When I was overwhelmed by my wife’s divorce request and days after confronting her about her 18+ month affair, my mind was spinning. Multiple times a day I would have repetitive thoughts about my wife’s affair. I would imagine the worst-case scenario as I didn’t even have all the details yet (which were far worse than imagined), and I was stuck in a loop. I was in a severe state of stress, and these thoughts would flood my mind and would drain all the energy that I had. I couldn’t concentrate. I wasn’t sleeping.
One afternoon I was in my home office and decided I needed to do something, so I called my health insurance provider. They mentioned that I had a program called “Employee Assistance Program (EAP),” available to me and connected me to a representative. After speaking with a specialist and explaining the situation, I was diagnosed with a “Traumatic Life Experience,” and received eight therapist sessions to start.
I then said that I’d prefer to have in person visits if possible, and then received a list of available providers who were inside of a 30-mile radius. Now, how do you select a therapist? In my situation, I was working with health insurance which provided me with a list so, by default, I remained “in Network”. I then looked at the credentials of each therapist and then narrowed the list down to the ones which specialized on “Marriage and Family Therapy (MFT). I then narrowed the list down further to see which of them had a focus on infidelity.
Turned out that all said they could help, but each did in different ways. None of them had personal experience with an affair, but each had experience in working with other couples which were looking to reconcile. I explained that my wife had no interest in marriage counseling, so they would need to deal with me as the “betrayed spouse.” After interviewing 3 therapists, I felt best about a female therapist and scheduled an appointment.
On my first visit I didn’t know what to expect, and we went through “How did I get here?” After my second visit I found that I talked 85% of the time and didn’t receive tips to improve. With this therapist, it was more of a session of me talking about my wife’s affair and her being someone to listen that I could vent to. I didn’t need this as I have friends and family who were available if I just wanted someone to listen and decided to look at other options.
Note that there is value to a therapist like this who will listen. This particular therapist called it out, and she was right. When I do talk to my family and friends about my wife’s affair, there is a lot of shock, a lot of anger, and their responses would end up “fueling the fire,” which doesn’t help. As a result, I don’t vent to them as much and limit the talk to select friends, one in particular who I’d consider my “Relationship Mentor,” when I was hopeful to save our marriage.
This Relationship Mentor would tell me, “I’m just a dumb All American Football Player from Notre Dame, but I’ve been where you are with your marriage.” His situation wasn’t an affair, but one thing he said which stuck with me was, “Marriage is like a highway. There are plenty of off ramps and plenty of ramps. As long as you both are in the same car, you’ll get your marriage back on track. This is what we went through…”
My problem was that my wife left my car and was in another.
Outside of EAP, my wife had a family friend who was a retired therapist who offered to help. They had been helping my wife for about a month before I decided to reach out. I met with them over the phone for three sessions over two months and came out with two “ah ha” moments. One night I was talking with my wife about the affair and she said, “Even “therapist” said it was just three days.” I decided at that moment that I couldn’t go to a therapist that diminished the impact of her affair as I knew it was much more than “3 days.”
Getting back to that initial therapist, after that second visit, I went back to the assigned EAP specialist and explained that I was looking to change from the initial therapist I had seen. The EAP specialist was sympathetic to the situation and sent me a new list of licensed therapists in the area. Again, I used the process of looking at the qualifications and reviews, then reached out to each one to see if they had experience in dealing with infidelity. This time I selected a male who offered to “Take the healing journey with you.” He had the credentials of an LMFT and worked with couples, but did not have direct experience with an affair.
The first visit with him was interesting. I had a scheduled appointment for 1 PM, but we didn’t start until 1:09 PM. I had no idea how long the session would be but assumed 45 minutes, but we ended at a random time of 1:38 PM. I wasn’t a fan of this and thought it was unprofessional, and he asked me about “Female Companionship” which I found odd as I was in tears talking about my wife’s affair and the fallout for me, but he did give me one item which was positive, a process to journal called the “S.I.F.T” method. With that, I figured I’d give it another chance.
That second chance didn’t work out much better then the first, and I decided at the end of that visit when I was walking out that I would move on.
This third time I called the EAP specialist, I said I’d be willing to do a virtual session. This time I received access to a portal and 5 therapists. With my requirements of someone that worked in LMFT and specialized in infidelity, I ended up selecting a psychologist, not a therapist. Outside of his credentials, he has published a lot of work which I was able to review, and he had been a successful speaker who traveled the world as a subject matter experience on marriage. I felt comfortable speaking with him in our pre-visit interview and scheduled the first session.
I’ve been in a number of online meetings, so I was comfortable with the video conference visit. Again, with this psychologist, we started with a “How did I get here?” During that first visit he called my wife’s affair the worse he has seen in his 35 years. He’s worked with couples where one partner had an affair, but never one that documented the level of detail that my wife had, and the fact that I would continue to find pieces of paper with notes about her affair partner and these “lists,” even after she moved out. I kept reading these, over and over again, and would be devastated each time, but I couldn’t stop at the time. I just couldn’t believe it; that she had an affair, and that fact that her affair partner treated her and our marriage with such disrespect.
Near the end of this first session this Psychologist said, “It makes me sad that there are still people like your wife in the world. What you are going through is similar to the loss of a child.”
I remember when he said that in my session it really impacted me. Was my wife’s affair really the worse he had seen in his career? People are shocked when I share the details I had learned, but it wasn’t until I was speaking in a support group and other spouses about my experience and other people would tell me, “My spouse’s affair was traumatic, but what your wife did was at another level….”
At the end of this initial visit, the psychologist was the only one to provide me with a diagnosis and scored me on the “Clinical Global Impression-Severity” (CGI-S) matrix. Outside of my wife’s actions with her affair partner, we spent a lot of time discussing the damage I was experiencing from my wife’s lies and “gaslighting.” I still wake up in the middle of the night and think of some of the lies that she told me. Lies or telling me a partial truth, but hiding the details. To conclude the visit, he gave me a list of 5 action items to practice and start the process of healing.
A couple of additional items of note I’d like to include. Outside of this list, I had found a marriage counselor who I worked with over the phone and had scheduled a session for my wife and me. My wife declined to go so I cancelled, but he was my first choice in all of this and remains #1. Of all the people I talked with when looking for a marriage counselor, he was the only one who was impacted by an affair and was the most empathetic. He was also practicing the “Gottman Method” which I had studied and been practicing when I was working on the marriage with my wife.
Throughout all this, I know that I’m fortunate to have health insurance. If you don’t, you still have options as there are a number of resources available. Over the summer I connected with a therapist via reddit who was incredibly helpful and continues to be a resource that is available as needed. In fact, he was the first one to provide insight into my wife’s affair (before I had the details, but he was 100% right).
There also might be people at your church that are willing to help. For me, in December I reached out to friend that I knew who’s situation was the closest to what I had experiencing with the affair, the divorce, the settlement, etc. I can’t tell you how often I thought about hurting my wife’s affair partner, but with this friend’s help we’re working on leaving this it up to God. We don’t believe in the same God, but you don’t have to limit yourself to one religion if you go this route.
In the “Resources” section of this blog, you’ll see some books which have been insightful, and I’ll continue to provide references which have been helpful to the team at Beyond the Affair.