My husband isn't the same after his affair. Is there hope for us?

A betrayed spouse worries she's fighting a losing battle for her marriage and family.

Dear Lauren,

It has been a year and a half since the discovery of my husband’s affair. Long story short, he left his affair partner and we are currently working to save our marriage of 19 years with the help of a counselor. We have two teenage children together.

My husband is fully invested in being home. He does the work in counseling, has made efforts to repair the damage done with our children and on the surface everything looks “fine.” He is not fine beneath said surface. He is in pain, he is drinking alcoholically, and he has admitted to me that he doesn’t know if he is happy.

He says this process just takes time, and with help, he hopes to be able to get that spark back with me and move on from his feelings of guilt, shame and regret surrounding his AP and everything he’s done to me and our family. Right now, he just feels “stuck.”

Is there still hope? I feel like I am fighting a losing battle. Why should I be fighting for him, when he is the one who stepped outside of our marriage?

All I ask for is some reassurance from him that things are moving in the right direction.

Sincerely,
Everything’s Fine

Dear Everything’s Fine,

It can be so worrisome when you’re not sure if your life, your marriage, or your spouse will ever return to a healthy baseline in the wake of an affair.

Since I don’t know how long it’s been since your husband ended his affair, I’ll add that there’s a period of grief and withdrawal that is common after ending an affair. Your husband may be struggling with low level depressive feelings, sadness, and loss from his extramarital relationship, while he also simultaneously contends with shame, confusion, guilt, and overwhelm at the damage he’s caused his nuclear family.

That being said, there are so many layers to affair healing, and it can certainly feel hopeless for a betrayed spouse when the person who stepped out feels vaguely lost to us, as if they’re mentally in another world or far away, even though they’re physically there.

Despite doing the external repair work, your husband has an important trajectory of internal work to do, which I address in greater scope in my video message to you here.

My video to you also addresses your worries that the work you’re doing on your marriage is futile. If you feel your husband hasn’t fully returned to earth yet, you may certainly wonder if you’re fighting a losing battle, because the positive feedback isn’t as bountiful as it needs to be. There’s so much fear in investing in another person and a relationship with an uncertain outcome. That can be exactly what affair recovery feels like for couples.

I hope my message to you below gives you greater insight.