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Q&A: Did I Make a Mistake Ending My Affair?

Source: Michele Weiner-Davis, LCSW

Question:

Years ago, I had an affair. My wife found out, and I stopped the affair. But I can’t get the other woman out of my mind. Did I make a mistake ending the affair? Should I have left my wife?

Answer:

When people decide to end affairs, they often expect the feelings about their affair partners to fade away in short order. After all, they have made conscious decisions to reinvest in their marriages, so shouldn’t the longing for their paramours simply go away?

Although the saying Out of sight, out of mind often has merit, when it comes to infidelity, it often doesn’t work that way. This is particularly true if the affair was long-lasting, deeply meaningful and/or sexually passionate. People frequently say that their affairs made them feel greatly appreciated, sexier than they’d felt in years and even “alive again”—and it’s hard for whatever comes afterward to compete with that.

That’s why when an affair ends, even if it’s for all the right reasons, there’s a sense of loss. With loss comes grief. Sometimes when people grieve over an affair that has ended, they feel guilty about the grief. They tell themselves they “should” be over the relationship. To compound matters, betrayed spouses seem to have radar for their partners’ lingering feelings of love or lust for their affair partners and often (understandably) become upset and accusatory, only adding to the complexity of the situation.

The truth is, overcoming loss takes time. Feelings do not come and go on a schedule. Judging oneself for reflecting on the importance of an affair and mentally reliving meaningful moments only serves to prolong the challenges in letting go—but it’s all understandable.

That doesn’t mean you have to just live with it. Rather than allow your continued thoughts about the affair to make you question the wisdom of staying in your marriage, why not ask yourself the reasons you decided to end the affair and recommit to your wife in the first place?  Did you value your history together?  Were you unwilling to break up your family? Did you realize that despite your decision to have an affair, you really love your wife? Is there a part of you that recognized that in many ways, the excitement of the affair was just that it was a responsibility-free relationship?  Did you recognize that your marriage would improve if you funneled your energy toward your spouse rather than your affair partner?

Chances are you had good reasons for deciding to stay in your marriage. Don’t lose sight of that. At the same time, don’t judge yourself for having lingering thoughts about the past. And after considering all the above, if you still feel torn about your decision to remain with your wife, you can seek professional help to sort things out. Be sure to reach out to a therapist who specializes in marriage therapy. Although the best way to find a referral is word-of-mouth, you also can search through a directory on the website for the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT.org).————————————————–Source: Michele Weiner-Davis, LCSW, founder of The Divorce Busting Center in Boulder, Colorado, that helps on-the-brink couples save their marriages. She is the best-selling author of eight books including Healing from Infidelity, The Sex-Starved Marriage and Divorce Bustin

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Ten (10) Truths Every Christian Needs to Know About Marriage

SOURCE:  Leslie Vernick

1. God designed marriage to be a loving and respectful partnership, not a slave/master dictatorship where one person dominates and controls the other. When one spouse seeks to gain power and control over the other and bullies or intimidates using words, finances, physical force, or the Scriptures, he or she is not only sinning against their spouse but also against God’s plan for marriage.

2. Every healthy adult relationship requires three essential ingredients to thrive. They are mutuality, reciprocity, and freedom. Mutuality means that each person brings into the relationship honesty, compassion, and respect. Reciprocity involves a give and take, where both people in the relationship share power and both people in the relationship share responsibility. Lastly, a healthy marriage needs freedom to express one’s thoughts, feelings and needs without fear as well as freedom to respectfully challenge someone’s behavior or ideas. When any of these three ingredients are missing we may be in a relationship with someone, but it is often difficult, unhealthy, and sometimes destructive.

3. All marriages experience angst, disagreement, and struggle. When a conflict arises mature people engage in conversations where they discuss, negotiate compromise, as well as respect one another’s differences, feelings and desires. They work on problem-solving, not attacking one another.

4. When a person is seriously sinned against, Jesus understands it fractures relationships. He provides instructions for relationship repair in Matthew 18. First, we are to go to the person who has sinned against us and speak to them about it. However, when that conversation does not result in repentance, no reconciliation of the relationship can take place, even if one-sided forgiveness is granted. Relationships are damaged by sin and are not repaired without repentance and restitution. Joseph forgave his brothers long before he saw them again when they came looking for food in Egypt, but he did not trust them or reconcile with them until he saw their hearts were changed (Genesis 44,45).

