Ten Strategies for Surviving Infidelity
Anne Bercht, the director of the Beyond Affairs Network, is co-founder, along with her husband Brian, of www.passionatelife.ca, a website dedicated to creating a healthy, passionate marriage.
People have no idea just how painful and difficult surviving infidelity really is, unless they have been there themselves. During the initial stages one seems to be literally teetering between life and death. This is not just a bad day or something you will 'just get over.' It is worse than death. It is living through your worst nightmare.
Recently I watched a documentary on television regarding 'the unforgivable sin.' I wondered what the unforgivable sin according to Hollywood might be. The program was about a man whose wife and child had been killed in a motor vehicle accident caused by the selfish, thoughtless and negligent behavior of a teenager engaging himself in streetcar racing. I thought to myself, how much more devastated would that man have been to find out it had not been a stranger who had caused his pain, but rather his own wife who had secretly gone out and given away the most intimate part of their marriage and then had proceeded to lie to and deceive him regarding this betrayal for who knows how long. I admit the redeeming factor regarding surviving infidelity, is that people don't usually die physically. (They certainly do emotionally.) Therefore there is hope of rebuilding life on the other side of infidelity, but this man will never see his wife and child on this earth again.
Imagine a smooth glassy lake on a beautiful sun shiny day. Then imagine that someone manages to drop a gigantic bolder right into the middle of the lake from a considerable height. Kursplash!!! Peace now destroyed, the water splashes up out of the lake and back down creating a ripple, a wave, and it continues one ripple after another getting bigger and bigger until even the outer edges of the lake have felt the effect of the giant bolder. This is the way that it is with affairs. Chaos where there once was beauty and calm. Sure in some marriages there were problems before an affair, but affairs happen in good marriages too. However, unlike many other wrongs human beings are capable of committing, marital infidelity creates far reaching consequences of pain and destruction. It doesn't just hurt the person who has been betrayed, it hurts children, friends and family members. People who are surviving infidelity begin scapegoating, that is taking out their anger, frustration and pain on others who have nothing to do with it. Then there are those left to cope with STD's including one woman in our group who saving herself for marriage, was a virgin on her wedding day. Her reward, the pain of venereal disease, a wedding gift from the man she saved herself for. What about pregnancy? What about the children who grow up feeling that they don't really belong, because they are the product of an affair?
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