A Conversation: Perspective of the Unfaithful Partner
Listen to a conversation between two men (myself and Doug) who talk about how an affair is experienced from the unfaithful partner's perspective. We try to address some of the primary questions often asked by those who have been wounded by an affair.
Listen to the Audio (or read the transcript below):
Listen to the Audio (or read the transcript below):
More about Doug...
Doug and his wife, Linda, use their own recovery to encourage others in affair healing. You can find out more about them and check out their website at emotionalaffair.org.
Doug and his wife, Linda, use their own recovery to encourage others in affair healing. You can find out more about them and check out their website at emotionalaffair.org.
Note: The transcript was edited to make it more readable (since we don't always speak as well as we write, or listen the same way we read).
Doug: Hello everybody, this is Doug with The Emotional Affair Journey and today I have the pleasure to be talking to Tim Tedder who is a licensed mental health counselor, a nationally certified counselor, and owner of Currents Counseling in Winter Park, Florida. Tim, how are you doing today?
Tim: I'm doing good, Doug.
Doug: Good. I want to thank you for joining me today.
Both Tim and I are men who, in the past, were unfaithful in their marriages. Tim has used that experience to propel him into the mental health field.
I’ve got some questions [about unfaithful partners] that have been asked of me in the past, and I'm sure they've been asked of Tim in the past. Tim does that sound good?
Tim: Sounds good. I'm ready.
Doug: Alright. If you could, just give us a real brief history about what happened in your situation. I know it was about 20 years ago; maybe just a real quick history and then we'll go from there.
Tim: Yeah, it was about 20 years ago, after over 16 years of marriage, 5 children. I had never had an affair in my marriage before. I was that guy that would never do that. In fact, if you had said to me a couple of months before the affair started that I would cheat on my wife, I would have said, “That's never going to happen.” And yet it did.
When it did, I dove right into it. It became full blown: emotional, sexual, everything. I became a liar. I became all the things I thought I’d never be.
It was surprising to me how easily and naturally it seemed to happen. Probably two months into the affair, it was discovered, and that led to all kinds of devastation. Sadly, my story took me to such brokenness that my wife divorced me. It was only on the other side of all that brokenness that I started figuring my stuff out.
I was able to eventually experience healing. People around me encouraged me to take what I had learned and help others, and that's what I've been doing for the past years.
Doug: It's amazing how when you hit your lowest point things start to change; you start to figure things out and say "Hey, I better get going here or I’m going to lose it."
Tim: I had a user on my web site say, "How can you help people when your own marriage didn't work out?" I replied, "Well, that's exactly why I'm trying to help people." I wanted someone in my life who would do what I'm trying to do for people now, but I didn't have that. So, I'm hoping to help people avoid some of the regrets that I faced.
Doug: And that's some of the reason why we started what we were doing. When I had my affair, Linda was searching like a mad woman, getting on the Internet, trying to find something from an experienced perspective. I'm sure there were things out there at the time, but she just couldn't find them. That's the reason we started doing what we we’re doing, too.
What you mentioned earlier leads into the first question we seem to get a lot: How does a good, moral man, a seemingly normal person with good values, wind up in an affair?
Tim: I think that's very confusing, especially to friends and family. In my own situation it was so confusing and people wanted a decisive answer to that question so much that they started reaching conclusions that provided black-and-white solution for them. Some of them just assumed, "Well I guess this is the way Tim’s always been. He's probably had affairs before."
But that wasn't the case. I was basically a truthful man. I was not given to lying, I was not given to cheating, and yet it happened seemingly so easily.
I think it's [confusing] because it's not primarily a rational choice. I still held to the things I always believed, but it was an emotional choice for me. All that stuff that I believe, all of those moral choices that had to do with character and values… in the years leading up to the affair, I really hadn’t been attentive to those things. I think my moral foundation, if you want to call it that, became a bit weak. But you don't realize it until it's tested with something that comes along, like the temptation for an affair relationship. I just crumbled beneath it.
On the other side of the affair devastation, I came back to those things that I always held as the true values. But in the moment of the affair my choices were exactly the opposite.
Doug: So did yours develop over time or was it a fairly quick reaction?
Tim: It started as a work relationship, a friendship, someone that was attractive to me. But it wasn't just the fact that she was an attractive woman. I had been around attractive women before, but I think that was a time in my life when my need for being valued, being appreciated, was especially acute. She fed all of that, and I was hungry for it.
The friendship became an emotional connection that was very unhealthy. Once the line was crossed, when I declared my feelings and she reciprocated, it moved quickly into a physical and sexual relationship as well.
Doug: My situation was somewhat similar as far as how it took off. When I look back at it, I realize I had no boundaries at all; not boundaries that a married individual should have, anyway. I allowed myself to be sucked into the flirting and texting and calling. It grew from there. It might have had to do with my lack of self esteem issues and need for having my ego stroked and think that "Hey, I'm almost 50 and still got it."
Tim: One of the things that I had to be very honest about was this: even though I had never had an affair before, I know that I would look for [emotional connection with other women] in ways that even my wife recognized and said, "I'm not comfortable with that," but I would excuse it away.
So, on one hand people saw me as a man with a particular strong moral character, and yet these broken parts of me, when significantly tested, just crumbled underneath me. It became easy to fall into the choices I made.
Doug: Now, would you say at the time that you realized all of this or did you have other reasons going in your mind: "Okay, my wife is not paying any attention to me, things are boring" that kind of thing? Is that what led you to not so much look for an affair but be vulnerable to one?
Tim: Yes. I think of the circumstances of my life: I didn't feel greatly fulfilled in my marriage, I had stresses at work, other circumstances that were frustrating and unfulfilling. It was the perfect storm of need and longing, and this relationship felt like the affirming, feel-good place to rest for a while. Once I was willing to step into it, it became a passionate pursuit. It felt like the thing I deserved.
When held up in comparison to my marriage, I started to think "Yeah, my marriage has probably always been a sham; maybe we never should have been married in the first place." All the stuff I hear from clients now, I desperately believed them to be true. But I don't think they were. Those beliefs came out of brokenness, not from a healthy place in me.
Doug: Exactly. You mentioned your clients. Would you say that this is a similar type of justification that you hear from your clients as well?
Tim: In many cases, yes. There are a lot of different reasons people step into an affair, but those areas of unaddressed brokenness, or need, or longing become the place where some make profoundly unhealthy choices that affect their future and their relationships. So, yes, it's a pretty common scenario that I see in both men and women.
Doug: And I don't know how long your typical client relationship is but in your own situation, how long after all of this occurred did you finally come to the realization that it had nothing to do with your marriage or your wife?
Tim: Well, this is going to be discouraging to some listeners but for me it was probably near the 3 year mark. Every story is different, every individual is different, every relationship and marriage that comes to me for help is different.
There are some people that come to that realization much more quickly. Honestly, I think if I had had the right kind of people speaking into my life I would have been able to come to that more quickly as well, But it was nearly 3 years before I came to that breaking point of realizing "Oh, this has much more to do with me than my marriage or my wife."
Doug: That leads into the next question that a lot of people seem to ask. People who are just discovering an affair and trying to get through the initial weeks or months, often feel that the affair was all about them. "What did I do wrong? Wasn't I good enough? How could you do this to your family? How can you give up everything for this other person?"
But the affair really isn't about them in those cases. Like we just said, it's about us.
I know in my case, I really had no thought at all that I was hurting my family, or that she was more important than Linda, or anything like that. It was just all about the feeling at the time, the selfishness of what was in it for me, and the ego stroking that I was getting. Did you experience something similar?
