Soon after I discovered my first wife had an affair and wanted to divorce me, I sat down for a beer with a friend. Obviously, my cheating wife and all the ensuing drama was the topic of choice. It would prove to be the topic of choice for at least the next year.
I remember saying to my friend, “Ya know, it would probably be easier if I found out she had died in an accident or had cancer or something. That would be totally out of her control. There would be a sense of finality to it. I could explain it. Death is just part of life. My dad died. It really sucked. But this is different… I think it’s a million times worse.”
Infidelity, like most things in relationships, is a choice. It’s an admission by your spouse… the one person you loved and trusted above all others… that she was not the infallible queen that you thought she was. She was very flawed and very human. She was weak. She was, in part, “evil”. This is like a child seeing their parent drunk for the first time. It’s scary. It crushes the entire vision of “safety” and “comfort” that you had.
When real chaos hits you like this, it’s as if the ground is crumbling under your feet… and you only have yourself to turn to. The comparison to being a scared child is very fitting.
The Future
When you discover that your spouse has been leading a double life and wants out of your marriage, it obviously changes everything about your future. Both your future together as a family and your future as an individual are changed in an instant. This has a cascading effect on everything else in your life. Your professional development, your health, your finances… everything you said you “planned” for has just been thrown in the trash. Time to start over.
That’s when us good guys realize just how much of ourselves was tied up into the concept of being part of a family with a wife and kids. Without them… what’s left?
The Past
This is the most insidious part of enduring your spouse’s affair. Not only is your future suddenly chaotic, but events from your past are now called into question. Thanks to cell phones, ipads and secret email accounts, we can sometimes find all of the sordid details of our wife’s affair. If you’re like most men, you’ll become almost obsessive in your quest to learn the whole truth.
“She called him on Christmas Day… that must have been when was in the bathroom so long in the morning before we opened presents”.
“That time we were all so happy sitting in the living room watching Disney movies, she was sexting her lover.”
“We were looking at new houses together and she was texting ‘I love you’ to her affair partner.”
Not only is your future reality altered and now even more uncertain, what you were FOR SURE was real… your past… is now shown to be something else entirely.
Frightening stuff.
As humans, we all seek out security and safety. That drives much of our behavior. This colors our relationships with one another. This drives our ambition. Remove that foundational need from the equation, and a person’s behavior can change in an instant. Take a poor kid from the ghetto who has nothing to live for, for example. His accepted roadmap for his life is much different than a kid with the same intelligence who comes from the nice part of town. They have the same innate tools to work with (their mind and potential), but they also have completely different perceptions about what is possible in life. Ghetto kid says “Why bother? Might as well sell drugs and at least make some decent money. I’ll probably be dead by the time I’m 30 anyway.” The other kid is taught the word “college” and “career” from an early age. To him, the sky is the limit.
You can think of the victim of infidelity as being the chubby little affluent kid being yanked out of suburbia and dropped off at the ghetto with $5 and a slap on the back. “Good luck, kid.”
“Ummm… this wasn’t the plan for my life!”
Scary stuff.
Like the little kid, you’re going to get a quick lesson in reality. Life wasn’t all wine and roses like you thought it was. There always been something scary around the corner. Your wife was never a “sure thing”. No, you weren’t wrong in your love and devotion to her… but you were wrong in your complete neglect of your own self development. You DO need to be selfish on occasion. You always have a “just in case” plan in place. Live and learn, my friend.
Did this happen to you? Give yourself a break. It’s okay to be scared of what lies ahead and disgusted at what happened before. None of this is a direct reflection of you, and none of this has to dictate the future you going forward.