How to get over an affair partner… The grief of the involved partner
Friday, May 17, 2024. Revised and updated
Getting over an affair partner is an uphill battle.
You want to return to your marriage, but you also need to know how to get over your affair partner. The grief of the "unfaithful" involved partner is one of the most delicate issues in couples therapy.
In an earlier post, I discussed the problem of rumination and obsession with the hurt partner and how thought-stopping may be an effective way to assert control over intrusive toxic thoughts.
Sometimes, an involved partner breaks off an affair when they come to realize that the relationship is a dead end.
Some involved partners disclose their affair, while others are discovered. However, they often realize they don’t want to sacrifice their marriage and can’t make promises in the dark anymore.
Intimate and Significant
Affair relationships can be intimate and significant. A sense of profound grief and longing may linger long after the affair has ended. They ask how to get over an affair partner and remain content in their marriage.
Getting over an affair partner is not only filled with grief but is also worsened because it is an often taboo subject in couples therapy. Many “all-purpose therapists” lack the sophistication and training to engage with the involved partner’s grief during their individual sessions—if they even hold individual sessions at all.
Unlike the rumination of the hurt partner, involved partners who are grieving the loss of their affair partner cannot discuss their grief with their spouse. They often lock their grief away, typically regarding it as invalid and inappropriate as the affair itself. In the therapy room, where full disclosure is important, not discussing this grief is a double-edged sword.
The Unspoken Grief of the Involved Partner
When I am working with a couple in affair recovery, I always assume grief is in the room, but I am willing to be corrected if it’s not.
During an intensive couple retreat focused on affair recovery, I always have a chance to speak with the involved partner alone.
“How are you handling your grief about losing this relationship?” I ask.
Sometimes the question startles them…
A Shame-Laden Dark Secret
They seem surprised that I know about their grief.
They discuss their grief as a shame-laden dark secret because, up to this point, they have been struggling with it alone. Often they are relieved to talk about it or are grateful for my “permission” to explore it.
If they confirm that they are grieving, I normalize their grief. I tell them that it is natural to grieve a loss. They want to know how to get over their affair partner. It doesn’t mean they aren’t determined to rebuild their marriage. They should accept these feelings and not fight against them.
Therapeutic Paradox in Affair Recovery
Affair recovery sometimes presents a therapeutic paradox. I might help a hurt partner to thought-stop their toxic rumination, but I might tell the involved partner that their grief is not toxic and that they should avoid second-guessing themselves or their commitment to their affair recovery. The grief they feel doesn’t render them insincere. They should allow the grief to flow so that it may be discharged as soon as possible.
The sooner you relax into grief, the sooner your grief will fade.
Grief Is an Idiosyncratic Emotion
Grief is a very idiosyncratic emotion. It’s a popular notion that there isn’t a “right” way to grieve. Grief is a working process that works if you don’t interfere with it by denying its reality. While there may be no correct path to resolving grief, there are many paths to a problematic and painful, prolonged grieving process.
Many general practitioners see the grief of the involved partner as a serious obstacle to affair recovery. Some are even openly hostile to the grief of the involved partner. They are wrong.
The Utility of Grief in Affair Recovery
Working with the grief of the involved partner is a necessary part of affair recovery. This grief, however painful, has a utility. It often provides a roadmap to what was lost or denied in the marriage. Normalizing the grief of the involved partner is not a moral decision; it is a pragmatic one.
The Grief of the Involved Partner and the Struggle for Integrity
Involved partners are assailed on all fronts. The grief of the involved partner is only part of their struggle. They often see their grief as something to hide, while also feeling resentment and lingering dissatisfaction with the marital status quo, depression over the collapse of their integrity, and an often anxious, angry partner who is also in grief and despair.
The grief of the involved partner has many dimensions: grief for their affair partner, grief for their spouse, grief for what may be an emotionally abusive or dead marriage, or grief for themselves over their unwise decisions. That is why generative conversations are so critical to affair recovery.
Generative Conversations in Affair Recovery
I have written about these conversations between the partners striving toward affair recovery, but there is also an inner conversation that needs to take place as well.
What kind of partner do I want to be?
Why did I lie and deceive? Why am I staying?
What if the repair is too hard?
And what does too hard mean to me in light of my other accomplishments?
Am I staying because divorce is too messy?
Am I only staying for my kids?
What will my kids think if I leave?
What will they think if I stay?
How can I ask for what I need after what I have done?
Can we recover from this?
Is it true that we can get into a better place than before?