Tim: Yes. I which I could reach into the brain of betrayed partners and infuse them with the truth instead of the painful lies that are so easy to hold on to: "I'm not good enough. There is something wrong with me. What did I do to cause this? Why can't I measure up to the partner?"
I had a client email me last night to tell me her husband was overtly saying "This woman gives me better sex than you have ever given me, makes me happier than I've ever been with you" and down the list, tearing her down. She’s left to wonder, "Why am I such a bad person?" But that's a lie coming out of his brokenness.
It's very difficult, when you're betrayed and dealing with all the pain, to separate those messages coming to you from the real truth. It takes time and courage, but you have to stop listening to the affair partner as if they're speaking the truth to you. It is not the truth.
Doug: But yet they feel that it's the truth a lot of times.
Tim: Of course. I felt believed the lies were true, too. I was absolutely convinced.
I don't know about you, Doug, but I was very aware of affair stories before, in other families, in other couples, but I just believed that I was one of the exceptions… that I had finally found “that thing.” Did you experience the same?
Doug: Oh, yeah. “My affair is going to be different. All those other affairs, they never worked but mine will.” I think that's a common song that plays in the affair partner's mind. They think this is the affair to end all affairs. And, statistically speaking, that certainly isn't the case. And it wasn't in my case, either. But sometimes it takes a while to come to that realization.
Tim: Right. When I think back, I cringe at some of the things I said to my wife, the way I behaved in front of her, the comparisons I made. I remember a time that I was actually crying in front of my wife because I missed the other woman. It's a huge regret that I carry with me, but in the moment it felt so real.
Doug: Changing direction just a little bit... a lot of times we see is that eventually the affair gets discovered. They almost always do. At that point in time the cheater has a decision to make. Sometimes they make the decision to end the affair; sometimes they don't.
But we often see ambivalence, or a kind of fence-sitting where the unfaithful partner won't make a decision between the affair partner or the spouse. Why is that so difficult? Is there anything that can be done about that, or does it just have to play out? Why does the unfaithful spouse get to that point? What can their spouses do?
Tim: I was the fence-sitter. I wanted two things. One one side was the moral foundational part of me (the history that I had with my family, with my wife, the children we had, that sense of rightness) pulled me back to my marriage. The idea: Maybe we can find our way to love each other again. I don't know if that's true but, theoretically, maybe it's possible.” And then, on the other side of the conflict, there was a powerful emotional connection that I had that felt like nothing I’d ever experienced before. It was a battle.
Once that conflict starts, once you've got a fence-sitter, there's potential for it to be a long drawn-out, dangerous scenario unless something happens. Sometimes it does have to play out, but I think the work that has to be done is in the heart and the mind of the unfaithful spouse.
I'll go back to my experience… When my wife was really making an effort, sometimes out of anger, desperation, or fear, to convince me to make the choice for the marriage and for her, my reaction was usually, "What a desperate woman you are." It was one of pity. It didn't draw me in. I'm not judging her for that; was a bad person, but still, that was the real reaction I experienced.
I can remember two instances when my wife stood on the other side of the room and said to me honestly, "I want our marriage. I want us to work. But Tim, you need to understand that if you choose this affair I'm going to be okay. I'm going to move on." When she spoke like, I felt something of respect; something in me that was drawn to her.
Each time an attempt was made to make me change my mind, to try to convince me, I reacted against it. But I felt something different whenever I saw that strength of separation, "I want you to come back to us but I'm going to take care of myself and our family if you choose not to do that." There was something pretty powerful in that message.
That's a message that I try to pass on to betrayed partners now: This choice is theirs, you can't make it for them. In fact your best strategy right now is to be very honest with them, but give them space to make their choice and work on your own healing.
Doug: What your ex-wife said to you is almost word for word what Linda said to me. They must have read the same book, or something. When she said that to me, that was the switch that turned on in my head and caused me to end things with the other partner.
Even when I made that decision, it still took me a little bit of time to end things completely. I felt like I didn't want to hurt the other person, so I thought I had to let her down easy. It played out longer than it should have.
But I think Linda and I both learned. You read about people who have all these mental tricks and manipulations they talk about to try to force the unfaithful partner to end their affair. But sometimes it's best to back off and let them go through their own process; let them make their own decisions and let the pain play out.
Tim: That's a very risky choice for the betrayed spouse to make, and I know. The fear is that they're just going to leave. That's always a possible choice.
The unfaithful spouse needs to come to the place where this condition of coming back to the marriage is something that comes from the inside out, not something that is being forced on them from the outside in. That really does make a tremendous difference in the way recovery and restoration happens.
Doug: Absolutely. One of the biggest problems we run up against is that the unfaithful just do not want to talk about the affair, "It's over, let's move on, let's get on with our life and I don't want to talk about it."
Let's address what that mindset, then maybe we can touch on what the betrayed spouse can do to motivate their spouse to talk and open up. I'll start this one off.
I've never been good with confrontation, first of all. Obviously, when you're talking about the affair, there is going to be confrontation. I just didn't want to deal with that.
Also, there are so many lies go on during the affair that you realize that rehashing things over again that may expose more lies, may expose additional feelings and thoughts that weren't expressed before.
Plus, dealing with the affair was starting to wear on me. Having Linda find out was kind of a relief, so I felt like I was done. I'd been living it and going through it, but now it was over.
But for Linda the pain was just new. She had just found out. She was just now experiencing it, but I was just too stupid to realize that. I didn’t give her the empathy and love and respect that I should have given at the time; I just wanted to move on and not talk about it.
One other thing that was an issue was many of our discussions evoked a lot of anger, a lot of emotion. It's not something anyone really wants to go through, so you throw up your fight-or-flight reflex of act out of instinct. It took us a long time to learn good communication so we could talk through things.
They were mostly my issues and my problems, but Linda also had to learn what my hot buttons were. She had to figure out how to talk to me in ways that would encourage me to open up and not be fearful of consequences or battles.
That's my story in a nutshell. Anything similar for you?
Tim: Especially at the beginning the request to have conversation about it, I was resistant. Shame was a huge reason for me, which tends to be quite a trigger especially for men. "I don't want to talk about my failure, I don't want to be reminded of those things. I'd rather just say 'I'm sorry' and be able to move on."
I needed to learn how to become vulnerable when talking about those areas of brokenness and need in my life. For me, that's where healing started: instead of avoiding that stuff, becoming willing to sit with it and have conversation about it. But it took me a while to get there.
Once I got to the place where I the process of healing had taken over, that resistance to conversation broke down in me. Not that I was excited to talk about my affair, but I realized it was something that was necessary for my children and for my wife, and so it changed.
I do think there were things I didn't want to talk about because I didn't want to hurt my wife. Some of the details, I know, were going to be hurtful so I'd rather just keep quiet about it, not have to talk about it, maybe even lie about it because I didn't want to cause any more pain. But the weird thing is is that you have to be willing to be honest so that they can forgive and learn to trust you again. But that sure wasn't making sense in my brain at the time.
Doug: Yeah, I forgot to mention that as well. That certainly was the case for me too. I didn't understand Linda's need to want to know all sorts of things when I knew it would just hurt her like crazy. So I held that stuff back, but eventually it became clear: the need to be fully honest was paramount.
