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?
So you’ve decided to give your marriage another chance. But how in the hell are you two going to make this time different?
You two are about to embark on the journey through Phase II. Remember in Phase I, it was all about triage and damage control from the trauma that ensued after the affair was revealed.
In this next phase you both will get an opportunity to share your perspective about how the marriage was before the aftermath from a decision that threatened to take down your world.
Do you remember the skills that you learned in Phase I, self-soothing and unyielding patience? Good because you will need them to get through the upcoming exercises.
When the dust from the initial life-shattering bomb has begun to settle you’re shocked to hear yourself ask, Okay, now what?
It’s been weeks of night sweats and devastating pain that threatens to bring you to your knees every time the truth telling reel begins to play in you head. You know that you’re not ready to reconcile with your partner, but at the same time you need to start to explore the path of healing. Because you sure as hell can’t stay in this state much longer.
To The Betrayed,
Right now you feel utterly destroyed. The amount of pain that you’re in is indescribable.
You want to scream, but the only sound that comes out is a broken roar from the unearthed sobs that you can’t control. Your mind races from one end of the relationship to the other searching for answers. Questions like, were there clues that you missed that could have alerted you this was coming, plague your mind.
It won’t STOP! The story line that you can come up with has only bits and pieces flashing across the screen in your mind, like a faulty film reel. So you beg your partner to relinquish the knowledge so that your mind can find peace. Even though deep down you know more anguish is in the details, your mind won’t rest until it gets some answers.
How important is the relationship that you have with your spouse?
Extremely important. In fact it’s the most important relationship (not including religion and self) that you’ll ever have.
When your relationship is not up to par, the rest of your life takes a major hit. Other relationships suffer and your level of over all satisfaction goes down.