|
NOTE: This single post actually includes the content of multiple post previously uploaded. Each tells a different part of the Affair Healing origin story. They have been combined and edited into a single post for the pupose of space & convenience. --Tim Tedder In The Beginning...If I went back more than 20 years ago, there is nothing about my present life that I would have predicted. My wife, my career, the direction of my passions... all these present realities are only part of my story because I had an affair. I'm open about that part of my story (read 4 Lessons Learned in the Broken Pieces eBook, or "Mark's Story"), but that's not the part of the story I want to tell here. This new blog is my attempt to give you a peek into the passion that grew in me on the other side of recovery: the desire to help others who experience brokenness due to infidelity and the ways I've struggled in trying to do so. That passion led me to become a counselor, led me to create this website in 2009, led me to set out in an exploration of new ways to bring healing to wounded individuals and couples. I'm not sure if anyone else will find interest in this, but it's good for me to tell it... to remember what twists & turns I've taken and to be honest about the personal and professional challenges that meet me along the way. My goal is to be transparent, even painfully so at times. I will confess that there are details of my past story that I do not talk about in a public forum. They are The Dangerouse Lure of a Clean Image Photo Credit: JonoMueller via Compfight cc In addition to the eventual ending of my marriage, the consequences of my affair included public embarrassment and the loss of a career. I was use to speaking and training in various venues across the US and Canada, but after The Fall the only work I could find was selling ads for GTE Yellow Pages (Remember those?) and delivering for Pizza Hut, often handing the pizza to someone with that wait-wait-don't-tell-me stare that eventually ended with, "Hey, aren't you that guy...?" Yes, I was. I found my way to better jobs, eventually starting my own small business (T2Designs web creations) which made enough to pay the bills, but not much more. My personal changes and growth sometimes drew me to individuals or couples with issues that seemed familiar to me: disappointment and disconnects. I tried to encourage them, helping them avoid choices that led to my regrets. Eventually, someone said to me, "You should think about doing that as a living." "Do what?" I asked. "Be a counselor." I laughed. A few weeks later, I took out a student loan and enrolled in a graduate program. Preparing for my first semester of classes, I wrestled with a choice. Since I would likely be unknown on the campus, wouldn't this be a great opportunity to start fresh? To begin my new career with a clean slate? No more talking about my affair. No more delving into the dark choices and consequences of my past. If I wanted to, I could tell the good parts of my story and leave the bad parts unsaid. There was something enticing about rebuilding my image. I recognized that enticement, that longing for admiration and respect. That same desire had been powerfully at work when I stepped into an affair. Knowing its danger, I refused the "clean image" temptation and chose to risk vulnerable self-disclosure during my years of training as a counselor. Making a willing choice to let others see my "stuff" was not easy. There were certainly times I hid behind an everything's-fine-now facade but, for the most part, I let my new friends see my failures and weaknesses. To be honest, I miss the admiration. Part of me still wants people to see me with a "look how good you are" perspective. But making sure people see only the better parts of me takes too much effort. Letting them see the real me, lovely or not... something always feels right about that. How My Story Became "Mark's Story"Several years after my affair, the decision to return to graduate school seemed right. It gave me a renewed sense of satisfaction and purpose. But there was still something about my past that felt unresolved. I decided to review history by "journaling" my story as though I was experiencing it again, hoping the process would bring greater clarity to that period of my life. This occurred in the early days of blogging, before most people knew what the word meant. I signed up for a free Google Blogger account and started writing the story of my affair from its beginning. I wrote anonymously and told no one about this project, I assumed it was private, that nobody but me would ever read it. At the time, I didn't understand how Internet spiders could find their way into hidden corners. During the first couple weeks, a few people somehow found their way to my blog. I'm not sure exactly how, but the few visitors quickly turned into hundreds, most of them assuming the story was happening in real time. Even though I made repeated attempts to clarify their misunderstanding, those messages were lost in the cacophony of opinions being expressed. To some, I was a villain. To others, I was a lost soul. To a few, I was a repressed man who should feel absolutely free to have sex with whomever, whenever I wanted. I continued posting the story until its conclusion. By that time, a