Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: I sometimes hear from people who desperately want to put their affair behind them so that they can save their marriage and keep their precious family intact. They fully intend to stay away from the other person and place their entire focus on their family. But a common problem in this scenario is an inability to stop thinking about the other person and about the affair.

A sample comment in this type of situation is something like: “more than anything in the world, I want to keep my family intact. I take full responsibility for the affair. It was all my fault. My husband is an incredible man and a wonderful husband and father. I have promised to stay away from the other man and that is exactly what I am doing. We have been going to counseling and although I find it incredibly uncomfortable and painful, I will keep right on going as long as it helps us. I want to save my marriage more than anything. I love my husband. But I can’t stop thinking about the other man and about the affair. I am very ashamed of this, but it is simply the truth. I will be sitting at dinner with my family and then a memory of a dinner with the other man will pop into my head. I will be hugging my husband and I will think about touching the other man. These thoughts just pop into my head. I know that my thoughts should be solely on my husband and my family. So how do I stop thinking about the other man?” I will try to address this below.

You Can’t Control Your Thoughts. But You Can Control Whether You Allow Them To Continue And How You React To Them: I will admit that I’m not completely objective about this. I was the faithful spouse and the thought of my husband still thinking about the other woman is not a pleasant thought for me, although realistically, I have to acknowledge that this is possible or even likely. Because this is very normal behavior. You can’t expect to abruptly end a relationship and to then have no additional thought about it That’s an unrealistic expectation. And this doesn’t always mean that you won’t ever get over this, that you have longing for the other person, or that you won’t remain faithful to your spouse.

You can’t control what pops into your head. But you do have control over whether you allow yourself to continue walking down that road. What I mean by that is this. Let’s say that you’re having dinner with your family and you start to think about dinners with the other man. You could continue to get lost in your thoughts and allow that to lead you to even more thoughts about the affair. You could even dwell on this and distance yourself from your family when you have these thoughts.

Or, you could do something to distract yourself. You could stop, take a deep breath, and ask one of your children about their day and then listen intently to their response. In short, you could do whatever is necessary to short circuit this process so that the thoughts stop right there. You invest in your family and you turn away from the affair every chance that you get.

Another thing that you can try is to develop a sort of mantra or response that you say in your own mind every time these thoughts crop up. I’ve had people tell me that this is hugely helpful. An example would be that once you start to have stray thoughts about the affair, you say in your own mind “I place my focus on the family that I love.” I know that this might sound silly, but it’s no different than meditation when you draw your attention back to your breath when your mind starts to wander. If you’ve ever tried meditation, you probably already know that your mind tends to wander, even when you don’t want for this to happen.  But you may also know that those with lots of experience will simply focus on the breath once again and repeat the process when or if the thoughts come back. With practice, it gets easier every time.

This Situation Often Improves With Time: With the natural progression of time, most people find that the thoughts about the affair begin to wane and to lose their grip on you. The more time that you spend with your family and on your marriage, the less you will have thoughts about the other person. Until then, it really is a choice. No, you can’t control the thoughts as they pop up, but you most certainly can control how you react to them. You can chose to distract yourself and to draw your attention back to where it belongs.

The good news was that the wife was very aware of where her attention needed to be. So it was only a matter of putting these tips into action and allowing time to help the thoughts about the affair to fade.

As I alluded to, I don’t like to dwell on my husband’s thought process after the affair.  Instead, I like to focus on how far we have come and how our marriage is now not only intact but thriving.  I’ve found that when the present is happy and fulfilling, there’s really no need to constantly look to the past.  If it helps, you’re welcome to read about my recovery on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com

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