair has nothing to do with you. You were the unintended recipient of the extreme hurt caused by somebody else. It's like being hit by a drunk driver. You did absolutely nothing wrong, and someone else's horrible choice is causing you pain.

Am I saying that makes it okay? No, absolutely not. But please understand, we made our own choices and we did not think about the awful consequences that you would have to endure as a result. I won't pretend that these are easy concepts to apply or that you won't still struggle with shame. You will. All I can say is that I hope in time you regain your ability to trust and to recognize your own value and worth.

And I'll see you next time.