Dear Susan,

Thank you for taking the time to read this Susan, and thank you for all the encouraging words to all who need them. You’re a godsend.

Thank you for writing.  As I read this letter I have to wonder what is missing here, other thank–in the beginning–your husband.  He was gone a lot and that can trigger loneliness but did you try to find things to do for yourself and “take advantage” of the time alone.   Did you talk to your husband about the fact that you missed him and was lonely? If so, what did he say? If not, why not? People who are truly loved and have ethical boundaries don’t typically stray. And if you did, why? What is not here that would lead to this? Was it the pull of puppy love? Of having someone to think about and be with?

Did absolutely NOTHING go on physically? If so then I’m not sure I really consider this a true affair. While dabbling, emotionally, outside of marriage is sometimes more damaging and hurtful than sleeping with someone, to keep yourself from any physical contact IS a form of fidelity and a good boundary. Crushes happen. They just do.  So long as you’re not acting on it and have put distance between you and your crush, it’s usually no big deal.  But what you do with all this can turn it into a big deal, as you’ve done here.

What could you have done to prevent it? Is it something missing in your relationship or missing in you? What led you to this place?

I’m not advocating emotional affairs…certainly not…but a crush typically signals that something is wrong in your primary relationship or that you are looking for something no one has to give or are lacking in self-love and self-soothing. It sounds like you might be needing to do some positive work on yourself…affirmations, feeling “good enough” because you have a lot of “I don’t deserve” going on in your letter.

Self-healing and self-soothing are concepts I try to drive home all the time.  I know my coaching clients are pretty sick of hearing it (that and “did you journal?”).  But knowing that you can pull yourself off the ledge is important.  And without self-healing and self-soothing and self-redirection, you’re not going to get there.

However, if you don’t try to “fix” something that is leading you to someone else, even just to have a crush on this other person, then you are culpable for those behaviors. Did you tell your husband you were lonely or that you should spend the one day a week that you saw each other together (canoodling)?

You say that your husband loves you…but do you love him? Why did you tell him about the “affair” if it was only emotional and it was over? Why do you consider it an affair? While it goes beyond the boundaries of a good and loving relationship, what really happened here?

You got too close to a male friend and ultimately backed away. While you might have been in the emotional soup for a while, it sounds like a gigantic crush that sprang out of loneliness, not “in love” as you describe. Part of me wonders why you’ve chosen to kick up such a huge amount of dust over this? What are you getting from “coming clean” to your husband? Why couldn’t you break away from this guy, work on repairing your emotional state, work on your marriage and let your feelings for this other person die a natural death?

You say that you feel that you don’t deserve this chance with your husband. It’s not going to be easy if you go through the rest of your relationship feeling “less than” or the one who feels as if she has strayed.

Typically I have no mercy with cheaters, I’m pretty brutal on both the cheater and cheatee (and yes I’ve heard all the justifications and rationalizations and they’re all bullshit), but I’m not that sure that is what is going on here.

I think you’re taking way too much of this on yourself to beat yourself up with. You’re only going to be successful in restoring your relationship if you let go of the guilt and concentrate on what led you to this situation in the first place…both your issues and your issues with your marriage. Just because someone’s spouse is suddenly not present most of the time still does not give license to fall for someone else. Something tells me there is more to this than that. What is it? If you don’t figure that out, it will happen again.

The other guy is mad? Can I hear a rousing “too damn bad” from the GPYB crowd here? He chose to get close and fall for a married woman. He is responsible for his choices and the result of those choices. You did not string him along. People have affairs all the time and promise the sun, the sky and the moon to their paramour. Then they change their minds. It happens ALL the time. Lesson: don’t have an affair, physical or emotional, with a married person. Simple. Basic. Honest.

If you are being mistreated, dumped repeatedly, getting broken promises, lies and general bad behavior from your married “love,” congratulations!  That’s what they “do.”  They took a vow.  They decided to break it, making them low down scum (and I don’t give a crap WHY they’ve stayed all those years…if you’re miserable:  GET OUT).  So now this liar and cheater and immoral half-wit is not treating you well?  And you’re surprised because…..

He’s angry? Well he should be angry at himself. You have to get rid of the idea that he deserved to punch you through a wall. No one ever deserves that no matter what they’ve done. You have to get rid of the guilt and shame. And figure out why you want to hold onto it and why you’ve chosen to deal with this as you have (with you in the starring role as villian).

I’m convinced that people don’t just fall into affairs and that it’s possible to drive the train in another direction instead of off the tracks. To heal from all this you’re going to need to figure out what exactly is going on with you and your marriage, what is up with you and your husband and what caused and contributed to the continuation of this emotional trainwreck. Just sitting there feeling overly guilty while holding the other two blameless is not going to get you far. In fact, it’s going to keep the smouldering embers of the trainwreck alive until it bursts into flames somewhere down the line.

I think that more in-depth soul searching and inventory is called for here. I think you really need to access, without guilt or shame, what went on here. And how much each person owns. Do your relationship inventories on each of these relationships and come to terms with what you own and what you don’t own. And then move on from there.

Forgiving one’s self and asking forgiveness from others is at the end of a long, difficult process.  You’re just beginning but you can work on forgiving yourself and not spending a life in a state of mea culpa.  If you do you are basically making you a victim of you.  And that will not do.

And don’t judge that others need the site more than you do or DESERVE it more than you do. You are more than welcome to share here and I hope you do!

When difficult times and people leave our lives, we often find the void almost too much to bear. We feel as if there is this huge gaping hole in our lives and in our heart. We are not quite sure what to do with ourselves.

