Signed,
Unfaithful & Grieving
Dealing with guilt and grief after infidelity
You started carrying your cell phone more often and taking it literally everywhere. You catch yourself speaking about your coworker far more often than you should. You justify it by saying that you really want to keep in touch with friends and family or that you have a lot of stuff happening at work and this is one person who seems to relate to the craziness. As time passes, the truth is revealed. You’ve had an affair. Affair…regardless of the times, still has a negative, dirty connotation. Most people tend to reject it by saying that they were just spending time with someone else and it simply got out of hand. Regardless of how you classify it; it happened. Your partner found out, is devastated, and now you must (guiltily) help pick up the pieces. There are tons of resources to help him or her reconfigure trust, deal with the emotional mountains and valleys that come along with the revelation and the healing, but what about you? Cutting off a relationship that provided meaning and validation for you is just as weighty as the death of a loved one. It’s complex. It’s grief. It’s guilt. It’s confusion. It’s strained hope. So, how do you overcome and regain some sense of normalcy?
First things first, be honest with yourself. Your honest account of how you’re feeling can prevail through you having moments of self-talk on your morning/evening commute or writing in a journal (I know…evidence!). Nevertheless, no matter how you get it out, be honest with yourself about how you’re feeling. Connect with your sense of loss. Take note of what that person meant to you and how he/she made you feel – what you loved and loathed about them. Secondly, identify the deficit. Regardless of the shame that can be attached to having an affair, you didn’t get there alone. Be honest about what was missing in your relationship that created that space (and your justification) for it to occur. So, what was missing – your sense of validation? A change in intimacy with your partner? Constant discord and distance from your partner? Whatever it is, figure it out because unless you can be honest about your loss and figure out what got you there in the first place, you have a higher chance you have of history repeating itself.
-Infatuation is when you think he’s as sexy as Robert Redford, as smart as Henry Kissinger, as noble as Ralph Nader, as funny as Woody Allen, and as athletic as Jimmy Connors.
-Love is when you realize that he’s as sexy as Woody Allen, as smart as Jimmy Connors, as funny as Ralph Nader, as athletic as Henry Kissinger and nothing like Robert Redford – but you’ll take him anyway. ~Judith Viorst, Redbook, 1975