You might be surprised at how upset your partner is about your affair. The amount of rage directed at you can be overwhelming. Your spouse’s depression and withdrawal may be highly anxiety provoking. Although you both might want to work it out, you can find yourselves tossed about in a turbulent sea of emotions. You may feel desperate for a way to fix things, (more…)
It can be completely crazy-making to feel like you cannot get at the truth. Something doesn’t feel right between the two of you, he’s not around as much as he used to be, not as interested in you. You suspect he might be seeing someone else. You demand he look you straight in the eye and tell you this isn’t so. He does. Can you be certain you now know?
Not according to (more…)
“Men weren’t really the enemy – – they were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill” Betty Friedan, Christian Science Monitor, April 1974
“Mad Men” portrays this “mystique” … women as subordinate and submissive, housewives, maybe secretaries, always standing behind their men, and only able to derive status from their husbands’ positions. The women who dared to deviate from this arrangement paid dearly (as did the women who submitted to it).
It appeared that men had it all… power, control, status, in general..superiority.
But Don Draper (more…)
Can you? Is this possible? Many writers present plans that are supposed to be near fool-proof. Some are aimed at husbands; some are aimed at wives. Do this, be that way, and you can prevent your partner from straying. It’s appealing, and, on the whole, (more…)
It can be confusing to know that you have betrayed your partner’s trust, to see him or her so devastated, and yet be unable to feel true remorse. This lack of remorse can be the final nail in the coffin of a marriage. You can see that it leaves your partner feeling more betrayed, enraged, disgusted, and/or withdrawn. You can see their panic and feel the tenuous threads holding you together fraying. What you might not know or want to think about is how your lack of sincere apology leaves your partner feeling as if they now mean nothing to you and the lover, everything. However, sometimes that is not the case at all, yet you still don’t want to apologize. Here are some common reasons:
Deep down, you had the affair to get out of your marriage. This is commonly referred to as an “exit affair.” But sometimes this motive is not experienced on a conscious level. In my experience, it can take someone a long time to come to grips with the desire to leave a marriage and the familiarity and/or safety that it represents. Acting out the wish by having an affair can be the first step towards this realization. Ironically, acting out feelings can keep us from being in touch with them.
You’re too angry. You haven’t been able to get through to your partner all of these years, either because (more…)
The discovery of an affair is traumatic for everyone involved. However, there are important things you can do to help your partner heal over time.
It can be useful to think about trauma as something that actually wants to heal. If provided with the appropriate conditions, it frequently does. Your partner probably feel that his or her world, life, identity, and marriage has been shattered. Natural reactions include feeling betrayed, panicked, rageful and vengeful, and ultimately very deep, and previously unimaginable pain. I frequently hear “the ground opened up under me,” or (more…)
Most likely if you are reading this you have been struggling with whether to tell your partner for a while. It’s natural to feel paralyzed, and unable to think deeply about your options. The issues involved can seem endlessly complicated; any route you take resulting in emotional upheaval for everyone involved. Revealing your affair will undoubtedly alter many important relationships in ways that you cannot predict or control. The situation is less difficult if you are clear that you want to leave your relationship for your new lover, but if you have now realized that in fact, you have made a mistake and want to save your primary relationship, or if you don’t yet know who you really want to be with, (more…)