Tim: I don't think a couple has to have counseling in order to survive an affair, but it can be of tremendous help. And in this one area, I would encourage people to really seek out someone they trust. It might be a religious leader, a counselor, a trusted wise friend, but they should find someone to help them navigate the way questions are asked and pushing for honesty. Couples sometimes end up doing more damage as they fight this fight of questions and answers.
Doug: Right. In our case we didn't go to counseling initially and I'm sure that would have helped and provided us with some kind of communication rules and guidelines and things of that nature so absolutely. Is there anything you think the betrayed partner can do to motivate or help the conversation along? That can help the unfaithful person open up? Anything that you can suggest?
Tim: Well, my advice would probably be different based on the circumstances of that couple’s unique story at the time and how invested the betrayed partner is in that moment (if they're working on the marriage, or if they're still in the confused state, or whatever). Basically, I encourage betrayed spouses to figure out what it means for them to move toward their spouse lovingly and honestly.
Now, that's hard for a person who has been betrayed to hear. Sometimes they can't even do that because they have to sit back and lick their wounds. If someone is in a state or trauma, I'm don’t push them toward connect with their spouse, but moving toward connection is as important for the betrayed spouse to do as it is for the unfaithful partner to do.
The intent is to move toward the other, lovingly but honestly; not in an attempt to change the betrayer, not to convince them to change their mind, but out of a sense of strength to say, "I want our marriage. I'm willing to invest in this. I'm willing to do what needs to be done. There are things I need from you, and I invite you to the process." Then let them make that choice without feeling the pressure of it.
Doug: Do you feel that a lot of times the unfaithful partner doesn’t want to talk because of the fighting and arguing? Do you think there's an importance of having a safe environment? Maybe that goes back to seeking counseling. That's part of that safe environment: establishing communication rules that can help the affair person feel safe.
Tim: When an affair first comes out, it's almost out of control; there is too much emotion going on. What's going to happen is going to happen. But as you settle down from that and figure, "What do we do now?" I do think it can be beneficial if the betrayed spouse can try to control the way they regulate the questions. A constant barrage of questions tires everybody. Becoming more intentional and specific about how much they ask and when they ask it can be helpful.
If there's a willingness to work on the marriage, always affirm: "Listen, I want to move toward forgiveness and I'm willing to move toward that. But in order for me to get there, I need you to be invested in it and I need to understand what has gone on here. You've got it all figured out. You lived it. It's a big blur to me. I need you to be willing to be honest enough and vulnerable enough to be honest with me about this. And I'm telling you, I'm willing to work through it. I can't think of anything right now that I'm not willing to forgive, but you're going to have to just trust me whether I can or not. But in order for me to forgive it, I've got to understand it. In order for me to trust you again, I've got to know that you're willing to risk being honest with me." That's a message a lot of the betrayed spouses are going to have to hear a number of times before they're willing to risk stepping in that direction. But it needs to happen.
Doug: Excellent. Obviously in affairs, feelings develop between the affair partners. One of the questions we get is why can it be so hard for the unfaithful partner to let go of those feelings for the other person and make a commitment back to the marriage? In your own situation, it sounded like there were some feelings that developed for the other person. Were you able to get passed those fairly quick after the affair ended?
Tim: No. We were found out about two months into the affair and after the discovery, I never expected my marriage to fall apart. I never intended to leave my family and be with the other woman. On the other side of the discovery my intent was "I've got to fix this; I've got to put my marriage back together again."
I've never been addicted to anything in my life; I don't tend to have that personality. But my emotional connection to the other woman... even though I look back on it now and can admit I didn't love her (I didn't fall in love with her in just two months), it was such a rush. The infatuation, all that stuff that feels romantic and sexual, was so heightened; my brain was firing with all kinds of stuff. It was like a drug. It was a genuine battle inside me.
Unfortunately, I didn't have the people around me that understood that. I was given a "You just have to let go of that; it wasn't real. It's just a fantasy, so move on." I couldn't. I had to figure this out and I think that because I wasn't allowed to really process that in a way that was helpful (I was just told to bottle it up and ignore it), the longing for it remained.
Several months later, my wife got angry. She came across something that she honestly misunderstood but thought it was an indication that I was still in the affair. I wasn't, but she got mad and she said "I'm leaving for the weekend, you need to be out of here when I get back." I don't know if she really meant that, but I used that as my opportunity to go back and see if this woman was still available. The affair started up again.
From that point on, I started to grow in love with the other woman. It wasn't love before, but it started turning into that. It was a powerful hook that I didn't know at the time how to get untangled from.
Doug: I don't know if you mentioned it before but eventually that affair came to an end, correct?
Tim: Yes, it did.
Doug: How did you get outside of that addiction if you will? Was there any one specific light bulb that went off, or was it just a matter of time?
Tim: Well, there were two things for me. And again, I think good healthy counseling or input can really facilitate a faster process than this. But I was figuring it out on my own.
There were two things that began to changed. One was simply time. As time went on the powerful pull of that affair started settling down to what felt more normal. I sometimes felt disappointment with the other woman. All of that stuff that starts to happen in real relationships began to happen in the affair.
But there were also changes going on in me that were more private and personal... the beginning of my awareness of need and brokenness in my life. At that point I began to realize, rather quickly, that my view of my marriage, which had become very negative, and my view of the affair relationship, which had become that fantasy thing, were wrong. My issues had much less to do with those two women or the circumstances and a lot more to do with the stuff that was going on in me, stuff that I desperately needed to figure out.
That's a hard place to bring people to if they’re not used to thinking that way. It's especially hard when a person tells themselves, "I don't want to think about that this other thing I’m doing right now feels so good." There are very few arguments that are going to win in that scenario.
If someone is that hooked in and drawn that powerfully into an affair relationship, the best thing you can do is to declare your intent, declare your love, declare your willingness to work on recovery, then establish boundaries and leave them to make the choices they're going to make. That's a hard choice to make, but if that had been done to me I probably would have come to conclusions much more quickly.
Doug: That seems to be a common problem that we see quite a bit. The unfaithful person continues to have these feelings for the other person and just won't let them go. Especially when the affair seems to end abruptly.
Tim: When they're caught.
Doug: Right, when they're caught and they say "Okay, it's over, that's it." And I guess two things happen, generally. They do end it and they try to recommit, but there's still those feelings there for the other person; it just sends them underground. They sneak around and find ways of contacting.
I may be in the minority, but once I did decide to end it that was it, and I haven't had any contact since. Not having contact is probably the main element in my own situation that helped me get over any kind of feelings that I had relatively quickly.
Tim: Right. Once contact is finally broken, as difficult as that is, the feeling—that emotional tethering—will begin to thin out and diminish and go away. If I'm working with a couple now and that connection is not diminishing, then I suspect that there is still some sort of secret communication or connection going on. There almost always is. In the cases where the ongoing connection isn’t obvious, I just figure: well, you haven't found it, but the communication is probably still there.
Doug: When I'm mentoring people, I'm almost hesitant to tell that to people. But when someone is telling me "Oh, he just won't get over it, I think he's just wrapped up in guilt, he just can't do this and that, " I say, "I think there's probably something still going on there." 9 times out of 10, that is the case.
Once someone is able to let go of any feelings for the other person, the next question is how about rediscovering the love again for their partner? I know your marriage unfortunately didn't survive. I'm sure there were some realizations that came to you after that, but I guess from more of a professional experience. What would you tell a couple as far as how they can work to rediscover their love for one another? What's your experience as far as the probability of that happening?
Tim: Let me say something about my marriage because people often ask, "Do you think if you understood then what you understand now—if someone had helped you like you're trying to help other people—do you think your first marriage could have survived?" My answer to that: knowing my ex-wife and knowing our relationship, yes, I think it could have not only survived but it would have become something much different than it was before.
