Surviving Infidelity: 8 paths to cope and survive

July 12, 2008 by 2 Comments

So, you’ve discovered your partner or spouse is having an affair?

And, if you are like most, you are in pain and find it difficult to function from day to day, hour to hour.

You wonder how you will survive and cope.

You wonder IF you will survive.

Over the years working with many many couples and individuals, I’ve seen patterns and themes. There is a predictable sequence of steps that most go through as they recover from infidelity.

This video outlines those steps and also gives research on the stage or step where most enter the recovery process.

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Surviving Infidelity: Death without Dying Part 4

June 1, 2008 by 1 Comment

More reflections from a friend of mine who came home after a long trip, greeted by his wife at the door who without feeling said, “I’ve met someone else. I’m leaving.”

Space. It’s not mine to give her and she’s taking it, having it. I cannot rein or reign her behaviors, her choices, her judgments. My emotions also cannot be reined in and where the healthy line is for me to reign over them is a source of confusion. To be healthy, I probably need to give them a large pasture to run through, unbridled. Breathe.

Judgment. These bleeding edge, raw emotions are mine. Like hunger or weariness, they are mine and have no morality attached to them. They’re okay. They’re mine. But I’m judging some other’s behaviors as wrong. Just plain wrong. Moralistically wrong. Cosmically wrong. And I struggle, fight, and fear the dichotomy of my judgment of the behavior that has causes so many deaths and my need to remain the nonjudgmental witness to my own flood of emotions, thoughts and memories. I fear their ability and my surrender to control by them or being plucked up by them like a raging current into a spiral of self-destructive choices. What blend of respect and curiosity can master them and discharge them if not constructively, at minimum appropriately. I’m suddenly a child. Six years old. And must treat myself as kindly as I would that display of raw, unbridled and at times inappropriate emotion.

“I’ve met somebody. I’m leaving you.?? God damn. God Damn! You’re not supposed to meet somebody! You’re married to me. You can look. You can even stray. But leave?
Fuck! Just like that? I feel tossed aside. Like the history means nothing. How could I miss that? When did requited become unrequited? We’ve always been far from perfect. But pretty damn good. God, this hurts so fuckin’ bad. It feels like a wound that will never close, always ooze, never die. Death without dying.

How, how, just how the fuck am I supposed to free the emotions and control the behaviors? Not that I have any impulses yet. I’m not even eating and alcohol and drugs scare the hell out of me right now. And even this fear of losing control scares the hell out of me right now. Damn. Maybe it’s just all fear. Fear of the dark? I’m certainly in a place with no light. Pitch. Black. Heavy. A bag on my chest. Breathe.

Transcend! What an idea! For someone without this weight anchored to the murky, muddy depths. Andy says, “Happy, Healthy, Whole.?? Normally, those would seem easy enough goals. Today, I’m not so sure. Steph and I had some laughs last night. But we’re not happy. I’m not drinking. But I’m not eating either. Somehow, playing observer and tackling this ogre seems like the healthiest thing that I’m capable of right now. Whole? I feel as whole as an amputee just released from the hospital.

My value remains. My values shaken. I could have worked more on my marriage. But the family, the team, the four of us, the unit. That was / is my everything. And I will be strong, I will defend, protect and do what ever I can to close these gaping wounds and restore us. To do so. And to resist impulse requires such a careful observation of this disoriented, dismembered soul. Such self-centeredness this, this thing.Judgment-free emotions, tightly reined impulses. How can one not implode, if they do not explode? Or vise versa?
Can I behave with integrity and allow my emotions to be my advisors but not my masters?

“I’ve met somebody. I’m leaving you.?? The continuous loop tape plays over and over in my mind. When my father died, the image of his body on the floor of his apartment, two paramedics and a cop working it, the dark stain of piss down his pants and across the chair where he breathed and wet his last seared forever in my memory. Will those two sentences stated so matter-of-factly at the kitchen island, her facing the window, me facing the fridge, will they remain frozen in my ears? Will they ever go away? Will the coldness of them ever thaw?

