Infidelity causes intense emotional pain--anger, disbelief, fear, guilt and shame. But an affair doesn't have to mean the end of your marriage.Recovery from an Emotional Affair
If your marriage or relationship has fallen victim to an emotional affair, the first step in recovery is honesty, according to psychologist Barry McCarthy. “It is secrecy that enables affairs to thrive. The cover-up, for most people, is worse than the actual infidelity,” he says. “So it’s only by putting everything on the table that you’ll be able to move on.”
We can tell you from experience that this is the case. The lies and half-truths that I continually told to hide or downplay my emotional affair drove Linda to the brink. Eventually, it made no sense for me to continue to do so. More than a year later, I still answer questions that Linda has on a regular basis. Though these question and answer sessions can be rather unpleasant, they always result in us feeling better about our relationship and each other.
Author Peggy Vaughan states that “When a person discovers their mate is having an affair, their world suddenly turns upside down. In order to recover any sense of balance, they need to get more information and understanding of the situation. Without answers to their questions, they convince themselves that the answers must all be bad; otherwise why wouldn’t they be told what they want to know. They feel they’re being treated like a child, and they resent it.”
In other words, the involved partner must be honest about all aspects of the affair. Moving on too fast usually backfires, leaving the injured party reeling and the problem unresolved. “Many people believe that too much discussion just reopens the wound; but, in fact, the wound needs to be exposed to the light of day so that it can heal,” says Vaughan. “The involved partner must answer questions and soothe the injured partner for as long as that person needs.”
Psychologist Janis Abrahms Spring says the ultimate goal to being an open book is restoring trust to the relationship. She suggests couples make a list of the trust-enhancing behaviors that will help them heal. Both partners typically need compassion for their feelings, she says, but “the hurt partner shoulders a disproportionate share of the burden of recovery and may require some sacrificial gifts to redress the injury caused.”
Such sacrificial gifts could range from a request that the unfaithful partner change jobs to avoid contact with the “special friend” to access to that partner’s e-mail account and/or cell phone.
An emotional affair can really rattle a marriage, but statistically they rarely result in divorce. In fact, in many cases, through hard work the couple can create an even stronger marriage than they had previously. We are certainly proof of that!
Additional Resources
Affair Recovery Group – Learn real life ways on how to recover from an affair based on our own experiences as well as direction from therapist, Jeff Murrah.
How to Survive Infidelity – Article by Dr. Willard Harley
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Nice =] I really enjoy your posts, especially this one)
How would you deal with the spouse who refuses to give up the person she had the emotional affair with, because he is a “true friend”? She had an emotional affair about a year ago with her first bf from over 30yrs ago. That one finally ended with me giving her the choice of choosing one of us. Now she says she wont give up another friend. She accuses me of preventing her of having friends, which is not the case. I just feel that 30-40 text messages a day, and texts to only this friend while we were on vacation saying “I miss you and wish you were here” are not the way we act with regular friends. Plus I never end phone calls or texts with “I love you” to any of my friends, male or female. Is my marriage beyond saving?
Nick,
Simple answer, No its not beyond saving.
Compounding answer, It depends on what you see as over.
I am a year out of discovery of my wife’s affair with an ex-BOYfriend. I know how you feel and I know what she is going through. Time is on your side. Your not alone. And I will attempt to answer any questions you have.
I made mistakes in my dealing with her affair. I made risky decisions on what to do. Some paid of and some may have made things worse.
Visit my blog, ask me questions here, talk to people who can objectily look at what you are feeling and what you think you should do. There are many poeple who may tell you what you want to hear, but you need people to tell you what you need to hear.
Best of luck to you and your family.
I need some advice. My husband and I were married about a year ago, and prior to the marriage he had a very good female friend. They would text, talk and even do things that I would have considered reserved for a “couple” like attending work Christmas parties and spending time decorating his new house.
I tried to become friends with this person, feeling that if she was that important to him, I wanted her to feel welcomed by me. I was often met with disregard. I had even asked her to be a part of the wedding. She caused many problems with the other girls in the wedding and myself by being completly passive, ignoring phone calls, emails, ect and only responding to my husband. When I confronted her about her behavior and that I did not understand why she was treating me so poorly, she said she was not going to be part of the wedding at all and did not even attend.
