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Sometimes just "thinking" about the time when you learned about your spouse's affair (even after a lot of time has passed) feels like it just happened - or that it's happening all over again. People make comments like: "It still feels like it just happened yesterday" or "It is like my brain and body don't realize that any time at all has passed; it is literally like being THEN."

There's actually a biological basis for this: the body doesn't discriminate between whether something is actually happening at a given moment or whether the brain is simply "reviewing" past events.

This is why going over and over the painful details in your mind makes it so difficult to recover; it's as if it's happening again and again. The body doesn't know the difference.

So the passage of time does very little to help in recovering. In fact, it can make it worse if the time is spent obsessively going over the painful thoughts. There needs to be a concerted effort to try to get more understanding and perspective rather than just repeatedly reviewing all the details.

Naturally, this is easier said than done. I still remember the struggle to come to the point where I could emotionally accept a lot of things that I could rationally understand. (There's an inevitable gap between intellectually understanding something like this and emotionally accepting the reality of it.)

The painful thoughts will come (they can't be prevented). But what happens next makes all the difference. If someone "gives in" to the painful thoughts and dwells on them, the pain will stay the same - or get worse. But if someone acknowledges the painful emotions are there again (but deliberately focuses their attention on whatever rational understandings they're gaining about the whole issue of affairs), then they're gaining some control of the power of the thoughts to bring pain.