Falling in Love Again After The Affair

 

 

Perhaps one of the biggest surprises to me after my husband’s confession to the affair was the realization of how much he did mean to me and my willingness to work through it. Anger often had triumphed in my life and I fully believed that if he ever did that I would walk away. It was a process to go through making the decision to stay or leave and wondering if someone else would make me happy, but by the grace of God and the love I did have for my husband I stayed.  I realized I loved him more than I thought I did.

Now we had to start over again, rebuilding our relationship.  It does take time for your heart to go through the initial anger, sadness, forgiveness, and trust building, let alone begin growing in love and romance again. Rebuilding sexual intimacy as well takes time. (Next Friday there will be a post about that!) But for now some thoughts on falling in love again after an affair.

A big thing for me was trying to notice the change in him. My husband had gone through a spiritual revival right after the affair. The man he had been was not who he was. I had been seeing big differences in the way he handled things and his attitude towards God, life, and family changed for the better. Now I realize you may not see a “change” in your husband like mine went through, but what positive traits about him can you focus on and appreciate? What attracted you to him in the first place? It just helped for me to focus on his good attributes, the way he contributed to our family, and recognizing he really was my other half. He had strengths where I had weaknesses and vice versa.

 A book I read when we were engaged and have referred to periodically through our marriage, is called “Love Life for Every Married Couple: How to fall in love, stay in love, rekindle your love” By Ed Wheat. This is an older book but still very relevant and talks about the different kinds of love. The more we build each aspect of love the fuller it becomes. There’s Eros (desirous love), storge (a love of belonging), phileo (a cherishing/friendship love), and agape (unconditional love). It was through this book I learned about love being a choice. If we rely on the puppy dog, feel good love, and our partner lets us down or our expectations aren’t met, we won’t have a love to stand on. Without agape love, our love is based on emotions that constantly shift and change. No wonder so many people marry and then divorce shortly after, because often they marry with just feelings and not a committed choice to love and continue to pursue their spouse. It is great to have the feeling of being in love. And it definitely makes the relationship exciting but know that we have to make that decision to choose to love our spouse even when they aren’t at their best or have let us down.

An affair is a heavy thing to deal with and depending on your circumstances, like me you could also be dealing with a move or troubled finances etc that add to the heaviness on life and the relationship. So that is why I found it important to make time for fun as a couple. Having time to go out or have in home dates is important to bonding with each other and creating an atmosphere to rekindle love. In my last post I shared some of our most fun dating adventures. Because of the heavy emotions and financial constraints we have not done as many adventurous dates yet as we did before. It is my desire to keep moving in that direction and to continue pursuing fun dating activities. But for now here are some of the dates we’ve done since the affair.

-Dinner on the back deck with monologues  *A book I highly recommend for affair recovery is “Torn Asunder” by Dave Carder. This also has a work book. As we worked through the book there were exercises in each chapter to complete. Monologuing was one of the exercises. This was helpful in learning more about your spouse’s life growing up, best/worst decisions experiences, memories, etc. It’s a time to focus on each other and probably learn something about each other’s life you didn’t know.

-A Breakout Room

For those who like solving mysteries or want something to work at as a team this would be it. Break Out rooms have clues and locks throughout the room. You are given an hour to figure out the clues and solve the mystery. Though we never made it out before the clock was up, it was still a fun team building game.

Instie contest- We both like taking pictures to post on instagram. So we had a contest one day during our date sightseeing to see who could take the best pictures. We each put together a collage of our top 4 pictures then posted it on facebook without telling anyone who took which set of pictures. Then we asked our friends to vote on which they liked the most.

Dancing-I love the freedom of in home dates because you feel comfortable at home. Lots of people are into watching Dancing with the Stars. I am a Zumba instructor so I like dancing and have tried putting some choreography to songs. There is a song called “Marvin Gaye” with Megan Trainor singing harmony. It’s super catchy and fun. I tried to invision a couples dance to it, nothing crazy complicated, just simple hand gestures and moves. Though my husband was not totally thrilled with the concept he still was willing to humor me and played along. We practiced a few times then recorded it together. I loved it and though he may not want to do it ever again I do have a video to enjoy 🙂

Outdoor fun-we actually went to the beach several times after the confession. It was the middle of summer so we normally would have gone anyway, but it was a nice change of scenery and a welcome distraction. Hiking also has been something we have enjoyed doing this fall and winter.

The Dating Divas- This is a fabulous website that has more date ideas than you could possibly do every night of the year. It’s pure awesomeness. Lots of the ideas have free printables for card games and themed decorations for the date etc. We played a game of charades that came from dating divas. It was fun to play and it was a personalized game for couples. I would act out his favorite movie, or he would act out my favorite vacation spot, etc

Bible study together-This helps keep focus on God and create special bonding time between you.

Praying together-Pray about working through forgiving him, pray about rebuilding your marriage, growing your love again, about your hurts, sex life, everything. This is a real place of vulnerability that both of you can enter together by praying aloud together. One night I was so inconsolable that my husband gently pulled me from the bed to the floor and told me to tell God what was on my heart. We both knelt side by side as I sobbed and poured my heart out to God.

Forgiveness also is a big step that needs to be worked on before love can really start to grow again.

It takes time. The first weeks and months will be rocky. Your feelings will go up and down. Hang in there friend.

1.Work on forgiving so you can move forward

2. Focus on what you can admire and appreciate about him

3. Date each other to bring in some much needed fun and bonding

4. Choose to love when those fuzzy feelings aren’t there

5. Pray, pray, pray that God will grow love in your heart again for him.