Survive and Thrive after a MidLife Affair
People in Mid life crisis are looking for answers. Often times a person in mid life crisis is not ready to be alone and looks for help outside their current situation. As a result the consequence of many Midlife Crisis situations is that a person will think about or even have an affair.
I have helped many people work through the consequences of Midlife affairs. Lets not try to make the situation pretty: the fact is, once you are reading this, it means you have entered in a very hard world, with very real consequences that will effect the rest of your life.
The only way to handle a midlife affair is to remove judgement. Judgement traps a person into having an affair and judgements force affairs to go deeper and become messier situations than they need to be. Judgements prevent people from learning from their mistakes. Judgement after the affair will prevent a healthy relationship from growing from the aftermath.
So the one truth that must get released is:
Release the judgement!
There are three cases to consider: Pre Affair, During the Affair and Post Affair.
Pre Affair
If you are considering a midlife affair, it means your current relation has problems. It also means you are afraid to directly work with your partner or that your partner has stopped communicating with you.
In the end many midlife affairs happen because it is the only route where a person feels brave enough or alive enough to begin trying to find answers to their personal problems. The longing towards the affair is also the longing that another person can help solve the problems that are tugging at your heart.
If you are longing towards an affair the first step is to realize that your current relationship is already having serious enough problems to end it.
Finding a counselor to help you begin work out issues is often a better path to explore rather than just suppressing your feelings. The problem is individuals are often blind to their own problems and cannot fix them on their own (hence the pull to an affair). The only trouble is the affair rarely fixes personal problems, rather affairs usually only add additional complications into the mix.
Most people try to solve the pre affair by suppressing their own feelings. Suppression of personal feelings will always fail as an answer. Suppression of feelings leads to (a) you breaking down to having the affair, (b) the pent up feelings coming out volcanically to break your current relationship later in a much more painful manner or (c) pent up feelings slowly rend your heart apart to the point you spiritually die, or even worse (d) the pent up feelings slowly tear a person up inside to the point they stop caring about life, many heart attacks and cancers come out of not taking care of your body properly.
During the Midlife Affair
The truth is sometimes the midlife affair has to happen. Too much tension exists or the need for freedom is so strong that a person finds themselves in a relationship with another person. Part of this attraction comes out from that fact all new relationships are relatively judgement free still. New relationships are fresh, this opens up new experiences and kick starts the exploration of life again. The pull to live again is very irresistible. The pull to be with a person that doesn’t limit one down with judgements or measurement is intoxicating.
The only problem is this: having started a new relationship by breaking trust, this also sows the seeds of hidden judgements, judgements that will grow and circle back around to slowly eat away at your choices. A person can run only so far before having to start dealing with the very issues that created the previous set of relationship problems eating away at the earlier relationship.
The first few months of any affair is magical, but at some point judgement and past patterns will creep back into the situation to cause most people to repeat the seeds of crisis they were running away from.
Post Midlife Affair
At some point, events catch up to a person and their relationship. Most people fall back to the common tools taught to them by society to handle the after effects of an affair: anger, judgement, hate, despair, feeling wronged and feeling morally right…
Conflict accomplishes nothing, and in the end judgement results in conflict.
The truth is this:
The whole midlife affair ends up actually being inconsequential. Most people living fresh from the results of the affair won’t believe this statement. But it is true. What truly matters is this: What did you learn and how did you use the situation to grow from?
If you focus on the affair, you then get stuck in the past and judgements which limit how you can grow from the situation. Learn from the affair but don’t focus upon it either. The affair is a stepping stone towards a better life for everyone, if used as a stepping stone. For most people affairs become swamps of despair. Such a place is not a place worth living within.
Many people waste the experience to hate or regrets. Hate is a very sad limited way to hold an experience. Hate allows no room for growth. In fact, hate dissolves the heart away, it eats a person away until they are left with nothing. Those resorting to hate often will fall prey to depression and slowly pull away from others.
No this whole process means being brave enough to stand up and learn from the experience. To be willing to live life honestly and not hiding away from others.
The Real Truth about Midlife Affairs
This is a very delicate case by case situation that most of the time will not be resolved smoothly without outside assistance. The truth is once the affair happens, the marriage is officially broken. The fundamental value of trust that a marriage is based upon is broken and will never again be the same.
But here is the secret:
Mid life transformation is all about starting a new life. You and your partner are in mid life transformation. This means it’s possible to start and build a fresh new trust between partners, to create a whole new relationship, since you both are in transformation!
The process runs like this
- Remove judgement. No one is guilty.
