This is a difficult topic at the best of times. While the soap opera genre makes its bones on selling infidelity and dishonesty. No one likes to think it could happen to them. No one wants to imagine the scenario where it could or it did happen. More than one divorce can cite infidelity as the crisis point that the relationship never recovered from. Yet, a marriage may survive infidelity and a spouse may be able to cope when they have learned that their spouse was unfaithful.
The very thought that your spouse has been unfaithful is enough to leave you feeling sick to your stomach. You experience a myriad of sensations from fear to anger to sadness to betrayal to a hurt that goes beyond simple injury. Your faith and your trust will shatter and even if you suspected the infidelity, the proof that it happened always hits you like a ton of bricks.
It’s hard to think clearly in such an emotionally charged situation and the following are suggestions to help you cope in the event that you discover your spouse has been unfaithful. There is no full proof method for coping in such a situation and there is no guaranteed method that will make you feel better. But the following suggestions are to help you survive, go on and put the pieces of your life back together.
Taking Control of the Situation Can Empower You
If a spouse is unfaithful, you may sink into a mass of depression as illustrated above, but you are also victimized by your own sense of helpless and powerlessness. By taking control, you help alleve some of that helplessness you may be feeling. What you go through over the months after discovering the infidelity will be some of the most difficult and intense situations you may have faced in your life. Whether you can forgive your spouse and reconcile or you cannot and seek a divorce, the following advice can help.
- Make no large decisions at this stage in the game. Don’t file for divorce, don’t walk out and don’t throw them out – you need time to reflect on the marriage and discover whether there are other causes for the issues related to the infidelity that you need to address
- Being angry, sad, shocked or uncertain – you will run the gamut of emotions – there is no such thing as the right thing to feel in this situation. Accept your feelings for what they are.
- If you need to cry, cry – tears are healthy and they help relieve the tension
- If you are laughing, don’t think you are crazy – it’s okay. You need to laugh as much as you need to cry
- Take care of yourself – don’t just stop because this happened – especially if there are children involved, you need to take care of you so you can cope with what is going on
- Don’t hide the distress from the kids, explain to them that you are upset, that it will be okay and whether you belive it or not, someday it will be okay, but your kids will know that something is going on – they don’t need the details, they just need the reassurance
- Talk to your spouse – you need to know what they are thinking, what they are feeling and they need to hear from you – they may not be able to come up with a reason for the infidelity – but it happened and it needs to be discussed
- Don’t hesitate to seek out counseling, we can all use an outside third party sometimes – talking to family can help – but family may feel compelled to take sides and you need someone neutral
- Keep a journal – if you’ve never kept one before, now is a good time to start – you can write down how you feel, what is happening and what is going through your mind – it may not make it better, but it can help you to sort out your emotions.
I’ve gone through some difficult times in my marriage. We’ve hit bumps in the road, some external and some internal – it takes time, it takes effort and no matter what anyne else says, no one can predict how you are going to feel from one moment to the next. Give yourself the time and the space to figure it out.
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