Because this made no sense to me, I kept asking my then fiance to explain thier relatonship. I also found it odd, that although I knew they were in constant contact, he woudl never talk to her in front of me on the phone. He would say that they barely talked and I had nothing to worry about.
After we got married, and we joined our cell phone accounts, I looked through the records and realized he was talking and texting her on the way to work, during his lunch, on the way home, when he was on business trips and even when I was away on my own business trips. He also, just this past Christmas gave her an expensive gift to a high end Spa. (While I got a printer). When I asked him about this, he stated it was a comp. from his work, because she is his vendor- although no other vendors recieved gifts from him. And he charged it to his credit card.
I confronted him on all these issues. I felt like he had hidden from me thier relationship and during a time when we were supposed to build a foundation, he was putting another woman before me.
He says he has not spoken with her since our wedding, but the gift he gave her says otherwise.
I am confused and hurt. When we try to discuss this he admits he had an emotional affair with her but does not want to deal with it or talk about it. He told me I needed to get over it or it would destry our marriage.
I honestly don’t know what to do.
Hi Laura, First off, I’m sorry that you are going through this. Secondly, since your husband has admitted that it was an emotional affair, he needs to realize the profound affect that it has had on you and your relationship. He needs to understand that you are in pain and that in order for you to heal from that pain, you need to discuss it and he needs to “deal” with it. He cannot just sweep it under the rug. In a calm and non-judgmental way, you need to let him know that this is the case and that if you don’t talk about it or deal with it, then it could destroy your marriage.
My boyfriend and I have been together for 8 years. Last August, I discovered that he had been having an EA with a friend and co-worker of mine. We all work for the same company. So 9 months ago, he was taking the dog for a walk and I walked by the nightstand where his phone was laying and picked it up. There were emails from a secret account he had created. I felt sick and numb. This was someone I never thought would do this to me. I was suspicious of their friendship for a while prior to that, but every time I asked him about it, he said there was nothing but friendship between them. I have been through some nasty stuff in relationships in my life (physical and emotional abuse) but this was the worst of all of them combined. I never saw this coming and it is destoying me. I trusted him and thought he was different than the other men I had dated. I let the wall down to my heart and let him in. It’s not that we didn’t have some issues before the time I found the emails but this was devestating. The emails were contained things like “I like your hair pulled up like that honey” or “after all this time of flirting, I don’t know what would happen if we ever got alone”. You know the sick part of all this is that I’ve almost memorized the emails word for word (I sent them to my email when I found them). That is self punishment but I found myself drawn to reading them over and over. I can’t even begin to express the hurt and betrayal (from him and my so-called friend) I’ve felt since it happened. He seemed really sorry for hurting me and left his phone out (before it was stuck up his butt 24×7), I had his email passwords and he deleted the secret one in my presence. He also (at my request) went over and talked to my grown children about what had happened, accepting blame. Fast forward to the present, he is now ready to end our relationship. Apaprently my time limit of grieving over the EA has expired. I have been angry and have let him know it. I want him to hurt like he hurt me. I made nasty remarks about the EA every chance I got – not letting it go and not forgiving him. I know that I should have gotten help at the time but I thought I could deal with it. By the way, the girl he had the EA with – is MARRIED! The night I found the email, I called her and let her have it and then called her husband. She kept saying it was all a joke, which really added fuel to the fire. So today, I went to see a counselor to find out how to deal with the jealousy and anger I feel. This website helps and reading the differnt blogs make me realize just how familiar the mechanics of an EA are. Now he wants out and I am left trying to make sense of why I feel it’s my fault. He says he can’t handle things the way they are anymore and that I will never be able to forgive him and let this go. I am trying, truly I am. . . and I do want this relationship to work. But he says he can’t believe me and feels we would be better apart from each other. He also says he isn’t 100% sure he wants out, but he has to know that things will change. How can I guarantee that? I am going to counseling to try and get rid of the anger and hurt, I’ve promised to never bring it up again and promised to start trusting again and not being so obsessive about what he is doing all the time. I would be so grateful for some advice and assistance on what to do and how to let this go? Whether we stayt to gether or not, I have to release the anger. HELP!
Why do you want this relationship to work? Did you read your post? He is not 100% sure he wants out? How much sure you would want him to be? 99? I am so sorry, bad things happen to good people. Help him make this decision by changing your cell phone number, packing his belongings and visit your friend for a week without telling anything to anyone involved. Yourself esteem might need treatment.
