Have you been told, "You will feel better in 6 months," or "It takes about 2 years to over come the pain of infidelity." Maybe you have heard this one, "It takes half the time to heal as the affair itself lasted." If I read that right, than it is going to take me 9 years to heal, or 4.5 years. After all, my husband had affairs for the entire 18 years of our marriage, one lasted 9 years, which length of time do I go by? Absolutely neither.
Know one can tell you how long it will take to heal, that is a journey only you can decide. The thing I know for sure is, YOU MUST HEAL.
I want to tell you a short story of a lady I met early on in my discovery. She had found out about her husband 4 years prior. I thought she was way ahead of me in the healing process. She had caught her husband having a secret 3 month email affair with a woman from a different country. His affair was never physical in person, their emails were graphic with sexual detail, along with the I Love
You to each other and my new friend was devastated. She told me that it took her by complete surprise, her husband was not the type of man to have an affair. She had caught him early in their marriage going to strip clubs but he had stopped that as soon has she had caught him, then later in their marriage she caught him viewing porn on their home computer and once again it came to a stop. She never viewed the strip clubs or the porn as betrayal. She saw it only as something men will do. I understand her thought process on this, it is easy to bury your head in the sand. When your busy raising children, working a job, trying to keep up on your house and yard, it takes to much time and effort to deal with your husbands issues. Why should you have to, after all he is a grown man and you have your own issues to deal with, right? Anyway, I truly believed that she would help me on my journey to healing and I was absolutely
disappointed to find she had not healed at all.
After 4 years of trying to salvage her marriage, she was still caught up in her anger at the other woman. In fact I found that her anger was more at the Other Woman than at her own husband. She was going to personal counseling, once in awhile anyway, but when she went, her and her therapist talked more about how to heal her husband than how to heal herself. Through time, I found out she did not believe in forgiveness. Forgiveness to her meant she had to trust him again immediately and that she had to let go of what he had done to her, which meant in her eyes, that he had gotten away with it. Her husband had been doing what ever he needed to do to help save their marriage, going to counseling, attending 12 step group classes, he was doing everything she had asked of him, yet she was not working on herself.
She was 47 when I met her and she had a huge fear of being left alone at her age. She was afraid that know one would want her and that she would spend the rest of her life alone. This screams insecurity and this is something that most of us that have been betrayed by our spouse feel. (We were not good enough). Instead of working on her
insecurities and her own issues, she was working on his sexual addiction.
It had been over 6 years since her discovery when she caught her husband in another lie. He had made plans to go to a golf
tournament with some co-workers, his partner was a lady that he had admitted he was attracted to. When my friend found out a month later, it all blew up and she ended up divorcing him within two months. Do I blame her for this decision, NO. After the divorce was finalized, she continued to see him almost daily, but at night when he was not there, she would call him, yelling and screaming about how he broke up his family, about how he had hurt her beyond belief, how could he do this, there were times when she would call him at 2 in the morning, because she could not sleep and her anger would build. These calls went on for months. While she was making these calls to her ex husband she was on the
Internet posting her profile on sites to reconnect to her past friends, her fear of being alone was screaming out all over her life. Like I said, she never did the work on her self.
About 7 months after her divorce, she ran across an old girlfriend on Face Book. She began to renew their friendship, than one night her old girlfriend told her that she had been living with a man they both knew from high school, they had been living together for the past 15 years. They had never married, nor had kids.
One night while my friend was on the
Internet, she
received an email from her old girlfriends partner. She responded to it and for the next month she and him began to have late night secret email
conversations. When she told me about their
conversations and what he was saying, I got extremely upset. I told her she was getting into a situation just like what her husband had done to her, she disagreed, saying they were never married, nor had kids, it was not the same. I asked her if her old girlfriend knew they were
corresponding, she said she did not know, but did not think so. I asked her how she could hurt someone else like this, knowing the pain it causes, all she would say is, well according to him, their
relationship was over anyway. This new man had told my friend that she was the woman he had dreamed about for years and that he never married because he could not find someone who compared to her. She believed everything he said to her and got lost in his words. It helped to boast her ego. Within 1 month of them emailing each other, they were sleeping together, two weeks later, he moved in with her, without telling his 15 year partner. My friend thought this was all fine and she felt wonderful, she was falling in love again. The newness of an affair.
