Happiness After Infidelity

When you are right there at the moment of discovery that your spouse cheated on you, you are literally choking on feelings that can never be aptly described in words. You feel betrayed, humiliated, laughed at, and discarded. All those little clues came flashing back, one after the other, in the very same way described by those who had near-death experiences, except that they saw milestones in their lives while you saw carefully hidden signs of cheating.

It was a time when the word happiness had an empty meaning. You tell yourself it was not your fault but then you ask again and felt maybe it was. You look for things to occupy your mind and then wonder what for. You try to be happy and you say why bother. You felt so lonely because your happiness depended on another person who is now gone.

This is one scenario faced by people who have been cheated on. After being robbed of happiness by a cheating partner, they further deprive themselves of the opportunity to bring back that happiness. Believe it or not, achieving happiness after infidelity is as real as can be.

Like all other paths to recovery, it would need the participation of the people concerned to make it work. True happiness per se remains an elusive dream for most human beings because of the conditions we set on ourselves to be happy. I can only be happy if... I will no longer be lonely when... I cannot be happy because...We make it so difficult for ourselves to be happy that we almost always succeed in making our lives more miserable.

More than the happiness of finding a new man is the joy of finding a new and better man. More than the sense of accomplishment in making it on one's own is the sense of gratitude in being released from a life of doubt and lies. Yes, there is happiness after infidelity.

When the Innocent Suffers

People caught in the ugly mess of spousal cheating and its consequences can sometimes get so engrossed with their own feelings that they forget that there are other people suffering with them. As they envelop themselves in their own sense of grief, guilt, anger and depression, their innocent children get to suffer as well. No one goes through infidelity completely unscathed.

Children get to have the front seats of the drama unfolding in their home. As the battle rages, specifically when a spouse is caught cheating on the other, every move made and every word spoken cuts through the young hearts and minds of these children who are not yet truly equipped to process what is happening. Things don't get better when a couple opts for divorce as children are forced to deal with the trauma of separation and the possibility of not getting to know one parent for a large part of their lives, if not never.

Having a broken family presents emotional, physical and psychological challenges that are not typically encountered by families who are together. In the case of parents who have sole responsibility of taking care of the children, the pressure to compensate for the absence of the other can be immense. Even in a shared custody scenario, there can be heavy pressure of having to deal with the irregular situation. If adults find it difficult both ways, imagine how difficult it is for the children who ordinarily have no say on the matter.

We have seen far too many stories of children gone astray because of their inability to handle the pressures of seeing their parents build individual and separate lives while caught in the middle. Fortunately, we have also witnessed the triumph of many who have gone through the same experience but managed to come better in spite of the great odds. Estranged couples need to look after the welfare of their children while dealing with their own pains so that the innocent do not become an unwilling collateral damage to marital infidelity.