After the Affair: Dos and Don'ts #3

DO Trust the Process

---

Affair recovery will ask you to do something wildly uncomfortable: look at yourself. Your behaviors. Your patterns. How you show up in relationships. I say you because that’s exactly what happened to me.

I didn’t want to look inward. I wanted to talk about my husband’s affair and what he needed to do to be a better husband—so I wouldn’t feel the way I felt.

Cue the eye roll and my signature line:

“If he would just be honest and stop doing things that make me feel like crap, I might consider sticking this out.”

I said that more times than I can count. Every feeling I had? His fault. Every. Single. One.

If he came home and said “hey” in the wrong tone, or got irritated over something ridiculous, I’d start mentally packing my bags. My hypervigilance? Also his fault.

And maybe you’re nodding along right now. Maybe that tracks. But hear me out: if I hadn’t started looking at my behaviors—how I was showing up in our marriage—I’d still be stuck in hypervigilant mode, blaming him for everything.

It took time to realize that. And when I did? The pain didn’t stop. It got worse.

But again—hear me out. That pain was a signal. A neon sign pointing to the internal work I hadn’t done. Self-reflection meant facing the stuff I’d buried deep: childhood trauma, sexual abuse, neglect, abandonment, emotional wounds. That’s not Tuesday-night-light-reading kind of stuff. No one wakes up and says, “You know what sounds fun today? Processing my childhood trauma.”

While self-work isn’t the main focus of this post, it’s deeply relevant to healing. (For more on that, check out Affair Dos and Don’ts #4: DO Work On Your Own Healing.)

What I didn’t know at the time was that my emotional backlash—rage, resentment, the urge to burn it all down—was actually grief. I had to let it bubble up and burst, like a shaken champagne bottle, before I could even begin to feel the deeper pain underneath.

Anger and resentment were my armor. Vulnerability felt like weakness. But beneath it all? A big, fat iceberg of pain lodged right in the middle of my heart.

Opening up to that pain felt like unlocking Pandora’s box. And let me tell you—I had all of that fucker’s boxes.

If any of this resonates, I’m glad. Not because I want you to feel this way (it’s the pits), but because I want you to know you’re not alone. And here’s something else I want you to consider—just for a second: As much as you’re hurting, your partner is too.

I know, I know. I sound like a broken record. We could make a drinking game out of how many times I’ve said “hear me out” in this post. But seriously—hear me out.

I don’t know who cheated. I don’t know why. I don’t know what your relationship looked like before the affair blew it all up. But I do know this: your partner has feelings, too. They have their own Pandora’s box. And it probably scares the ever-loving shit out of them.

So when I say trust the process, I mean lean into the discomfort. Feel your feelings. Be vulnerable when you’d rather be stoic. Try something new. Something brave.

With the guidance of a skilled therapist, you’re learning how to build a brand-new relationship. And that shit’s hard—especially after infidelity. Especially if you’re also healing from other trauma.

Whether you stay or go, you take you with you. You’ll need to heal either way.

One thing my therapist said that kept me committed to the process:

“You don’t want to give up, and you don’t want to leave your husband. You want the pain to go away. But the pain won’t go away on its own. You have to do the work to heal—whether you stay or go. So… do you want to find out if your marriage has what it takes not just to survive, but to thrive?”

I leave you with the same question.

Trusting the process is terrifying. I get it. Even though I sprinkle these posts with humor, I don’t take this lightly. Infidelity is brutal. It shakes your foundation. It hurts like hell.

But you get to choose what’s best for you. Be kind to yourself. You’re stronger than you think.