What can I learn about myself in this recovery process?
Some of these inner questions are more helpful and generative than others. It is not unusual for involved partners to do individual therapy and couples therapy to determine how they will stay in their marriage after they decide to stay. Affair recovery is often a transformational as well as a painful one.
Exploring the Grief of the Involved Partner…
I’ve written about the twin tasks of affair recovery. Blazing a path to forgiveness, transparency, trust, empathy, and redemptive healing is always the best practice. When we unpack the grief of the involved partner, we often find that they feel hopelessly lost and depressed. Even when struggling to reconcile with the hurt partner, they may also feel a keen loss of excitement and vitality.
Reconnecting with Your Spouse and Rebuilding Trust
How can they reconnect with their spouse and rebuild trust again? Some involved partners struggle with the question about their relational dissatisfactions before the affair. “After everything my partner has been through, how can I put these issues on the table now?”
They’ve been through an exciting affair and now struggle with a fear of their lingering malaise with their now openly troubled marriage. Is it possible to process this grief with your hurt partner?
Confronting Humility, Neediness, and a Broken Spirit
Part of the grieving process for the involved partner is confronting their humility, neediness, and broken spirit. The involved partner appreciates, through their grief, a growing awareness of their own self-focus and misplaced attachment. Perhaps with this deeper understanding, they might learn to tolerate their partner’s relational failures as well.
I suggest to involved partners who choose to return to their marriage that they avoid the pitfalls that will complicate their grief and extend their suffering:
Stuffing down their feelings.
Grieving without talking to a therapist or confidant.
Thinking that passing time without self-examination is enough.
Regretting the past without curiosity about enduring vulnerabilities.
Collapsing into toxic shame and not feeling entitled to discuss with their hurt partner “what happened to us?”
Can Getting Over an Affair Partner Lead to Healing?
It’s not unusual for involved partners to carry a toxic shame for their infidelity and wonder how their marriage could ever be restored. They question whether they’re doing the right thing for themselves and their spouse by staying.
They must silently deal with their own internal grief for the loss of their affair partner because to openly grieve would either risk derision from others or upset their hurt partner, who already has been devastated by their actions.
However, self-forgiveness is sometimes a part of this process. If you have split yourself off, lied, and distorted the truth to cover your tracks, eventually, you must look back and learn. If you are authentically striving to rebuild with your spouse, you must forgive yourself for being a good person who made bad choices and then tried to make it right again.
Toxic shame, like toxic rumination, means that there is less of you available to your partner in the ever-critical present moment. Learn about your vulnerabilities and promise yourself not to ignore them in the future. And since you care about your partner’s feelings, be tender with your own.
Managing Lingering Feelings
Getting over your affair partner means managing lingering feelings. My mentor, Michele-Weiner Davis, once told me that there are many varied reasons why someone might have an affair.
Sometimes it is purely a case of bad judgment—a person may feel satisfied, even happy, with their marriage, but after a late night at the office struggling to meet a deadline with an attractive co-worker, and after a couple of celebratory glasses of wine, can lead to a lack of impulse control.
But much more frequently, it’s either an active search for an emotional connection or responding to an attractive other who is paying attention to you, flattering you, and attracted to you. The subsequent feeling of “aliveness” that follows can be as unexpected as it is exhilarating and alarming.
Grief Is a Normal Process
This soon becomes an incredibly challenging situation. Don’t expect your feelings to simply die off. Michele advises that feeling positive feelings toward your former affair partner is a quite common reaction, even if it’s been quite some time since the affair ended.
But feeling grief does not
mean that you should not return to your marriage and put every effort into trying to repair it. Grief, especially early on, is a normal process and is rarely an indication that you made a poor choice by ending the affair and working on your marriage.
Are You Still in Love?
I tell my clients that it’s not uncommon to feel that you’re still in love with your affair partner, but that’s not necessarily a “deal-breaker.” This feeling will most certainly fade over time.
But it is also critical to work on “a shared relationship vision” with your spouse that creates a compelling and exciting roadmap for your future together. This shared vision will likely remind you of why you fell in love with your partner in the first place and will help ensure that your marriage will grow and thrive as you heal from this difficult period.
This soon becomes an incredibly challenging situation. Don’t expect your feelings to simply die off.
Feeling positive feelings toward your former affair partner is quite a common reaction, even if it’s been quite some time since the affair ended. But if you’ve decided to stay in your marriage, you’ll need a shared vision of what that might look like.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