My friend was still sleeping and having sex with her ex husband, she was inviting him over for family dinners and holidays, up until her new friend moved in. She had let her children believe that she was trying to salvage her
relationship with their dad, that the reason they divorced is because the old vows were not kept and that they would have to take those vows again someday, so the old marriage had to die and a new marriage would have to be formed. When her children found out about her new partner, they were extremely angry with her, they are now refusing to speak to her altogether. She lied to them. Amazingly she does not see it this way. Her ex husband found out by stopping by her house one Sunday morning with a cup of coffee for her. My friend called this, payback. Wow, I was amazed that someone who had been betrayed and hurt to the core, that knew how it felt to be so deeply wounded could do this to another woman and her own family.
It took about two weeks before her old girlfriend found out about her partner moving in with my friend. Once she had found out, the rumor mill began and my friend became a target for all to throw darts at. My friend who was once thought of as loving, kind, generous, was now a whore, tramp, home wrecker,
ect. Every name my friend had called her husbands other woman was now being
labeled on her. She is thriving in this drama, she will laugh about it, joke about it and make excuses for her behavior. She really believes she is healed from her husbands betrayal.
The character, integrity and self respect I truly believed my friend had, was gone in my eyes. She had thrown them out the window. She believes she is still the same person, I do not. It has been over 7 years now since my friend found out about her husband of almost 30 years and she is still lost. She has never healed from her husbands 3 month affair, instead she is carrying it into someone else life. She never worked to get beyond her
insecurities of being alone and now has herself, betrayed an old friend and her family.
I am know longer friends with her. She is lost, in a sea of
unforgiveness and pain. I could not walk this path with her as a friend, as much as I care for her and her family, I could not watch her hurt so many, including herself. She is standing on a self
righteous throne of payback, even to those who did not deserve payback.
My friend has not healed at all from the pain her husbands betrayal caused her. She did not learn anything
positive about herself, she did not add to her character, integrity or self worth, but instead depleted them. The things she said she would never do, she is doing. There is no healing here, there is only a
band aide.
TIME: Time does not heal, time only makes it easier to handle. You will never forget the pain, you will just learn to choose what to remember. There is no such thing as a time limit, it is a personal journey we take
individually. Some of us will heal by improving our lives, while others will not heal and carry their pain into the lives of others, only to continue the cycle of pain.
I am tired of hearing, "You will feel better in about 2 years," or "Your right on the mark, this is where I would expect you to be at 6 months." I am tired of the false hopes of time.
Do not watch the clock, do not count the days or months and do not keep track of the years, instead focus on your own life. Work on your fears,
insecurities, grieve what has been lost, cry tears of
sadness and joy, scream and yell until you are hoarse, do what ever it is you have to do to regain YOU.
I am still today, angry. Almost 3 years since discovery and I find myself still angry. My anger has turned on me though, now I am angry at myself. I am angry that for so many years, I buried my head in the sand, angry that I let my life get here, angry that I did not do for myself, angry that I did not
believe in myself. My anger is a healthy anger, because it is keeping me on a growing path in my life. Since the focus of my anger was taken off of my husband, his other women and placed on myself, I have been able to move, grow and get beyond my husbands betrayal of me and unto the betrayal of myself.
Time has not been my friend, nor my enemy, time has just been time. Standing still, unable to move, trapped by my fears, my
insecurities, these things have been my enemy, 10 years from now, they could still be my enemy if I chose them to be,
in fact my anger at myself has become my weapon against my enemies and I am going to fight them until the day I take my last breath.
When you have faced your fears and conquered them, when you have battled your
insecurities and won, when you have faced the worst pain imaginable and came out the other side a more positive and healthier person, than you are on the road to truly healing.
If you are waiting for time to pass, it will. If you truly want to heal, than CHOOSE to heal. Find out what your fears really are, go discover your
insecurities and start facing them one at a time. You may lose a few battles along the way, but when the war is over, you will walk out stronger, wiser, taller and so much happier with who you are. YOU WILL COME OUT THE OTHER SIDE A VICTOR, INSTEAD OF A VICTIM.
GOD BLESS YOU ALL IN YOUR JOURNEY TO SELF.
