Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: A lot of the adjectives that you hear to describe life after an affair are catastrophic ones like: “ruined,” “destroyed,” and “devastated.”  Many people confess that they feel that infidelity has ended life (and their marriage) as they know it.  And none of this is for the better.  I understand this, because my thinking was exactly the same way.  I felt like I had a perfectly normal and satisfying life before I found out about the affair, and I felt that everything was gone in an instant after it.

And I know that I am not alone.  I often hear from folks who say things like: “You can call me delusional if you want, but I really do not care.  My husband and I were very happy before his affair.  It is not just me thinking this. People always told me that they were envious of my marriage.  My husband and I loved AND liked each other.  We loved spending time together.  We were very considerate of one another.  We’d even been through hard times together and we came out much stronger and it made our marriage better.  But I do not see that happening this time.  I do not think that I will ever get over this infidelity.  And our happy marriage, that was always so full of love and laughter, is now barren.  I can’t even stand to look at my husband anymore, much less to laugh with him.  The affair lasted for less than two weeks and my husband was eaten up with guilt and he told me about it himself.  He acts as if he does not understand why he did this, but he insists that we can recover from it.  He says that he knows that he can make me happy again if I will just give him that chance.  I don’t believe this.  The only way that I could ever be happy again if we could erase the past and the affair and then just go on as though it never happened.  Obviously, that isn’t possible.  So I believe that my happiness is over.  And because of this, I just don’t see the point in staying married anymore.”

I understand.  My thinking was along the same lines as yours.  But there was one difference.  I have children.  And I was open to the idea of seeing whether or not we could work things out for them – and for them only.  Frankly, I didn’t think that it was going to be possible.  But I wanted to know that for their sake, I had done everything that I possibly could not to break up their family.  And in my own mind, I thought that even if we made our marriage work, it would only be a shadow of its former self.  Because we were happy pre-affair too.  (And no, I don’t think wives who say that are delusional.  It’s not always martial unhappiness or discontent that causes affairs.  The majority of men who reach out to me insist that they love their wives.)

I’ve never been so happy to be wrong.  I can’t tell you that every bit of my recovery was wonderful.  It was not.  We had to take breaks at times because things got so bad.  There were very rough days where I thought that I would be better off giving up and walking away.  But I can tell you that I am happy today.  My marriage is happy.  My family is happy. I don’t live in denial or pretend that the affair didn’t happen.  I see it as a stressor in our marriage that we got over, just like financial or health stressors or other things in life that challenge your marriage.  I’m not diminishing the infidelity.  I would give anything if it had never happened.  But since it did, the choice became whether to deal with it or to walk away.

I’d never tell anyone they have to remain unhappy for the sake of their marriage or kids.  We all deserve happiness.  And I believe that it is attainable, even after an affair.  But it’s also my observation that it doesn’t usually happen on its own.  You have to really dig deep, put in the effort, and take the time to try to rebuild your marriage — with the help or professionals or self help if that is what it takes.

It is not a quick or easy process, which means that there may be days where you are sure that perhaps you’ve made a bad decision or a mistake.  But in my experience, very gradually, things go from excruciating, to improving, to tolerable, to contented, and then to genuinely happy.

We’ve all had tragedies occur in our lives which made us sure that we would never feel the same again.  And yet, we live another day.  One day we laugh and love and endure again. Things that were destroyed are rebuilt each and every day.  That is what makes the human spirit so resilient.  I am not diminishing an affair or its impact.  I’m just sharing my experience that it is possible to be happy again.  In fact, life is too short not to.  And even if you ultimately try really hard and decide that you can’t be happy in your marriage.  Please try to be happy in your life regardless.  There is no reason for the affair to be a life sentence for you since you were not the one who committed the crime.  You weren’t put on this earth to be miserable or unhappy.  And you deserve better.  So give yourself permission to seek happiness in whatever way that you decide is fitting.

I truly believe that if we don’t do our best to seek happiness, we aren’t fulfilling our responsibility to ourselves and to our families.  Admittedly, the days following an affair won’t be blissful.  It does take time to rebuild and to process.  Make no apologies about taking that time.  But also believe that you absolutely deserve to be happy again and that you CAN be happy again in time.  This happiness may come with or without your marriage, but it is not only possible, it is your right.  If you’d like to read about how I regained my own happiness, there’s more on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com.

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