To Support Your New And Improved Marriage
Awesome. You now know exactly what went wrong before the affair and you feel absolutely helpless to fix it.
Basically your marriage needs more time (and attention). But where’s this precious commodity going to come from? And who can sustain devoting that much attention to their relationship once kids and the rest of the sh*t storm shows up?
You can.
The way that you see your world is about to drastically change. You’ll realize that you do have the choice to slow down your crazy hectic existence. And that it’s not only possible, it’s required, if you two want to build a better marriage.
Heads Up, The Affair Still Happened
Moving forward will feel like the affair is being forgotten, it’s not. In order to continue the healing process you have to start building an infrastructure to support the progress that you have and will continue to make.
Every nugget of advice given in previous articles (in this series) is still in active play. The betrayed is still on a structured thought diet and the betrayer continues to practice patience with the questions and rollercoaster emotions.
Continue to practice all the skills and use the tools previously discussed as we keep this healing train rolling.
Current Lifestyle Assessment
What was your idea of marriage and adult life before you wed and grew more mature? Let me guess, your fantasy looked nothing like your current situation. Don’t worry, I think most would agree.
But I want you to take a pause and really invest a good 10-20 minutes and complete this assessment that virtually consists of one question.
What Are The 5 Things Closes To Your Heart?
Hint: What things or aspects must be present in your life for you to be happy and content? Be brutally honest and then list them in order of importance (1=most important, 5 least important).
For example, mine are (1) fun, (2) love, (3) family time, (4) simple, and (5) content
You read it right, my children are not #1 on my list (gasps fill the room!) Now I’ll be honest, when I initially did this exercise I did put them at #2 but then erased them (oh dear lord!) I decided to stay authentic and true to myself. So I wrote what I feel are the five things closest too my heart in order of importance. Here is my argument:
I MUST have fun. I need laughter like a fish needs water. It makes me a better human being. I respect, cherish, and worship love. I can’t get enough quality time with family. If things get too complicated or messy I fall apart. I HATE feeling like I want to crawl out of my skin; therefore, being content is a euphoric state for me, and something that I strive for everyday.
Now it’s your turn. Answer the question and then share with each other what you came up with. And ask yourselves, does our lifestyle allow us to be happy and meet each other’s needs?
I’m 100 percent sure that you’ll discover your lifestyle choices have created basically a living and breathing entity of a nightmare that has hijacked your marriage.
Bottom line, every marriage takes work. And work requires time (that you currently don’t have). Phenomenal relationships are a result of making better lifestyle choices to create precious pockets of time to practice love daily.
Use this as an assessment tool. Keep the list close by (wallet or purse). When you feel like life is getting out of control again, review your list and see what levels are low. If I get too caught up in work and forget to have fun, that would be low on my list, letting me know to go out and whoop it up.
What In The Hell Does This Have To Do With Healing From An Affair?
Plenty.
You two don’t just want to heal, because then what? You go back to your ram-sham of a lifestyle and the bottom falls out again. You want to launch into a life that you can actually live in and be surrounded by the things that matter most.
Somewhere along the way, from being a free and full of life twenty something, you got sucked into this idea that being in a constant state of stress was what you had to do. That having no time to play and be carefree with each other didn’t matter and wouldn’t impact how you saw one another.
Until that horrific day that you found out that it did.
Now, I’m talking to both of you. For the betrayer that day came when he/she was willing to cross that moral line. That was a truth telling experience, because something that had never been an option suddenly became one.
What had gone so wrong in the marriage for your spouse to think, this is the only way to get his/her basic needs met? I believe that he/she saw the same defeated mess that you did in the beginning of this article. That your life had taken on an identity of it’s own and was unmanageable.
And for the betrayed, you found out the cold hard truth on the day that you felt one of the most incredible amounts of pain a human can experience.
Sing It Sister! A.K.A. Here’s The Truth
No marriage is immune to neglect. That’s a choice. A fantasy that it won’t all come crumbling down if we pretend that we don’t see it or try and believe that the feeling of utter disconnect is normal. F*ck that.
Basically we’re all walking around stressed out of our minds feeling like we don’t have control. So what do we do? We numb to newsfeeds, binge on Netflix, and continue to keep busy with projects. We’re too scared to turn and face the monster that we created (our lifestyle) because we have been told by societal messages that this is how it has to be, until we’re almost dead (golden years my ass), then we can slow down and enjoy life. BULL SH*T.
How many people do you know drop dead of cancer right before they retire (my hand is raised)? Our biggest enemy is our minds and how it tricks us into believing that we have all this time. We don’t!
Your time is right now and if you want to have the marriage of your dreams and continue to grow together through this experience. You have to wake up and start sorting through your lifestyle choices. This is your path to freedom, making the choice to live differently. You’ll be happier, see your kids more, and remember that playtime is not just for kids. It’s for anyone that wants a rock star marriage.
Phewta! I will digress. In the next article we’ll dive into how you two are going to make some changes in your lifestyle to slow down and create those pockets of time to stay connected long term, not just in crisis.
Jessica is the author of Back 2 Love and How to Start a Mental Health Private Practice. She owns a practice in New Prague, Minnesota where she lives with her husband, two kids, and two pups. For more relationship advice follower her on Twitter. Don’t forget to check out her video series, Back 2 Love on her YouTube channel Super Living.