popular web site requested permission to republish it in its entirety, which I allowed. But the increasing traffic (thousands per day by this time; I wish I could have that traffic back again!) and comments eventually exhausted me. Months after creating the blog, I took it down. Despite the surprising conclusion of this exercise, my hope for greater clarity was satisfied. Putting all the parts of my story into a complete narrative allowed me to feel more settled, like the end of a chapter had finally been written. I also benefited from many interactions with strangers, each with their own story. They challenged me, stretched me, encouraged me. One of them remains a good friend to this day. Years later, when I created AffairHealing.com, I pulled those old posts out of my archives, edited them into a single narrative, and posted it as "Mark's Story." At the time, I was not sure whether I should identify myself as the author. My greatest concern was for betrayed wives who became my clients. Would they struggle to find out their counselor had been a cheater, too? Eventually, I added the "Interview with Mark" (seems a bit silly now) based on questions commonly asked about the article. Eventually, I openly identified myself as the author, but never changed the title because of how well it ranked in search engines. It has become the most popular page on this site, second only to the Affair Stories index page. At some point, we all decide how much of our story we're going to tell. We'd like to throw away the worse bits and there are still parts of mine I try to ignore. But my story is Mark's story and you won't understand me unless you've heard it. Shame Wins Again (for a while)I entered graduate school completely dedicated to the process of becoming a counselor for the sole purpose of helping others avoid the many regrets caused by my infidelity. My story, I believed, along with the training I was receiving would equip me to uniquely address the needs of people wounded by an affair. In a graduate counseling program, you can specialize in particular areas. I had chosen to become licensed as a marriage and family therapist, but something happened in my second year that threw me off that track. I became overwhelmingly aware of my failures in the past and the stuff I was still working on in the present. (I'm still working on stuff in the present!) Shame was in the back seat questioning persistently, "Who are YOU to tell people how to make good choices? Who are YOU to tell people how to save a marriage? Look at your failure. What gives you the right?" A picture came to mind: A scrawny man wanting to get into shape goes to a fitness club and asks to see a trainer. The trainer who shows up is sickly and weak. The client politely exits, hoping to go somewhere else and find someone more qualified. That's what I felt like. The guy who couldn't even bring himself to save his own marriage is going to tell others how they can save theirs? Shame won. It crawled into the front seat and put a hand on the steering wheel. Even though I'd put many hours into the marriage & family program, I dropped out and switched to a more generalized counseling degree. My professors tried to discourage me, but I didn't listen. At that point, I decided it would be better to help people with a broader range of issues. Maybe I'd even avoid relationship problems altogether. After graduation, my first counseling gig was with an agency in central Indiana. I focused on helping juveniles who had been court ordered into counseling. There's much about that work I enjoyed, but something unexpected started happening. I often had to meet with parents in private sessions, and stories of infidelity often coming up. With little effort, I was able to help those couples gain insight and move in new directions. Before long, it became clear to me that this was "my thing." I stopped the car, dragged shame out of the front seat and thew him into the trunk. (I wish I could say I just left him on the side of the road, but I can still hear his mutterings every now and then.) By the time I moved to Florida to join Charis Counseling in 2008, I had already made the shift in focus. Now I was in a new place and had to find a way to get the word out. What I Learned at the GRACE PLACEDuring the seasons of my recovery and growth, there were a few people in my life who were especially influential. Jim Keller was one of them. Before Jim became a counselor, highly respected for his effective work with individuals and couples, he was my uncle. In 2008, at his invitation, I moved to Orlando to join his practice in Baldwin Park: Charis Counseling. Previously, the focus of my counseling was dictated by the cases that were assigned to me. Now I had to create my own niche and earn a reputation in an area where I was unknown. At Charis, I began to train my focus on providing therapy to clients wounded by infidelity. "Charis" is a Greek word that means grace, the giving of unearned favor or blessing. I will always be grateful for the ways in which Jim Keller, and the rest of the Charis staff, provided a grace-filled context in which I had room to stumble in my vulnerability and learn how to be a more effective counselor. I learned more about grace and witnessed it at work while I was there. Here's one example (with