• March 31, 2023

How to avoid negative thoughts after learning about your spouse’s affair?

It’s very easy to get discouraged after your marriage has been crippled by an affair. This can be true regardless of whether you are the faithful spouse or the cheating spouse. No matter which side you are on, you can feel like your life has changed drastically. It may feel like it will never get better. And always looking on the negative side of life can get depressing. But it can also be a challenge to see any other side.

For example, from a cheating spouse, you may hear something like, “I’m very depressed, but I know I deserve what happens. I cheated on my wife, just once, and I couldn’t be more sorry. I have repeatedly begged for your mercy, but you are furious with me. We’ve been trying to get counselling, but she’s still very angry. I can’t blame her either. I’d be mad at her if she cheated on me. myself. But I can’t do better and our home life is suffering. Our kids know something’s wrong .Last night, I was going through my phone randomly and I was looking at pictures from six months ago.My family was happy.That was before anyone knew how much I was going to screw things up.I don’t think we’ll ever be this happy again. The counselor tells me to find little ways to lighten the load in my home, but it feels pointless. Now there’s a black cloud over everything. I want to be more positive because I hate feeling this way, but I’m not sure how I can when all this is my fault”.

You might hear a similar theme from the faithful spouse, who says something like, “My spouse says he’s sorry he was unfaithful and goes to therapy every week. But it’s like he feels like someone should be able to wave a magic wand and get back together.” to unite our marriage and our home. I wish it worked that way, but it doesn’t. My husband always complains that he hates that the children have to live this way, because now there is anger in our home. they are not the same. I I hate him too. I wish I could smile and laugh again. But I’m so angry. I can’t help it. I trusted my husband and he betrayed me in the worst possible way.” She lied through her teeth. And now that he’s been caught, he wants to pretend everything’s okay. Our counselor and our pastor suggest that we work hard to have a more positive outlook in the future. No one thinks I would. I actually would love to do this, but I would. Does everyone think I like being angry and hurt all the time? But I don’t know how to make the feelings stop. How are you supposed to be more positive after an affair?

I agree that this is very challenging. I’m going to share a few things that helped me a bit. And to be clear, initially I was trying to be positive for myself and my children. I didn’t feel like my husband deserved my positivity at the time, even though he got it back for him. He helped me write in a gratitude journal with five things to be thankful for each night. I started with five things, but found that if he really tried and focused, I usually came up with a lot more. I still remember common themes that he had almost every night. They were things like:

I am alive;

my children are alive;

my children and I are healthy;

I am healthy and intelligent and can start over if necessary;

my spouse and I love our children and will do whatever is necessary for their well-being;

my dogs love me;

my extended family supports me;

both my spouse and I are still around, so we might eventually have a chance, even if we’re struggling right now;

we have a roof over our heads;

we have enough food to eat;

I have loving friends who will hold me up.

I could go on and on. But at the end of the day, tracking things to be grateful for helped me see that adventure was a small part of my life. Yeah, it made everything else feel polluted, so I had to train myself to protect other areas of my life, which I didn’t want polluted. I told my friends that talking about adventures was off-limits. And I finally agreed with my husband that we would try to talk about it in counseling and a couple of times a week, but other than that, he was going to try really hard not to think about it. Because I felt that if I didn’t make this conscious decision, I would spend every moment of my life thinking about the adventure and I didn’t need or want that. It just made me miserable spending so much time on it.

The truth is, whether you reflect on the adventure or not, things are going to change over time. Your perspective will change over time. Your marriage will survive or not, but reflecting on it and allowing it to taint what is good in your life is not going to change the outcome, but it can make you feel much worse about everything else, even the good. Being positive in the middle of an adventure is very hard work. It requires you to be aware of your thoughts and decisions several times a day and then redirect yourself. But it may be worth the effort because swimming in negativity 24/7 is painful and debilitating. You deserve more. And with effort, it can become a habit to redirect yourself to positive thinking.

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