The Loving Truth

Key Questions After an Affair

• Sharon Pope • Episode 142

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When you discover that your partner has had an affair, it’s common to be overwhelmed by a rush of emotions… fear, anger, confusion, and shame.

The questions you ask in the heat of the moment, like "Did you love her?" or "Did you have sex with him?" reflect deep pain, but some questions can only make things worse by creating images that are impossible to unsee.

Healing after an affair requires more than just support from friends and family. You need a structured approach with someone who can help you process the pain and guide you through the difficult steps ahead.

The journey to healing is complex. The key is to find a safe space to process the pain, whether it’s with a coach, therapist, or support group.

Don’t carry this burden alone.

Struggling to decide whether to stay or go in your marriage and you’re serious about finding that answer?

Book a Truth & Clarity Session with a member of my team. We’ll discuss where you are in your marriage and explore if there’s a fit for you and I to work together so you can make - and execute - the RIGHT decision for YOU and your marriage.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Loving Truth Podcast, where it's all about finding clarity, confidence and peace in the face of marriage challenges. And now your host relationship expert and certified Master Life Coach, sharon Pope.

Speaker 2:

Hello, loves, this is Sharon Pope and this is the Loving Truth. Today, we're going to be talking about affairs and we're going to be talking specifically about the first question that you ask when you find out that there's been an affair. So have you ever been on the receiving end of finding out that your partner has cheated on? You know, maybe you found text messages or an email trail, maybe you found photos, or you walked in on something and you saw it with your own eyes and now you can't unsee it. Or maybe you went so far as to get some tracking information, some real data, and then you confronted your partner with that information and, having no other choice, they admitted to it. I will tell you that most people research has shown this that most people will not admit to an affair, even when they're faced with evidence. So even when it's really evidence that can't be denied, they will many times deny it and, of course, they will also downplay it. So, my friends, if you're like, well, I suspected that he was having an affair, but I kept asking him and he kept denying it. That's normal. That doesn't mean that there's not an affair. That means that he's doing what most people in that situation, if they're in that situation would do so. It doesn't mean he is having an affair, but it means he could be. Just because he's denying it does not make it true that there's not an affair. Okay, I just want to say that, and if you've never been here, if you've never been on the receiving end of finding out that your partner has betrayed you in this way, then really you're lucky and I'm happy for you, because this is happening in more than 60% of marriages today, and I think that's understated, because that's only the people who will admit on a survey that they've cheated. And, number two, that what they did was actually cheating or an affair, because, think about it, we don't have common definitions for what constitutes an affair or cheating. Right, are flirty text messages? Is that cheating? It's certainly a betrayal, but is it cheating, is it an affair? That's really up to you and it's a subjective answer.

Speaker 2:

What about nude photos that are sent back and forth, right? What about porn in secret, when you didn't know that it was happening and he's watching it every day? Or what about live porn? Right, where there's an interaction taking place with another person? It's just happening over a computer. Is it cheating Because we've never physically even touched each other.

Speaker 2:

Because here's the reality is that so much of our erotic experience is happening in our minds. It doesn't even have to be happening physically to us, it's happening in our minds. And my friends, a year from now not that long from now, I don't know if it's a year even there's going to be a lot of conversation about is my AI boyfriend now an affair? Right, people are creating what they think is another person to be their affair partner and they've programmed him or her to be the exact thing that they want. They've designed it. It's like designing a robot to be exactly who you want, who will never challenge you, who will only love you, will send you flirtatious messages in the middle of the day, will always know what to say and how to say it for you specifically so that you feel loved. You can even have erotic experiences with technology, even though they're not a physical human being. There are people right now having these relationships and their partners are having to determine is my wife having an affair because she has this AI boyfriend, or am I okay with that? Like it's not that far off that we're gonna be talking about stuff like that, which is just mind bending really so for those of you where you found out that your partner has had an affair or has cheated on you or betrayed you in some way.

Speaker 2:

When you find out about that, you get flooded with a million questions all at once and you almost don't know what to grab a hold of. And there's this onslaught of emotions, almost like a wave, that sort of comes and takes you under, pulls you under, and the emotions are like fear and confusion and anger, humiliation, shame, despair, and it's like one negative emotion after another, after another, after another. It's almost like you look at it from a prism and one hand you're looking at it and you're feeling just absolutely shattered and you turn it again and then you're like, oh my God, I'm so humiliated. And then you turn it again, and then you're just mad as hell. So humiliated, and then you turn it again, and then you're just mad as hell, right. So the questions are coming, the emotions are coming, and it's incredibly overwhelming when an affair is discovered.