their permission, using pseudonyms): Rick and his wife, Julie, came in seeking counseling. He had recently confessed to over 20 sexual affairs during their seven-year marriage. Here's how Julie described her pain: "There were some days I could not pick myself up off the floor, the pain was so deep... I felt like I had been punked, and I was angry at myself for putting up with it for so long... I put walls up because I did not want to let myself get hurt again." Rick made the commitment to embrace truthfulness, work on change, and take responsibility for creating a safe place for his wife. They endured months of ups and downs, hope and despair, but eventually Julie wrote this: "I realized that I needed grace just as much as he did for some of the ways I reacted in the process. There was nothing Rick could do to take back his actions and give me back the last eight years of my life, so the only thing I could do was move forward, to focus on the true meaning of forgiveness and learn to walk in patience, kindness, gentleness... believing that my marriage could be restored. I am now honestly amazed at the resurrection of our marriage and redemption in both of our lives. It really is a miracle." The wonder of charis. HONESTLY, it's not porn.In 2009, I contacted Google for information about business listing and ads for a new site I was creating: AffairHealing.com. Google: "So, what is this site, exactly?" Me: "It's a site about affairs, infidelity." Google: "You mean about having affairs? Is it an adult site." Me: "No, no. It's not that. It's to help people who already had affairs and want help repairing their marriage." Google: "So, no adult content?" Me: "Well, it's content for adults..." Google: "But no porn at all, right?" Me: "No... honestly, it's not porn." Once he was assured this site was "safe" for Google, I got the help I needed and continued to develop the site, finally launching it in November 2009. From the very start, the focus of the site has been to provide affair recovery help & resources to anyone who needed them. After my affair, but before becoming a counselor, I spent quite a few years trying to figure out "What do I do with my life now?" For a few years, I poured myself into learning web design and providing web development services to small businesses. It didn't make me rich, but it paid the bills. More importantly, I learned skills that have been tremendously beneficial in building my counseling sites. AffairHealing.com was the first of those sites. Here's how the site usage has grown over the years. These visitor numbers are based on Google Analytics statistics:
Just during the past 4 months, visits have grown twice as much as the they did during its first 4 years! Visitors from all over the world come to AffairHealing.com for help. I think the growth in the past year and a half is due to an increased effort to add content and resources. Some things worked; but some things didn't. The Stuff That Didn't WOrkHere's a quote from a book I'm reading: "Men move toward whatever makes them feel competent." If I'm a measure of that statement's accuracy, then chalk it up as absolute truth. I tend to actively avoid anything that reveals my incompetency. There is a reason only a handful of people have ever watched me play basketball. As I move into what is likely to be the final quarter of my life and consider this matter of competency, I have two regrets about the first three-quarters. My first regret is that I didn't spend more time becoming competent in areas of interest and passion. I think I would have enjoyed learning more about writing, painting, playing guitar, and exploring underwater wonders. I know there is still time to pursue these things, but I wish I'd started sooner or spent more time on them. My second regret is that I failed to engage in many experiences out of fear that others would notice my inadequacies. I should have been willing to play more basketball, among other things, even when I wasn't that good at it. It takes too much work to always appear competent. It sucks the joy out of experiences, too. To be honest, I'd like everybody to think I'm so good at being a counselor that I've always got the right answer for every client. But that's not true. Sometimes, I get it wrong. The "be competent" urge in me would rather minimize an error or even pretend it didn't happen. But the "be authentic" part of me wins more often now. A couple weeks ago, I told a client we needed to back up because I had been focussing on the wrong problem. So let me tell you about a couple failures with AffairHealing.com. In these blog posts, I've been giving you a behind-the-scenes perspective of my counseling services and resources, especially as they have been offered online. What began as a general effort to provide information on these web pages started shifting in 2014 when I started making online changes. But I experienced more failure than success. Let me tell you about two big efforts that failed. Failure #1: Support for Counselors In the spring of 2014, I established a "members only" area of the website, dedicated to sharing counseling resources I had created. There was no cost and any counselor (or counseling student) could join simply by submitting a request along with their qualifications. I did not actively work