How To Not Bring Up An Affair
By: Katie Lersch: If you are struggling with the aftermath of an affair, you likely already know that when topics about the details surrounding the affair come up, the faithful spouse can learn to tread very lightly. Because although the cheating spouse may attempt to have patience when the affair is brought up initially, this same patience can quickly wear out. It can become a vicious cycle. The faithful spouse can feel as if she doesn’t have the answers and understanding that she so desperately needs, but the cheating spouse can feel as if the repetitive questions are never going to end. He can begin to withdraw and become frustrated every time the faithful spouse brings up the affair, which is incredibly unfortunate because usually, the faithful spouse is only asking because she wants to make some actual progress.
She might say, “I can’t believe that I am saying this, but now that it looks like it might not be possible to save my marriage, now I think that I might want to. But my husband is so impatient with me. I admit that I tend to ask the same questions over and over. But that’s because I don’t feel satisfied with the answers. I don’t understand why he did this. And literally, every time I ask, the answers will slightly vary, so that the new answers bring about more questions that I need to have answered. I don’t feel that I have a full account of what happened. My husband swears that I do. He says that every time I insist on asking the same variations over and over again, we get pushed right back into the mire and all of the progress that we have made is undone. I’m not sure that I agree with this completely, but I do see his point. These exchanges often make both of us angry. Last time, he literally told me that if I continue to bring up the affair every time that we talk, he is not sure that he can stand to live his life this way forever. He says that he can never ever relax, let his guard down, or feel okay about himself. He says that I am sentencing him to always live in the past. This isn’t my intention and I know that I have to stop bringing it up, but I don’t know how to stop. How do you not bring up the affair when it’s literally all you think about on some days?”
Why Censoring Yourself Can Have Negative Consequences: I am biased. But I honestly believe that if your questions are not answered or if new questions come up, then you should not willingly give away your ability to bring up the affair when you legitimately need to. If you ignore your need for information, the churning of these questions will feel as if they are eating you up inside and taking up all of your emotional space. Sure, I understand your husband’s desire to live in the future but allowing unresolved issues to remain means that YOU can’t necessarily move on into the future, either. Keeping quiet might mean that you have to stay stuck because you feel that there’s not an open communication policy, which, believe me, is necessary when you’re trying to revive and then maintain your marriage. You will need to be able to speak openly and to trust one another. Censoring yourself is not the ideal way to achieve this.
Why Monitoring Yourself (And Asking Specific, Targeted Questions) Might Be A Better Idea: Having said all of the above, I do concede that it CAN be a good idea to limit all of the rapid-fire questions. Your husband does have a point. Sometimes, it does get exhausting to repeat the same cycle all of the time. You can both feel as if you are just going in circles. The key then is to limit yourself to TARGETED questions and also, to think really hard about what you want the outcome of those questions to be.
Here is what I mean. A therapist once told me that, if I found myself asking repetitive questions, to sit down and ask myself WHAT I was trying to elicit from the question and if there was a more efficient way to get it. For example, when I found myself repeatedly asking my husband how he felt about the other woman, even though he had repeatedly answered me, I realized that by continuing to ask this question, what I really wanted was reassurance about my husband’s feelings for me.
Or, when repeatedly asking about who knew of the affair, I was really wanting to know who I could trust. This is very important because there were much more efficient and fitting ways for me to evaluate my husband’s feelings for me and to determine who my real friends were. In fact, grilling my husband with questions that he’d already answered and that weren’t offering reassurance at all was actually DELAYING my getting what I needed.
Sometimes, you do need a specific answer to a question, but other times, you want something besides the answer. You’re often looking for reassurance and healing instead. In those instances, at least in my experience, you are better off moving forward, which leads me to my next point.
Moving Forward Even With Unanswered Questions Is Sometimes The Most Efficient Way To Get Peace Of Mind: I know that it may be hard to believe this, but sometimes healing is the best answer for your most pressing questions. Why do I say this? Because I think that often, our most pressing questions are just pleas for reassurance that this is all going to work out okay. When you have some success with healing and begin to move on (even a little) you do begin to have the reassurance that only time and progress can give you. Plus, sometimes, more snippets of information about the affair will naturally come out without your even needing to nag over it. Your conversations become less emotional and therefore, your husband feels more comfortable disclosing the details. Unfortunately, there is no way to rush this process, but it will often give much more honest answers.
Why You Shouldn’t Ignore The Elephant In The Room: I’d like to leave you with one final thought: I understand wanting to not talk about the affair at all, but doing this comes with its own risk. When you ignore the obvious outstanding issues, you risk things becoming awkward between you. This is something that can be just as detrimental to your relationship as the affair. One of the hardest parts of rebuilding is reestablishing the trust and the loving and easy rapport between you. With the awkwardness of incomplete conversation, it is extremely difficult to have the ease that is needed for the type of rebuilding that might actually give you more peace. Because let’s be honest – asking all of those questions is mostly about us wives seeking peace. We want answers because we hope that they can give us closure and peace. Unfortunately, sometimes that comes with time and healing instead. I am not saying that you should stop asking questions. I firmly believe that you should feel free to bring up any issues that are needed. I’m cautioning about those circular, repetitive questions that are truly more about reassurance than about any answer that your husband has already tried to give.
I began to limit my questions to those that truly had an answer and I promised to make a list and ask my questions all at once, at a designated time. This meant that we were able to get out of the cycle we were in and I was able to make progress, which actually addressed my concerns more than the repetitive questions. If it helps, you read about the progress we made here: http://surviving-the-affair.com
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