When a spouse cheats, your emotions run wild. Not only do you go through every emotion imaginable but you can experience them all at the same time. It’s enough to drive you insane. Understanding the emotions that come with infidelity can help you with the recovery process. Your emotions are normal, must be felt and processed and knowing how to do this is imperative to your healing.
Infidelity Emotion #1: Rage
Rage is more than anger; it’s an emotion that can send you into a flight of forbidden words you never thought you would say. It may make you do things that you never thought you would do. Rage will overcome your true personality and leave you with a sense of eerie calmness.
What to do: Rage is a normal reaction because being cheated on pains you to your core. When going through the emotion of rage, it’s good to have someone you can safely vent to that will be able to allow you to vent and keep you from doing anything you will regret later. This person can be your husband, a good friend or a family member. These moments can last anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours…but as time goes on the moments will become shorter and less frequent as you heal.
Infidelity Emotion #2: Sadness
You’ve lost innocence in your marriage that you never thought would ever be lost. One of the most precious vows has been broken; of course, you have a reason to feel sadness.
What to do: You can cry, just want to sleep or listen to music and be still – all are normal and appropriate ways to deal with this common and natural infidelity emotion.
Infidelity Emotion #3 Confusion
Your mind tells you that he cheated on you so you need to divorce him but your heart loves him so much that you can’t bear leaving him. You have no idea what to do and you’re just stuck.
What to do: Allow yourself to be stuck for as long as you need to be stuck. You don’t need to make any decisions until you are ready to make one and know what you really want to do. When you know for sure whether or not you want to continue the marriage or get a divorce then you will make that call. Until then, just sit back and let yourself grief, take in the situation and give yourself time to consider the many factors that come into play in this big decision.
Infidelity Emotion #4: Shame
You didn’t do anything wrong but yet you feel ashamed of what your husband did – how could this be?
What to do: Common and natural. Your shame comes from your connection to the family. You feel as though you represent your family and whatever the family does, you do. That’s why you feel that way.
Coming to grips with the fact that your husband separated himself from the family to commit adultery and that you are not associated with this act takes time. As you process the reasons why he cheated, and the reasons why you have decided to stay or leave, you will start to feel less ashamed of what has happened. You will begin to take less responsibility of what happened. Because it’s never your fault that he cheated…men cheat because of personal issues that they struggle with internally.
Infidelity Emotion #5: Hopelessness
You feel as though you can’t go on and that you’ll do anything to have your old life back but you know that you can’t do anything to have that back.
What to do: Your marriage as you know it has died unexpectedly, just as someone who is close to you could die unexpectedly. This takes time to heal from and it takes time to realize that life from this moment on will be different but much better. Once you have healed and your husband has healed; you can start to repair the marriage. This is when you can start to rebuild the broken trust and make a marriage that both of you are happy in. First though, you must properly grieve your old marriage so you can move on without harboring resentment into your new marriage.
Image: graur codrin / FreeDigitalPhotos.net