The Message in the Affair

 

Even though my husband made the choice to be unfaithful I also contributed to the atmosphere and sins that had impact upon that decision.

I had always idolized sexual intimacy in our relationship but I shied away from emotional intimacy. Honesty and vulnerability were something I greatly struggled with. I was afraid that some of my disappointments with our marriage, lack of affection, fears in our relationship, etc, needed to be hidden from him because I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. But greater than that, I wanted to protect myself because I feared if he knew my real feelings over certain things that he would leave me or be disappointed in me.

So though we had sex regularly he often wondered how I really felt about things. Sometimes I would cry and get upset and bottle things up, but just didn’t know how to talk about how I was feeling or feel safe to share.

About a year and a half before the affair, he sent me an article about honesty in marriage. I did feel convicted and tried harder to share feelings. When I was reading about honesty I stumbled upon the song “If We’re Honest”

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lDcTvtuuVU8

I sent that to my husband.  He heard it while he was driving, but he had to pull over because he was crying so much. It really mattered to him, and he was trying to share his need for intimacy. I heard that cry but I still didn’t fully feel I could open up. I tried harder to share but still couldn’t totally be vulnerable.

This was a pattern I kept throughout our whole marriage. Bottling things up until they came leaking out or I’d blow up and we’d have a big talk, but I still usually held something back.

As a result of my silence, my husband wondered what was going on in my mind. He got on my phone and started looking through my search history. During this particular time (about 8 months before the affair) I was struggling with liking my husband and feeling in love. I was looking up articles about how to like your spouse and be their best friend. This was hard, because I wanted to fix how I felt and I didn’t want to tell him. I knew it would be hurtful. But it was worse that he found it on my phone and confronted me about it. He was crushed that I didn’t like him. I still tried to soften it and hide what I could, still not wanting to fully bear my heart.

Though there were good things about my husband that I loved I could always feel the spiritual chasm between us. I still believed he was a Christian but I knew he wasn’t walking with God actively. There was a bitterness to his feelings about life especially when things didn’t go as he planned. When he knew I was unhappy, he started drinking more. Alcohol made him happy. He was very easy going and enjoyable to be around when he drank. And he desparately wanted me to like him. But he walked the edge of addiction and I watched him consume more and more all the time which really concerned me as well as his lack of judgment during this time. He felt frustrated with our marriage because he couldn’t make me happy. My silence and withdrawal emotionally made him feel lonely.

In his loneliness there was a woman that caught his attention. This woman had been a former girlfriend to a buddy of his, but was now single. On a date night we had at home I was trying to be honest and open so I let him know about a guy that had been reaching out to me. I kept texting at a minimum and mainly this person was letting me know about his bible study and things related to that but I did feel some discomfort from attention I seemed to get from him. So I showed my husband the texts. He in turn shared his attraction to this woman. She was working with some financial things with our home at the time, so there had to be communication, but my husband claimed he wouldn’t meet her for a lunch date or be alone with her etc. I cried that night just from the insecurity I felt with his attraction to her. I am glad he told me and didn’t hide it, but it still made me feel scared. We continued to struggle and have some low times. As his path crossed with her, there were boundaries crossed from a flirty text, to a car ride alone together to deliver something, which he had not told me about until after the fact.

I tried to be open and confront him about this interaction and stress my discomfort with this relationship, but this was a downward spiral he’d set himself on that continued to take him further into sin. Was this his own choice? Yes. But I had equally made him feel alone for years with my stonewalling, hiding, and lack of praise which made him feel he couldn’t do enough to make me happy. I was seeking my happiness and fulfillment in him and he in turn had made me into his god. A role I could not uphold either. Both of us were seeking each other to fill the emptiness in our souls when it was God that we needed. This is still something I have to work on. When I’m disappointed in our marriage now or wonder when we will experience the next high, I need to look to God. I need to tell God about the emptiness I feel inside and acknowledge that Jesus is the only one who can fill that in me. My spouse is a blessing, but he will fail, he will not be all that I need, and I can’t be that for him either.

But you know what’s crazy? After my husband’s confession to the affair, (which was not with the woman I mentioned above), there was radical vulnerability and openness that had never been there before. I guess because of the seriousness of the offense I felt like I could come forward with all my hidden sins and feelings. Finally we were transparent, both of us were naked and exposed able to see each other for who we really were. It was painful, don’t get me wrong, but it was totally freeing. The strange distance I had felt in my husband during sex also was removed. He had been hiding behind the guilt and secret of the affair, but now the emotional and physical intimacy could finally be what it was meant to be.

There is usually a message in the affair. I highly recommend the book Torn Assunder. Even if you don’t know you want to stay with your spouse it helps you to work through the processes you’ll need to go through to head towards healing in your own life. But one of the things in the book is identifying what the message of the affair was. For us it was that my husband felt alone because of the lack of emotional intimacy between us and he felt defeated because he didn’t feel he could keep me happy.