I had an emotional affair 2 years ago. I came clean and my hubby & I fought for about month about it and then swept it under the rug. Recently we’ve both been really condescening, sarcastic, mean to each other and we both sat down and made a list of what was bothering each of us. The entire Emotional Affair thing from 2 years ago apparently has not worked itself out — that has been my hubby’s problem. ?? We’ve been married for 8 years and I’m sure I emotionally divorced him the 2nd year of our marriage because I felt like I wasn’t appreciated and he wanted to be with his family more than with me…still feel that way. I’m still working through suppressing memories of the EA and try not to think about what a B**** I was in doing this to my hubby…. My hubby says I need to regain his trust from this EA that happened 2 years ago. ?? After I told my hubby, we cancelled texting, I quit that job where it happened, I quit going out of the house on dates etc. for several reasons…..
1. No emotional connection in current marriage
2. Do not want to take a chance of seeing HIM (EA)
3. I feel like a piece of crap for being “one of those people” — I’ve had severe acne and have gained 25 lbs since the EA has happened and very low self worth.
4. I don’t have friends….I don’t talk to anyone except when I absolutely have to — When we were 1st married, I would always make sexual jokes when we were out with friends etc. My hubby told me he hated that and I shouldn’t be doing that as a married woman. However, that is the only way I know how to relate to the opposite sex…. So I’ve just shutdown and no longer have friends of either sex, no longer do anything with anyone
How do I regain my hubby’s trust?? I don’t DO ANYTHING….no facebook, no myspace, no texting, no phone calls, no friends, rarely leave the house…etc.
I don’t understand how the EA can be a problem 2 years later.
Any advice would be so helpful!!! — from ANYONE!!!
Jen, Thanks for sharing. It seems that you and your husband both have many unresolved issues and pent up resentment as a result of your EA. It was good that you sat down and made a list of what was bothering you, but have either of you actually been working on the items that were on the list – together? As you mentioned, trust seems to be the biggest issue, and the lack of trust that your husband has in you has caused you to basically shut yourself down in both socially and emotionally. I would suggest that you both try to get into marriage counseling and in the meantime, you might want to read the various posts that we have written on trust (do a search for “rebuilding trust” in the upper right corner of this blog) and you might want to consider checking out our book that we wrote on how we were able to rebuild the trust in our marriage. You can get more info on it by clicking here. Best of luck to you!
Jen, sorry for such a late reply to your post. Geez, you seem to have done more than enough to keep your husband from wondering if you are cheating on him again, but just stopping what you did while you were having the EA would not, at least for me, cause me to actually trust you any more than I did upon learning of your EA. What my wife has done more than anything else to regain my trust is, most importantly, 3-fold. First, she has demonstrated that she understands what actions she did with her EA partner that were unacceptable (a part of her “apologies” for the EA), and has reached agreements with me regarding what acceptable boundaries are for each of us going forward with respect to friendships with persons of the opposite sex. Second, she has very reluctantly agreed to complete transparency in terms of texts, phone calls, emails and in-person interactions. But third and most importantly, she has shown that she can interact with persons of the opposite sex in ways that are within our agreed upon boundaries. Oh, and she has also on a few occasions (I don’t recommend this, of course) confessed to what she considered to be little “white lies” that she made before I discovered them, in each case apologizing profusely, as you might imagine, but also explaining to me what was going through her mind when she did it and how she knew it was wrong at the time but in almost every case how she felt it better to lie than to tell the truth and risk hurting me.
Counselling has been a huge help for my wife and I, although we stopped as soon as we felt comfortable going forward without it, and only once have we had to go back for a couple of sessions to sort out issues that arose once I discovered my wife’s EA (we started and completed initial counselling at the time my wife ended the EA and, although I love our counsellor, I have always been puzzled by the fact that my wife confessed the EA to the counsellor but refused to follow the counsellor’s advice to disclose the EA at a time shortly after we stopped seeing the counsellor). I also stongly encourage you and your husband to see the counsellor you are working with together on a one-on-one basis in between joint sessions as my wife and I did. As noted above, people don’t always tell counsellors everthing when their spouse is in the same room, so individual sessions give a person a freer forum to act in and the counsellor should be able to use insight gained from the one-on-one sessions to better advise the parties during joint sessions.
