Affair Recovery: Discovering an Affair -- Taking Time to Make a Decision

Discovering an affair can be one of the most traumatic experiences anyone has in their life.  Finding out that your partner has been unfaithful can and often does catapult you into a crisis.  If you are like most people who have been hit with the news of an affair you may feel like nothing in your world makes sense anymore and you may even question if you are going crazy given the array and intensity of emotions you probably feel.  Know that this reaction will not last forever.  It will likely take you some time to regain your equilibrium enough to feel like you are thinking clearly and can begin to sort through the pieces of your life.  There are several steps to the process of healing after an affair. 

The good news is you can heal both yourself and your marriage if you choose to stay in your relationship.  That is often one of the first things that people think about, "Should I stay or should I go."  If you are one of those people you may be thinking, "I can't stand the idea of being married to anyone who would betray me and cause me pain like this.  What he/she did was so immoral, it goes against everything I believe in."  You may not be able to see how you could ever trust this person again.  On the other hand, you may be really torn.  One minute you think that and the next you think, "If I leave how will that affect the chidren?" or, "How can I just throw away 10 years of my life?"  You may still love your partner, even after the discovery.  This isn't uncommon.  Sorting through whether or not you will stay and heal the relationship can be a difficult and complicated decision to make.  Crisis and trauma research has shown repeatedly that our ability to think clearly, take into account a large variety of factors and make a decision based on them, is usually fairly, if not greatly, diminished during times of crisis. 

Giving yourself the time to regain some sense of equilibrium and begin the healing process for yourself before making a decision about your marriage may be one of the best things you can do for yourself in this situation.  Even if down the road a few months you do decide to end your relationship, and looking back you can see that there really wasn't ever any doubt, you will have given yourself the gift of knowing there was no doubt.  Most researchers say it takes3-4 months to regain a sense of balance after an initial crisis.  A decision you think you would never doubt only weeks after finding out about the affair, may seem much more tentative a few months later. Take care of yourself in all the ways you can, including giving yourself time.

Until next time....