Speaker 2:

Here's what's interesting the first question a man will ask is did you have sex with him? And the first question a female will ask a man is do you love her? And that tells you a lot about how men and women think about relationships, how they think about affairs and how they value relationships. Right, because I think for a man it might be slightly easier to forgive an emotional affair than a physical affair, because having a physical affair is sort of the ultimate betrayal for most men For their wives to have sex with someone else is sort of the ultimate betrayal. To have sex with someone else is sort of the ultimate betrayal. But isn't it interesting that for women it means more. To many women not all women obviously it means more when you have feelings for this other person, when you love her, versus when it's just the physical act of sex. And maybe that's because almost every woman knows what it's like to go through the motions of sex. But it's a very different thing to manufacture feelings. Women value feelings and we value relationship, where men probably prioritize the physicality of sex a bit more than women do. Again, those are broad brushstrokes.

Speaker 2:

It's not everybody in every situation, but when the majority of the time the first question that's being asked from a man is did you have sex with him? And the first question that's being asked from a woman is, did you love her or do you love her, because we're looking for the worst case scenario. We're looking for that like nail to the heart kind of thing, like what's, how bad is this? Like I just got shot. I need to know how bad is this, and that's kind of what those questions are seeking.

Speaker 2:

Now there are questions that you can ask in when you find out about an affair that are going to be helpful to you towards healing and towards figuring out where to go next, and I think both of those questions are valid questions that need to be answered. And then there's some questions that you're going to have that are not going to be helpful to you, right Like so when you're asking questions of are they better than me in bed, or where did you have sex, and you start asking specific things about the sex, about the sexual experience. When you hear those things, your mind creates an image. And I'm telling you, once you see something, you can't unsee it, Just like sometimes, when you hear something, it's really hard to unhear it, it's really hard to make that image go away.

Speaker 2:

And now, in today's day and age, because technology certainly facilitates affairs, but it also is the primary way that all affairs are found out is through technology, because there's a tracking for everything. It's out there somewhere, right, and so the text messages that you see, the emails that you see, the photos that you see, you can't unsee that, and sometimes there's hundreds of them, maybe even thousands of them, and so that becomes something that you now have to carry. So that's why, sometimes more detail, when you start to spiral into getting into the nitty gritty details, those questions are not going to be helpful. But the high level questions of did you love her? Did you have feelings for her? Did you have sex with this person? What did they mean to you? How did that relationship make you feel? Was there something missing in our relationship that you found in this other person? Is there something in that relationship that you had with the other person that you now know is important for you to have in your most intimate relationship?

Speaker 2:

Those are all questions that can be helpful to figuring out how you got here, healing in terms of the hurt that was caused and how to move forward Like are we going to try to heal this? Is healing even possible? Are we up to that challenge? Or is the only answer to end it? And, my friends, even if you end it, I still want you to be able to heal from that, because I don't want you carrying the hurt of that for the rest of your life. So the healing process that needs to happen regardless, the forgiveness and what to do next process, that becomes the question mark experience when an affair is discovered.

Speaker 2:

And so here's where I want to just spend a moment talking about needing support, because this is an interesting thing that happens when you're the one that's cheated on. You need support right, like you just got shot, and you need help, right, you need someone to help take the bullet out. You need you know like you need help and support in that moment. And so what do most of us do? We go to our family and friends, the people that we turn to for support, and I think that that is a very common thing.

Speaker 2:

But I think it also creates its own set of challenges, because many times when your partner has hurt you and you run to your best friend or your sister and they just want to love you and protect you and then call it a few months down the road, you and your spouse find your way back to one another and you're healing after the affair and you're feeling more hopeful about the relationship, but your sister or your best friend is not right. They have not gotten the apology. They have not. They've seen you in such a high degree of pain and they love you that they're not ready to just forgive and welcome the person that hurt you right back into their lives. So now we create a new challenge that makes the relationship harder than it was even before the affair, because now you've got people that you love, people that you're close to, who now don't approve of or want you to be with this person anymore. So I understand why we go to our friends and family for support, but it does create an extra layer of stuff.

Speaker 2:

And also the thing to consider is that your friends and your family they don't have like a structured approach to navigating affairs right. What they're good at is loving you and supporting you, and that's amazing. But when you find out about an affair, I'm going to tell you something you need a structured process and someone who has been there and done that and has walked people through that. Now, of course, that is some of the work that I do and this is not a sales pitch. But you can do that with a trained therapist in the area of affairs. You can do it with a coach.