After leaving a dramatic and chaotic marriage, I knocked around the house bored to tears. I couldn’t quite get a hold of anything to keep my attention. Nothing was exciting or compelling. My therapist told me to simply “Make peace with the peace.” The sound I heard was the wonderful sound of silence, of no one yelling for no reason, of no one criticizing me, of no one staying out all night and telling me it was my fault.

It was not easy to “make peace with the peace.” ”

The first few times you try to spend time alone with yourself, you will feel as if your skin is crawling. You will want to do something, anything to get out of this alone thing. And that’s okay. My anxiety with being alone drove me to support groups, to conferences, to 12 step meetings, to anywhere and everywhere there were people who were trying to get better and heal.

Harnessing the inability to be alone is okay for a while. For me, it really worked to drive me to places where healing happens…to talk to people who were making it work for themselves. The other end of the spectrum is after you have been alone a while, you have to get out and about and rebuild your life. Being alone too much too often becomes detrimental toward the end of your process.

But you cannot get out and about and try new things until you have learned to be alone and be okay with being alone. If you’re not okay with being alone, you’re going to bounce from person to person or do all kinds of things to distract yourself because you don’t know how to be alone.

And alone means ALONE. Not surfing the internet or the tv channels. Not texting mindlessly to your friends. Not being connected to anyone else for a certain amount of time each day.

At first I needed to harness my inability to be alone to drive me to people, places and things where healing happened. But after a while (a few months) I HAD to learn to sit still and be alone. It is IMPERATIVE, in a healthy life, that you know how to be alone. Too much alone time is not good but none is terrible. You have to learn to sit and be still.

Start slow. When you are clearly bored or clearly itching to talk to the ex or mindlessly surf the internet or do some other nonsense thing to just have something to do, set a timer and vow to do nothing for 15 minutes. Just sit there, breathe in and breathe out…get a meditation or relaxation audio if you need to, but learn to sit still and clear your mind for 15 minutes. I used relaxation tapes and meditation tapes. It takes practice. That is why they call meditation a practice, because it TAKES PRACTICE to tone down the noise in your head. To learn how to just be. It takes time and practice. Start to practice it. Do your affirmations. Keep telling yourself you are you and you are okay and it is okay and everything is as it should be. Just keep giving yourself gentle pointers and gentle affirmations.

Watch your thoughts go by. Don’t get upset by them. Don’t try to stop them. Don’t latch onto them…just watch them come and go without attachment. Keep trying to move your attention back to your own breath or your meditation/relaxation audio. Don’t get distracted by your thoughts but don’t try to suppress them either (it won’t work).

If you don’t make it to 15 minutes, try again the next day and the next and the next. You should be spending some time every day spending time with yourself by yourself when you really don’t want to be doing that. No phone, no email, no computer, no interruptions. 15 minutes of you time.

I know it’s not easy. Been there, done that. But it’s one of the essential things to being okay with you.

Last year I wrote in a post about making the peace with the peace, “Sometimes I was clear out of my mind from lack of stimulation. Over the years I had to learn to balance filling the boredom with things I’ve always wanted to do (books I’ve wanted to read, hobbies I’ve wanted to take up, things I’ve wanted to learn) and with nothing, just the peace and quiet of being in my own skin and in my own life.

A truly healthy person knows how to “just be” and just be okay with nothing going on.

Boredom is really a wonderful thing. It means you have the freedom to do nothing.

When my kids were little I did not rush to fill their boredom with games or videos or activities. Sometimes I let them be bored and let them know that being bored was a good thing. To this day they all take time out, quiet time, for themselves. I didn’t intentionally teach them to do that but when they would tell me they were bored I often said, “good” because it gave them time to figure things out for themselves. Sometimes they annoyed each other out of boredom but eventually they learned to go off on their own and fill the boredom (or not). There is joy in laying on your bed staring at the ceiling and kids can find that joy on their own.”

I just came back from a weekend to my son’s house in Boston and went with my son and daughter in law and their two kids. When the boys (ages 5 and 7) are with me, I don’t entertain them. We’re in a vehicle getting from one destination to the other. Look out the window, talk to me, take a nap. No need to have DVDs, video games etc. But with their parents they were whining when they couldn’t play with an iPhone or a video game. It was ridiculous. And I know they don’t act like that when they’re with me. I feel no obligation to entertain them and expect them to sit quietly while we’re driving. I don’t need to make sure their DSs are charged and I don’t need to let them play with my phone. I need them to be quiet so I can concentrate on driving us safely from place to place.

My kids learned to sit in the car and look out the window. They learned to sit in a room and not need to talk or be busy. We could be in a room and not find silence uncomfortable (though non of us are really non-talkative). It all comes from not being afraid of boredom and of quiet. I read Adam Philips a lot…the Harvard professor who believes that boredom leads to creativity and freedom. There IS freedom in being bored and having NOTHING going on.

Boredom is a wonderful thing a lot of the time. When you learn to sit and be with yourself and just be okay with that, it is a yardstick of growth. Don’t be upset if you don’t get it right away. It’s okay if you don’t…but try to fill some of your waking hours with just you. And learn to discover how special you truly are. You are wonderful and you need to dedicate some part of each day just being okay with wonderful, wonderful you.

Welcome the boredom and don’t rush to fill it. Spend some quiet time with yourself each and every day.

It’s not boredom, it’s peace and quiet.

It’s the sound of your own life working.

YOU CAN DO THIS!!!