Infidelity is often crazy time. The spouse takes off on a crazy ride which challenges the self-esteem of the spouse.
Read this case study:
1. What in the way of disrespect, blame, criticism and/or abuse are you facing?
He was ‘unhappy’ for thirty years ‘but didn’t know it until this woman picked him up in a bar and they started an affair (two years ago). Yet six weeks before, he said to friends that he had never been happier (with me); he was living a ‘honeymoon’. Weeks before he revealed he was leaving me and our five children for this woman he had known five weeks, he berated me for ‘being an emotional and financial burden to him’. It was time he ‘kept’ and did something for himself. I was totally shocked. (This man is a military chaplain.) He said the ‘kids would get over it.’ That he could ‘have any woman he wanted and he just proved it’. He described the affair in detail, but contradicted himself so many times I thought I was going crazy. I can’t believe anything he says. For a minister to say ‘there is no right and wrong’, I did nothing wrong for I found my true self’, or ‘you never loved me’, after I devoted my entire life to him, is so hurtful. Thank god for my kids, who can look him in the eye and say – Dad, you threw Mom away like a piece of garbage, and we know what you did is wrong.
2. What has worked best for you in stopping or tolerating less and less of these destructive behaviors?
Confrontation of his behavior only sent him into a spinning cycle of confession, lying, twisting details, and self-justification. He was not only lying to me and his kids, he was lying to the Chaplain-General himself, and all his colleagues, parading her around as his new partner when he was still with me. Fortunately, his boss compared notes with me. Yet, risking his reputation, career, and job did not make him change his behavior, either. He defied all of us. I took him back three times in an eleven-month period, only to have him confess that he had never broken it off but was leading a double life. He never stopped the behavior, was lying to the marriage counselor, and treating me as if it was my fault, and to ‘get over it’. The third time he phoned me to tell me he was leaving me again for her, I told him not to bother coming home (he was away on a business trip). He was shocked. (But brought her with him to pick up his stuff I packed in his car.) I filed for divorce after he changed the password on the bank accounts. He was shocked. Now his spin is, I kicked him out. No, I made him choose, and he didn’t like that. But I like that. At least I know where I stand, and that has given me such power and heart. It is truly his loss. What works best is standing firm in your own self-worth, and letting the other person know that you will no longer tolerate disrespect. I am worth a whole heart, not half a one.