Finally, and I hate to admit it, but as the BS, I took many opportunities to use my wife’s EA against her when we had disagreements/fights shortly after I learned of the EA. There is I difference, I believe, in letting your spouse know how much you have been hurt by the EA, and how various “triggers” are making it hard for you to get over the EA (do we every really “get over” an affair?) or more precisely/importantly for you to accept your spouse for who they are and move forward in as happy of a marriage as you can make it, as opposed to using the fact that your spouse had an EA to make your spouse out to be the “bad guy” for whatever reason at the time. The latter is very unproductive. To move on, my wife and I agree to a “wash” in which we acknowledged that her EA was wrong but agreed that I would not hold against her the fact that she had had an EA. Similarly, we acknowledged several things that I was or was not doing within our marriage before and during the EA that were harmful to my relationship with my wife, and agreed that my wife would not hold that against me. However, the “wash” in no way excused such behavious from occurring again in the future. So, I can no longer say that the EA is a problem as it appears your husband might be doing. And my wife is so relieved at this as she felt at times like she could never overcome having had an EA, so she thought why stay in a relationship that had such an insurrmountable hurdle (so she thought at the time) which made it difficult for us to work on real issues we had at the time.
I wish all the best for you.
Healing Mark
It has been 15 months since dday and lately I have been feeling a PROFOUND sadness. It wont go away. I look at my spouse and I feel sad. I was doing so good and back to as normal as possible until she called and I heard her voice. I also came to find out that she had called a few months earlier allthough there is no record of that call (and I dont know why I wish there was). This has set me back almost like it was the beginning. AM I normal? What is wrong with me?
I found out yesterday, my fiance’ has been having an emotional affair with his ex girlfriend who know lives in Georgia. A month ago we got into a very big fight because he was emailing another woman about our problems. This really made me mad because he didn’t confide in me, instead he went to another woman. I admit I over reacted and basically threw his shit out on the lawn. I didn’t find this out till yesterday but he had texted his ex girlfriend the night of our fight telling her about what happened and that he missed her. They have been texting back and forth for a month and even sent pictures to each other. During this month he proposed to me and come to find out he had been texting her everyday since our proposal. I found this all out because I had sent him an email. We both have each others passwords so I was curious if he had read my email. Some part of me decided to check his sent messages and that is when I found he had sent himself a picture of her to save in his email. I brought this up to him and he denied it. The next day he came out with all of his lies about her and admitted to texting her for the past month.
We had a ‘come to Jesus’ talk last night and laid all the cards on the table. We agreed to seek professional help for his lying and infidelity and I’d seek help for any insecurities and jealousy I may have inflicted on our relationship. He gave me access to our personal phone account where I found out how often they had spoken and so forth. He told me he was blocking her number and would never speak to her again. We both want to move forward from this EA but it’s so hard. I feel like a door mat. Wondering what I did for him to do this to us and our family. It’s good we found out before the wedding, which by the way we did call off the engagement until we got past all of this. But I’m so hurt and devastated. I have an appointment with a counselor this afternoon and I hope to begin the ‘starting over’ process. But how? How do I forgive. How do I not think of her? How do I begin to feel better? This is one of the worst pains imaginable…
Jaimie,
You are very wise to put your wedding plans on hold, this may save you from more heartache down the road. Go slow, time will tell if he is really the one for you. Your very lucky to have found this out, before getting married. I know your hurting right now, but its better to know now, instead of later. When you do decide to get married, make sure it is with a man who
remains faithful and true to you. Please do not go into a marriage expecting to change that person. Even though
this is a hard time, please choose your mate wisely, it could save you from years of heartache. To be very honest with you
I believe you can do better than settle for a man who has already decieved you with another woman. You are worth it!
Jaimie,
Please try to press past your pain, and see the gift that was given to you, of learning who he really was before you got married. Now you can exercise your knowledge and make choice of wisdom, you already know that he is capable of
putting another woman before you. You need to be strong
and understand that you are worth more than this. Its your gain to leave him and trust God to bring you a man who will
treat you with respect. There are better choices out there for
you, don’t settle for this one, he still needs to develop and grow
he’s not mature enough to be in a marriage. Do yourself a favor
and start over fresh with someone else. I know this is hard
but it could save you from more pain later.