My Husband’s Affair Blindsided Me – Tips and Advice That Might Help
I recently heard from a wife who wrote, in part: “I just found out that my husband has had a six month affair. Someone else had to tell me. I could not even figure it out for myself and I didn’t see it coming at all. I thought we had a good marriage. I thought we were happy. I would never have dreamed that he would be unfaithful to me. And, I never would’ve dreamed that he would cheat on me that the woman that he did. I feel so stupid. I feel so devastated. I am totally blindsided and I don’t know to go from here.”
This email, though heartbreaking, isn’t all that unique, unfortunately. I hear variations on this almost every day. The wives almost always blame and are disgusted with themselves, although none of this is their fault. They can’t and shouldn’t take responsibility for actions that their husbands took. And only a fraction of women whose husband’s have affairs see this coming. Many men with perfectly happy marriages who have perfectly wonderful, attentive, and desirable wives are, at least at some point in their marriage, unfaithful. This does not need to change the way that you feel about yourself and your perceived ability to see the reality of the situation.
I know that this is an intensely painful situation that can feel like there is no end in sight. But I can tell you from observation and experience that you can move past this. Many times, it’s tempting to focus on the fact that you were blindsided rather than on where you’re going to go from here. This is an avoidable mistake that I will discuss this more in the following article.
Don’t Blame Yourself If You Were Blindsided. It Happens Much More Than You Might Think: It’s very rare for me to get email from a wife who was actually expected or anticipating an affair. This is the exception rather than the rule. Most of the women who write me did not see the affair coming at all. They are completely shocked. But please understand that this is not your fault. Almost no one goes into marriage expecting for their partner to cheat on them. More, your thought process didn’t consider cheating because this is not an action that you, yourself would take. If you approached your marriage with skepticism, suspicion, and doubt, you would be sabotaging it and could not be fully invested. So, there is no need to blame yourself now.
And, husbands who cheat don’t want you to know that they are doing so. They cover their tracks very well. They pretend that everything is fine. They go out of their way to act normally or even better than normal. And, whether you believe this or not, many husbands very sincerely insist that their feelings about and their love for their wife never, ever changed. This is often why you can feel that you were very happy and in love. You were. His mistake does not mean that you are any less desirable. And I’m sure that intellectually, you know this. (Look at all the beautiful actresses whose husbands have cheated with women who did not even compare to their wives.) It’s the emotional part of accepting what you know intellectually that is so hard.
When You’re Ready To Move Forward, Focus Not On Being Surprised By The Affair, But On Where You Go From Here: It’s very easy to obsess over how faulty you were for not seeing this coming. But this is a trial to nowhere. All it does is make you blame yourself, ensure that you stay stuck, and contribute to your continuing to be unhappy. Sometimes, this will get old enough that you will snap out of it on your own. Other times, you will have to force yourself to focus on other things and to move forward. No matter how it happens, if you want to get your life back and to return to a healthy place, you will need to shift your focus from the past to the future.
Generally, you’ll know that your reaching this point when you’ll begin to become angry and annoyed with the same old thoughts and feelings. Often, you will want to change, but you aren’t sure how. The thing is, you can’t change what has happened in the past. As unfortunate as that is, it is a fact now. But you do have control over your future. It can be a blank slate onto which you can draw exactly what you want.
You shouldn’t continue to beat yourself up over your husband’s actions. You can’t control what someone else does. What you can control is your own actions. And you can feed yourself positive affirmations and loving self care that will eventually influence your thoughts. This is a gradual process and I won’t tell you that it will always be easy because it won’t. There well be some dark days. But, if you are able to gradually keep moving forward, always move toward what you know to be your in best interests, and practice extreme self care, you should gradually begin to feel at least some improvement.
At the end of the day, you have to ask yourself what you really want. Most people will answer this question with some variation of “I just want my life back. I want to be happy again.” Unfortunately, most of us don’t realize that beating ourselves up and focusing on where we went wrong doesn’t do anything to help us with our goals of being happy and healthy again. Yes, it hurts to be taken by surprise in this way. But you can’t change that aspect of it. What’s really important is that you heal from this and are eventually able to overcome it.
Embrace Restoring Your Confidence And Self Worth: I always tell people to not forget rebuilding their confidence. Dealing with an affair is painful and difficult. But what makes it even worse is if you allow it to change the way that you feel about yourself. Someone elses’ actions should not change your view of who and what you are. If it does, then make no apologies for doing whatever is necessary to restore your sense of self worth. It’s very hard to heal for good if you have continuous doubts about yourself within your own head and heart.