And that always needs to be the goal. It's not just: how do we get back to something it was before? It's never going to be that again. An affair changes your story. It changed my story. But then it became about "How do I learn from this?"
My ex-wife and I have talked a lot about this. We've talked about it with our children. She and I have even cooperated on television shows that have told our story, so I think it's certainly something that's possible. But in order to do that there has to be a willingness not only to address what's necessary in healing the affair or in making a better marriage, but to ask more fundamental questions like, "What do we both learn from this that helps us become the persons we want to be, and love in way that we want to love? How do I move toward making that kind of change in my life and then in my marriage and in my family? How do I become a person who is consistently moving toward that mark?”
When I began to understand that and see what the healthy me looked like, I started practicing becoming that person. In my marriage now, I’m discovering that emotional connection I've always wanted. It comes as I exercise those “becoming” parts of me.
The connection isn’t coming because I finally found my soul mate. I have as many challenges and problems in my marriage this time around as I did before. It's not that I finally found the perfect person; it's that I’m learning to be a man who really loves this woman well and being vulnerable enough to deal with my issues. As I do those things, I experience an intimacy and connection that I never really understood before.
It's a process; it takes time. It takes a lifetime, but it's exciting when it starts to happen. I think that's the hope for every marriage: that we can move on from this. It's always going to be a part of our story, there's always going to be a twinge of pain, but grace allows even that pain to be a part of our story. It says "Look who we've become on the other side of this."
Immediately after affair discovery, you feel so hopeless, you feel so separate. But what it can look like a year down the road… you and Linda can tell a story that's much different than the story you told before the affair happened.
Doug: That's great. It seems both you and I have been able to get to the point where we've had introspection. We’ve been able to sit down, figure our stuff out, do some thinking, and realize what we've done wrong.
But how did we get to that point? What was the turning point to where you were able to say "Gee, this is messed up. I really need to figure myself out"? Because we hear from a lot of people that "My husband doesn't want to do the work necessary to figure out why he did what he did." That's basically how they put it.
So how do we get to that point where we have the motivation and desire to sit down and really figure out why we did what we did and no longer blame our spouses or blame the other person?
Tim: Well, I'm guessing this about you, as it was with me: part of that came from something that was already in us. In other words, when I'm dealing with someone that has a whole history of never being able to connect in a healthy way with other people, and maybe a pattern of lying or cheating, my hope for them being able to get there is greatly diminished. But in most cases people have an understanding of what a healthy relationship feels like.
For me, I had to get the place where I felt the pain of my choices. And it wasn't just one thing that got me there. It was a series of events that all came together, culminating at a party for one of my daughters. In that social gathering, I become very aware of how much my world had changed and how different it was from what I had once dreamed and expected. I felt so distant and isolated from the life I thought I would have and what my relationships would look like. I left that party feeling all that. Something happened during that night.
I woke up the next morning and it all came crashing in. Something broke in me. It doesn't happen that way for everybody but the thing that is essential is I felt very aware of my brokenness and very aware of the cost of what I had done.
Some people who are on the other side of the affair working on their marriages may not fully understand that about themselves. It still may be a process that continues to build in them. But I think it's very important that the unfaithful person be willing to consider that pain, understand it, and deal with it. At that point, I was really motivated to make changes in my life.
Doug: In my situation, we got to the point in our relationship where Linda was just kind of stuck. Basically, we were both stuck as far as being able to move on with things after the affair. She didn't understand why it happened and I wasn't communicating why it happened very well because I really didn't know myself at that time.
I guess a bolt of lightening hit me and said "Your marriage isn't going to make it unless you figure things out here and get your butt in gear." So I just had to start putting the work in and doing a lot of soul searching and thinking and came up with a better understanding of why it happened. We talked about it and things went from there. But until the pain of the affair, and whatever consequences were a result of the affair, get to the point where it gets too uncomfortable. Sometimes it's difficult for people to take the time with the pain, to really look within and try to figure things out, but it's something that has to be done. It really does.
Tim: Betrayed spouses tend to either help or hinder that process. I think sometimes they hinder it by trying to control the outcome or sometimes even accommodate the affair. It's surprising how many spouses, even though they're hurt and they're angry, will cover for their unfaithful partners, allowing them to continue the affair and still come home. They try to keep the family and the house as normal as possible, while the unfaithful spouse continues to choose the affair partner.
You've got to, out of love, establish boundaries so they begin to experience what their choices really cost them. Stop covering for them, stop lying for them, stop pretending that the marriage is normal or that nothing has really changed. Help them experience the cost of the choices they're making. Not in a manipulative way, but in a way that's loving and caring, strong and honest. I think sometimes that can be helpful.
Doug: Absolutely. We've got one more question and this is the one that always remains deep within some of the betrayed partners and that is how do they really know that we're not going to cheat again?
Tim: How do you know that, Doug?
Doug: I guess you could say I've learned my lesson. You learn so much when you go through this, about yourself and about your partner and about life and about marriage and relationships.
I know that Linda is the love of my life and I would never hurt her again. The pain that I caused is not anything I want to do again or put Linda through.
I also learned boundaries, I've learned healthy ways to develop self esteem and to do the things that are important for me. But it's just one of those things: I know it will never happen.
From Linda's standpoint, she either has to trust it or she will always have that question in the back of her mind. But I think we're to the point where she knows it's not going to happen again. She has told me that she is sure that I would never do it again. It’s good to know that she trusts me again.
Tim: And that came over time I'm sure.
Doug: Oh, absolutely. It's nothing that happened too quickly and certainly my actions at the beginning were not trustworthy. I had to prove by my actions over time. How about you?
Tim: I think it's a great question and I'll tell you, when I stood and made my vows to be faithful in my first marriage, I absolutely meant it. 100%.
Doug: Sure.
Tim: When I broke that vow… forget whether other people could trust me or not; I was struggling with how do I ever trust myself again? I couldn't have been more firm and more committed to a promise than I was then, so how can I can make a promise to any other woman again and be sure that I'm going to be faithful to her? It's a great question; one I wrestled with.
I'm married to a woman who is partners with me here in the counseling practice. She came out of a previous marriage to a spouse who had multiple affairs and she vowed she would never date a man who had ever been a cheater. So our own story is interesting. But her assurance and my assurance now have less to do with the words of promise that I make (even though they're sincere, and I do promise her I am going to be faithful to her) and more to do with that ongoing commitment to be a man who is learning how to love well.
When we get upset with each other, disappoint each other, or hurt each other, and she sees the consistent way I move to come back, do the repair work, and vulnerably reconnect with her—and she does that to me—that's how we learn to trust. And by the way, that wasn't normal in my first marriage. I'd hide from that kind of vulnerability.
That gives her certainty and, frankly, gives me certainty, too, because I know I'm a man who is loving differently than I did before. I'm so passionate about wanting to be that person for my wife and for my children and for my friends that there's not room for an affair. So that's my assurance that an affair is not going to happen again...
I want to be an encouragement to individuals or couples who are listening to this who maybe feel a real sense of hopelessness or confusion, that on the other side of this there is hope for something better and something different. Not every relationship survives. Frankly, there are some that probably shouldn't survive an affair. But usually those are the relationships that have a history of this sort of thing going on.
If you have a history in the relationship of love and commitment and trust, then it's always worth doing the work to find that again. And again, the real promise is not only can you find recovery back to something you had, but something that becomes something much different and, in some ways, deeper.