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Marital Infidelity: Death Without Dying Part 3

May 25, 2008 by Leave a Comment

This is Part 3 of a series.

A good friend, after a long speaking engagement, was greeted by his wife at the door with, “I’m leaving. I’ve found someone else.”

Yes, it was almost like that – exactly.

No explanation, other than I found someone else.

Shocked and devastated, he began to eloquently write about this experience.

As it was cathartic for him to write, I hope it is comforting for you to read, knowing that the intensity of your feelings and thoughts have a friend.

Part 3….

The hollowness. Empty. Void. Darkness. Ain’t no sunshine. The light is out. My soul bare. Eyes burned in the sockets. Wave after wave of suffocation.In an instant, who I was forever scarred.My life gone. My body lives on.

Living, dreaming, planning, building one moment. And the next, it’s gone. Oh, yeah, it sometimes was on automatic pilot. Sometimes even boring. But everything changes in an instant. Everything taken away. Except for this shell. This shell of existence goes on.

The pain is constant. Only sleep quiets the incessant ache. But sleep is cursed with waking. And at present there is no cure for consciousness. The relief of death denied by the insistent, incessant call of life.

Longing for yesterday. Give me back my tomorrows. Just take away my present pain.
Sudden as a heart attack.But no warning. There were no signs. No chance to adjust, to diagnose, to remediate, to prescribe or transition. Just gone in plain sight.

There’s an old Zen parable about a meditation master instructing his students on meditation through concentration on inhaling and exhaling. One complained of the boredom of breathing. At this, the master grabbed the student’s neck and held his head under water for nearly a minute. The master then asked the student who was gasping for air, “do you still think breathing is boring???

My boring love affair is over. When did we forget to breathe? Where did it go? Why can’t it go on? My partner. My best friend. The team. My wife. The mother of my children.The inseparable constant.Thirty-two, thirty-three years. Gone without a warning. Without a trace. No body. Nothing that makes sense.

Her tears were to wet my cold dead face at my final hour. Her hands were to comfort and cover the hands of my two others that complete me. Her timeless beauty still shining at my last.So many years from now. Or at worst, it would be my agonized cries and sobs piercing the night as my tears fall on those high cheek bones at the coldest hour. But there is no body.

“I’ve met somebody. I’m leaving you.?? That was it. Two short sentences that broke my world asunder. That tore my heart from my chest. That leave me cold, dead and bleeding. I can’t talk to my best friend, my soul mate, my confidant about this when the words came from her cold lips.

How do you make sense of the unsensible? No, boys and girls it isn’t rational. It doesn’t make sense. We were a great team. We were the perfect couple. We were lots of things.
And now we’re not. We have left. One is gone. For the first time in thirty-three years, when one is gone, we are no longer one and we’re no longer two. My world has stopped. But it must go on.

I’m so damn lost. I’m so confused. I’m spinning untethered in the cold dark void. I’ve been transported to a place that’s uncharted and I need to find my way home. But I’m no longer certain of home. Or me. Or much of anything. I’ve gone from all together to all apart. My competencies in question.

If self-awareness begins with knowing what is happening inside, I feel my very survival is at stake. But I must force myself to focus, reflect and make my inner state an object of my awareness. I know that a part of me is afraid. Afraid of loss. Afraid of losing the thing I value most ?” my family, our team of four.

These raw, bleeding emotions, gushing, exploding, oozing, seeping and demanding. It requires great effort to assess my being and look at how I can be true to who I am in perspective, and look at these emotions and not view this vast wasteland through them.
I can have these emotions, but they cannot have me.

“I’ve met somebody. I’m leaving you.?? It echoes. It haunts. It taunts. When will this nightmare end?

Filed Under: Infidelity Help Tagged With: , ,
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