Dealing With Infidelity
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Victoria M. Parham is a retired Army spouse, veteran, president and chief technology officer for VSSCyberOffice.com, a wholly virtual business startup consultancy and entrepreneurial training firm specializing in Portable Careers, Virtual Business Ownership and Virtual Assistant Training for military spouses and trailing corporate spouses.
Mrs. Parham currently serves as the (contracted) director of training and lead instructor for the Department of Defense "No Cost" Portable Careers Initiative: Virtual Business Owners Training Program. Military spouses can apply and/or learn more by visiting: http://www.vsscyberoffice.com/vbo.
Mrs. Parham is a sought after speaker and presenter. She has been featured, quoted, profiled and published in major media publications, radio and television. In 2005, Mrs. Parham was profiled in Inc. Magazine as one of 26 Most Fascinating Entrepreneurs We Love and honored in 2001 as a Top Forty Under 40 for the State of Alaska.
Learn more about Victoria by visiting her online podcast and blog:
Military Spouse Talk Radio Show Podcast -
www.militaryspousetalkradio.com
Victoria Parham's Blog - www.victoriaparham.com
Victoria Parham Article Archives
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Learning that your soldier has cheated on you is enough to send you on the emotional roller coaster ride of a lifetime. Do you leave or stay in the marriage? Your friends and family encourage you to leave but the bottom line is that you must deal with your spouse's infidelity. You must deal with your own hurt and betrayal, and the final decision about what to do must be yours and should be well thought-out.
No spouse ever wants to learn that they've been betrayed. The truth is: it hurts deeply. Infidelity is a topic nobody wants to deal with, but it happens, and in order to move on you must deal with it. Not dealing with it can impact your life in ways you never imagined (example: future relationships, self esteem, personal appearance, communication, job performance, personality, or health).
Below are some key areas to seriously consider when dealing with infidelity in your relationship. The important thing to remember is not to make immediate life changing decisions when you feel angry, betrayed, hurt, or desire revenge. Take all the time you need to collect your thoughts — and if need be (pray) about your decision — and seek professional or spiritual counseling. Your final decision can be just as stressful as learning about your soldier's infidelity.
Many couples have gone through infidelity and their marriage survived and so can yours.
Confession — you've confronted your soldier about the infidelity and he has come clean and confessed his wrong-doing, asked for your forgiveness and has promised to end the affair. He could have lied about the affair but he didn't. The fact that he confessed to you openly and honestly indicates that he wants to dot the right thing.
Forgiveness — with an open and honest confession now on the table, you must now search deep within yourself to find the love and strength to forgive your soldier. The truth is we all have made mistakes and someone forgave us. If you truly and sincerely love your soldier, you too can hopefully find the power to forgive.
Communicate (talk, talk, and talk again) — communicating about what you feel to your soldier and how this situation has impacted you is absolutely crucial. If you don’t talk about it, he will never know how you feel. The key word is talking (not shouting, swearing, threatening, pointing fingers, etc.) in a manner that your soldier can hear, feel and understand.
Kids — if you have small children try to keep the home atmosphere as normal as possible. If you and your soldier need to talk, have the children play in another room or safe location where they can’t hear your conversation. Your little ones don’t understand the feelings you’re going through and will often-times be emotionally effected when they see that you are stressed, upset, and/or crying. There may be times where you will need to release and that’s ok and normal, perhaps taking a long walk alone would be appropriate.
Time and Healing — there is a saying “time heals all wounds” while there is some truth to the saying, the person who is hurting has to allow time for the healing process to be completed and it doesn’t just happen overnight, it takes time. How much time? Until you feel healed.
The time and healing phase is not a time to beat your soldier up-side the head with their infidelity. If you need to talk about something that is bothering you, create an atmosphere for open dialogue for you and your spouse. Healing from this hurt is crucial to you moving forward.
Counseling — seeking professional or spiritual guidance is ok. Everyone copes with traumatic situations differently, some cope better alone, while others need outside intervention. Whatever you do, don’t feel like you’re all alone and there is no one to help you. The military has marriage counseling programs for each branch of the service, to find a program for yourself, you can go online to www.militaryonesource.com or call their 24/7 toll free line at 1.800.342.9647. You can also contact or visit your base Chaplin.
Marriage Recovery — the big question, do you mend the marriage or leave it? Hopefully there is a chance to mend it but the end decision is ultimately yours to make. Whatever your decision, take all that you’ve gone through as a learning experience. A marriage is like a long-term stock investment, it’s going to endure some turbulent times, but in the end if it’s a good stock, it’s going to bounce back and chances are you’re going to have more after it recovers than you did when you initially invested.
© 2007 Victoria Parham.
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