Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: When you’re trying to rebuild your marriage after an affair, nobody really warns you about how much space the past can still take up. Even after the tears have been shed, the apologies have been made, and the promises have been spoken — the ghost of what happened can still linger.

You might be folding laundry or laughing at a dumb TV show together, and out of nowhere, it hits you:
“Remember what he did.” “Remember how he betrayed you.”

Or maybe you’re having a perfectly fine day, and a random song, place, or even smell knocks the wind right out of you.

If you’re living with this — and still trying to save your marriage — please know this: You’re not crazy. And you’re not doing it wrong. This is what imperfect healing can really look like. It’s messy, it’s unpredictable, and sometimes it’s downright exhausting.

But it’s also possible for you to come out on the other side. And often, it’s not about doing one big thing perfectly.
It’s about rebuilding your marriage day by day, even when the ghost of the affair tries to haunt you.

Know That the Ghost Is Normal And Haunting (And Doesn’t Mean You’re Not Healing:) One thing I wish someone had told me early on is this: You can be healing and still hurt at the same time. They’re not opposites. They actually go hand-in-hand. You can forgive your spouse one day and be furious the next. You can have moments where you feel hopeful and connected — and then, out of nowhere, feel crushed all over again.

That doesn’t mean you’re broken. It doesn’t mean you can’t do this. It just means you’re human. Healing isn’t a straight line. It’s more like a tangled ball of emotions that you’re slowly, painfully, but somewhat steadily, untangling one day at a time. The ghost shows up because the affair affected a marriage that mattered. Because you loved deeply.

And actually? Your shattered feelings are a sign that you’re still in the fight — still caring enough to heal, not numbing out or giving up completely. If you weren’t hurt, you wouldn’t be invested. And your investment is necessary to get you out of this.

Don’t Let the Ghost Rewrite Your Future: Here’s something I learned the hard way: The past only controls the future if you let it. It’s really easy to slip into fear-thinking after an affair. You may have thoughts like:

• He betrayed me once, so he’ll probably do it again.

• I was blindsided before. So I’ll probably be again.

• We’ll never get back the marriage that we lost.

I’m not here to sugarcoat anything. Affairs change things. Trust takes a huge hit. You are knocked off your axis. But living under constant fear and suspicion isn’t really living. And it’s not fair — to you or to your marriage — to stay stuck in a place that’s always looking backward. You deserve much better. You don’t have to pretend nothing happened. But you also don’t have to hand your entire future over to the ghost of one terrible chapter. What happened was real. You can’t take it back. But the good news is that 
what happens next is still being written. And YOU get to write it.

Rebuilding Happens in Small Moments — Not In Grand Gestures:After an affair, it’s tempting to look for some huge, magical moment that will make everything “right” again. A big apology. A grand promise. Some proof that the pain was worth it.But real rebuilding doesn’t usually look like that. It’s way quieter than people think It looks like your spouse answering your texts without delay, you both staying in the hard conversation instead of walking away, one of you reaching for the other’s hand — even after a tense moment and laughter that sneaks back in when you weren’t expecting it.

These little things? They matter more than any dramatic speech or over-the-top gesture.Trust isn’t rebuilt overnight with one big event.It’s rebuilt moment by moment, choice by choice, day by day.

Some Days Will Feel Like You’re Going Backward — That’s Normal: There will be days when you feel like, “We’ve made no progress at all.” Days when you feel tired, resentful, triggered, or just plain over it.Please know: That doesn’t mean you’re doomed. Healing is like walking up a mountain. Sometimes you’ll trip. Sometimes you’ll sit down and cry. Sometimes you’ll even slide backward a little. But as long as you get back up and keep climbing — even slowly — you’re still moving forward.

One bad day doesn’t erase a hundred good ones. One hard conversation doesn’t cancel all the progress you’ve made. And when you’re ready, take one small step forward again.

Give Yourself (and Your Marriage) Permission to Grow Into Something New: A lot of people get stuck because they keep trying to get “back to normal.” But after an affair, there’s no real going back. There’s only building something new – there’s going to be a “new normal.” And honestly? Sometimes that’s a good thing.

Maybe the marriage you had before the affair wasn’t everything either of you needed — even if you didn’t realize it at the time. Maybe this painful, messy, unwanted process can eventually grow into a marriage that’s more honest, more intentional, more connected, and more real.

It might not be completely the same. But it can still be a solid, beautiful, and lasting marriage. I know this because I have that type of marriage now. And my healing was messy and non-linear at times. But we both ultimately hung in there and we are still solidly marriage today. We can read about exactly how I facilitated this on my blog at https://surviving-the-affair.com

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