Remaking You After the Affair

The first ten years of my marriage my husband was fond of saying that I never "changed" there was never anything I had to work on or fix. I thought I was perfect. That was his perception, however I knew I was far from perfect, but the only thing I could imagine that I needed to work on was my housekeeping ability. They are lacking in a big way.

I don't blame him for being frustrated all those years, I think he felt very nit picked.

He doesn't say that to me anymore however.

After the affair we were both so broken that we had to completely rebuild ourselves. Husband had some massive changes overnight. Things unexplainable that were suddenly different about him. For instance he now tolerated and enjoyed spicy food now, he began writing poetry (this is a guy who'd never written creatively in his life) and intimacy was so completetly different. I'm not going to get into the sex stuff right now, but Husband is planning a post about Sex and Intimacy after the affair in the future.

But what I'm getting at is that very strange things were suddenly different about him, and then there were very large personality changes as well. I think his battling for his life (essentially) suddenly made him an incredibly strong and self respecting man. Something he had never acheived before.

Me, well I felt very much like I had spun a chrysalis around my tainted body and broken spirit and slept. The first few weeks after the discovery it was all I could do to keep my eyes open at night. I was so thoroughly exhausted I could only imagine all the effort I had put into my 10 years of hiding my true feelings and the 6 months of lying had taken a lot more effort than I imagined.

Husband carried me through those months afterwards and kept the reality of what I did from crushing me completly. It seems very odd that he would protect me so much, especially when he was hurting so much. But protection is what I had craved our whole marriage and I think he thought it was now his duty. It gave him something to do during the recovery.

Me, well I used what happened to get in better shape. I was a good deal overweight which led to a lot of self loathing. I wanted to change as much of me as I could. I wanted to be a different person. And that was my first focus, I wanted to have a different body, one that had never been seen by another person outside my husband. I also started writing and reading more and became active with service projects in the community. Things I had always loved but let slide into the background.

And we remade ourselves as a couple. First and foremost we turned off the TV and spent our evenings talking, writing together and reading aloud to each other when we didn't want to process anymore.

And of course all of this made us better parents.

Those first 6-8 months after the affair were the hardest. There was much pain and sadness from Husband and a lot of fear and horror from me. But as time moved by the thoughts come less, the happiness more frequent and we healed.