Affair Discovery & Aftermath

Finding out about the affair was the easy part. Easy is the operative word here because nothing about discovering your spouse has been unfaithful is easy. But, compared to everything that came after the discovery, finding out was a sinch.  

What was easy about it? I could finally stop suspecting that he was having an affair and stop convincing myself I was crazy to think such a thing. I was relieved to finally know the truth. I could take a deep breath and relax. I felt accomplished.

The easy phase lasted about twelve minutes.

It took that long for my emotions to catch up with the truth, and that’s when the emotional rollercoaster phase started. I call it that because that’s precisely how it felt. I was on a pendulum and swung from being scathingly angry to feeling completely broken-hearted and grief-stricken.

One minute I wanted to throw all his shit on the front lawn and set it on fire. I had all the four-letter words I could think of ready to fire out of my mouth. I was certain I wanted a divorce. The next minute I’d be balled up in bed sobbing over the excruciating pain, trying to make sense of everything. I loved him. I wanted him to hold me and comfort me. I wanted him to tell me everything would be okay.

Fucking asshole. The pendulum swung back, and I’d be on the hunt for a hotshot divorce attorney.

The emotional rollercoaster was exhausting. Getting out of the house to do anything was a major chore. I didn’t know when or where my emotions would be triggered. I remember being at the grocery store a few days after finding out. I was reading the label on a box of rice and burst into uncontrollable tears. The kind that attracted strangers to make sure I was okay.

If the emotional hiatus wasn’t enough, add the thoughts that trampled through my mind. Every morning he’d leave for work, I convinced myself he would go see her instead of going to work, or on his way to work, or during a break, or on his way home from work, or…the list of possibilities was endless.

I was hypervigilant (the extreme kind). I watched his every move searching for evidence of his continued infidelity. He wore nice suits to work every day. He’d spray himself with designer cologne too, but not every day. On the days he did wear cologne, the intrusive thoughts bombarded me. It was the cologne days that he’d go see her, I convinced myself of it. If he didn’t call me during the day, I was certain he was with her. If he did call me, I convinced myself he’d be talking to me on the phone while holding her hand.  

There were mornings we would have great conversations about the steps we’d take to heal our marriage and that the affair was the horrible catalyst that would bring us closer together. By the evening of the same morning, I’d be screaming obscenities at him, criticizing his character, telling him how stupid I was to marry him in the first place, and that putting in the work to save us would be a waste of time.

I didn’t trust a word he said, which should be expected, but wanted so badly to hear the truth. So, nothing he said would satisfy my need for honesty. No matter what he said, in my mind, he was lying.

I know I am not making a strong case for our healing journey, and that’s not the point of this article. The point of this one is to share what it was like for me to discover my husband’s affair and the torment I went through trying to make sense of it.

If you are in this phase of affair recovery, please know I feel for you. This part of the journey is debilitating, excruciating, confusing, and isolating. If you and your spouse want to work things out, I want you to know that it is possible because we did it, and we are better for it (ten-fold).

I know that is crazy talk right now, and I don’t expect anything less because I was in the same boat. When I was trying to make sense of my own thoughts and emotions, I couldn’t see five minutes in front of me, let alone months or years. I was struggling to survive one minute to the next and desperately wanted someone, anyone, to tell me what to do, to hug me and tell me everything would be okay, to explain why this happened to me, to tell me what they did to get through it, and to give me a map I could mimic so I could get through it too.

If you find yourself here, I want you to know you’re not alone. What you’re feeling, whatever it is, is okay. Emotions may shift like the wind blows. The road from here is not an easy one, whether you decide to stay or pack up and go.

In the next post, I will talk about what we did next. How we started to do the hard work to save our marriage.