QUESTION: After 11 years of marriage
my husband had an affair. I saw the signs about a year ago and confronted
him, but he denied it. He finally admitted to the affair after a friend
told me. We had a few very bad months. We hit rock bottom but are
slowly climbing our way back to the top. I can now see where things
went wrong. We are communicating but he has started to refuse answering
any more questions that I ask. He says that it will only make matters
worse. My husband says that he still loves me and is full of regret
and remorse for his actions. And I still love him but I feel in so
much pain. I visualize the two of them together on a daily basis.
I think I am going mad. How can I heal?
ANSWER: You are not going mad.
You are grieving your husband's betrayal! The questions you need answered
are not the details of the sexual affair, as much as the motivation
for his behavior. Except for clarifying issues of safe sex, details
often become overly focused upon and can lead to unhealthy obsessions
with a life of their own. What would be more important to focus your
energy on is what the emotional meaning of the affair was in context
of your marriage together.
Your husband broke the rules of your monogamous
agreement. He has broken your trust, and you have every reason to
feel angry and sad. Accepting these feelings and working through
them includes understanding what was truly going on for him when
he chose to so jeopardize his marriage. Only through understanding
the meaning of the affair will you be able to determine whether
you may be able to regain trust in him for the future.
You believe that his motivation has to do with
your preoccupation with mourning your father's death. Though his
reasons by no means validates his destructive acting out in your
relationship, it would be critical to explore this aspect in depth.
In this way the two of you will be taking responsibility for the
gap in your marriage that might allow other people between you.
And should this kind of gap present pain in the future, communication
in place of dangerous acting out behavior will be more likely to
occur.
It is the responsibility of both of you to create
the connection that is lacking in your relationship rather than
ignore it. Perhaps you were too quick to accept that your husband
cannot help you in your bereavement. Your self reliance, or in his
perception, dependence on your parents, may have left him feeling
like he was peripheral to you instead of your main support. The
silver lining in your situation may be that the obvious symptom
of infidelity is blatant enough that neither of you can ignore it.
In some way it may present the opportunity for focusing on your
couples' relationship and bringing you closer together. Clearly
this has already occurred with your alliance against the other woman,
and this is how it should be if the priorities for the marriage
are basically sound.
The "other woman" in this case does not seem to
represent any desirable replacement to you, in your husband's mind
but may symbolize the predator of disconnection that you and your
partner were falling prey to in your own intimate relationship.
Without attention, this gap may have caused your marriage to atrophy
and die a slow death over time. Your love for one another, your
desire to remain as a family unit, his deep remorse and your belief
in his genuine regret for hurting you are all reasons to consider
remaining in the marriage.
Do not get seduced away from the problem by having
an emotional obsession with the affair itself! Express your anger
and hurt. You might want to create a ritual which includes making
a fire and burning the pain, sharing it with the flames themselves.
From the ashes may come the possibility for a renewed relationship
with your husband. Expect a change from your husband in how he expresses
his dissatisfaction in the marriage. Ask him for clarification regarding
his acting out behavior. What would he have done differently, looking
back on it? Instead of having an affair, what did he need to express
to you about his own needs in the marriage? Is he talking to you
and are you listening?
The overriding danger is that without a change
in your ability to connect and communicate with one another, the
two of you are vulnerable to using the affair as a continued object
of distancing. Perhaps one that replaces the gap left by the separate
grief you experienced with your father. The rift between your father
and your husband may have left you with conflict about your closeness
to your husband. The distance between you and your spouse may have
set the conditions that are ripe for affairs. Your best insurance
as a couple is to build a bridge to one another.
Increase your reliance on each other to meet your
emotional needs. Perhaps a weekend away together when you are ready,
could provide the opportunity for beginning a deepened discussion
about the last 11 years of marriage. Trace your path together, see
what might have been missing from your current retroperspective
view of your marriage which includes acknowledgment of the gap that
has existed between the two of you. Make this an opportunity for
self reflection, too. Explore your own intimacy issues. And be sure
to look deeply enough into yourself to honestly assess your own
past availability to the marriage. Are you willing to depend on
your husband for your emotional needs? Does anything keep you from
making him a significant source of nourishment. He may need to feel
that he is important to you and that you need him. Is he there for
you when you do reach out? Determine together what kind of bond
you would like to have with one another, and the steps needed to
achieve that.
Make your relationship the main focus. Do not allow
jealousy the power to ravage your life or to undermine your self
worth! If your husband's behavior can be understood and does not
represent a pattern of infidelity as a response to stress,
it is unlikely to occur again. Contain the jealousy fire and like
any fire deprived of its oxygen, it will eventually die out. Instead,
direct the wind bellows towards the marriage relationship!
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