- Release the Relationship. (All relationships)
- A new friendship is beginning.
- Work with kindness.
- Help each other grow
- In time, if love reignites then remarry, if not then help each other move on
Is this easy? No it isn’t. The over whelming response of our society is to push guilt, to force relationships and want answers right away. Yet the mid life transformation process takes roughly two years to grow within. It takes time to grow and find one’s nature.
But to those who take the time:
This is literally becomes a magical process,
truly the stuff of stories everyone else reads about and wishes would happen to them.
The only trouble is this, reading a story with a happy ending is fast and quick and takes no effort.
To live the happy ending is a slow process requiring patience, it means making mistakes and growing from those mistakes. It’s lots of hard effort which very few people are willing to do in a society where everything is consumed and expected to happen by miracles and pills…
Finally and most importantly:
Be Brave.
Hiding from an midlife affair or truth only diminishes you in this process.
Be Brave: so you can live your life and grow.
Right now, it won’t seem possible that the whole affair issue can ever resolve out gracefully, but having work with many people, all my clients say the same thing, they would go thru the process again: because it allowed them to truly live again, honestly and completely as themselves! In other words, many relationships have become a prison from judgements and that is where the affair comes into the picture. In this process, we free those involved to live to heart, without judgement. The whole affair literally just becomes a past story to be shed as each person transforms into a newer wiser person.
Literally
- Shed it or have it shred you.
Many people reading this are probably feeling shredded by the thoughts of an affair…The shredding feeling is your soul eroding away. Stand up and live your life.. or watch it erode away in pain.
It really is a personal choice. Sadly most people in this culture choose the painful path, only because they haven’t been shown another way. This article is to help show, there is a better path that does work.
Sincerely
Casey
As a note: Many times people are stuck in abusive situations and a person will have an affair to help break free of abuse. Understand in abusive situations call immediately the abuse hotlines that exist and find assistance. No one should live through abuse. Abusive relationships require special helping conditions and local help. While I work with people around the world, I don’t work with abuse cases as it requires local assistance and professional help specially trained to help break of the abuse.
Professional Assistance in Handling an Affair
I work with people on a case by case basis, as each person is a unique tapestry of needs, past events needing resolution, different future goals, different mixes of partners, supporting past obligations and different stories.
It takes rebuilding a new relationship and that is a very patient process and a process not many people are willing to commit to. I have helped many people thrive in the most beautiful ways after affairs have occurred, but it only can happen if you are ready to change. Otherwise, the conditions that led to the affair will only get worse, the problems will repeat and you ensure leading a very unhappy future life.
Strangely and most sadly people usually choose hate and pain as the answer to the affair. Look around to how many bad divorces that happen that end up in hate, and you will know the truth of this statement. Refuse to let pain define your life, Choose to change and grow.
I can help you grow and thrive. But the process I teach isn’t for everyone. Before I accept you as a client you must set up an interview with me to determine if you would match to the process I use. Of all the services I provide, this is the most serious and complicated one I offer. It takes time, commitment and patience to be true to your heart and future relationship. It requires releasing all judgement and acceptance that you initially have and also releasing your partner to give each person space to grow.
If you are ready to step ahead and truly make you life thrive after an affair then contact me and lets start now.
Contact Casey at:
PersonalTao@gmail.com
(360) 870-2897
Additional Midlife Crisis Reading Materials
17 Responses to Survive and Thrive after a MidLife Affair
Leave a Reply
A Personal Tao
Discover the Tao and Taoism. This is a guide to the heart and a handbook for discovering the Tao.
Volume 2:
Living Grace. Now in work!
Good morning Casey;
I want to thank you for your wise words and your non-judgmental outlook of this painful situation. I, myself, have been in a pre affair mode for the last year. A very special friend has become to mean much more to me and our conversations took a more personal turn. I realize we both may be going through our mid life crisis plus marital slumps but that does not help ease the guilt of where my feelings have taken me or the terrible pain my heart is now that we have agreed to end our friendship before we made a big mistake and hurt our families and our selves. I have been trapped by the pain and mourning for the loss of my friend for two months now and now feel it is time to let it go and move on…hopefully wiser. Reading your thoughts about this situation is very helpful to me and I appreciate your compassion for those of us who have flirted with the heady idea of forbidden “love”. Peace~*~
@Denise: I am honored to have helped.
It isn’t easy at all, and worse there isn’t a “right” path, all options and choices have problems associated with them.
