I Am So Disappointed In My Husband After His Affair
I recently heard from a wife who told me that she was having a very hard time getting over the disappointment in her husband after finding out about his affair. She had been working hard to save her marriage, but she was having a hard time because it always came back to the shock of how badly the man she trusted most in the world had let her down.
She said in part: “I am just so disappointed in my husband. He has never been the type of man who I would’ve thought would cheat on me. He’s always been rock solid, loyal, and faithful. In fact, when I watched some of my friends struggle when their husband’s cheated and had affairs, I always thought: ‘thank God this is something that I’ll never have to handle with my own husband. How naive I was! It just floors me to learn that my husband is like every other man. I still love him. I want to save my marriage, but I just can’t get past my disappointment.”
This is a very common complaint. And while it’s unlikely that the disappointment is every going to completely disappear, there are some ways for you to deal with it, so that it doesn’t become a main theme within your marriage.
Both You And Your Husband Already Know How Disappointed You Are. Once It’s Known, It’s Time To Work Past It: I know that there’s a real temptation to keep telling him how he’s let your down. But the thing is, he already knows this. He’s heard you say it and he can likely literally see it in your eyes. So continuing to dwell on it or put more stress on it, isn’t likely to do you any real good.
If you find that these feelings keep coming up, it’s better to journal about them or voice them to some ojective third party. You have to get them out and release them, but if you keep on voicing the same theme over and over, it tends to become your reality or an insurmountable problem rather than something you are committed to working through.
Understand That You Can Chose To Give Your Husband The Chance To Overcome Your Disappointment: I’m not going to sit here and tell you that one day you will wake up no longer hurt, angry, or disappointed in his choice. It’s probably not realistic to say that you will ever be OK with him having an affair. Nor should you be.
But, what’s done is done. The choice now is how you move forward and what you want to happen now. Yes, it’s hard to live with these feelings that he has let you down. But the way past that (if you chose this route), is to give him an opportunity to prove to you that he will make this up to you, and once he does, that he will never disappoint you again.
By no means am I defending men who cheat. This is a situation that I’ve dealt with and I’d never defend it. However, every one makes mistakes in their marriage. Yes, this is a big one. But if he is willing to make things right again, it’s likely in your best interest to focus on this rather than your disappointment. And, the wife admitted that prior to the affair, he was a good, loyal, and compassionate husband. One act should not negate all the good things he had done.
Trying to think of the good when weighing the disappointment is going to give you the best chance to start feeling better rather than continuing to feel worse. Sometimes, we forget the whole point of the work we do after the affair. It isn’t the keep churning up how we were wronged, how disappointed we are, and how he’s let us down – because those things just keep us stuck.
It really is truly to move forward a little bit each day so that, after the shortest period of time possible, we are no longer so wounded by this that it’s all we think about.
You have a right to be disappointed. But, are these the feelings that you want to continue to feel moving forward? I know it’s hard to derail these types of thoughts but you have to try your best to do so because this is the kind of thing that can cloud the whole process.
I know he has let you down. There’s no denying it. But there’s probably times when he has really come through for you also. And there’s every chance that if you repair and strengthen your marriage, this will one day be one of those things that was a blip in your marriage that you worked through. So that you can again focus on the good he has done rather than the one time he let you down.
I’m not saying that you should immediately let him off the hook or to just tell yourself not to be disappointed anymore. I’m just suggesting that you accept whatever feelings come, process them, and then work on moving past them so that your goal is feelings that make you feel better rather than worse.
I can’t tell you how disappointed I was in my husband after he had an affair. This was one of the main emotions I felt for a long, long time. But one day I decided that I was so tired of feeling bad all the time. And I learned to place my focus on feeling better one day at a time. Our marriage today is actually better than it was before the affair. I no longer worry he will cheat again. If it helps, you can read that very personal story on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com
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