1. ACKNOWLEDGE THE PAIN.
The process of recovery begins with the recognition of your own suffering and the misery you are causing your partner with your behavior. All personal change and growth arises from suffering and embracing it fully, not running away from it. If you pretend you are not hurting yourself and your partner, you will continue to be stuck repeating the hurtful behavior. The experience of this suffering launches you into a search for some escape. The wisdom of the ages, both psychological and spiritual, teaches that accepting reality with honesty and sincerity is the only path to happiness. So you must desire with your heart and soul to be radically honest with yourself. Only honesty will move you forward.
Such radical honesty can be difficult for anyone because of our tendency to live out our fantasies of how we think life should be. But for you who grew up in a home where your parent was unfaithful, your childhood model was one of deceit. Affairs are sustained by lying. In fact, the greatest harm of an infidelity is not the individual acts, but the cover-up that undermines any sense of trust in the relationship. The basic trust that is the foundation of a marital relationship is destroyed by the deceit. The spouse comes to mistrust anything that his or her unfaithful partner says or does. If your parent was unfaithful, you grew up infected by the deceit. You were caught in the web. You learned, without fully realizing it, that you could lie to yourself and others with impunity. You lacked models of truthfulness.
2. MAKE A MORAL INVENTORY.
If you desire to be honest with yourself, then you must undertake a moral inventory. This is also called an examination of conscience in religious circles. To undertake such an inventory, you must stop, look and listen to the stirrings in your heart. You must also step back and become an observer of your own behavior: what you have done and what you are doing now with your life. What do you see going on within you? You may discover that being introspective is a new experience that can be unsettling, because you are so used to keeping busy and active without thinking seriously about what you are doing. But take courage and continue the inner examination. Eventually, you will realize that you are better than the cheating behavior that has caused so much distress for you and your family. When you examine yourself, be totally honest and see both your strengths and your weaknesses. That is genuine humility, seeing yourself as you really are, not just being preoccupied with your own fault-finding.
3. CONFESS YOUR FAULTS.
The next step is to confess what you learn about yourself to another. Shame and guilt want to hide in darkness, but exposing them to the light causes them to evaporate, like the mist that all feelings are. It is really pride and an inflated self-image that motivate you to hide yourself from others and even yourself. Talking about your failings and strengths with another can be liberating because you surrender the burden of secrecy you carried so long in hiding your affair. The acceptance of another can also help free you from your own harsh judgments about yourself and your behavior. Of course, there is always the danger of self-deception, especially since infidelity had become a way of life for you. Requesting honest feedback from someone you trust can help you to be honest with yourself.
Be careful about choosing the person to whom you confess. The person must be trustworthy to keep your confidence. It might be a therapist, trusted friend, priest or minister. That person should not be your spouse whom you betrayed, because the honest and detailed revelations may well be overwhelming. Over time you will find effective ways of confessing to your partner that will be beneficial in rebuilding trust.
4. MAKE AMENDS.
The next step involves making amends to all the people you harmed with your behavior. Catholics call it doing penance. Making amends needs to be done carefully so as not to create more harm. You are entitled to privacy and do not have to announce your indiscretion to the world. People do not have a right to know your business or your failings. Thinking seriously about the people you have harmed by your wayward behavior makes the consequences of your self-indulgence more real. You become more aware of how your self-centered behavior caused others severe harm. Such awareness can increase your sense of healthy remorse and determination never to be unfaithful again. It can accelerate the process of overcoming your self-obsession, becoming genuinely concerned about the well-being of others. In making amends, you think about how you can restore the balance in relationships that have been upset by your behavior. You ask yourself, “How can I make up for what I have done? How can I be more loving and truthful?” Reversing the downward trend of your life, you can replace dishonesty with truthfulness, the stealing of time and energy with loving attention and the hiding with openness.
5. MAKE A NEW START.
The final step flows naturally from the preceding ones. You make a firm decision never to be unfaithful again. You are resolved to make a new start in your life. Once you have honestly looked at yourself and the hurt you have caused others and yourself, you will naturally be determined to avoid that behavior. You realize that you as a person are better than that behavior. You will feel relief in not having to hide yourself and lead a double life. Your spouse may take some time to trust you again and may be suspicious that you will revert to your old ways. But be patient with him or her and acknowledge to yourself that you deserve his or her suspicion as a consequence of your behavior. Your resolution to be honest and loving will eventually move your spouse’s heart, if you are meant to remain married.
Through this process of facing your guilt and shame, you will come to greater self-awareness and self-acceptance. By acting in truth instead of deceit, in love instead of selfishness, you will come to forgive yourself. You will give up your self-loathing and desire to punish yourself.
PATH TO HEALING: GIVING UP GUILT
1) Acknowledge the pain you caused.
2) Make a moral inventory.
3) Confess your wrongdoing.
4) Make amends.
5) Resolve to make a new start.
As you become more aware of your unhappiness as an unfaithful spouse, think about your parent who betrayed the family. Think back on your memories and try focusing, not on your hurt, but on the suffering of your unfaithful parent. His or her infidelity arose from a sense of emptiness and pain, just as yours did. As you get in touch with your own suffering, feel the suffering of your betraying parent. Feel compassion for your parent as you begin to have compassion for yourself. Replace the anger and resentment, which only harms you, with love and tenderness. It will likely be difficult to feel genuine compassion for the parent who harmed you and the family, but begin with the intention to forgive. Be patient with yourself if resentment persists. Healing takes time and a willingness to forgive.
EXERCISE: METTA
Forgiveness begins with you. You will likely discover that fully accepting yourself because of your transgressions is no simple matter and requires time, patience, perseverance and effort. Others may mistakenly misjudge you, imagining that you do not take your betrayal seriously enough and are not sufficiently guilty. They expect you to live in “apology mode” for an indefinite length of time. However, if you embark sincerely on a path of healing, you will face squarely the obstacle of forgiving yourself.
Make no mistake about it. Unless you can learn to be compassionate and forgiving of yourself, you will not be able to be compassionate and forgiving of others, especially your cheating parent.
A traditional Eastern practice to develop compassion is called metta, or loving-kindness. This deceptively simple and powerful practice has been used for over twenty-five hundred years to cultivate loving feelings as an antidote to fear, hate and guilt. The practice is reinforced
