The Affair Recovery Group Session 19: Rebuilding Your Self-Esteem After the Affair
Doug: Hello, everybody. This is Doug with the Affair Recovery Group. I m here with Jeff and Linda again this evening. Tonight we re going to have a session about self-esteem. Specifically, we re going to talk about how it feels to lose your self-esteem, what self-esteem means and also try to get into a little bit about how you can work to get it back. Let s get started right away. Jeff, how are you this evening? Jeff: Doing good. Yourself? Doug: I m doing great, thank you. Linda: I m doing fine, thanks. Doug: Everybody s on the line here. Good. Let s get right into it and kick things off here. Let s get a good definition out there of what exactly self-esteem is and what it means to lose your self-esteem, from a clinical standpoint or whatever standpoint you want to give us. Jeff: That s a tough one in the sense that although the field of psychology throws the term around a lot, there s not a lot agreement as to what the definition is. It s often used as a catchall phrase. A lot of it goes back to the different theoretical orientation of the different approaches. Good self-esteem, if you re coming from a Freudian viewpoint is very different than, say, somebody who looks at family therapy or other issues. Unlike depression or something else where there is some agreement as to what the definition is, this one does not have an agreed definition. I can give you a working idea of what we re talking about. Doug: Great. Jeff: In terms of a working idea, I usually think of self-esteem in terms of the value a person puts on themselves or their self-worth that s a little more functional and to questions like, What do you base your self-value on? Based on what other people say about you, on your own personal achievements? It gets into a lot of things like that.
Most people I find have an upper and a lower limit to their self-value. If we could graph it out, there would be a line at the top an upper limit and a lower limit and it would tell us if when somebody gives us a compliment that is beyond what we think we deserve, it doesn t register. If they say any type of put down that is below what we value ourselves to be, it doesn t register. Our sense of self-value also sets some blinders on us in terms of us being able to hear what other people are telling us. Linda: Did you say that if someone gives us a compliment that is above what we think we deserve, that we don t hear it, and the same with below? Jeff: Right. The sound hits your ear, but it won t accept it. For instance, let s say you bought a new dress and you wore it and Doug gave you a wonderful compliment on it. In fact, I like the European way of complimenting women in dresses because they usually say rather than, That dress looks good, they say, You make that dress look good. Some women, their self-esteem is such that, Oh, this old thing? and they find some way to discount it. They cannot accept simple compliments if it s beyond their sense of self-value. Doug: That s interesting. When it comes to self-esteem, we want to talk about the loss of self-esteem here. What is the affect on somebody when they lose their self-esteem or what can it be? I ll ask that first of Jeff, and then, Linda, we ll pose that same question to you. Jeff: Before we head into that, I threw out some stuff on self-esteem. When you re asked about that, what is it that you have in mind that self-esteem is? Doug: I ve always felt it as more or less how you described it the opinion of yourself and how you value yourself to yourself, if that makes sense. Linda, what about you? Linda: I think it s having the confidence feeling you have the confidence to do whatever you want to do; not having any limits our boundaries, but feeling that you can accomplish anything.
Jeff: It s a tough one. That s why I mention that. Even here among us, we have some subtle variations. This is why you ve got to be careful in reading books on self-esteem, because although they use the term, it s one of these real mushy terms that changes with whoever is doing the writing. Something like self-confidence, we can measure self-confidence. That makes sense. And we can turn around and measure some of these other things, but selfesteem is not one that can easily be measured or even defined. Linda: And I think that we look at other people and believe because of the way they act that they have self-confidence and that s our self-esteem and that s what it looks like. But that s not always the truth. A lot of people will project those things and not have very much self-confidence at all. I think we get a different version of what it should be with ourselves. We see someone who projects themselves as being very confident and having a lot of self-esteem, and actually they aren t inside. I think we measure ourselves by other people. Jeff: We do that quite often. We often use other people as our measuring points for our own accomplishments. Now I ll get to Doug s question. Linda: We could discuss that forever probably. Jeff: We probably could, and perhaps we need to if people want us to. You re wanting to know what the affects are of someone who lost their self-esteem. Is that correct? Doug: Yes, sir. Jeff: Let me narrow it down a little bit more, because I think when you re dealing with affairs one of the big challenges is when that news, the D-day, hits you, you are forced to redefine who you are. You have to redefine all your relationships and everything is redefined in relationship to the affair. As part of that redefinition, whatever value you had on yourself is up for grabs. Are you with me so far there?