You know, the way grace works in a relationship and in our lives is sometimes a very amazing thing. So I'm committed to helping couples find that, or helping individuals when a partner isn't involved.
Doug: Awesome. Great pleasure talking to you today, Tim. I appreciate it very much. And I'm sure that the listeners will get a lot of value out of the things that you've said so hopefully we can do this again sometime, maybe on a different topic. I appreciate it very much.
Tim: Likewise Doug, thank you.
Tim: I'm doing good, Doug.
Doug: Good. I want to thank you for joining me today.
Both Tim and I are men who, in the past, were unfaithful in their marriages. Tim has used that experience to propel him into the mental health field.
I’ve got some questions [about unfaithful partners] that have been asked of me in the past, and I'm sure they've been asked of Tim in the past. Tim does that sound good?
Tim: Sounds good. I'm ready.
Doug: Alright. If you could, just give us a real brief history about what happened in your situation. I know it was about 20 years ago; maybe just a real quick history and then we'll go from there.
Tim: Yeah, it was about 20 years ago, after over 16 years of marriage, 5 children. I had never had an affair in my marriage before. I was that guy that would never do that. In fact, if you had said to me a couple of months before the affair started that I would cheat on my wife, I would have said, “That's never going to happen.” And yet it did.
When it did, I dove right into it. It became full blown: emotional, sexual, everything. I became a liar. I became all the things I thought I’d never be.
It was surprising to me how easily and naturally it seemed to happen. Probably two months into the affair, it was discovered, and that led to all kinds of devastation. Sadly, my story took me to such brokenness that my wife divorced me. It was only on the other side of all that brokenness that I started figuring my stuff out.
I was able to eventually experience healing. People around me encouraged me to take what I had learned and help others, and that's what I've been doing for the past years.
Doug: It's amazing how when you hit your lowest point things start to change; you start to figure things out and say "Hey, I better get going here or I’m going to lose it."
Tim: I had a user on my web site say, "How can you help people when your own marriage didn't work out?" I replied, "Well, that's exactly why I'm trying to help people." I wanted someone in my life who would do what I'm trying to do for people now, but I didn't have that. So, I'm hoping to help people avoid some of the regrets that I faced.
Doug: And that's some of the reason why we started what we were doing. When I had my affair, Linda was searching like a mad woman, getting on the Internet, trying to find something from an experienced perspective. I'm sure there were things out there at the time, but she just couldn't find them. That's the reason we started doing what we we’re doing, too.
What you mentioned earlier leads into the first question we seem to get a lot: How does a good, moral man, a seemingly normal person with good values, wind up in an affair?
Tim: I think that's very confusing, especially to friends and family. In my own situation it was so confusing and people wanted a decisive answer to that question so much that they started reaching conclusions that provided black-and-white solution for them. Some of them just assumed, "Well I guess this is the way Tim’s always been. He's probably had affairs before."
But that wasn't the case. I was basically a truthful man. I was not given to lying, I was not given to cheating, and yet it happened seemingly so easily.
I think it's [confusing] because it's not primarily a rational choice. I still held to the things I always believed, but it was an emotional choice for me. All that stuff that I believe, all of those moral choices that had to do with character and values… in the years leading up to the affair, I really hadn’t been attentive to those things. I think my moral foundation, if you want to call it that, became a bit weak. But you don't realize it until it's tested with something that comes along, like the temptation for an affair relationship. I just crumbled beneath it.
On the other side of the affair devastation, I came back to those things that I always held as the true values. But in the moment of the affair my choices were exactly the opposite.
Doug: So did yours develop over time or was it a fairly quick reaction?
Tim: It started as a work relationship, a friendship, someone that was attractive to me. But it wasn't just the fact that she was an attractive woman. I had been around attractive women before, but I think that was a time in my life when my need for being valued, being appreciated, was especially acute. She fed all of that, and I was hungry for it.
The friendship became an emotional connection that was very unhealthy. Once the line was crossed, when I declared my feelings and she reciprocated, it moved quickly into a physical and sexual relationship as well.
Doug: My situation was somewhat similar as far as how it took off. When I look back at it, I realize I had no boundaries at all; not boundaries that a married individual should have, anyway. I allowed myself to be sucked into the flirting and texting and calling. It grew from there. It might have had to do with my lack of self esteem issues and need for having my ego stroked and think that "Hey, I'm almost 50 and still got it."
Tim: One of the things that I had to be very honest about was this: even though I had never had an affair before, I know that I would look for [emotional connection with other women] in ways that even my wife recognized and said, "I'm not comfortable with that," but I would excuse it away.
So, on one hand people saw me as a man with a particular strong moral character, and yet these broken parts of me, when significantly tested, just crumbled underneath me. It became easy to fall into the choices I made.
Doug: Now, would you say at the time that you realized all of this or did you have other reasons going in your mind: "Okay, my wife is not paying any attention to me, things are boring" that kind of thing? Is that what led you to not so much look for an affair but be vulnerable to one?
Tim: Yes. I think of the circumstances of my life: I didn't feel greatly fulfilled in my marriage, I had stresses at work, other circumstances that were frustrating and unfulfilling. It was the perfect storm of need and longing, and this relationship felt like the affirming, feel-good place to rest for a while. Once I was willing to step into it, it became a passionate pursuit. It felt like the thing I deserved.
When held up in comparison to my marriage, I started to think "Yeah, my marriage has probably always been a sham; maybe we never should have been married in the first place." All the stuff I hear from clients now, I desperately believed them to be true. But I don't think they were. Those beliefs came out of brokenness, not from a healthy place in me.
Doug: Exactly. You mentioned your clients. Would you say that this is a similar type of justification that you hear from your clients as well?
Tim: In many cases, yes. There are a lot of different reasons people step into an affair, but those areas of unaddressed brokenness, or need, or longing become the place where some make profoundly unhealthy choices that affect their future and their relationships. So, yes, it's a pretty common scenario that I see in both men and women.
Doug: And I don't know how long your typical client relationship is but in your own situation, how long after all of this occurred did you finally come to the realization that it had nothing to do with your marriage or your wife?
Tim: Well, this is going to be discouraging to some listeners but for me it was probably near the 3 year mark. Every story is different, every individual is different, every relationship and marriage that comes to me for help is different.
There are some people that come to that realization much more quickly. Honestly, I think if I had had the right kind of people speaking into my life I would have been able to come to that more quickly as well, But it was nearly 3 years before I came to that breaking point of realizing "Oh, this has much more to do with me than my marriage or my wife."
Doug: That leads into the next question that a lot of people seem to ask. People who are just discovering an affair and trying to get through the initial weeks or months, often feel that the affair was all about them. "What did I do wrong? Wasn't I good enough? How could you do this to your family? How can you give up everything for this other person?"
But the affair really isn't about them in those cases. Like we just said, it's about us.
I know in my case, I really had no thought at all that I was hurting my family, or that she was more important than Linda, or anything like that. It was just all about the feeling at the time, the selfishness of what was in it for me, and the ego stroking that I was getting. Did you experience something similar?
Tim: Yes. I which I could reach into the brain of betrayed partners and infuse them with the truth instead of the painful lies that are so easy to hold on to: "I'm not good enough. There is something wrong with me. What did I do to cause this? Why can't I measure up to the partner?"
I had a client email me last night to tell me her husband was overtly saying "This woman gives me better sex than you have ever given me, makes me happier than I've ever been with you" and down the list, tearing her down. She’s left to wonder, "Why am I such a bad person?" But that's a lie coming out of his brokenness.
