Yesterday, I received an email from a woman who was overcome with negative emotions.  Her husband had cheated and understandably so, the wife was filled with rage and feelings of hatred.  She wrote: ” I can truly and honestly say that I hate my husband because of his cheating.  I can not even stand to be in the same room with him.  I feel like I could explode and I can’t imagine ever feeling any better.  What am I going to do? He wants to make things up to me, but the sight of him makes me sick.”

I completely understand feeling this way.  This could’ve described me a few years ago. Although these feelings are completely understandable, I also know that they are so destructive.  Although this hatred is directed at your husband, it will almost always come back and hurt / punish you just as much.  You are absolutely entitled to these feelings, but what is really going to make you feel better is not lashing out, but healing.  These negative feelings do nothing to get you there.  So, in the following article, I’ll tell you what I told her, hoping that it helps you to eventually move past the hatred.

What You Probably Really Hate Is The Feelings Of Hurt, Betrayal, And Fear: It took me a very long time to realize this, but what I really detested was the way that the affair made me feel.  It brought out insecurities and fears that brought me to my knees.  Suddenly, I felt unattractive, stupid, and naive.  Yes, I was furious with my husband, but I was also angry with myself.  How could I have ignored the warning signs? Why didn’t I take action to prevent this? How was I so stupid to think I could ever keep a man?

My friends would tell me that these thoughts were completely ridiculous and although I knew that this was true intellectually, I just could not stop feeling the way that I did.  Of course, my husband was a handy person at whom I could fling all the blame.  So, all of the fear, self doubt, and betrayal that was plaguing me, I took and projected on to him.  Don’t get me wrong, he very much deserved my wrath.  But he was remorseful and trying his best to make things right.  However, every single thing he did was wrong in my eyes. I refused to even allow the possibility of him redeeming himself.  What I didn’t realize though is that this was hurting me every bit as much as he was hurting him.  Holding on to negativity is only going to slow the healing process, whether you want to save your marriage or not.

Realizing That There Is A Difference Between Detesting What He Did And Detesting Him Personally:  Sometimes it helps to sit down (when you are calm enough to do it) and make list of the positive memories, attributes, and characteristics that have defined your marriage.  How he’s been there when you or a family member was sick.  How he’s provided for you family.  How he’s put you before himself at times. 

It’s very common to do this exercise and find that the positive column is full while the negative column has far less entries with the cheating of course being in position one.  Still if you are able to look over your life with this man, you’ll often find that he had quite a few redeeming qualities before he made one very awful choice.  In my own case, my rage had made me forget how my husband never left our sick son’s side when he was in the hospital or how he worked two jobs to support me when I was still in school.  I could not in good faith negate these two things because of one negative and I intellectually knew that, but putting this into action in real life was another story.

But, I did begin to see that I could not literally hate my husband the man.  However, I had no problem loathing with a passion that he cheated on me. Fortunately, I was able to eventually see the difference between the two.

Loving Yourself More Than You Hate Him:  In the end, I think that true healing comes down to self preservation.  One day, I woke up and realized that I was drowning and not waving.  I realize that clinging so tightly to this rage and these choking feelings were only weeding out any joy and peace that I deeply deserved but wasn’t experiencing.  This was going to be true whether I decided to remain married or not. 

Even if I chose to kick my husband to the curb, I was going to have to deal with these feelings and I was going to have to eventually let them go if I was going to truly heal.  It’s really about wanting what is best for yourself more than you want to hang onto the pain and resentment.  At some point, you have to move on.  This will take time and every one has their own time frame for this.

For me, I was able to make a conscious decision that I wanted to separate the feelings about my husband’s act from my feelings about him. This was a challenge and it didn’t happen overnight.  But, once I came to this conclusion I was able to become more open to my husband’s attempts at making things up to me and reconciliation.  This too was a long process, but separating the act from the person was the first step.