What To Do When The Fog Wont Lift After Your Affair Ends

What to do when the fog won't lift

In this post, I want to share with you four ways to end affair fog. But before we get started discussing what to do when it seems the fog won't lift, I just want to recap what the definition of what affair fog is.

Affair fog is defined as the euphoric state a person feels when they are having an affair. And that state can impair their judgment and ability to make rational decisions. That person begins to see the affair person as their soulmate and the love of their life. Then if married their husband becomes second best and a threat to their newfound happiness.

Everything in their life takes a back seat to the affair partner and desperate measures are taken to keep the affair partner in their life. I have already written a post explaining my experience with affair fog and my theory so I won't go into detail about that in this post, but you can read about it here.

Experts say that it takes around six months for the fog to start to lift. For you to start to see things clearly and began to realize you were not "in love" with your affair partner. At least that is what my understanding of affair fog is. I found a great post explaining the neuroscience behind affair fog. You can read that here. But for me, that was not the case.

I was almost three years out and still found myself as infatuated with my affair partner as ever. I was still having intrusive thoughts and overwhelming memories of our time together. Now to be honest with you I am not a believer in the term "affair fog". I believe we experience this so-called affair fog every time we fall in love. And I believe one way to end the affair fog is we have to treat the affair like you would any other breakup.

Affairs are real relationships, with real feelings

Most of us have started a relationship with someone with high hopes of success only to have it come crashing down around us. And the heartbreak was unbearable at times, depending on the connection the two of you shared. So from what I have learned when I couldn't get over my affair partner is to treat the breakup like the relationship was ok to be in but now it's over.

Many times after an affair ends, there is a great deal of guilt and shame that rests upon the unfaithful. Which causes them to deny their feelings of love towards their affair partner.

We have to face our feelings and realize our feelings are not wrong its what we do with them that can be wrong.

My Story/ The first step to ending the affair fog

One of my roadblocks to my recovery was how I saw God. I had a misunderstanding of who Jesus was. I thought he was judgemental and was going to punish me for my affair. But I learned God does not punish us. The affair is punishment enough all by itself. So I struggled with facing the way I felt about my affair partner. Until one day my therapist told me to stop feeling guilty for how I felt and to start praying about how I was feeling. She said God created me to have emotions and he could handle any emotions I was having. She also said he was willing to help me with my recovery. This was life-changing for me.

Because for me, I didn't feel like I had a right to miss him or love him. I shamed myself for even falling in love with him. But by trying to ignore my feelings only made my recovery worse. Ask yourself are your shaming yourself for how you feel? Do you believe you have the right to grieve your affair partner? These questions are important because if we can't face how we feel and allow ourselves the freedom to sort through them we always suffer in silence without being able to move forward.

I remember it was like yesterday. I went home that evening and poured my heart out to the Lord. I told him everything I was feeling. How I missed my affair partner and how I didn't want to let him go. And how afraid I was to have to go through the withdrawals of losing him that was standing before me like a giant.

At that moment I felt a great sense of peace wash over me and these words rose up in my spirit "trust me all will be well". From that day forward my life changed. I knew I had the God of heaven wants to help me heal from this pain I brought on myself and he wants to do the same for you as well.

I say all of this to let you know that its ok to feel how you are feeling. It's ok to miss your affair partner and to not want to go through life without him. Everything you are feeling is normal. So I want you to stop feeling guilty for how you are feeling. Remember guilt is there to let you know you are doing something wrong. That your thoughts, actions, and behaviors are wrong.

Once we can start to face how we feel and apply self care our recovery will move a lot quicker. So I stopped judging my feelings and started to learn how to help them heal.

It's important for you to take some time and try to identify any roadblocks you may have that are keeping you from facing your feelings. Then take the necessary steps to fix them.

4 ways to end affair fog

Now that we have confronted our feelings of guilt over loving our affair partner, I want to discuss with you 4 ways that helped me walk out of my affair fog (romantic love) after 3 years of struggling.

1.No Contact-Make sure you have ended the affair completely. On and off contact will reinforce the bond you have created making it stronger to break.

2. End the affair in your mind- You don't need actual physical contact with your affair partner to get a dopamine rush. Just the thought of him will cause dopamine to be released. In case you are not familiar with how dopamine works. Dopamine is the chemical that causes us to feel good. Dopamine is released when the affair partner is identified as a reward. And its what keeps us going back to our affair partner. We are looking for that high he gave us.

So any time we have a fantasy about our affair partner dopamine is released. Basically we can keep the affair going on in our mind even if it's over in reality. And by doing this it will just enforce our feeling of love for our affair partner, making letting go almost impossible.

3.When hope is bad- Its so important to let go of any hope of a reconciliation. Because hope keeps love alive. It's the fuel that feeds the fire of love. Even if it's subtle, it's still feeding the flame. Hope feeds dopamine. Because remember I said just the anticipation of the affair partner will release dopamine. And the definition of hope is to cherish a desire with anticipation. So hope keeps the addiction alive.

4. Don't Idolize your affair partner- We have to start seeing our affair partner as a real person and not a superhero who has come to rescue us from hell on earth. Our perception of him as a real person with real problems is so necessary for letting go. Now I'm not saying your affair partner is a horrible person. I know there were some good qualities about mine, but what I am saying is that I had to start looking at him as not being the right person for me.

What do you really want in a man?

I had to start asking myself if I was single what type of man would I want in my life? What qualities are most important to me? And did my affair partner have the most important qualities? My affair partner liked to cook and my husband does not. Well, I loved that about my affair partner. But my affair partner could not be trusted. My husband, on the other hand, was very trustworthy. He proved that by staying with me in spite of his pain.

So I did prefer a yummy meal and not knowing if my affair partner was really at a CE class, or would I prefer to cook a yummy meal myself knowing my husband was coming straight home to me and not making a pit stop at a hotel somewhere or flirting with his office workers.

It's important to ask yourself these types of questions because whether we like it or not time will pass and chemicals will subside. Real-life will kick in and then what reality will we be faced with if we married our affair partner? I married my first affair partner so trust me I know what I'm talking about.

Another thing to recognize is when having an affair we are only seeing and loving a piece of a person. We don't see the whole puzzle. We cant see them for who they really are because we are not living with them 24/7. And even then it takes years to fully learn who someone is and besides we are always changing so do we ever really learn who the soul of a person is?

My point is your affair partner may not really be the person you want him to be, you may not be the person he wants you to be. So moving on involves letting go of the affairytale world we created and embracing reality.

Do you want to end the affair fog?

In Conclusion

Letting is also taking the knowledge we learn and actually applying it to our life. By asking ourselves the hard questions and putting in the work it takes to survive the withdrawals that try to keep pulling us back to our affair partner.

Ask yourself how bad do I want to move on? Until your answer becomes the pain of staying the same is harder than the pain of change you will stay in the fog. No one ever really wants to lose someone they love but whats harder losing yourself or losing someone you cant have? You have to put yourself first. The pain of not having your affair partner in your life will destroy every aspect of your life if you let it.

There is no one size fits all. There is a lot of info and awesome advice, but the bottom line is LETTING GO is up to you!

If you struggle with letting go please feel free to email me and share your story. You can reach me at [email protected].

If you would like to be placed on the waitlist for my new course, Letting Go you can sign up below. The course will teach you how to let go of your affair partner.