It's very difficult, when you're betrayed and dealing with all the pain, to separate those messages coming to you from the real truth. It takes time and courage, but you have to stop listening to the affair partner as if they're speaking the truth to you. It is not the truth.
Doug: But yet they feel that it's the truth a lot of times.
Tim: Of course. I felt believed the lies were true, too. I was absolutely convinced.
I don't know about you, Doug, but I was very aware of affair stories before, in other families, in other couples, but I just believed that I was one of the exceptions… that I had finally found “that thing.” Did you experience the same?
Doug: Oh, yeah. “My affair is going to be different. All those other affairs, they never worked but mine will.” I think that's a common song that plays in the affair partner's mind. They think this is the affair to end all affairs. And, statistically speaking, that certainly isn't the case. And it wasn't in my case, either. But sometimes it takes a while to come to that realization.
Tim: Right. When I think back, I cringe at some of the things I said to my wife, the way I behaved in front of her, the comparisons I made. I remember a time that I was actually crying in front of my wife because I missed the other woman. It's a huge regret that I carry with me, but in the moment it felt so real.
Doug: Changing direction just a little bit... a lot of times we see is that eventually the affair gets discovered. They almost always do. At that point in time the cheater has a decision to make. Sometimes they make the decision to end the affair; sometimes they don't.
But we often see ambivalence, or a kind of fence-sitting where the unfaithful partner won't make a decision between the affair partner or the spouse. Why is that so difficult? Is there anything that can be done about that, or does it just have to play out? Why does the unfaithful spouse get to that point? What can their spouses do?
Tim: I was the fence-sitter. I wanted two things. One one side was the moral foundational part of me (the history that I had with my family, with my wife, the children we had, that sense of rightness) pulled me back to my marriage. The idea: Maybe we can find our way to love each other again. I don't know if that's true but, theoretically, maybe it's possible.” And then, on the other side of the conflict, there was a powerful emotional connection that I had that felt like nothing I’d ever experienced before. It was a battle.
Once that conflict starts, once you've got a fence-sitter, there's potential for it to be a long drawn-out, dangerous scenario unless something happens. Sometimes it does have to play out, but I think the work that has to be done is in the heart and the mind of the unfaithful spouse.
I'll go back to my experience… When my wife was really making an effort, sometimes out of anger, desperation, or fear, to convince me to make the choice for the marriage and for her, my reaction was usually, "What a desperate woman you are." It was one of pity. It didn't draw me in. I'm not judging her for that; was a bad person, but still, that was the real reaction I experienced.
I can remember two instances when my wife stood on the other side of the room and said to me honestly, "I want our marriage. I want us to work. But Tim, you need to understand that if you choose this affair I'm going to be okay. I'm going to move on." When she spoke like, I felt something of respect; something in me that was drawn to her.
Each time an attempt was made to make me change my mind, to try to convince me, I reacted against it. But I felt something different whenever I saw that strength of separation, "I want you to come back to us but I'm going to take care of myself and our family if you choose not to do that." There was something pretty powerful in that message.
That's a message that I try to pass on to betrayed partners now: This choice is theirs, you can't make it for them. In fact your best strategy right now is to be very honest with them, but give them space to make their choice and work on your own healing.
Doug: What your ex-wife said to you is almost word for word what Linda said to me. They must have read the same book, or something. When she said that to me, that was the switch that turned on in my head and caused me to end things with the other partner.
Even when I made that decision, it still took me a little bit of time to end things completely. I felt like I didn't want to hurt the other person, so I thought I had to let her down easy. It played out longer than it should have.
But I think Linda and I both learned. You read about people who have all these mental tricks and manipulations they talk about to try to force the unfaithful partner to end their affair. But sometimes it's best to back off and let them go through their own process; let them make their own decisions and let the pain play out.
Tim: That's a very risky choice for the betrayed spouse to make, and I know. The fear is that they're just going to leave. That's always a possible choice.
The unfaithful spouse needs to come to the place where this condition of coming back to the marriage is something that comes from the inside out, not something that is being forced on them from the outside in. That really does make a tremendous difference in the way recovery and restoration happens.
Doug: Absolutely. One of the biggest problems we run up against is that the unfaithful just do not want to talk about the affair, "It's over, let's move on, let's get on with our life and I don't want to talk about it."
Let's address what that mindset, then maybe we can touch on what the betrayed spouse can do to motivate their spouse to talk and open up. I'll start this one off.
I've never been good with confrontation, first of all. Obviously, when you're talking about the affair, there is going to be confrontation. I just didn't want to deal with that.
Also, there are so many lies go on during the affair that you realize that rehashing things over again that may expose more lies, may expose additional feelings and thoughts that weren't expressed before.
Plus, dealing with the affair was starting to wear on me. Having Linda find out was kind of a relief, so I felt like I was done. I'd been living it and going through it, but now it was over.
But for Linda the pain was just new. She had just found out. She was just now experiencing it, but I was just too stupid to realize that. I didn’t give her the empathy and love and respect that I should have given at the time; I just wanted to move on and not talk about it.
One other thing that was an issue was many of our discussions evoked a lot of anger, a lot of emotion. It's not something anyone really wants to go through, so you throw up your fight-or-flight reflex of act out of instinct. It took us a long time to learn good communication so we could talk through things.
They were mostly my issues and my problems, but Linda also had to learn what my hot buttons were. She had to figure out how to talk to me in ways that would encourage me to open up and not be fearful of consequences or battles.
That's my story in a nutshell. Anything similar for you?
Tim: Especially at the beginning the request to have conversation about it, I was resistant. Shame was a huge reason for me, which tends to be quite a trigger especially for men. "I don't want to talk about my failure, I don't want to be reminded of those things. I'd rather just say 'I'm sorry' and be able to move on."
I needed to learn how to become vulnerable when talking about those areas of brokenness and need in my life. For me, that's where healing started: instead of avoiding that stuff, becoming willing to sit with it and have conversation about it. But it took me a while to get there.
Once I got to the place where I the process of healing had taken over, that resistance to conversation broke down in me. Not that I was excited to talk about my affair, but I realized it was something that was necessary for my children and for my wife, and so it changed.
I do think there were things I didn't want to talk about because I didn't want to hurt my wife. Some of the details, I know, were going to be hurtful so I'd rather just keep quiet about it, not have to talk about it, maybe even lie about it because I didn't want to cause any more pain. But the weird thing is is that you have to be willing to be honest so that they can forgive and learn to trust you again. But that sure wasn't making sense in my brain at the time.
Doug: Yeah, I forgot to mention that as well. That certainly was the case for me too. I didn't understand Linda's need to want to know all sorts of things when I knew it would just hurt her like crazy. So I held that stuff back, but eventually it became clear: the need to be fully honest was paramount.
Tim: I don't think a couple has to have counseling in order to survive an affair, but it can be of tremendous help. And in this one area, I would encourage people to really seek out someone they trust. It might be a religious leader, a counselor, a trusted wise friend, but they should find someone to help them navigate the way questions are asked and pushing for honesty. Couples sometimes end up doing more damage as they fight this fight of questions and answers.
Doug: Right. In our case we didn't go to counseling initially and I'm sure that would have helped and provided us with some kind of communication rules and guidelines and things of that nature so absolutely. Is there anything you think the betrayed partner can do to motivate or help the conversation along? That can help the unfaithful person open up? Anything that you can suggest?
