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This article was written and posted in our Community Forum by user"Stillme."  It is always frustrating when people say the equivalent of, "If you won't give it 100%, why stay?" That assumes that some decisions are not rational and that life is simply 100% or 0%. I live in the real world, and the real world is filled with compromise.
I'll give an example: I completely dislike strawberry ice cream. Vanilla ice cream is okay, just okay. I like chocolate ice cream. I absolutely LOVE salted caramel ice cream.
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Helen Tower is one of the people I follow on Twitter and am often encouraged by what she writes. Recently, she posted a letter she wrote to her "ex-unfaithful" husband. She gave permission to post it here, too. You can read the entire post on her Sailing Through Infidelity blog.  Dear ex-unfaithful husband,
I want to thank you for sticking with me during the trying times after I discovered your affair. I am so happy this is now in the past. We went through periods during which I was willing to hurt myself just to hurt you, in a desperate attempt to soothe my pain. You never lost focus on your commitment to do whatever it took to save our marriage.  We usually expect our marriage to last a lifetime. What starts with promises of faithfulness and endurance, we believe, will survive any challenge "for better or for worse." Most marriages do; some even thrive. But many die in ways never anticipated.
When the death of a marriage is a mutual choice between two partners, grieving its loss may be a short-term process. The decision to end their relationship often follows a period of prolonged suffering, making divorce feel like relief. Similar to a funeral, partners make the appropriate arrangements, pay their final respects, bury the marriage, and move on with their lives. But a marriage killed by betrayal is not so easily mourned.  In my interview with Debi Silber (Recovery Room podcast #401), founder of the Post Betrayal Institute, Debi talked about different ways women move beyond betrayal. She made a distinction between those who experience resilience and those who experience transformation.
To illustrate her point, she gave this example: Let's say a house needs a new boiler, paint job, and roof. You buy a new boiler, repaint it, and get a new roof. That's resilience. But transformation is like this... One of our Community members posted a message in response to an unfaithful spouse who was frustrated because his wife remained angry about his affair. It's worth reprinting again. This is an edited version of her response.  You can feel put out that your wife is so insanely angry abut your affair, but it's not going to get you anywhere. Stop thinking of it as judgement from your spouse and, instead, judge yourself. Can you sit and own the choices you made and all the consequences that followed as yours and yours alone? When you can do that, I think empathy will come easier, your wife will feel safer, and some of her anger will dissipate. There were very few times—I'm talking nanoseconds—when my spouse showed real remorse without any defensiveness. And you know what? In those nanoseconds (until his defenses went up again, of course) my anger melted away.
I think every wayward spouse seriously underestimates the fear and intense pain, both emotional and physical, caused by what they have done. It's in their interest to do so, since as seeing it too clearly would feel awful. |
AuthorUnless otherwise noted, articles are written by Tim Tedder, a licensed counselor and creator of this site and its resources. Twitter: @TimTedder Topics
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