Reflections A Year After The Affair

Yesterday was a year to the date that my world flipped upside down with my husband’s confession to an affair. A year. A time that seems short, yet long in other ways. So much has happened this past year. Lots of tears, hard relational work and life changes. Since the confession we moved to a new area, I went from being a homeschool mom to sending our boys to school for the first time. I took on two new part time jobs, made many connections and friendships within our new church, and am now looking at full time work. I have learned to trust again in my husband, strengthened my relationship with God, and learned to forgive and continue to choose forgiveness.

What’s interesting to me is that I’m experiencing  similarities in the feelings I had last year leading up to the affair. I remember feeling romantic and hopeful the weekend before the confession. I felt a new season upon us with the move and with the  marriage counseling we had already been recieving, I felt we had the tools to move forward with better communication and positivity in our relationship. Now I am on the other side of that having passed a date that I am glad is behind me. Maybe having some distance from that time helps and I continue to try and look ahead rather than back. To focus on our relationship, sex life and spiritual connection in the here and now.

After hearing the stories of others whose circumstances are vastly different from mine, I feel grateful for the progress that has occured for us in a year. For those of you that are still going through extreme difficulty emotionally even a year after the affair, hang in there. Everyone’s time table of healing is different. Each situation unique.

There are keys I believe to moving faster in healing and getting whole healing. Forgiveness is the big one. As long as we hold onto unforgiveness we hold onto hurt. Acceptance is another one. This is something I still struggle with as well. We all wish this had never happened to us. That we could go back and change it. But there comes a point that though we don’t like what happened we have to accept that it did happen, but that it was in the past and choose to move forward. Professional Christian counseling is highly recommended. We really needed someone to give us an outsider’s perspective and wise counsel in how to work through all these issues and processes that need to be dealt with after an affair. If you are serious about trying to stay together this needs to be worked on. Openess and honesty are key. The spouse that strayed can do alot to rebuild trust by being transparent, giving freedom for you to locate them on google maps, or keeping phones, computers and passwords accessable to you. Also controlling their interactions with people of the opposite sex and choosing to give up relationships that make you uncomfortable will help protect your realtionship and build trust. Pray often with each other. Prayer helps to keep God in the middle of the relationship and puts our burdens, struggles, pain, and disappointments in His hands rather than dumping them on our spouse or carrying them by ourselves.

So as I look back I realize I have grown alot. Someone asked me if our new relationship was better. In many ways yes. We are open in a way we never were before, share a spiritual bond that wasn’t there previously, and have learned to love and grow together even through the pain. I know there will still be hard days, ones where the pain may seem somewhat fresh, but those times become less frequent. I look hopeful into this new season for us.