However, there is a kinder path, a path you can work to improve oneself and make choices towards:
What this kinder path is, looks different for each person, and so I help each person sort that out individually. Because while there may not be a “right” path.. If we work at it wisely, we can forge ahead and create a graceful path, that takes all the mistakes we make, takes all the victories we taste… merge them together and then to become a person we can respect and enjoy when looking in the mirror each day.
Namaste
A kinder path that leads to grace…I like the sound of that.
Have a lovely evening.
Peace ~*~
If the person living through the transformation gives it time and concludes that the person they are having an affair with is the one that is helping them move along the path they want to create for themselves. What if the affair has gone on for more than a few months and they feel it really could work, even though there will be hurdles to overcome.
Would you suggest following the same 6 step process?What would be your advice on how to start on a fresh path together?
@Hopeful: You would have to arrange a session with me on your question. While it would have some similarities to the 6 Step process I outlined, there are other considerations in play.
From the perspective you state, it would at first seem to be the easier path to the person within the affair, but longer term the the path you ask me about on average has additional challenges and hardships to face.
I only write up the general processes that have high chances of success, for the path that you ask for advice on how to travel, actually has to be individualize since the general odds for success are against you: this means following any generalized scripted path will just get you in deeper trouble.
No matter what your choice, be patient and work at it a day at a time. Don’t plan in your mind life steps beyond a month or two right now otherwise you will miss your own heart in the travels.
Sincerely
Casey
Thank you Casey. This site is fantastic. Keep up the good work.
wow your sight was amazing and fit my husband to a T he left me 6 months ago after our business failed in Jan 2011. I feel he started his mid life crisis in Aug 2009 but was able to handle it,I do feel he has had an emotional affair with someone he works with and feel when the company failed he moved out and started to explore his feelings for this other woman. He tells me he does notlove me like a man should love his wife and he wants to be friends. So text book I would like to know what I can do to talk to him to tell him I want us back together and I am willing to forgive him for anything. Please let me know thx Andrea Conrod
What are the common ages to a midlife for a woman? I will say that I found myself on my 40th birthday questioning everything in life, went thru a great spout of depression, then concluded I was not happy. I have been having an affair for about a month now. It feels great, I feel alive, and I don’t feel bad. I told my husband and he wants to try and make our marriage work, I don’t know if that is what I want I just want him to give me space and freedom… we are now talking of a divorce.. but I wonder if that is what I really want also.
I got my nose pierced always wanted to, he hates it… and I want a new tattoo– I feel like a little kid rebeling…. any advise … dazed and confused.
@Lost: the age at which midlife transformation can occur varies quite a bit actually. I personally have seen it as young as 38 and as old as 54.
Also people are being forced by social conditions into having midlife crisis at times they wouldn’t be going into crisis normally.
Advice here is spread across the pages, but simply stated the process I use is to educate each person based on their life circumstances.
The simple answer is take the time to be yourself finally… but I often spend several months helping people de-tangle what it is they want to be, and helping them sort out their life so they can work towards becoming the best they can be.
No one size fit all answer: rather, it is a process of a thousand smaller steps leading to a new life.
Linda/Doug (Trust after an affair): If you find a spelling/grammar mistake, that drives you crazy, pleased be welcomed to send me an email pointing out the error and I will gladly update.
But I never fix posts from other posters leaving them as is.
Casey, I’ve just come across your articles and thank you for them. I’ve looked around a lot for guidance and trying to learn from others experiences but affairs that don’t include the midlife transformation do not really fit my situation or my husband’s affair. From one of your articles describing the 35 signs of a midlife crisis, my husband fit almost all of them. I knew he was in trouble but wasn’t competent or successful in helping him, he came home and out of nowhere told me he was leaving. Needed space, comtemplating his life and looking in the mirror not being happy, etc. I was forced to come to some harsh conclusions of my part in our marital disconnection and our how off our timing was. At the time I suspected another woman but did not get confirmation so I was patient and waited and was as kind to him as I could be even when he was so cruel. I changed everything, not for him, but for me and for us and realizing that I was headed in the wrong direction before. It worked, my patience and a particular ahaa incident ‘woke’ him up and he came home (7 weeks altogether only 3 weeks out of the house). It was another month before he admitted the reason for leaving was another woman. She used to work with him but no longer and she was only 22 (i’m 41 husband 42). I went through more devistation and trying to heal and we both committed to working through it all. He cut off all contact and we spend so much more time together now, better, more caring, more fun and more respectful of one another, more intimate,etc. We talk all of the time, communicate about everything and our feelings and are there for eachother even for the most difficult stuff. It’s 3 1/2 months in and things are going very well with our relationship but he is still thinking about her. He believed he loved her, still thinks about that ‘electric’ feeling he had with her. He logically knows his love for me is real, lasting, amazing, but can’t totally move on from that thought of the electric feeling he had with her. Because he came home before their relationship could find it’s natural end and it was never a real, or public relationship, it’s lingering. I’m dying to know if we can get past this and if time will help him get over her, stop thinking of her and have only me in his heart. He looks at me every night, right in the eyes and says thank you for fighting for me, for saving us, for everything, I love you, I do, he means it. Then when we have talks and I feel a little holding back, he admits he still thinks of her, and that he knows it’s stupid. How much time do I give this? My self esteem takes a huge hit everytime he admits this and I doubt our complete recovery. But then I discover that I know this is right, that he loves me, etc. It’s a crazy rollercoater and the only thing keeping us down is his feelings for her. Can I hope for resolution and time to heal this? More patience? Thank you for your time and your helpful articles..