5. When a person or spouse respectfully speaks up against injustice and oppression in a marriage (or anywhere else for that matter), God is with them. When a spouse speaks up against the abuse and injustice in her marriage, Christians need to come alongside her, hear her, and provide church support and help. In practicing Matthew 18, she is seeking true reconciliation and is attempting biblical peacemaking. The church must not pressure her reconcile without any evidence of repentance or to be a peace at any price peacekeeper.

God does not care more about the institution of marriage than the safety and sanity of the people in it. .

6. If the abuser refuses to listen, refuses to repent or change, the blessings of a close marriage are impossible. Unconditional love does not equal unconditional relationship. God loves humankind unconditionally but does not offer unconditional relationship to everyone. Our sin separates us from God and repeated unacknowledged and unrepentant sin also separates us from one another. Marital intimacy, trust, fellowship, and warmth cannot exist where there is fear, threats, intimidation, bullying and disrespect of one’s thoughts, feelings, body, or personhood. A marriage with no boundaries or conditions It is not psychologically healthy, nor is it spiritually sound

7. One person in a difficult/destructive marriage can make the relationship better by not reacting sinfully to mistreatment, not retaliating and not repaying evil for evil, but one person in a difficult marriage cannot make a bad marriage good all by herself. It takes both people working together. Sometimes people helpers place an inordinately heavy burden on one spouse to somehow maintain fellowship and intimacy in a relationship while they are repeatedly being sinned against.

8. If the couple desires biblical change, Christian people helpers (pastors, Christian counselors, well-meaning friends) must not attempt to heal the couple’s serious marital wounds superficially by pushing premature reconciliation or promising peace when there is no true peace (Jeremiah 6:14) A Biblical peacemaker knows there is no quick fix to these difficult situations and walk this couple through the counseling stages of safety, sanity, and stability, until they reach security. There is no mutual counseling possible without first establishing some history of safety, not only physically, but emotionally and financially.

9. When trust in a marriage is broken (through deceit, infidelity, abuse, or unfaithfulness in various ways), the marriage is seriously damaged. The gift of consequences[1] can be a painful but potent reminder that the wrong-doer will not reap the benefits of a good marriage when they continue to sow discord, sin, and selfishness. Consequences may include legal ramifications, church discipline, and/or loss of relationship through separation when warranted.

10. Church and pastoral support and accountability are critical for a couple to heal from a destructive relationship pattern. Secrets destroy. An atmosphere of loving accountability and support along with zero tolerance for manipulation, abuse, or power and control over another individual, is the optimal environment for biblical peacemaking and relationship repair to take place.

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Can You Ever Affair-Proof a Relationship?

psychologytoday.com · by Linda and Charlie Bloom

 Can love and good sex “affair-proof” a relationship?

This myth is deeply embedded in our culture and is even held by a fairly large number of marriage counselors. But a lot of people who hold this belief have been deeply disappointed to discover that it’s not necessarily true. While it may seem reasonable to assume that if both partners love each other and have a mutually satisfying sexual relationship, there would simply be no reason for either to stray. Well, that is true: There is no “good reason.” Affairs, however, are generally not motivated by reason or rational thinking, but tend to be matters of the heart, which is the source of passion and desire, and not the mind, which deals with abstraction and logic.

So while it does seem logical to assume that there would be little motivation for partners in a happy relationship to go outside of it to fulfill their most intimate desires, particularly if they’ve made an agreement to be monogamous, it does happen—and more frequently often than most of us realize. A study cited in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy in 2015 reported that 54 percent of female respondents, and 57 percent of males, stated that they had been unfaithful in their relationship. What may also be surprising: The average length of the affairs was two years.

Still more surprising is that according to relationship and sexuality expert Esther Perel, author of Mating in Captivity, the motivating drive to have an affair is a desire not necessarily for sex, but rather for experiences their relationship is no longer delivering. What they desire, according to Perel, is attention, novelty, adventure, vibrancy, aliveness, and passion. They crave the experience of losing themselves in the intensity, excitement, and stimulation of a new relationship, with the hope of re-invigorating the feelings that occur in the stage of infatuation.

Too often, it seems that couples fail to keep that spark alive after they formalize their commitment, and so they run the risk of weakening the glue that keeps their relationship passionate and healthy. When daily routines and responsibilities dominate their attention, the risk of a violation of their monogamy agreement increases. When either partner feels that they must submerge aspects of themselves to maintain peace or avoid conflict, the risk factor is similarly heightened. The fantasy of being free to be fully authentic, and to experience aspects of oneself with another person that one’s partner disapproves of, is a compelling motivator for anyone who has withheld or concealed aspects of themselves out of fear of judgment, rejection, or punishment.

