Infidelity during the holidays
Infidelity situations can be plenty tough at any time of year.
Um, obviously.
But they can be SO especially difficult during the holidays, in a million different ways, for a million different reasons.
You may be involved with someone who is married… and they may be EXTRA unavailable at this time of year. This may bother you deeply under any circumstances, but if you aren’t romantically involved with anyone other than them, their lack of availability may seem extra-painful to deal with. On top of that… if you love the holidays, but don’t have friends or family to share them with, not being able spend the holidays with your Person may seem like the most awful, unfair, torturous experience EVER. Especially if your person has been promising you they’re going to leave their family so the two of you will be able to spend holidays together… but they haven’t followed through on that promise yet.
Ouch. Ouch, ouch, ouch.
Or… if YOU’RE married and you have a family, and you’re also involved with someone else, and you know that someone else is spending the holidays alone and lonely, wishing they were with you, you may feel rather awful. You may feel horrible for leaving your affair partner alone. You may feel guilty for enjoying the comforts of spending the holiday with your family. You may miss your affair partner so much it’s driving you crazy… or you might NOT miss them all that much, and you might feel a little sheepish about that. And, more than anything, you might just wish that your affair partner would stop fucking texting you. They KNOW you can’t talk right now. Can’t they just let you get through the day with your family? And then, the second that thought floats through your mind, you may feel like a terrible, uncaring person for thinking it.
Horrendous, right? I know.
Here’s the deal, people. Unless you’re willing to make some pretty major changes in short order, your best bet for dealing with the extra challenges the holidays impose upon your infidelity situation is to surrender to the unpleasantness of the moment.
The only way you’re going to get through the holidays — and the minutes, hours, and days within them — is one moment at a time. The only way your Person is going to get through the holidays is one moment at a time.
Some of these moments might be QUITE unpleasant. Some might be extremely painful. Some might be anything but fun.
But you can survive just about anything one moment at a time.
AND it can be tremendously beneficial to ACKNOWLEDGE to yourself just how much you don’t like what’s happening during any given moment within your infidelity/holiday situation. Sometimes, the kindest, most helpful thing we can do for ourselves when we’re hurting is to say — or yell out loud — “THIS REALLY FUCKING HURTS AND I DON’T LIKE THIS!!!!”
(I’m serious about the yelling out loud thing. Try it!)
Legitimizing our own pain and suffering is IMPORTANT. And, it’s just as important to remember that more than one thing can be true at once. We can be hurting a LOT. And we can hurt, without being completely consumed by our pain.
We can feel TERRIBLE about our affair partner being all alone on Christmas (or any other holiday). We can feel like a total asshole for enjoying our time with our family when we know they’re lonely.
And we can also be present with our family, and enjoy our time with them. We can make the very best of the choices we’ve made, however conflicted we feel about them.
And… we can feel really, really shitty about not being able to spend a holiday we love — like, perhaps, Christmas — with our Person. We can be really, really angry that they’ve chosen to spend the holidays with their family instead of us. We can feel lonely, and we can feel sorry for ourselves if we want to. Sometimes having a pity party for yourself is an act of radical honesty.
But we also get to choose how long we want our pity party to last. Do we want to feel sorry for ourselves for an hour, or a day, or a week? Could we perhaps feel sorry for ourselves — or sad, or angry, or lonely, or all of the above and then some — for a little while, and then go take a glorious hike and choose to enjoy our solitude? Could we allow ourselves to feel like hell for half the day… and then go find a way to actually enjoy ourselves for a little while?
If you WANT to enjoy yourself, that is.
If you don’t want to enjoy yourself, that’s fair enough. It’s your party, and you can cry if you want to. But if you do want to enjoy yourself during the holidays, you CAN find a way to do that, no matter what is currently happening within your infidelity situation. You do not have to let your infidelity situation completely define your experience of the holidays. Even if you are totally displeased with your current state of affairs. Ahem.
Here’s an important thing to remember: the holidays are not going to last forever. For better or worse! The holiday season in general, or any particular holiday may make your infidelity situation extra-challenging in ways you REALLY don’t like. But this too shall pass.
I know how hard it is to remember that — or even CARE about that — in moments when things seem hard and awful and you JUST WANT TO BE ABLE TO SEE YOUR PERSON RIGHT NOW. But this moment in time will not last forever, and when the holidays are over, you’ll be able to either get back to normal with your infidelity situation — if that’s what you want — or you can make some changes within it, without the extra constraints posed by the holidays making things even harder.