The thing that puzzles me is I’ve never had any midlife crisis, my childhood was full of verbal abuse, poverty and very hard times. If anyone should be in line for one it would be me ;~)
My wife in the other hand grew up in a very supportive middle class home with no abuse of any sort, and yet she’s gone right off the deep end, and left me with two kids and the classic “I’m not in love with you, I’m not sure I was ever in love with you” speech. Surely there has to be more to it than unresolved childhood issues and hitting 45 to trigger such a huge change in personality in the space of a couple of months?
@Mike and ???: It’s a bit more complicated than a simple single answer, as you try to puzzle it out, that is becoming clear to you. In fact I usually take 90 minutes with clients to first go over the details and aspects of the mid life changing process with each person. Each such session gets tailored to fit in all the particular aspects you are experiencing in order to help you move ahead more precisely.
It has to do with quite a bit with biological, psychological and various social constraints all interacting to create very strange results that vary quite a bit from person to person. But it is a very real biological change also and there end up being many common patterns people follow also due to social pressures.
I wrote these web pages merely as a starting point to help people, but I have developed an entire process that works amazingly gracefully and part of this process is to always tailor the teachings to each case to best fit to the particular situation you might be facing.
I enjoyed reading what you have to say about mid-life affairs and social pressures, and also enjoyed reading other’s thoughts on the matter. It’s definitely an interesting time in my life. Lots of changes. Lots of evaluating what’s important and what I want out of life. I don’t like the hurt/pain that stems from affairs, but pain does foster growth in many ways. We want to avoid it, but sometimes it’s needed.
@Ann: yes at times trying to avoid pain or trying to find only “right” answers create larger problems later for people to face, that then have a greater chance of breaking a person down.
Often times in midlife crisis we are dealing with problems that have been allowed to grow to be too large. And then that tends to force people for crisis style solutions.
More times than not, a little pain up front can go a long way to releasing bigger problems later.
I love your website. My spouse of 21 years told me he was leaving me through a txt, the day after he left to go on a golf trip with the boy’s. I htought it was a bad joke. It wasn’t. When he came back, he said he needed space and that he was unhappy with his life. Said that he loves me but needed space so that he could figure out what he wants. He was a shareholder of an Architecture firm and they sold out to another larger firm in October. His golf trip was in November. We have a 17 year old daughter and decided that he would stay home with us throughout Christmas. That didn’t happen. He told me 6 day’s before Christmas that he is moving out that day. We sat our daughter down 5 day’s before Christmas. It was devastating. I asked him if there was another woman and of course he said no. He travels alot to the other office they have in another province. We have been intimate quite a few times. 3 weeks ago he told me he was going on a trip to Mexico with his 26 year old “friend”, he is 44. He is there with her right now. He came to see me the day he was leaving to go and see her. He said, “I agree that I have not always been the best family man and some days now wonder if any of it was worth it with regards to the work I put in over those years as it is all gone. The last year and a half or so with work, us, etc has been very hard on me and taken a lot of the good out of me if there ever was any.Anyway, I hope things work out for us both in the end, whatever they may be. And I truly don’t know what that is. I hope that in the upcoming months that I will know exactly where that is headed, maybe that will be far too late depending, but I will have to live with that I guess.” I was very supportive of him until he told me about his 26 year old friend. I am so lost and confused as what to do. Should I see a lawyer or wait for this process to end?
@Hurt: Generally speaking talking to a Lawyer at the very least will give you more information to work with, and also in that way you will understand your legal options ahead of you.
Legal details vary from country to country and State to State. So make sure you find out what your options are based on where you live.