QUESTION: My wife is suffering
from guilty feelings about "cheating" on her ex-husband over two years
ago. We have been married for one year and have been seeing each other
for almost six years. She was unhappy in her marriage as I was in
mine, and we found happiness and love being together. What is happening
to cause these feelings now?
ANSWER: Two years is the average length
for the "honeymoon phase" of a relationship. However, in the context
of a forbidden romance, the initial honeymoon phase can be prolonged,
even indefinitely. In your case, progressing to marriage has brought
developmental challenges which must be handled if your relationship
is to grow, rather than stagnate.
In an affair, the lover is the recipient of only positive
feelings. Negative feelings are projected onto the marriage, leaving
the lover relationship unrealistically free of disappointment or resentments.
Because of this dynamic, it may feel as if your lover understands
you while your spouse does not. But then, your lover is not living
with you on a daily basis, negotiating the tasks of ordinary life!
It is time to get to work on what your own marriage
needs in order to develop a truly intimate relationship based on honesty.
It is possible that your wife's remorse is functioning as a distraction
from dealing with negativity about this current relationship.
Marital intimacy is based on honesty and resolving
the inevitable struggles and needs of two different people. Your relationship
must progress through the second phase of marriage. You must struggle
with differences and resolve disappointments as they arise. Resolving
this second phase of marriage may have been curtailed in your first
marriages, due to the development of the extramarital relationship,
which promised to make you only happy. True intimacy involves unhappiness
as well as happiness.
Whatever factors that kept your wife from resolving
problems with her first husband may still be an issue with her new
marriage to you. Now that you are the husband and not the secret lover,
is your wife bringing her unmet needs and disappointments (which are
inevitable in any marriage) to you, or not?
Give this relationship a chance by allowing your wife
the space to reflect on the past and any express remorse about dishonesty
in her previous marriage. Commit yourself to developing the communication
in this marriage that you both lacked with your former partners. If
you can endure the growing pains, you may discover that you are on
the verge of a much greater intimacy than either of you has experienced!
