Turn Inward and Take Care of Yourself

From: Dr. Frank Gunzburg

When you first learn about an affair there is usually an explosion of emotions that’s accompanied by a series of questions. The emotions are a crazy cocktail of anger, denial, grief, and a complete loss of self-esteem. The questions that follow aren’t any better: How could this happen? Am I being a doormat? How could he do this to me? Why didn’t I see this coming? What kind of fool am I that this could happen right under my nose? How can I possibly keep something like this from happening again? Who knows about this? What effect is this going to have on…?

The problem is that the questions you ask often misdirect you, turning your attention away from where it needs to be for you to heal. Let me explain.

The questions that typically come up are going to be unanswerable for one thing. For another they don’t really help you heal.

The more energy you direct towards trying to figure out why the affair happened, the less energy you have to work on your own emotional healing process. And turning inward to help yourself is what’s going to help you heal.

Ironic as it may sound, looking at your emotions and learning how to cope with them in ways that make sense to you is going to take you a whole lot further in the beginning than trying to figure out why the affair happened. Later, you and your spouse will need to figure out what factors allowed and helped put the affair in place, but at first it’s more important that you turn inward to heal.

Here’s the truth: You may never completely understand why the affair happened. Cheaters cheat for a multitude of reasons each of which comes down to an essential character flaw they have to overcome if they are going to improve their lives and heal their relationship.

If you aren’t a cheater, you won’t be able to completely understand why your spouse did what he did. Try as you might it may never become clear to you. You may glean some kind of perspective on the issue over time, but you won’t ever understand it completely.

There are parts you will probably understand, but the decision and act of “crossing the line” might be beyond your understanding. Even if you could understand it, it wouldn’t help you heal the emotions you are suffering with right now. Your emotions are yours, they are present, and they have to be dealt with if you are going to heal.

So the best thing you can do to start healing your relationship is turn inward and look for ways that you can heal yourself.

I know the pain of this horrible event is mammoth, and learning how to cope with your emotions may seem like an overwhelming task if you have just learned about an affair.

But the more work you can do on this, the more likely it is you will heal from the pain you are feeling right now.

Dr. Frank Gunzburg is a licensed counselor in Maryland and has been specializing is helping couples restore their marriage for over 30 years.