Healing After An Affair

Dear Dr Lewis,

I hope you can help me. I’m a stay at home mum in my late-40s. recently, I discovered that my husband of twenty-one years has been having an affair with a woman fifteen years my junior. Despite the anger that I felt at the time, I resolved to take the high road & forgave him.

Although he has told me that he broke it off with her straight away & six months have now passed, I am still devastated… I just can’t stop thinking about them together & the idea makes me sick to my stomach

It has completely knocked me for six. I used to feel so confident & secure, but now I’m a wreck. Although logically I know that this was not my fault, I’m starting to blame myself for what happened. If only I’d given him more attention, been more interesting, lost that baby weight etc. etc., perhaps he wouldn’t have strayed. To make matters even worse, I find myself utterly fixated with this woman & imagine her to be everything that I’m not.

I constantly worry that it’s going to happen again & find it so hard to trust him, much to his growing irritation. I feel constantly suspicious & I’m embarrassed to admit it but I check his phone & computer every day to make sure that he hasn’t been in contact with her. I feel like I’m going mad. Please help.

Caroline, Ponteland

dr lewis says…

I’m so sorry to hear about what you’re going through caroline. what an incredibly difficult situation

the betrayal of infidelity is something that rocks us to our very foundations, so there’s no wonder that you’re feeling so floored by it all. when this kind of thing happens to us, it’s like having the rug pulled from under our feet. everything that we hold dear is flung into the air & it can take a long time before things settle again, so go easy on yourself. what you’re going through is really difficult & six months isn’t that long in the grand scheme of things

from what you’ve shared in your email, it seems as though you’re putting a lot of pressure on yourself to be ok. to have made the decision to forgive so early on is incredibly generous of you, however it is possible that, in making this commitment, you have stopped yourself from being able to express all of your feelings about this betrayal. when we can’t freely feel what it is we are feeling, we cannot heal. blocking out, or denying our emotions turns us into a walking pressure cooker, which may explain why you feel like you’re going mad at the moment

the very fact that you feel compelled to check up on him is telling you that there is still a lot of healing to be done. I can completely understand that you don’t want any more nasty surprises, however, as you’ve found, being so preoccupied with him & what he may or may not be doing only serves to hurt you more & constantly feeling as though you have to police your husband is no way to live

although of course we all want to come to a place where we can forgive a betrayal, it is so important to remember that forgiveness is a process. my concern for you is that it seems you & your husband are expecting you to be further along in that process than you actually are. as wonderful as it would be, we cannot just click our fingers & magic away our wounds. it is going to take time for you to trust him again & he is going to have to earn that trust

I note that he is getting annoyed with you for disbelieving him. whilst I can understand how difficult it must be for him to be reminded of the pain he has caused you, it’s really important that he allows you the space to feel everything it is that you’re feeling, because, without doing so, it’s going to be very difficult for you to find the resolution that you need to move your relationship forward

it sounds as though relationship therapy could be of great benefit to you both at the moment. your therapist will create a space in which you & your husband can express yourselves clearly & look at ways in which you can reconnect & rebuild your marriage

more importantly, however, it seems to me that you could use some individual support to help you to rebuild yourself

your husband’s affair is not your fault. you can’t be held responsible for choices that he has made. yes, both of you have an equal role in maintaining a good relationship & you may well have become distanced in recent times, but the fact that instead of coming to you to address any problems he chose to start an intimate relationship with someone else, is a reflection of him & him alone

it sounds as though in the midst of all this pain you’ve lost sight of yourself & your own worth.  much like anybody who has ever been cheated on, it seems you feel as though he chose this woman over you & that she must therefore be better than you in some way. this is just not true, caroline. your fixation with her & her imagined perfection is hurting your self esteem & so you must get some help to get out of this way of viewing things

therapy can really help to shift our view point, so do consider arranging some counselling for yourself to help you to get through this difficult time. talking to someone who is completely impartial is a great way to gain perspective & will help you process all that you feel about the affair & figure out what is going to be the right way forward for you

good luck