Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

There’s no question that a wife can feel extremely traumatized after she learns that her husband has cheated or had an affair. It is not unusual to feel as if you are sleepwalking through life (or worse) for quite some time. Some wives worry that the affair will negatively impact their mental health permanently because it has given them posttraumatic stress disorder or PTSD.

A wife might say, “learning about my husband’s affair has completely upended my life. I have never been so shocked. My husband was the person I most trusted in this world. Turns out, that was a mistake because he betrayed me in the worst way. I have talked to my best friend about this quite a lot. She is not a mental health professional, but she does have a behavioral background. She believes that the affair gave me PTSD. At first, I scoffed at this because I have always been very healthy in terms of mental health. But then I took a long, hard look at my life and I believe that she may be right. In truth, ever since I learned about the affair, I don’t sleep. I don’t eat. I have nightmares. I am always suspicious and now I always assume that most people have unsavory motives. My attitude and demeanor are now always negative. I’m nearly certain that I am depressed. Could I have PTSD? And if so, will I have it forever? Does it go away? Can you recover from it?”

Symptoms Of PTSD: I am not a mental health professional. However, I have read much literature and research that leads me to believe that therapists do believe that is is possible to have PTSD after any trauma, including an affair. The reason for this is that it is very common to see symptoms of PTSD after an affair, including things like:

feelings of hopelessness and powerlessness

rumination or finding reasons to continue to go over negative emotions and thoughts about the affair

swinging emotions where one minute you feel numb and the next you feel overwhelming sadness and/or anger

and

feeling unstable and off balance.

These are just a few examples, but nearly everyone I know who has been through infidelity (myself included) can identify with these symptoms because we have deeply felt or experienced them.

The Affair Can Bring Back Previous Trauma: It is not uncommon for this new bout of PTSD to trigger memories or negative experiences of trauma from the past. Since an affair can make you question everything that you thought you knew, you can end up ruminating over multiple things. You can suddenly find a laundry list of all sorts of things that are now wrong with your life. In fact, after betrayals like infidelity, it is not uncommon to look back over your life in search of “proof” that you can’t trust anyone or that you are actually unlovable or unable to maintain a relationship. None of these things are true, of course. But it’s very common for PTSD to trigger the need to find a pattern of heartbreak as some sort of answer as to why this happened to you. In truth, there isn’t always an answer. You did nothing to deserve this. Please believe that.

So Can You Survive This PTSD And Move On? Yes, you can. Think about it for a second. When we take a walk down memory lane to try to determine what might have lead up to the affair, we forget one very important piece of the puzzle. Chances are, we are remembering these heartbreaks right now because we are devastated.

However, last month or last year, these things were in our rearview mirror. We were happily married, so we were able to leave these unfortunate events from our past where they belonged – in the past. And we moved on. The human spirit and our sense of resilience allowed us to do this. In time and with healing, you can overcome this affair.

How Do You Move Past A Pain Like This One? It is really helpful if both you and your spouse accept the trauma that the affair has caused. It does no good to downplay the pain that you are going through and it’s very important that your husband acknowledges both your pain and his role in it. Yes, you have the responsibility to want to move on and to do everything in your power to put one foot in front of the other, but your husband shares this burden.

Because he has an even bigger role to play since he is the party who put these events into motion. He will need to become your partner in healing and the one person on whom you can rely to be your ally and helpmate in overcoming these wounds. In a sense, you both have to become detectives. He needs to uncover what contributed to him committing this horrible act and you need to uncover (and share with him) what you need to begin to feel like yourself again.

In order to be your true ally, he will need to abandon any justification for his actions. If he truly wants to help you move on, he can not claim that you didn’t meet his needs and were therefore partly to blame. He must also be prepared to weather whatever frustration, anger, and confusion that you understandably have. He must have the patience to stand by you as you sort through the grief you are now feeling. The sooner he is willing to take responsibility for this process, the sooner you can both begin to heal.

In terms of how the wounded party can do her part, you must have patience with yourself and understand that you may have mood swings, life disturbances, and feelings of irrationality. While you may feel the need to retaliate or run away, you must try to self-soothe, find outside professional help if needed, and commit to envisioning a future that is positive and is reflective on what you deserve.

To answer the original question, yes, I definitely believe that one can experience symptoms of PTSD after an affair because an affair causes trauma. But I also believe that like all traumas, you can heal from it. I do believe that I have healed and in many ways, I am stronger from doing so.  If it helps, I share more of how I healed from my own husband’s affair at http://surviving-the-affair.com

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