I Ruined My Own Life By Having An Affair
By: Katie Lersch: Much of the correspondence that I receive comes from faithful spouses whose marriage partner has cheated on them. They are often looking for a way to heal in the quickest, easiest way possible.
Sometimes though, I hear from the spouse who was unfaithful. They are also looking to heal, but their road is a little different because they are the one who caused this whole turn of events. Many of them are filled with remorse and they don’t know how to start improving things. They want to make things better, but they don’t know how. Many are well aware that their decision was life altering, but they do not know how to begin to clean up the mess.
A wife might say: “I admit that this mess of my life is of my own doing. I had a wonderful family. I had a child who was the center of my world and a husband who loved me. I had everything that I’ve always wanted. And then a male coworker asked me out for drinks and I accepted. It’s hard to imagine that one simple gesture would so profoundly ruin my life – but it did. Those drinks lead to more outings together. And those outings lead to my cheating on my husband. I never intended to change my life. I never wanted a divorce. But now I am facing one. My employer found out about the relationship and I got transferred and demoted. I am making half of my old salary. My husband is saying that he is going to divorce me and fight me for custody of my child. The other man is going back to his wife because he got demoted too. I feel like I have nothing now. I know that this is my own fault. Last week, I got very upset when my husband told me that he was probably going to file for divorce and seek custody. I asked him why he was trying to ruin my life. He said that he didn’t need to ruin my life because I had already done that all by myself. This made me very angry until I calmed down and I realized that he was absolutely right. I did ruin my life. What do I have now? Not my marriage. Possibly not my child. And not my job. I never thought it would come to this. How do I pick up the pieces?”
I will admit that I was on the other side of this equation. So I am only speaking in hypotheticals. But in my opinion, you have to do it one step at a time. And you have to not panic. Things may seem very bleak right now, but people don’t always make good on their threats. Frankly, I threatened my own husband after his affair and yet, many of the things that I said were only meant to scare and hurt him. Years later, we are still married.
Admittedly, I did mean the threats when I said them. I fully suspected that I would end up divorcing my spouse. But I never counted on the fact that he would be willing to do whatever was necessary to mend our marriage and to restore my trust. And I never counted on the fact that I would eventually let him.
None of this happened quickly. It was a slow process. But I believe it’s very hard to predict how it’s going to end up when the emotions and the shock are running so high. I think you just have to wait and see what is going to happen while taking it slowly.
Your job is probably not in your control right now, but you do have a job. And you can work your way back up to your previous position over time. You are still a parent. And even if your husband is actually going to file for divorce and for custody (which we don’t know yet) the courts don’t automatically rule with one parent over the other. My point is, you don’t know how this is going to end up.
My first step would be trying to maintain as positive a relationship with your husband as you can. I know that he is angry. And I know that you are probably tempted to get defensive. But you have to remember that he is reacting to your infidelity. He has a right to be angry. The hope is that over time, his anger will fade and he will not act on it. But if you feed into his anger, you make it more likely that things will only get worse.
Try to stay calm and try to remember that your long term goal is to minimize the damage of this. One way to do that is to remember what you really want and to continue to be sincere. Yes, this is going to require you to remain calm when his angry words are hurtful. But stay the course. Because the more that you are calm, the less ammunition he has. The more that you are compassionate and sincere, the less justification he has for what he is doing.
I can’t tell you that you didn’t negatively affect your life by having an affair. But I think that saying you ruined your life is self defeating. Your life is still a work in progress. You still have tomorrow. You still have the ability to try to fix this as best as you can. And as long as those things are present, there is a still a chance that things will improve so that one day you may see that ruined is too harsh a word.
I am sure my husband felt that he ruined his life after his affair. But I think if you were to ask him today if his life is ruined, he would tell you that it is not. We did manage to pick up the pieces and our lives have a great deal of meaning and blessings today. And I would like to think that even if we did not save our marriage, we are both still people of value who would have been OK. You can read more on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com
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