Tim: Well, my advice would probably be different based on the circumstances of that couple’s unique story at the time and how invested the betrayed partner is in that moment (if they're working on the marriage, or if they're still in the confused state, or whatever). Basically, I encourage betrayed spouses to figure out what it means for them to move toward their spouse lovingly and honestly.
Now, that's hard for a person who has been betrayed to hear. Sometimes they can't even do that because they have to sit back and lick their wounds. If someone is in a state or trauma, I'm don’t push them toward connect with their spouse, but moving toward connection is as important for the betrayed spouse to do as it is for the unfaithful partner to do.
The intent is to move toward the other, lovingly but honestly; not in an attempt to change the betrayer, not to convince them to change their mind, but out of a sense of strength to say, "I want our marriage. I'm willing to invest in this. I'm willing to do what needs to be done. There are things I need from you, and I invite you to the process." Then let them make that choice without feeling the pressure of it.
Doug: Do you feel that a lot of times the unfaithful partner doesn’t want to talk because of the fighting and arguing? Do you think there's an importance of having a safe environment? Maybe that goes back to seeking counseling. That's part of that safe environment: establishing communication rules that can help the affair person feel safe.
Tim: When an affair first comes out, it's almost out of control; there is too much emotion going on. What's going to happen is going to happen. But as you settle down from that and figure, "What do we do now?" I do think it can be beneficial if the betrayed spouse can try to control the way they regulate the questions. A constant barrage of questions tires everybody. Becoming more intentional and specific about how much they ask and when they ask it can be helpful.
If there's a willingness to work on the marriage, always affirm: "Listen, I want to move toward forgiveness and I'm willing to move toward that. But in order for me to get there, I need you to be invested in it and I need to understand what has gone on here. You've got it all figured out. You lived it. It's a big blur to me. I need you to be willing to be honest enough and vulnerable enough to be honest with me about this. And I'm telling you, I'm willing to work through it. I can't think of anything right now that I'm not willing to forgive, but you're going to have to just trust me whether I can or not. But in order for me to forgive it, I've got to understand it. In order for me to trust you again, I've got to know that you're willing to risk being honest with me." That's a message a lot of the betrayed spouses are going to have to hear a number of times before they're willing to risk stepping in that direction. But it needs to happen.
Doug: Excellent. Obviously in affairs, feelings develop between the affair partners. One of the questions we get is why can it be so hard for the unfaithful partner to let go of those feelings for the other person and make a commitment back to the marriage? In your own situation, it sounded like there were some feelings that developed for the other person. Were you able to get passed those fairly quick after the affair ended?
Tim: No. We were found out about two months into the affair and after the discovery, I never expected my marriage to fall apart. I never intended to leave my family and be with the other woman. On the other side of the discovery my intent was "I've got to fix this; I've got to put my marriage back together again."
I've never been addicted to anything in my life; I don't tend to have that personality. But my emotional connection to the other woman... even though I look back on it now and can admit I didn't love her (I didn't fall in love with her in just two months), it was such a rush. The infatuation, all that stuff that feels romantic and sexual, was so heightened; my brain was firing with all kinds of stuff. It was like a drug. It was a genuine battle inside me.
Unfortunately, I didn't have the people around me that understood that. I was given a "You just have to let go of that; it wasn't real. It's just a fantasy, so move on." I couldn't. I had to figure this out and I think that because I wasn't allowed to really process that in a way that was helpful (I was just told to bottle it up and ignore it), the longing for it remained.
Several months later, my wife got angry. She came across something that she honestly misunderstood but thought it was an indication that I was still in the affair. I wasn't, but she got mad and she said "I'm leaving for the weekend, you need to be out of here when I get back." I don't know if she really meant that, but I used that as my opportunity to go back and see if this woman was still available. The affair started up again.
From that point on, I started to grow in love with the other woman. It wasn't love before, but it started turning into that. It was a powerful hook that I didn't know at the time how to get untangled from.
Doug: I don't know if you mentioned it before but eventually that affair came to an end, correct?
Tim: Yes, it did.
Doug: How did you get outside of that addiction if you will? Was there any one specific light bulb that went off, or was it just a matter of time?
Tim: Well, there were two things for me. And again, I think good healthy counseling or input can really facilitate a faster process than this. But I was figuring it out on my own.
There were two things that began to changed. One was simply time. As time went on the powerful pull of that affair started settling down to what felt more normal. I sometimes felt disappointment with the other woman. All of that stuff that starts to happen in real relationships began to happen in the affair.
But there were also changes going on in me that were more private and personal... the beginning of my awareness of need and brokenness in my life. At that point I began to realize, rather quickly, that my view of my marriage, which had become very negative, and my view of the affair relationship, which had become that fantasy thing, were wrong. My issues had much less to do with those two women or the circumstances and a lot more to do with the stuff that was going on in me, stuff that I desperately needed to figure out.
That's a hard place to bring people to if they’re not used to thinking that way. It's especially hard when a person tells themselves, "I don't want to think about that this other thing I’m doing right now feels so good." There are very few arguments that are going to win in that scenario.
If someone is that hooked in and drawn that powerfully into an affair relationship, the best thing you can do is to declare your intent, declare your love, declare your willingness to work on recovery, then establish boundaries and leave them to make the choices they're going to make. That's a hard choice to make, but if that had been done to me I probably would have come to conclusions much more quickly.
Doug: That seems to be a common problem that we see quite a bit. The unfaithful person continues to have these feelings for the other person and just won't let them go. Especially when the affair seems to end abruptly.
Tim: When they're caught.
Doug: Right, when they're caught and they say "Okay, it's over, that's it." And I guess two things happen, generally. They do end it and they try to recommit, but there's still those feelings there for the other person; it just sends them underground. They sneak around and find ways of contacting.
I may be in the minority, but once I did decide to end it that was it, and I haven't had any contact since. Not having contact is probably the main element in my own situation that helped me get over any kind of feelings that I had relatively quickly.
Tim: Right. Once contact is finally broken, as difficult as that is, the feeling—that emotional tethering—will begin to thin out and diminish and go away. If I'm working with a couple now and that connection is not diminishing, then I suspect that there is still some sort of secret communication or connection going on. There almost always is. In the cases where the ongoing connection isn’t obvious, I just figure: well, you haven't found it, but the communication is probably still there.
Doug: When I'm mentoring people, I'm almost hesitant to tell that to people. But when someone is telling me "Oh, he just won't get over it, I think he's just wrapped up in guilt, he just can't do this and that, " I say, "I think there's probably something still going on there." 9 times out of 10, that is the case.
Once someone is able to let go of any feelings for the other person, the next question is how about rediscovering the love again for their partner? I know your marriage unfortunately didn't survive. I'm sure there were some realizations that came to you after that, but I guess from more of a professional experience. What would you tell a couple as far as how they can work to rediscover their love for one another? What's your experience as far as the probability of that happening?
Tim: Let me say something about my marriage because people often ask, "Do you think if you understood then what you understand now—if someone had helped you like you're trying to help other people—do you think your first marriage could have survived?" My answer to that: knowing my ex-wife and knowing our relationship, yes, I think it could have not only survived but it would have become something much different than it was before.
And that always needs to be the goal. It's not just: how do we get back to something it was before? It's never going to be that again. An affair changes your story. It changed my story. But then it became about "How do I learn from this?"
