It’s a pretty open ended question with maybe some needed context for us to be able to address it in a personal way for you. When you are ready I hope you will feel comfortable to share your story.
Generally, there are many stages for healing. I suspect you are asking the question because you are early in this process and are in excruciating pain. Oh, how I remember those dark days. Those won’t last forever- I would say after about six months the intrusive thoughts were some better and that just continued to get better until about a year out. Everyone is different but that will subside.
The process of truly healing after that is less about the affair (though of course that remains a theme). It’s about becoming more self aware of your patterns that do not serve you and learning new coping skills. The majority of the coping skills I use today came from the teachings of Pema Chodron (I love her book "when things fall apart") ans Eckhardt Tolle ("the power of now").
And some of them came from therapy. If you can afford therapy, it a great way to start gaining self awareness.
What I mean by that is often the affair is a symptom of mismanagement of one’s life to the point an imbalance has occurred in some way. By tracing those things and working to be different, it will not only improve your life but it will help you towards the third stage of healing- finding more peace and self compassion.
I think the way I know I have healed is that I love myself enough to conduct my life in a way that creates stable happiness. And when things go wrong I have skills I have learned that reliably help me walk through that too. That all probably feels 100 miles away from you as you sit with the pain I know very well.
[This message edited by hikingout at 3:34 PM, Monday, June 9th]