The expectation that one person can and should meet all of another’s needs, particularly when many of them appear to be at odds with each other—security and adventure, excitement and peace of mind, spirituality and sensuality, tenderness, and strength—can be a setup for disappointment or betrayal. This is not to justify violating anyone’s vows, but rather a warning to be mindful of the dangers of holding a partner responsible for fulfilling a range of needs and desires that may be beyond any one person’s capacity.

The experience of loneliness is also something that can occur even in good relationships. This often comes as a surprise to those who wrongly assume that once they enter into a serious partnership, their lonely days are over. But the experience of loneliness has more to do with our relationship to ourselves than whether we are in relationship, or with whom. It is a function of how comfortable we are in our own skin, whether we relate to ourselves with compassion or criticism, and how much we enjoy our own company. When we mistakenly hold our partner responsible for taking away our loneliness and making us happy, he or she will be likely to feel turned off by our efforts to coerce their attention.

There is a significant difference between desire and neediness: Neediness often feels manipulative and is seen as a turnoff. It can also include a sense of entitlement, or an expectation that one has the right to be taken care of by one’s partner. When we experience a partner’s desire, without their expectation of our reciprocity toward us, it feels pleasurable and attractive.

Sometimes the burden of fulfilling family obligations and responsibilities can feel oppressive, and the desire for relief, even briefly, can be compelling. At these times we are particularly vulnerable to the temptation of affairs. When partners take each other for granted and neglect their relationship, they put it in jeopardy. When unresolved conflicts mount up, resentment, anger, a lack of respect, and even contempt may form conditions that are an accident waiting to happen. Such animosity can become a perfect rationalization to go outside the marriage for intimate contact.

Infidelity can be as brief as a one-night stand, or a secret, years-long affair. Some people try to fulfill their need for attention and validation through sex. Some may rationalize their indiscretions with the justification that there was no intimate physical contact, but like emotional affairs, in which literal sex does not occur, even technical infidelity or virtual affairs can do great damage to one’s primary relationship.

No matter what their cause or nature, every betrayal harms a relationship and requires repair work to restore trust and integrity. Another statistic cited by the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy study was that, of marriages in which an affair was discovered or admitted, 31 percent lasted. The shock of the crisis can expose the source of the unmet needs that the affair was an attempt to fulfill, and in doing so, open the possibility for this breakdown to become a breakthrough, provided both partners do the work that is required to heal the relationship.

Pain can sometimes be a great motivator. It would, of course, be more efficient and less painful to avoid the torturous stages of wounding and healing that accompany unfaithfulness. There are many ways to enhance the quality of your relationship without unnecessary suffering. If you don’t know what they are, ask your partner: It’s likely that he or she will be happy to give you a few ideas. As the saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Linda and Charlie Bloom are excited to announce the release of their third book, Happily Ever After . . . and 39 Other Myths about Love: Breaking Through to the Relationship of Your Dreams:

“Love experts Linda and Charlie shine a bright light, busting the most common myths about relationships. Using real-life examples, they skillfully, provide effective strategies and tools to create and grow a deeply loving and fulfilling long-term connection.” —Arielle Ford, author of Turn You Mate into Your Soulmate

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psychologytoday.com · by Linda and Charlie Bloom

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The Purpose of Confronting Controllers

Mark 8:31-33 – “Jesus then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. “Get behind me, Satan!” he said. “You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”

One of the most important benefits of having boundaries is that we have the ability to stand up to others when they try to control our lives. Peter wanted to impose his own design for

Jesus’ life onto Jesus, but Jesus had good boundaries; he stood up to Peter and rebuked him.

Jesus showed that he was in control of himself and would not be defined and controlled by Peter, no matter how good Peter’s intentions might have been. The truth is that Peter was thinking, not of God’s purposes, but of his own agenda. Peter was trying to rescue Jesus instead of turning the situation over to God.

We must be on guard against anyone or anything that might take control of us. Self-control is the fruit of the Spirit (see Galatians 5:22 – 23). When we have self-control, we maintain the ability to stand up to aggressive controllers who try to tell us who we should be and what we should do. Although we are wise to listen to others and be open to their feedback, we should never allow someone to be in control of us and define who we are. Setting appropriate boundaries helps us to retain that kind of freedom and self-control.

