Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: If your spouse has had an affair, I’d be willing to bet that at some point in this process, you’ve found yourself with the realization that in the future, you’d like to be able to “just let it go.”

That’s because this process can make you feel very negative feelings that seem to punish you all over again. A person who is generally very loving may find herself feeling spiteful. A person who is usually very happy-go- lucky might find herself feeling more anger than she ever has. And a confident person might suddenly lack self esteem.

As if the affair hasn’t already stolen enough from us, we now have to lose little pieces of ourselves and feel as if we are somehow looking into the face of a stranger when we look in the mirror.

A wife might have this complaint: “I know that I have to let go of the affair. I know that I need to do this for me and not for my husband or even for my kids. I have become a different person. I am angry and suspicious. I am borderline paranoid. I find myself being short with my kids and with my mom. I lose my temper and I have always been patient. I don’t like who I have become. I feel that enough time has passed for me to let it go. But I can not seem to do that. When I am alone, I dwell on it. I can’t seem to force myself to think about other things. Last night, I found myself spewing more questions at my husband. He has answered these questions countless times before. He says he constantly has to repeat himself and he is right. I don’t know why I feel the need to sound like a broken record. We’ve had counseling. We’ve made progress. It is me who can’t let go. How do I change this?”

Do Not Heap More Negativity Onto Yourself.  You Are Doing The Best That You Can: First of all, you are doing what so many of us do. We blame ourselves. We feel as if we are falling short because we should be able to just move on. We feel that we are being weak and not determined enough. If moving on was as easy as making up your mind to do so, then every one would be able to do it.

What is seemingly such a simple concept is anything but simple. There is so much to overcome here. And sometimes, it takes more time than we anticipate. But I can share some things that helped me to move on. This might sound “new age” or a little silly, but please bear with me.

Let Go Of The Need For Control: I think one of the most important things that you can do is to realize that you can not control everything. Here is something that the affair forced me to learn about myself. I have found that it is my personality to attempt to control based on fear. Somewhere in my mind, I must think that if I worry about something hard enough or attempt to put as much control over it as I possibly can, then I can somehow ward that thing off.

I do this with my children, with my husband, and even with my mother. I am normally a type A personality and I don’t like feeling that I have no control over what happens to me and to those that I love. The thing is, we do not have as much control as we like to think. People disappoint us. Accidents happen. Unforeseen circumstances rear their ugly heads. This occurs no matter how much we worry or we try to prevent things. And it a hard reality to face.

But the second we truly accept that many things are outside of our control, the switch is flipped. We are able to stop our worry and our rumination because we realize that it does us no good whatsoever. Worrying about your husband cheating again does very little to ensure that he will not do what you fear. It just makes you feel out of control and it makes him feel frustrated.

For me, one big key in “letting go” was accepting that I could not control what my husband did or did not do. And if I kept trying, I was only going to make us both more miserable. It was about understanding that I could make my marriage as strong as possible but, in the end, I could not control the future or someone else’s feelings and actions. And then, it was going a step further and realizing that if the worst happened, I could, and would, handle that at the appropriate time.

There are no guarantees in life. We have to do our best to strengthen our relationships and put safeguards in place. But in the end, we can only hope for the best and know that we will handle what comes as best as we can. We control what we can, but then we have no choice but to let it go and know that we will face whatever outcome greats us at the appropriate time.

Another thing that helped me was to try to look objectively at how often I dreaded things which never came to pass. This made me realize how much time I spent worrying about things that never actually happened. It made me realize that I was feeling pain and anxiety that wasn’t actually necessary.

None of us are promised tomorrow. We don’t know what the future holds. So we need to embrace what we have today and let go of those things that don’t serve us and hold us back. This is the thought process that allowed me to decide that letting go wasn’t giving in. It was freeing.

I don’t want to insinuate that this was an easy or fast process.  It wasn’t.  These realizations took a while to sink in.  I went through a lot of needless worry and attempt to control before they did.  You can read more on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com

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