My ex-wife and I have talked a lot about this. We've talked about it with our children. She and I have even cooperated on television shows that have told our story, so I think it's certainly something that's possible. But in order to do that there has to be a willingness not only to address what's necessary in healing the affair or in making a better marriage, but to ask more fundamental questions like, "What do we both learn from this that helps us become the persons we want to be, and love in way that we want to love? How do I move toward making that kind of change in my life and then in my marriage and in my family? How do I become a person who is consistently moving toward that mark?”
When I began to understand that and see what the healthy me looked like, I started practicing becoming that person. In my marriage now, I’m discovering that emotional connection I've always wanted. It comes as I exercise those “becoming” parts of me.
The connection isn’t coming because I finally found my soul mate. I have as many challenges and problems in my marriage this time around as I did before. It's not that I finally found the perfect person; it's that I’m learning to be a man who really loves this woman well and being vulnerable enough to deal with my issues. As I do those things, I experience an intimacy and connection that I never really understood before.
It's a process; it takes time. It takes a lifetime, but it's exciting when it starts to happen. I think that's the hope for every marriage: that we can move on from this. It's always going to be a part of our story, there's always going to be a twinge of pain, but grace allows even that pain to be a part of our story. It says "Look who we've become on the other side of this."
Immediately after affair discovery, you feel so hopeless, you feel so separate. But what it can look like a year down the road… you and Linda can tell a story that's much different than the story you told before the affair happened.
Doug: That's great. It seems both you and I have been able to get to the point where we've had introspection. We’ve been able to sit down, figure our stuff out, do some thinking, and realize what we've done wrong.
But how did we get to that point? What was the turning point to where you were able to say "Gee, this is messed up. I really need to figure myself out"? Because we hear from a lot of people that "My husband doesn't want to do the work necessary to figure out why he did what he did." That's basically how they put it.
So how do we get to that point where we have the motivation and desire to sit down and really figure out why we did what we did and no longer blame our spouses or blame the other person?
Tim: Well, I'm guessing this about you, as it was with me: part of that came from something that was already in us. In other words, when I'm dealing with someone that has a whole history of never being able to connect in a healthy way with other people, and maybe a pattern of lying or cheating, my hope for them being able to get there is greatly diminished. But in most cases people have an understanding of what a healthy relationship feels like.
For me, I had to get the place where I felt the pain of my choices. And it wasn't just one thing that got me there. It was a series of events that all came together, culminating at a party for one of my daughters. In that social gathering, I become very aware of how much my world had changed and how different it was from what I had once dreamed and expected. I felt so distant and isolated from the life I thought I would have and what my relationships would look like. I left that party feeling all that. Something happened during that night.
I woke up the next morning and it all came crashing in. Something broke in me. It doesn't happen that way for everybody but the thing that is essential is I felt very aware of my brokenness and very aware of the cost of what I had done.
Some people who are on the other side of the affair working on their marriages may not fully understand that about themselves. It still may be a process that continues to build in them. But I think it's very important that the unfaithful person be willing to consider that pain, understand it, and deal with it. At that point, I was really motivated to make changes in my life.
Doug: In my situation, we got to the point in our relationship where Linda was just kind of stuck. Basically, we were both stuck as far as being able to move on with things after the affair. She didn't understand why it happened and I wasn't communicating why it happened very well because I really didn't know myself at that time.
I guess a bolt of lightening hit me and said "Your marriage isn't going to make it unless you figure things out here and get your butt in gear." So I just had to start putting the work in and doing a lot of soul searching and thinking and came up with a better understanding of why it happened. We talked about it and things went from there. But until the pain of the affair, and whatever consequences were a result of the affair, get to the point where it gets too uncomfortable. Sometimes it's difficult for people to take the time with the pain, to really look within and try to figure things out, but it's something that has to be done. It really does.
Tim: Betrayed spouses tend to either help or hinder that process. I think sometimes they hinder it by trying to control the outcome or sometimes even accommodate the affair. It's surprising how many spouses, even though they're hurt and they're angry, will cover for their unfaithful partners, allowing them to continue the affair and still come home. They try to keep the family and the house as normal as possible, while the unfaithful spouse continues to choose the affair partner.
You've got to, out of love, establish boundaries so they begin to experience what their choices really cost them. Stop covering for them, stop lying for them, stop pretending that the marriage is normal or that nothing has really changed. Help them experience the cost of the choices they're making. Not in a manipulative way, but in a way that's loving and caring, strong and honest. I think sometimes that can be helpful.
Doug: Absolutely. We've got one more question and this is the one that always remains deep within some of the betrayed partners and that is how do they really know that we're not going to cheat again?
Tim: How do you know that, Doug?
Doug: I guess you could say I've learned my lesson. You learn so much when you go through this, about yourself and about your partner and about life and about marriage and relationships.
I know that Linda is the love of my life and I would never hurt her again. The pain that I caused is not anything I want to do again or put Linda through.
I also learned boundaries, I've learned healthy ways to develop self esteem and to do the things that are important for me. But it's just one of those things: I know it will never happen.
From Linda's standpoint, she either has to trust it or she will always have that question in the back of her mind. But I think we're to the point where she knows it's not going to happen again. She has told me that she is sure that I would never do it again. It’s good to know that she trusts me again.
Tim: And that came over time I'm sure.
Doug: Oh, absolutely. It's nothing that happened too quickly and certainly my actions at the beginning were not trustworthy. I had to prove by my actions over time. How about you?
Tim: I think it's a great question and I'll tell you, when I stood and made my vows to be faithful in my first marriage, I absolutely meant it. 100%.
Doug: Sure.
Tim: When I broke that vow… forget whether other people could trust me or not; I was struggling with how do I ever trust myself again? I couldn't have been more firm and more committed to a promise than I was then, so how can I can make a promise to any other woman again and be sure that I'm going to be faithful to her? It's a great question; one I wrestled with.
I'm married to a woman who is partners with me here in the counseling practice. She came out of a previous marriage to a spouse who had multiple affairs and she vowed she would never date a man who had ever been a cheater. So our own story is interesting. But her assurance and my assurance now have less to do with the words of promise that I make (even though they're sincere, and I do promise her I am going to be faithful to her) and more to do with that ongoing commitment to be a man who is learning how to love well.
When we get upset with each other, disappoint each other, or hurt each other, and she sees the consistent way I move to come back, do the repair work, and vulnerably reconnect with her—and she does that to me—that's how we learn to trust. And by the way, that wasn't normal in my first marriage. I'd hide from that kind of vulnerability.
That gives her certainty and, frankly, gives me certainty, too, because I know I'm a man who is loving differently than I did before. I'm so passionate about wanting to be that person for my wife and for my children and for my friends that there's not room for an affair. So that's my assurance that an affair is not going to happen again...
I want to be an encouragement to individuals or couples who are listening to this who maybe feel a real sense of hopelessness or confusion, that on the other side of this there is hope for something better and something different. Not every relationship survives. Frankly, there are some that probably shouldn't survive an affair. But usually those are the relationships that have a history of this sort of thing going on.
If you have a history in the relationship of love and commitment and trust, then it's always worth doing the work to find that again. And again, the real promise is not only can you find recovery back to something you had, but something that becomes something much different and, in some ways, deeper.
You know, the way grace works in a relationship and in our lives is sometimes a very amazing thing. So I'm committed to helping couples find that, or helping individuals when a partner isn't involved.
Doug: Awesome. Great pleasure talking to you today, Tim. I appreciate it very much. And I'm sure that the listeners will get a lot of value out of the things that you've said so hopefully we can do this again sometime, maybe on a different topic. I appreciate it very much.
Tim: Likewise Doug, thank you.
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