to build this group, but freely gave access to any counselor who asked. There were only a dozen members by the end of the year. Near the start of 2015, I thought it would awesome to build an online community of affair recovery counselors who shared their resources and engaged in online discussions about their work. I spent nearly 6 weeks establishing a contact list starting with people I knew and then searching online to find contact information for other counselors all over the country. I sent out hundreds of invitation emails. Less than 50 expressed interest in the idea, but I thought it was a good start. I build the private community, uploaded documents I used in practice, created discussion topics, and started an index of recommended outside resources that others could add to. I let one person "sneak" into the online area early and her response was very encouraging. I expected lively participation once everyone was let in. I granted access to everyone a few weeks later. Crickets. Half the members didn't even come in, others came in and downloaded the resources, but nobody (save one lonely post) seemed interested in getting involved as a community. I quickly posted an invitation to all infidelity counselors who were members of a central Florida counselors association. No interest. I sent out a survey to all the members. About 10% responded with answers that indicated minimal interest in ongoing online participation. So I pulled the plug before investing any more time or resources. Frankly, I'm still puzzled by this failure. It doesn't make sense to me, but I'm focussed on other things right now so I've got to let it go. Still, it was humbling to write all those counselors and let them know my "big vision" couldn't make it past the first few steps. Failure #2: Recovery Kits Also in 2014, I pulled most of the downloads available on my site and hid them on four pages, each targeting a specific need: (1) betrayed partner who just found out; (2) betrayed partner who has been in recovery for a while; (3) unfaithful partner with affair that is known; (4) unfaithful partner with affair that is still a secret. To be honest, I'm not even exactly sure what this was suppose to accomplish other than collect useful information in a central location. People had to sign up for a "Recovery Kit." Once they signed up (for free), they were given access to the appropriate page and sent some encouraging emails for the next 10 days. Nothing was sold, and at the end of 10 days they never heard from me again. Maybe it would be better to call this a partial failure, because many users were very appreciative of what they received. But there were a couple reasons for not continuing this program: (1) the sign-up process meant that fewer people had access to the free information and (2) I wasn't doing anything with this membership. I had nowhere else to send them; nothing else to offer them. After 10 days, they got nothing more from me. I think I've learned from these failures. More importantly, they helped pave the way for a bigger plan; one that has already been put into action. So far, so good, but the big risks are yet to come. Change Starts with a CommunityDuring the hour before the AH Community forum was launched, I sat in a room illuminated only by the soft blue of my Mac monitor. I was nervous, wondering if anyone would actually show up. Here's how it all started... I've been a podcast junkie long before most people even knew what the word meant. I enjoy listening to a wide variety of subjects: science, news, technology, religion and entertainment. But in February of this year, I decided to listen to a business related podcast. The topic: expanding your business by building a community. That podcast was a spark that ignited a new passion. I felt an intense desire to expand my message of recovery by providing new resources to people hurt by infidelity, including an online forum where they would be encouraged to be open, honest, and supportive of each other. There are other affair recovery forums available, but I wanted to be part of building one that was different in the following ways:
Having never run a forum before, I started researching my options, eventually settling on Website Toolbox as the service most likely to meet my needs. During the next two months, I built the forum and issued invitations to anyone who had interactions with AffairHealing.com, offering to let them become a "First Member" of this new community. First Members would be given early access to the forums when they opened on May 1, 2015. My plan was to only allow these members in during the first month in order to work out any unforeseen problems before a more public launch on June 1. But there was a problem. Although over 100 people registered as First Member, less than half that many ever logged in to the forum. Of the less-than-50 participants, only a portion of those were actively posting on the site. I was concerned, but there were a few things that helped us avoid a quick failure:
