It was commonplace that Samantha would ask me a ton of questions about the affair. Did I love her? Was I really trapped? What did we do, how often, when, where, what did you feel? I hated all of it and I’m quite sure she hated it more.

It was very common that during these types of conversations I’d pull back. She called it retreating. I hated to talk about it and hated to recant the details and feelings of my affair(s). I felt horrible. I hated myself, hated what I had done and didn’t want to keep reliving it. Early on, I would hesitantly give details and offered them up somewhat freely as I had to. As we got further along, a few months in, I’d get edgy and irritable when pressed with questions and concerns. Further down the road, after we found Rick, I would gladly offer up details and feelings about the affair and the affair partner, as I knew she needed the information and perspective to heal.

What many betrayed don’t get it is that we the unfaithful, struggle with an immense amount of shame. We just don’t want to talk about things that we’re ashamed of.  We’d almost rather you hit us and took your anger out on us and in turn, we never had to talk about the details ever again. You see, the details make us have to relive what we did and felt, afterwards. It makes us confront the coldness and rebellion of our hearts which allowed us to do what we did. We’re ashamed of the details. We’re ashamed to have to talk about that which we’re ashamed of doing. Talking about it again makes us relive it, and usually we’re not courageous enough to do that. We can’t just ‘put it behind us.’ We can’t just ‘move on’. We then have to relive it and remember the feelings we had immediately after the acts of the affair or addiction which we regret. We hate ourselves all over again.

It’s a fact of life we hate to talk through what makes us feel regret or shame. What we don’t get early on, unless we receive the right help, is that unless we’re able to talk through the details, you the betrayed can’t heal. We don’t know that though. We think we can heal faster if we don’t have to talk about it. It’s not true for you and it’s not true for us. What we need is healing. We need healing and we need forgiveness vertically first, then we can experience horizontal forgiveness after we’ve shared details, come clean and asked for you to forgive us.

We will also share details when we feel safe enough to share them. It’s counterintuitive and if you’re a betrayed, you’re probably already gritting your teeth and clinching your jaw at the fact that YOU would have to create a ‘safe place’ for us to share details. However, offensive as it may appear, the reality is, if we feel like you’re going to rage and blast us verbally or physically once we share the details, we’ll probably lie or not share them. If we feel like once you hear the details you’re going to run from us, we’ll probably hesitate to share any real details. I know, poor us. I agree. If we can’t handle the pain and hurt and consequences, we shouldn’t have committed the offenses. I agree again.

However, we were not thinking clearly when we committed the affair (most times anyway) so now this is a huge deal we didn’t see coming. We hate the consequences to our actions. We didn’t plan for this.

If you want us to share the details, we’ll probably need something from you that goes like this: “I need the details to heal. If you can’t share them with me, we probably can’t heal and you’re throwing away the chance at restoration with your family. I commit to not making any decisions after I hear the details of the affair(s) for 48 hours so I can process them. I’ll even get expert help to be with us ‘during disclosure’ if you like to help you feel safe. Remember, I can’t heal from what I don’t know I need to be healed from. I also can’t forgive what I don’t know I need to forgive.”