This devotional is drawn from The NIV Life Journey Bible, which features notes based on the precepts developed by John Townsend and Henry Cloud.

The Boundaries devotions are drawn from the Boundaries book series, which has transformed marriages, families, organizations, and individuals around the world. The Boundaries series is written by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend. Copyright 2015 by Zondervan; all rights reserved. Learn more at BoundariesBooks.com.

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11 Rules on Marriage You Won’t Learn in School

SOURCE:  Dennis and Barbara Rainey/Family Life

Here’s some practical, counter-cultural advice on how to make marriage work.

For many years, e-mails have circulated the country with the outline of a speech attributed to Microsoft founder Bill Gates titled “11 Rules You Won’t Learn in School About Life.”  It turns out that Gates never wrote these words nor did he deliver the speech—it was all taken from an article written by Charles J. Sykes in 1996. And it really doesn’t matter that Gates wasn’t involved, because the piece does a great job of unmasking how feel-good, politically-correct teachings have created a generation of kids with a false concept of reality.

I thought I’d not only pass on these rules, but also make a few of my own—on marriage.

First, here are the 11 rules of life that you won’t learn in school:

Rule 1: Life is not fair—get used to it!

Rule 2: The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will not make $60,000 per year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping—they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault.  So don’t whine about your mistakes; learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes, and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parents’ generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to anything in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you “find yourself.” Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is not real life. In real life, people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.

Sage advice.

After reading this piece, I was inspired to take a crack at something I’d been chewing on:  “11 Rules on Marriage You Won’t Learn in School.”

Rule 1: Marriage isn’t about your happiness.  It’s not about you getting all your needs met through another person.  Practicing self-denial and self-sacrifice, patience, understanding, and forgiveness are the fundamentals of a great marriage.  If you want to be the center of the universe, then there’s a much better chance of that happening if you stay single.

Rule 2: Getting married gives a man a chance to step up and finish growing up.  The best preparation for marriage for a single man is to man up now and keep on becoming the man God created him to be.

Rule 3: It’s okay to have one rookie season, but it’s not okay to repeat your rookie season.  You will make rookie mistakes in your first year of marriage; the key is that you don’t continue making those same mistakes in year five, year 10, or year 20 of your marriage.

Rule 4: It takes a real man to be satisfied with and love one woman for a lifetime.  And it takes a real woman to be content with and respect one man for a lifetime.

Rule 5: Love isn’t a feeling.  Love is commitment.  It’s time to replace the “D-word”—divorce—with the “C-word”—commitment.  Divorce may feel like a happy solution, but it results in long-term toxic baggage.  You can’t begin a marriage without commitment.  You can’t sustain one without it either.  A marriage that goes the distance is really hard work.  If you want something that is easy and has immediate gratification, then go shopping or play a video game.

Rule 6: Online relationships with old high school or college flames, emotional affairs, sexual affairs, and cohabiting are shallow and illegitimate substitutes for the real thing.  Emotional and sexual fidelity in marriage are the real thing.

Rule 7: Women spell romance R-E-L-A-T-I-O-N-S-H-I-P.  Men spell romance S-E-X.  If you want to speak romance to your spouse, become a student of your spouse, enroll in a lifelong “Romantic Language School,” and become fluent in your spouse’s language.

Rule 8: During courtship, opposites attract.  After marriage, opposites can repel each another.  You married your spouse because he/she is different.  Differences are God’s gift to you to create new capacities in your life.  Different isn’t wrong, it’s just different.

Rule 9: Pornography robs men of a real relationship with a real person and it poisons real masculinity, replacing it with the toxic killers of shame, deceit, and isolation.  Pornography siphons off a man’s drive for intimacy with his wife.  Marriage is not for wimps.  Accept no substitutes.

Rule 10: As a home is built, it will reflect the builder.  Most couples fail to consult the Master Architect and His blueprints for building a home.  Instead a man and woman marry with two sets of blueprints (his and hers). As they begin building, they discover that a home can’t be built from two very different sets of blueprints.

Rule 11: How you will be remembered has less to do with how much money you make or how much you accomplish and more with how you have loved and lived.

Pass on the rules to a friend who will enjoy them!

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Adapted from Preparing for Marriage Devotions for Couples, by Dennis and Barbara Rainey, Copyright © 2013. Used with permission from Regal Books