I recently heard from a wife who wrote, in part: “I just found out my husband has been having an affair for six months. Someone else had to tell me. I couldn’t even figure it out myself and didn’t see it.” I thought we had a good marriage. I thought we were happy. I would never have dreamed that he would be unfaithful to me. And I would never have dreamed that he would cheat on me than the woman he did. I feel so stupid. I feel so devastated. I’m totally shocked and I don’t know how to get out of here.”
This email, while heartbreaking, is not that unique, unfortunately. I hear variations on this almost every day. Wives almost always blame and disgust themselves, although none of this is their fault. They cannot and should not take responsibility for the actions of their husbands. And only a fraction of the women whose husbands are having affairs see it coming. Many men in perfectly happy marriages who have perfectly wonderful, caring, and desirable wives are, at least at some point in their marriage, unfaithful. This need not change the way you feel about yourself and your perceived ability to see the reality of the situation.
I know this is an intensely painful situation that can seem like there is no end in sight. But I can tell you from observation and experience that you can overcome this. Many times, it’s tempting to focus on the fact that you were caught off guard rather than where you’re going to go from here. This is an avoidable error that I will talk more about in the next article.
Whose Blame yourself if you were blind. It happens a lot more than you think: It is very rare for me to receive an email from a wife who was actually hoping or anticipating an affair. This is the exception and not the rule. Most of the women who write to me didn’t see it coming at all. They are completely shocked. But please understand that this is not your fault. Almost no one gets married expecting their partner to cheat on them. Furthermore, your thought process did not consider cheating because this is not an action you would take yourself. If you were to approach your marriage with skepticism, suspicion, and doubt, you would be sabotaging it and unable to reverse it completely. Therefore, there is no need to blame yourself now.
And cheating husbands don’t want you to know they’re cheating. They cover their tracks very well. They pretend that everything is fine. They strive to act normal or even better than normal. And, whether you believe it or not, many husbands very sincerely insist that their feelings and love for their wife never changed. This is often the reason why you can feel like you were very happy and in love. you were Your mistake doesn’t mean you’re less desirable. And I’m sure intellectually, you know that. (Look at all the beautiful actresses whose husbands have cheated on them with women who don’t even compare to their wives.) It’s the emotional part of accepting what you know intellectually that’s so hard.
When These Ready to move on, focus not on being surprised by the matter, but on where you go from here: It’s so easy to get hung up on how guilty you were for not seeing this coming. But this is a trial to nowhere. All it does is make you blame yourself, makes sure you stay stuck, and helps keep you unhappy. Sometimes this will get old enough to snap out of it on its own. Other times, you will have to force yourself to focus on other things and move on. No matter how it happens, if you want to get your life back on track and return to a healthy place, you’ll need to shift your focus from the past to the future.
In general, you will know that you are reaching this point when you will start to get angry and upset with the same old thoughts and feelings. Often he will want to change, but is not sure how. The thing is, you can’t change what happened in the past. As unfortunate as it is, it is now a fact. But you have control over your future. It can be a blank slate where you can draw exactly what you want.
You should not continue to punish yourself for your husband’s actions. You cannot control what another person does. What you can control are your own actions. And you can feed yourself with positive affirmations and loving self-care that will eventually influence your thoughts. This is a gradual process and I won’t tell you that it will always be easy because it won’t be. There are some dark days. But, if you can keep gradually moving forward, always moving toward what you know is best for you, and practicing extreme self-care, gradually you will start to feel at least some improvement.
At the end of the day, you have to ask yourself what it is that you really want. Most people will answer this question with some variation of “I just want my life back. I want to be happy again.” Unfortunately, most of us don’t realize that beating ourselves up and focusing on what we did wrong does nothing to help us reach our goals of becoming happy and healthy again. Yeah, it hurts to be caught off guard like this. But you can’t change that look. What is really important is that you recover from this and eventually get over it.
Embrace Restoring Your Confidence and Self-Esteem: I always tell people not to forget to rebuild their confidence. Dealing with an affair is painful and difficult. But what makes it even worse is if you allow it to change the way you feel about yourself. Another person’s actions should not change your view of who and what you are. If so, don’t apologize for doing whatever it takes to restore your sense of self-worth. It is very difficult to heal forever if you have continual self-doubt within your own head and heart.
