subject: My Husband is Having an Affair! [print this page] When you discover that your husband is having an affair, it can be the most painful, gut wrenching shock imaginable. Feelings of betrayal, sadness, rejection, anger, helplessness - these and many other feelings flood and swirl through you, as you try to make sense of the illogical. It's like riding through a stormy sea, where one foaming wave of emotion after another batters you.
Although this nightmare is not going to go away overnight, it is possible to get through an affair with your marriage intact. Many husbands, a majority in fact, want to stay with their wives after an affair. If you allow them to, then they will probably stay. But of course, the affair has to end, and both spouses must be committed to healing.
Some Superman type people may be able to rescue their marriage all on their own, but the rest of us need help. There is help available in the form of books, step by step guides and survival manuals that can help a couple get through this disaster and still have a life after the affair. These are necessary because of the large number of issues that need to be dealt with, such as building up trust again, accountability, humility, forgiveness, caring and friendship. It's a big task, and so a structured, methodical approach is needed.
One of the most important things to realise is that it was very likely that it was nothing that you did that made your husband have an affair. Some common causes are boredom with life in general, an addiction to pornography, being seduced by another woman, spur of the moment infatuation, and so on. You are probably a wonderful wife, but all it takes is for your husband to have one weak moment, and then he's sucked into the affair and doesn't know how to get out.
What most women and many men don't realise is the power of sexual addiction. Scientists have found that pornography addiction produces the same chemical reaction in the brain as heroin. No wonder men are unable to resist the pull of this need for a "fix." More and more satisfies less and less until they lose the ability to think and reason clearly, and then do illogical things like have an affair while their wife is in hospital having a baby. No common sense there!
But addictions can be cured, and the best way is by going cold turkey; that is, stopping everything at once, and planning strategies to avoid going back there. You may notice a recurring theme here: you need a plan. You could use some help. But you can get through this.