In our two-and-a-half months, we've grown to nearly 250 members (after deleting the ones that never showed up after the first invitation) with over 1300 posts. Although the Community was created as a place to help others, its members have been of tremendous help to me, too. I learn from them. I hope this place continues to flourish. Inspiration on Lotafun AvenueA couple months ago, I went on a long walk through various neighborhoods that border a large lake near my office. I've always used long walks to clear my head and work through whatever issues are on my mind. On this particular day, I came across Lotafun Avenue. It looked to be a narrow side street, but a name like that required investigation! The road started out like a fairly typical neighborhood street with 40+ year-old houses lined up on either side. Nothing unusual; nothing too interesting; but then something happened.  Inspiration on Lotafun Avenue8/7/2015 0 Comments A couple months ago, I went on a long walk through various neighborhoods that border a large lake near my office. I've always used long walks to clear my head and work through whatever issues are on my mind. On this particular day, I came across Lotafun Avenue. It looked to be a narrow side street, but a name like that required investigation! The road started out like a fairly typical neighborhood street with 40+ year-old houses lined up on either side. Nothing unusual; nothing too interesting; but then something happened. I'm sure you've had occasions in life when you seem to step out of your current reality, experiencing the occasion from a completely different perspective that causes you to think and feel differently than you did just seconds before. Those brief moments seem magical or spiritual in some profound way. That happened to me on Lotafun Avenue when I unexpectedly came across this little bamboo covered path. As best as I can remember, I had the sensation of being back at some previous moment in my life that was filled with excitement, adventure, and simple pleasure. Interestingly, it did not lead me to long for a return to the some past place. Rather, the longing that stirred in me was for a better future, one that provided a return to stimulating experiences and uncomplicated contentment. This desire was so strong that I began to weep for it. These were not tears of desperation or regret; rather, they were tears of hope for something I might realize even in the final third of a lifetime. And folded into this longing were the things I still wanted to do in following my purpose of communicating hope & healing to wounded people. You can't force moments like that. I tried. I've walked down Lotsafun a couple times since that day, but all it evokes is the memory of that experience, not the repetition of it. What was it? A memory triggered by certain familiar sensations? A gift from God? A natural response erupting from all the things I had been reading and contemplating before that day? I don't know. Maybe it was a bit of all those things. But I'm learning to accept gifts without over analyzing them. That moment inspired me to continue my efforts (to write, create, build), hope for more, and expect better things in the years ahead. It reminded me to keep my eyes open for unexpected inspirations. Doing Something I Said I'd Never DoMy response to any suggestion that I write book about infidelity has always been, “Why would I want to do that?” Good affair recovery books, by authors much smarter than I, have already been written. Besides, the process does not come easily to me. If anything I scribble comes across as interesting or insightful, it requires a lot of effort to make it seem that way. For those reasons, “write a book” has never been on my bucket list.
But I changed my mind when I realized I envisioned an approach that was different than anything else currently on the recovery market. Not only did I want to create a manual that had clear, practical steps to help users apply what they were reading (through suggested actions and worksheets), I wanted to create them as a PAIR of manuals so users had the option to use them individually (when working on recovery without the participation of a spouse), or jointly with a spouse. This unique approach, I believe, will provide detailed but practical help to people in manuals that can be used as part of counseling. And for couples who do not have access to counseling, the clear instructions allow them to be used as self-help guides in affair recovery. I'm embarrassed to admit that when I first got the idea, I thought I could complete the first manual in just a couple weeks. That was 3 months ago. Granted, illness and unexpected schedule interruptions have been a part of the delay, but I was surprised by how much effort it required to create the content even though I'm writing about something that has been my passion for many years. And I have a new understanding for what "writer's block" means. But the effort has been worth it. This is just the start. In addition to these 2 books, I have notes for 4 more! I'm excited to write them all. (I hope a few people will be just as excited to use them!) For more information about the Affair Healing journals, visit AffairHealingBook.com. Comments are closed.
|
AuthorUnless otherwise noted, articles are written by Tim Tedder, a licensed counselor and creator of this site and its resources. Topics
All
|
RSS Feed
Copyright ©2009-2022, Tim Tedder, LMHC, NCC & contributing authors. Content on this site cannot be used or reproduced without permission. AffairHealing.com is a resource of Currents Services, LLC.