For How Long Does The Hurt Last After An Affair?
By: Katie Lersch: I often hear from wives who worry that their husband’s affair means that they will never feel the same about anything in their life ever again. They describe the affair as the event that has sucked all of the joy out of their life. And they don’t envision this ever changing. They worry that the deep hurt that they are feeling right now is never going to go away and that they will always have to drag it around with them, like a ball and chain shackled to their ankle.
I recently heard from a wife who asked: “for how long does the hurt remain after a husband’s affair? Because my husband’s affair has clouded the way that I see the world. Every morning when I wake up, it is the first thing that I think about and I hurt. When I go to bed, I am still thinking about it and I hurt some more. I can’t even do normal things without thinking about my husband’s cheating. The other day, I watched the Twilight movie with my daughter and normally I would enjoy this very much, but I couldn’t help thinking that Edward would not cheat on Bella and I ended up sobbing. When I see children playing in the park, rather than being happy like I normally would, I worry about the future of my own children because I don’t know if I can hold my marriage together. The other day, I saw a couple all over each other in the parking lot at the theater and I found my eyes full of tears because somehow I just knew that they were cheaters because of the intensity of their affection and the fact that they were trying to hide it. How long will this hurt continue to cloud my worldview? Will this hurt always be with me?”
I will attempt to answer these questions as honestly as I can. But please keep in mind that everyone processes an affair (and recovers from it) in different and individual ways. But, I can tell you the opinion that I’ve formed from my experience, which I will do now.
My Take On The Hurt After An Affair: I am not going to lie to you and tell you that one day – long after the affair is over – you will magically wake up free from any pain. In my experience, it doesn’t work that way. But, as you place the emphasis on your recovery and healing, as you do kind things for yourself and surround yourself with loving friends and family, and as you rehabilitate your marriage (if that is what you choose to do,) you might find that you aren’t thinking about the affair nearly as much and therefore, you are feeling that hurt much less.
I sometimes hear from wives who tell me that it has been several years after the affair and they are still feeling as hurt today as they did when the affair was fresh. I don’t doubt that these women are telling the absolute truth, and my heart breaks for them. Because I feel that it doesn’t always have to be this way. To me, the fact that the intensity of the pain is that severe signifies that there is still so much healing to do. And it is never too late to heal. It is never too late to identify the source of your pain and remove it or work around or through it.
I am not going to lie to you and tell you that when I think about my husband’s affair today, I don’t feel any negativity or that I don’t feel a momentary twinge of regret. I do. But, it’s no longer that deep, dark pain. And I am looking back at it with the knowledge that I got through it, which is the way that I look at many challenges that I have faced in my life. Many things in life are painful and we would never repeat them. But as time passes, we look at them and see them more clearly and we can’t deny the lessons learned and the growth that resulted because of them.
So to answer the question “for how long does the hurt last after the affair,” I would have to say that, although it varies depending on the individual, that deep, almost unbearable pain does not last forever. One of the reasons for this is that, in order to experience that type of pain, you have to be thinking about the affair almost nonstop. Of course, in the early days, you think about it all the time. But later, once the healing has happened and you’ve moved on, you don’t think about it nearly as much. In fact, there will come a time when you are no longer thinking about it on a daily basis.
Sure, there are times when little things will remind you. And when they do, there is that twinge. But because you have moved past it and healed, it is something that you are able to experience, put it behind you, and then quickly move on.
I won’t tell you that there will be a day in the near future when all your hurt and pain will be gone. But, it does get better over time. And many women are able to look back and see that some of the lessons that they learned were beneficial to them and to their marriage. Our marriage is actually stronger today than it ever was before. If it helps, you can read about our recovery process on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com
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