Marriage: Hysterical or Historical?

Have you ever listened to yourself when you get into an argument with your spouse?

In the past when Rob and I have walked with couples overcoming an affair one of the first things the husband says is:  would you please tell her to quit bringing it up? The second is:  would you tell her to quit reminding me what month it is or time of the year it is?

To this I answer NO!

Women when they get into an argument do not get hysterical they get historical. So the advice I will give is that during an argument especially to the female:  DO NOT get historical.

Women, especially when they get upset start stating the past as ammunition.  This is not good and will only open more wounds.  When people are hurt especially in a relationship they use ammunition without thinking of the damage it will produce.  So my advice when an argument starts, make sure that the argument is only about the argument at hand.

Secondly know that we as women remember things by seasons.  After the affair I would get depressed around August, and stay in an on again off again “funk” until the first of the year.

The first year was real hard because I did not know what was going on.  It wasn’t until the second year after, that I started to realize: Oh this is when we did this together, Oh this is when this happened, Oh this is when that happened.  Now that I had realized that that was what was happening, Rob and I talked about it so as the time would start to come upon us, we would be more in tune to my feelings and walk through it together.

It has been 16 years; very rarely do I go into my “funk”.   The thing is though, if Rob had not done what he did to help me through this time, I really believe that we would not have been able to live our marriage to talk about it.

So if you are overcoming an affair and have decided to make your marriage work I hope that this has given you: first, another tool to help in your marriage and secondly, hope that marriages can make it after an affair.