Q: My wife finally had enough of my cheating and filed for divorce a few years ago. I am left without a home and only limited time to be with our three kids.
I don’t eat well, seldom get a great night of sleep and wish that I had not been so stupid.
How do I recover from this?
A: I suspect that you are right, that having several affairs while you were married was not the most intelligent thing. Nonetheless, you did it and maybe those were among the many indiscretions that all of us choose when we try to learn from our past mistakes.
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What you need to understand firstly is that although you and your wife have separated, you have not emotionally divorced yourself from her. Every time you experience a moment of guilt or have thoughts of regret, you are as married as you were when the two of you, or five if you include the children, were living together.
You need to let go. You need to let go of your marriage, your wife and that overwhelming regret that seems to permeate your well-being.
Instead of looking at the losses from the marriage, you might consider rebuilding your future; imagining the kind of a person you would like to become and developing better relationships with your children, even within your limited times together.
These are huge tasks, and you are likely to be more successful if you work with a family counselor for a while.
The problem with affairs is that they most often mask other problems within a marriage. Research tells us that having an affair, or even more than one, is seldom the cause of a separation or divorce.
Most likely it is the other way around. Having a difficult marriage is the root cause for having an affair. What you need to explore from your previous marriage is the extent to which you were taking responsibility for the sanctity of that relationship. Were you working together with your previous wife to have a good home, to raise your kids well, to balance your monthly budgets, to have moments to share in intimacy and to occasionally, just play with each other?
If you forget about your affairs for a while and honestly think about your own failures to contribute to your marriage, those boring day-by-day things, you are going to learn a lot about yourself. Then, the next time you swear intimacy to another person, you will be in a better position to step forward in a good marriage.
Jacklin Andrews is a family counsellor from Saskatchewan. Contact: jandrews@producer.com.
