Intrusion

Intrusion comes from the traumatic images associated with betrayal, such as the moment of disclosure, the suspected intimacies in the affair, or the string of lies preceding the disclosure.

You re-experience the psychological distress of the traumatic event when memories, dreams, or flashbacks intrude. TV talk shows, love songs, or even ordinary physical objects that were benign before the revelation now seem electrified with the pain of betrayal. Lovemaking scenes in movies may create vivid images of illicit sex. Words spoken in a patriotic speech, such as “loyalty,” can trigger a whole train of intrusive thoughts regarding the treachery in the marriage.

Obsessing

Betrayed partners cannot seem to stop obsessing about the affair until they have all the answers, which can take months. They turn over lies and unanswered questions incessantly in their heads. They develop fixations on visual images, snippets of conversation, and puzzling memories that don’t quite add up. They invest a lot of energy in discovering the truth about earlier lies. They question and reexamine all the details of their life together that made perfect sense before, in an effort to reconstruct the real truth.

Reviewing History

The betrayed partner begins to sort out the jigsaw puzzle of past lies into a clear picture of the deception. Forgetting feels dangerous. The entire history of the marriage is reviewed while grappling with shattered assumptions. Elsa had to reconstruct twenty years of her married life after learning about her husband’s affair on the same day as her twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.

Elsa discovered that her husband, Elliott, had been involved with other women since the birth of their first child. One incident she recalled was a weekend many years earlier when she and Elliott had gone to the beach with another couple. On Sunday morning Elliott said he was going out to get a newspaper. He was gone all morning. Three hours into his absence, their friends asked Elsa if she was worried that he had been gone so long. She told them he often did this kind of thing. Basically, he was antisocial and needed time alone; he was probably out driving around somewhere listening to music on the car radio. She had come to accept his idiosyncrasies. But when she discovered that he had been unfaithful, she had to undo all her psychological rationalizations and reconstruct past events in a radically new light.

Intrusive Thinking

The need to recapitulate and go over minute details means that the tape of the betrayal runs over and over on and on, seemingly forever—a continuous loop of details cycling through memory again and again.

Belinda found it difficult to work through the damage of her husband’s one-year love affair. She was obsessed with a love letter she had intercepted. Although he claimed he wasn’t emotionally involved with the other woman, the passionate and loving language told a different story. The poetry, which Belinda hadn’t heard from him for many years, haunted her. It was as though Belinda wanted to make more pain for herself by contrasting how romantic he was with his affair partner with how unromantic he was with her. Every time she talked with her husband, his reassurances sounded false and hollow. For a very long time, Belinda’s reality was that love letter.

Suppressors versus Obsessors

It is generally the rule that at times of emotional stress women tend to obsess and men tend to suppress It’s the contrast between the individual (usually the man) who says, “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it,” and the individual (usually the woman) who asks, “What’s on the way to the bridge? What’s the bridge built of? What’s on the other side?” Ruminators analyze and reanalyze and talk about upsetting events, whereas suppressors tell themselves not to think about it. However, when it comes to affairs, the unfaithful partner suppresses and the betrayed partner obsesses, regardless of gender.

To escape accountability, the involved partner may promote forgetting by denying or minimizing the magnitude of the betrayal. Before discovery, cheating partners do what they can to discourage or dismiss their naïve partner’s worries or suspicions. Now they may try to perpetuate their own guiltlessness by making routine apologies, claiming that the affair was minor or meaningless, redirecting blame toward the betrayed partner, or insisting that it’s time to get over it and move on.

Anything to avoid having to recount guilty chapter and verse.

Cameron was quite distressed by all the time he spent reliving the crisis of his wife’s betrayal with his business partner. He would be doing something quite ordinary, such as mowing the lawn or listening to music, and all of a sudden he would start thinking about an upsetting scene or conversation. Even though he knew that calling it to mind was reopening the wound, he couldn’t help following the mental trail back to his wife’s lies. Sure enough, once there, he revisited all his intense feelings of outrage and humiliation. For several months, physical contact with her, even when she was tender and wholly present with him, made him vulnerable to distressing thoughts about her sexual actions with her lover. While Cameron was obsessing, his wife became exhausted by his preoccupation with the infidelity.

Secrecy fuels obsessing. Although unfaithful partners would prefer to put the topic of the affair in a locked box, they too can experience intrusive thoughts and flashbacks. They can become obsessed with thoughts of the affair partner or the unmasking of their secret lives. Because secrecy fuels obsession, obsessive thoughts about the lover are intensified by refusing to discuss the affair. Sharing information about the affair allows both partners to let go.

Rejection fuels obsessing. Affair partners who have been jilted can also become obsessed. They may engage in hang-up phone calls, constant e-mail messages, and drop-in visits at the home or workplace of their lover. It is hard for them to accept that something that seemed so special could really be over. A cold but clear message from the still married partner is necessary to end this one- sided passionate attachment that keeps all three participants from moving on with their lives.

Everyone in the extramarital triangle will be stuck in the past until the affair is clearly over.

Related Information

How to cope with your obsessive thoughts