Here is the SerJr post from some years ago, that touched me, and kept me going through really rough times. I have it printed and keep it with me.
"...As such, there are a number of principles that one can apply to nearly every affair and they will hold true:
- The affair is not your fault. Your wayward spouse did not have an affair because you weren’t meeting his emotional needs. Your wayward spouse had an affair because he failed to protect himself from his own vulnerabilities. Affairs are rooted in fear and are in no way a reflection of the marriage regardless of whether he blames it on you, the marriage, the other person, your doggy, or anything else under the sun.
- Affairs are the manifestation of a wayward spouse's attempt to medicate his internal fears. Often, the fear is of intimacy or inadequacy and these fears create the barriers preventing him from getting his emotional needs met. A lack of a solid, stable inner core enables the drive for external validation that greases the slope of inappropriate behavior.
- His inappropriate behavior conflicts with the vision he wants to have of himself which drives the necessary lies, denial, and self-deception in order to justify and rationalize his behavior. Your wayward spouse is not under some foreign influence – one must be in command of his faculties to know which lies to tell himself.
- Until your wayward spouse does the necessary introspection to take responsibility for his choices, if he ever does, your marriage will not get better. He needs to resolve why he did this and how to have a healthy, functioning relationship. You are not responsible for his choices, nor for the consequences thereof. This does not, however, absolve you from doing what you can to improve yourself for yourself.
- You cannot control your wayward spouse and, as such, you cannot directly control the outcome. Let your wayward spouse make his own choices, and focus on yourself and your healing. To do so requires setting up boundaries. A boundary is not an expectation for someone else to change, but a conditional requirement for you to change in order to protect your wellbeing. Your own well-being will never interfere with someone else’s.
- There is no quick and easy way out of this. Action is needed to promote a change and there will be risk associated with any action. However, no action will promote no change.
- Fear is the great paralyzer that draws the shadows longer. You must value and protect yourself, in spite of the fear of losing your wayward spouse or enforcing boundaries, because if you don't....all your fears will be realized anyway. The threat of the wayward spouse is a direct affront to your intrinsic value.
- You are always a worthy human being, and this/here is never any reason to conduct yourself, or allow others to force you, in any direction in which your basic merit and rights as a human being are challenged.
- Your goal is not to rebuild the marriage at any cost… your goal is to guide yourself to where you need to be, regardless of the outcome. You cannot directly choose your circumstances, but you can control yourself and indirectly, but surely, create the world you seek.
- You need to look out for yourself and figure out what it is that you want. Do what is best for you and do not compromise on your fundamental beliefs, values, and character. You alone are responsible for writing the chapters in your story.
- Change is inevitable… and you do possess the capacity to rise above it.
- Life will move on… but you gotta move with it.
- You're gonna be okay."
SerJr