Speaker 2:

There's a bunch of different ways that you can do this, but you need support, like I'm not suggesting that you should just do this all on your own, carry it all silently and try to figure it all out on your own. That is not what I'm suggesting, god, that would be torture. And I've known women who have come to me and they're like I haven't told a soul, I've just been carrying this myself the whole time, like for years, and they still haven't healed from it, of course, because they've never done that work. So this can look a lot of ways. All right, I'm not trying to make this about a sales pitch for me. I want to make this a pitch about you getting the support that you need, because there is no path through healing after an affair without support and you need someone who knows their way through in terms of how did I get here, how do I heal and how do I move forward. And those are three very different and separate and important steps, each in and of themselves.

Speaker 2:

Your friends and family don't have that kind of a structured, unbiased approach. They're not going to have the ability to help you heal. They're not going to be able to ask you the right questions so that you're moving forward in a way that honors you and honors what was, if you will and, by the way, no one outside of you can tell you what to do in your life, like lots of people will tell you. Like it's super easy to say, well, if that ever happened to me, I'd be out of there in two seconds. Like that's super easy to say when you are not in that position, and it is an entirely different thing when it is happening to you. And I actually don't think that making a decision about whether to stay or go immediately after you find out about an affair is the right idea, because you've got so many questions and so many emotions that that's never going to be the place from which you're going to make the best and most rational decision for yourself. But if you start moving through the process, you're going to get to a place of more clarity about what feels like the next right step for you, because your friends and family, when they tell you what they would do, first of all it's hypothetical because they're not in it, but also they cannot separate their fears and their judgments and their insecurities from what they might tell you to do. All right I've had.

Speaker 2:

Let me give you an example. There's been several times that I can think of very specific clients who have shared with me that when they shared with their mother the struggles in their marriage and mostly what they were looking for was almost like is it okay if I end this mom? Like they were almost looking for mom's approval. And if mom had also had a hard marriage but had chosen to stay or, by the way, didn't have any option but to stay, then she wants to justify her choices. And so she would tell her daughter you know it's not that bad. You know it's not like he's beating you or anything. Can't you just be happy? What is it that you want from him? You know, like they would try to find ways.

Speaker 2:

Sometimes moms will say I just want you to be happy, and that's amazing. But sometimes a mom will say the things that will help justify the choices that she made in her life, not because she's a bad person, but because we all want to feel good about the choices that we've made in our lives. And so I tell you that because I want you to know that when people are giving you advice, they cannot separate their life experience, their fears, their choices, their actions, their insecurities, their judgments and opinions. They cannot separate that from what they might tell you to do, and they don't have that unbiased training in order to help you navigate what is probably the most hurtful thing you will ever experience in your life. If it's not the most hurtful, it's definitely the top three. So you need support during this time. Please don't go it alone and whatever that looks like, it just needs to be with a trained professional. But get the support that you need. Don't try to do this in isolation and don't try to just do this. You know, rallying with your best friend or your sister. Okay, there are many questions that are important for you to have answers to so that you can figure out how to move forward, and I want you to know the questions that are going to be helpful and the questions that are going to just cause more pain for you, so that we don't do that. Okay, I hope that this is helpful for you.

Speaker 2:

If you're someone who has been faced with your partner, has had an affair, I hope this gives you something to consider. If you have not been in that position, know that it can happen to you, like this can happen even in some of the best marriages, and so it's worth talking about in advance. It's worth thinking about in advance. At a minimum, you and your spouse should be having a conversation about what constitutes betrayal for you and what constitutes betrayal for me, because there's a whole lot of gray areas out there right now that we've not actually talked about. And what if your partner thinks, well, that's not a betrayal and you think it is? That's an important conversation to be able to have.

Speaker 2:

And if you're the one that's had an affair, this gives you a little glimpse into what it feels like on the other side of that, of what their experience is going to be.

Speaker 2:

And if you've had to come clean about an affair, I want you to consider carrying the weight of that a bit for them, because if you're the one that caused the hurt and created the distrust, then it's on you to rebuild that trust. And right now, the person who was cheated on is typically the person that has to carry all the pain of it, and they remember the answers to your questions, the questions that they ask, and they remember the images that they saw, even if you don't. So they're carrying the weight of this and I think it's not really their responsibility to do that. The more you can take that weight from them, the more you might be able to come through this. At least it gives you the possibility of being able to come through this, because coming through an affair is never about oh, let's just ignore it, bury our head in the sand and pretend it didn't happen. Then your partner is definitely carrying it forever. Okay, I hope this was helpful for you. Please take really good care.

Speaker 1:

If you're listening to this podcast because you're struggling to decide whether to stay or go in your marriage and you're serious about finding that answer, it's time to book a Truth and Clarity session with a member of my team. On the call. We'll discuss where you are in your marriage and explore if there's a fit for you and I to work together so you can make and execute the right decision for you and your marriage. Go to clarityformymarriagecom to fill out an application now. That's clarityformymarriagecom.