An Avalanche of Feelings

Though shocking, the statistics for infidelity and divorce do not reveal the full impact on people's daily lives. Besides the enormous financial implications, consider the mountains of feelings locked in those statistics—the buckets of tears shed and the immeasurable confusion, grief, anxiety, and excruciating pain that is suffered, as well as the countless nights that family members spend in sleepless anguish. The victims may survive the ordeal, but they are likely to carry the scars for a long time. The hurt and damage is not easily undone.

"A marital breakdown normally produces a huge eruption of emotions," explains the book How to Survive Divorce, "an eruption which sometimes threatens to obscure your vision. What should you do? How should you react? How do you rise above it all? You may swing from certainty to doubt, from anger to guilt or from trust to suspicion."

That was Pedro's experience after he learned about his wife's unfaithfulness. "When there is infidelity," he confides, "then a flood of confusing emotions rain down." The sense of devastation is difficult enough for victims to comprehend—let alone outsiders, who have little grasp of the situation. "No one," claims Pat, "really understands how I feel. When I think about my husband being with her, I feel a real physical pain, an ache that is impossible to explain to anyone." She adds: "There are times that I think I'm going crazy. One day I feel so in control; the next day I don't. One day I miss him; the next day I remember all the scheming and lying and humiliation."