How do I keep an eternal perspective through infidelity?

Last updated on: September 9, 2011 at 12:33 pm by Natasha Helfer

How do I keep an eternal perspective through infidelity? 2011-09-09T12:33:00-05:00 Natasha Helfer

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How does one find a balance between unconditional love, differences in marriage, and eternal perspective?
Context: My wife blames her same-sex affair and relapse affair (4 months later) primarily on my poor church attendance (as well as my social anxiety). She knows she should take responsibility but returns to blaming me when talking about us to me and family. I made large strides in focusing on her needs after the initial affair: frequent (1 a week) activities with her family, seeking treatment for my infertility, working day shift, 1-2 dates/week, increased church attendance, socializing at church, listening to her, and sleeping all night in the same bed (a problem left over from me working nights, I don’t sleep well in our bed). She doesn’t seem to recognize this. She is upset with my desire for her to go walking with me every other day and my desire for sex and has only done either a few times since the initial affair. It upsets her my needs are so simple and easy to define. She has moved out (immediately after relapse) and won’t move back in till she sees “real effort and change from me” because she doesn’t want to repeat a cycle. Her father had an emotional affair, years ago, with similar reasons. Her mother became active and spiritual because of it.
I love my wife and feel that I was selfish and immature through much of our marriage (married 8 years, I’m 35, she is 30). I have mild social anxiety and general dissatisfaction with my lack of success in life. She feels she is codependent and has been repressed while trying to keep the peace.
I want my wife to be happy. Her affair partner seems to be an addiction and escape. She doesn’t feel physically attracted to the woman. She only has sex because she is filled emotionally by the woman and wants to do what the woman wants because of it. She struggled with stopping all contact (unavoidable at first). When she gave in and talked to her she would become critical of me and hopeless about us. She continues to have contact with her during this break. I want to help her through this if at all possible. I want a marriage where we both know “leaving” (divorce or infidelity) is not an option. She has been such a giving, loving person most of our marriage that I feel her current attitudes are temporary. I feel that church activity and prayer and scriptures really do bring greater happiness and a stronger marriage. I have a strong desire to remain active and strong in our faith.
I desperately want someone that loves and accepts me no matter what. I don’t like the idea that if we fix us and I grow weak and become less-active she will leave me. I’m saddened by the thought of her feeling alone in church. I have always been empathetic about her affair and how she must feel and how she felt to do it in the first place. With the relapse I told her immediately it was OK and we all make mistakes, and she had done her best.
How do I reconcile my need for unconditional acceptance, my desire to be active, my history of inactivity, and her needs and her happiness?

Well — isn’t your first sentence the question of the century… 🙂
I think all couples at some level struggle to find the balance between my needs/desires, your needs/desires and a greater goal that at times can mean putting needs/desires temporarily aside. Finding this balance through things such as communication, compromise, boundaries, sacrifice and finding one’s own voice is, in my opinion, one of the biggest challenges in marriage and where the greatest potential for personal growth resides.
Your situation presents as complex with many facets — and so right away, my first suggestion for you and your wife is to start both individual and marital therapy.
Here are some themes I would encourage you to explore with a therapist:

What are your needs and her needs? What is the level of interdependence that you are both comfortable with? In other words, do you have a sense of security that your partner is able to meet your needs?
What is your social anxiety about? How does it affect your personal life as well as your relationships with loved ones? Is this something diagnosable and could you benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy and/or psychotropic medication?
If your wife feels like she was codependent in your relationship and didn’t like it, is she in danger of repeating this pattern in her new relationship? You mention she tells you sexual attraction is not involved and she is putting this woman’s needs ahead of her own. If this is truly the case then your wife is not solving any of her problems – she is just changing the partner with whom she will have problems with.
Has your wife explored her sexual orientation? I’m not completely convinced that this may not be an underlying factor greatly affecting more of your marriage than you might think. Within our faith structure this is not usually a safe thing to feel like one can explore. Yet denying or ignoring same-sex attraction is an ineffective way to deal with one’s sexuality.
Family history issues need to be explored further.

Although affairs can many times stem from disillusion or discontentment in the primary relationship, this does not justify the choice to have the affair to begin with. Your tone implies you are taking quite a large amount of blame for her inappropriate actions. Why is this? It will be important for the two of you to address the infidelity as separate from your underlying relational issues. If your relationship can survive, she will need to offer reparation for her actions. You will need to take the time to heal from her actions. That is one piece. Once this work is under way, then you can begin to explore the problems that reside within the relationship between the two of you that existed prior to the affair.

You mention this idea of “unconditional” love. Although beautiful in its concept, it is also complex and has a “perfection” quota attached to it. Since perfection is out of reach for us, there is a sense of impending failure many feel when pitted against the somewhat unrealistic challenge of loving “unconditionally.” I’m not sure marriage is necessarily a place where love happens unconditionally. I’m not sure this is even healthy. In other words can I promise to love you no matter how you treat me or what you do that may be destructive to my well being? Not healthy boundaries in my book. Maybe better stated than “unconditional love,” I’m speaking of the type of love that keeps a marriage viable. Much of the love that keeps partners together occurs when things such as respect, appropriate boundaries, and appropriate behavior are routinely in place. When uncertainties such as infidelity happen, you may still love your spouse, but the relationship needs to be redefined. And as this relationship is redefined some marriages end. Others move forward to new territory. Either way, the process of infidelity is usually unsustainable for a healthy marriage if it remains chronic.

I would encourage you to explore the possibility of offering unconditional love maybe in a different context. Are you able to offer it to yourself before you expect someone else to offer it to you? I’m not implying that in marriage there aren’t needs that we look for our partners to meet. However, this concept of self- work and self-progress is usually much more effective for people than focusing on how their partner can change or love them better. From some of the things that you say about yourself, I believe some work on self acceptance might be useful for you to consider. Something to explore in individual therapy.

I wish you the best in the painful process of moving forward you and your wife will be facing in the near future.

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