After the Affair: Dos & Don'ts Overview

 In last week's blog I shared the internal struggle I faced when I discovered my husband had been having an affair. This week I'm going to share the dos and don'ts that I either (1) figured out on my own, or (2) learned from our fantastic therapist.

As was true with Affair Discovery and Aftermath, the first blog of the Affair Recovery: The Hard Truth series, my goal is to share my experience, what I've learned, and how I (and we) have healed from the affair, processed grief, shame, and every other emotion that surfaced as a result of, and those that predated, the affair.

My husband and I saved our marriage, but I know that's not everyone's story, and that's okay. I am not here to tell you what to do with your marriage if you are facing the tough decision to stay or go. I am simply here to share my story in the hope that it will resonate with those who need to hear it, who need support, who don't want to talk about it yet, or who just don't want to feel alone.

This list of dos and don'ts helped me survive the first six months of therapy. In future blog posts, I will elaborate on each of the dos and don’ts, what helped me and us, and what didn’t.

DO find a licensed therapist who specializes in affair recovery. There are as many therapists out there as there are fish in the sea. That doesn't mean that you should blindly pick one. Our therapist has years of experience helping couples work through the painful emotions, thoughts, fears, shame, and grief that accompany such deep betrayal. Without our therapist, I honestly don't know how I would have recovered from the affair.

DON'T make any big decisions right now. Big would be getting divorced right now or the exact opposite, moving on from the affair as if it never happened. This was one of the best pieces of advice our therapist gave us in the beginning stages of our recovery. In therapy, things tend to get worse before they get better, and too often, people give up when the struggle gets to be too much to handle. But keep in mind that when starting therapy, you will begin to discuss things that you probably haven't shared with your spouse in a really long time, if ever. Feelings will get hurt, and you will probably get offended. But that’s okay. It is part of the healing process.

Think of your marriage as the random stuff that collects under a couch. All the shit that’s been hiding under there needs to be swept up. Just think about the amount of dust, debris, candy wrappers, pencils, and hair ties have been collecting dust under there. When you start cleaning, the dust will irritate you, confuse you, and make you feel emotions you didn’t know you had the capacity to feel. But, when the  dust starts to settle it’ll be easier to see what needs to be thrown out and what needs to be cleaned up and put away.

DO trust the process. You will be put in a position to look at yourself, your behaviors, your actions, and how you show up in your relationships. I say you because that's what happened to me. I did not want to look at myself or talk about my actions. I only 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 had been feeling for so long.

I wanted concrete evidence that I would never be put in the same position again. I wanted proof that he would never have another affair. You know the phrase, "anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law?" Well, I was the court of law and everything he said was held against him. If he admitted that he missed his affair partner, I threw it in his face, and shamed him for being a horrible husband. If he told me he didn’t think about her throughout the day, I’d accuse him of hiding his feelings for her. It didn’t matter what he said. I didn’t believe a word.

This is a sticky part of the beginning stages of healing. I’m not saying you should throw caution to the wind and decide to trust your spouse again. What I am saying is to allow your spouse to express his/her emotions just as you need to express yours. It’s hard. I know. Almost impossible.

DO work on your own individual healing. For us to grow together and heal our marriage, we had to also look inward and heal ourselves as individuals. It sucks. I promise it does. It sucks because it's uncomfortable and it feels almost impossible to be vulnerable with the person who pulled the heart out of your chest. But, if you are both willing to put in the work to save your marriage, being vulnerable with one another about your inner world (your thoughts, feelings, wants, and needs, and anything else that’s important to you), will turn into the most beautiful blessing. It will become the foundation on which your marriage will thrive.

I know I sound crazy right now. When our therapist told me the same thing in one of our couple's sessions, I told her she was insane. It's difficult to see that far into the future when you're trying to survive the minutes in front of you. I get it. That's why it is so important to trust the process.

DON'T talk about the affair all day and night. The only time I felt like we were making any progress was when we were talking about the affair. My anxiety was on steroids and the only way for me to feel at ease was to talk about it. I had countless questions from how many times they had sex and where they spent time together to how long the affair lasted and whether he thought of me at all. If ever he wasn't in the mood to talk about it, or deflected, it would trigger me into high alert. I would start to convince myself that he was hiding another affair and accuse him of cheating again. Our therapist finally told me that talking about the affair day in and day out was not sustainable. I hated that she said that to me.

But I am going to tell you the same thing. It honestly is not sustainable. Not if your goal is to heal your marriage.

We had to set "affair talk" boundaries. They were loose boundaries because I couldn't control when I'd be triggered and feel the NEED to talk about it. At the same time, trying to strike up a conversation while my husband was on his way out the door for work probably wasn't the best time to bring it up. Our therapist helped us establish healthy boundaries that we both felt comfortable with.

DO have grace for yourself and try to have some for your spouse. I expected to heal from the affair within three weeks and when I didn't I became angry with myself and was convinced there was something wrong with me. The honest truth is I was terrified of letting myself feel the grief and anguish that lived beneath the anger and rage I felt. When I finally let myself start feeling the pain and began talking openly about how I felt I learned how to hold space for myself to grieve. It was a long process. One that required more patience than I thought I could handle.

Having grace for your spouse might be an impossible feat at this point, and that's okay. If you are both showing up and doing the work, the grace will come. This goes back to trusting the process.

Healing from an affair and deciding to work together to redefine your marriage is a courageous decision. It is not easily accomplished, and it take a lot of work. Take each day one at a time. Take each hour one at a time if you need to. This process will rip you in half, but it will also put you back together in a beautiful way.

No one writes a manual on how to recover from an affair. When I scoured the internet for advice and wisdom I didn’t find anything that talked about what I would feel or how I would survive the rest of the day. I just wanted someone to be real with me, to share the ugly truth about what it looks like to walk through the muddy mess of affair recovery.

So, as I end this blog post, I want to remind you that you are not alone and while each person’s healing experience is different, you can count on me to tell you the truth – the downright dirty shit and the magnificent transformational beauty.

You are stronger than you think you are, and I believe in you.