Doug: Yes. Linda: Yes. Jeff: That s in terms of the spouse who was cheated on. Self-esteem is also a big factor in the affair itself. If for whatever reason the cheater operates on the assumption that they can engage in this behavior of the affair, I won t say in every case but in a lot of cases, they do it to pump up their self-esteem, to feel better about themselves or because they feel good about themselves and have this confidence. I ll go ahead and use the phrase I ve used before, the problem is not the problem, the problem is the solution. The cheater chooses the wrong solution to their own self-esteem issues. That s not the way to handle it. Both the cheater and the person who was cheated on, they ve got some selfesteem issues and everything is up for grabs and they ve got to start dealing with it, even though they might be on opposite ends of the spectrum. Somebody is feeling like they can conquer the world and the other one feels like they re stuck at the bottom of the sea floor. They both have esteem problems. If you re healthy, you get a sense of value that is steady and you re not having a constant sense of being refilled by your relationships with other people. I think with the cheater, that s part of what happens. The fantasies about the cheater, you think they ve got it all together. That s why they re able to have affairs. No, they don t have it all together. In terms of the affect, the affect is going to vary depending on what the foundation of the person is and what it was and how well put together you were. If you were very well put together, the affair may be massive speed bump but you can get over it. But if you re very tenuously put together then the news of the affair can be very shattering and you can have some very severe symptoms. You can find yourself dealing with disorientation, confusion or have difficulty thinking. Also the nature of the injury, how old you are, what kind of support you have that s all going to make a difference in terms of how you deal with it.
The British singer, Adele, her boyfriend dumped her or something and she turned around and wrote a bunch of songs about it and that became the basis of her latest album that has been a bestseller. This is somebody who took a negative blow and turned it around and turned it into something good. It can be overcome. Linda: I think that the cheater s low self-esteem has been a constant comment on our blog, and that they will get into an affair because it is boosting their selfesteem. Jeff: I was going to ask for a little bit of clarification. Are you saying that they re using the affair to make themselves feel better about themselves? Linda: I think the affair allows them to feel better about themselves because they re getting attention and admiration and things like that from their lover. Doug: I think it s a definite byproduct of an affair. It s certainly going to be something that s going to happen. I don t know that, at least in my situation, that it was something that I was out looking for or anything like that. Hey, I m going to have an affair so I can boost my self-esteem. It s not something that went through my, but it certainly was a byproduct of it. Linda, how did you feel once the affair came to light as far as your self-esteem? How did that affect you? Linda: Well, everything I believed about myself was taken away and I felt that I wasn t good enough anymore. I wasn t a good wife, a good person, everything. Doug: That s how you measured your self-esteem was with those items? Linda: Well, I never felt that I relied on you to make me feel a certain way. I felt I was pretty independent and I felt pretty good about myself by my own accomplishments. But when someone that you love and trust tells you that you are certain things or you act certain ways, I guess then I began to measure myself and believe everything that you told me. Doug: And then from that point you had a lower opinion of yourself?
Linda: Yes. I was conflicted. There were things that I believed about myself and I had a hard time. It didn t make sense to me, some of the things that you were telling me about me or some of the ways that you were acting. I was very conflicted and I didn t know who to trust or believe. Jeff: When you say conflicted, was that because you were telling yourself one thing in your head and Doug was telling you something else? Linda: Yes. Jeff: And which one was giving you the positive messages? Linda: Me. I was trying to tell myself that. Jeff: Let me go ahead and add this. I was a little hesitant about this, because some people don t get into reading heavy-duty psychology. Some of the stuff is very boring, but some of it is fascinating. One theorist by the name of James Marcia talks about when we hit crisis, if we didn t have a real stable sense of who we were, it literally throws us into an identity crisis. Affairs fit into that category, especially with marriages where people got married early, because they didn t have a real sense of who they were and they can find themselves struggling with those issues for a while. He talks about it in terms of going through a series of crisis and commitment. By crisis and commitment, kind of like when you were talking about being conflicted between what you were telling yourself and what Doug was telling you. That s a perfect example of crisis. The way to get out of it is to start making commitments, whether it be commitments to yourself, commitments to your marriage, deciding what you are really all about and what you re not about. Who is Linda and who is not Linda? Linda: During that time, I went through a lot of self-revelation. Is that what a person does?
Jeff: Yes, they do. And that s part of, I guess we ll go ahead and call it, the selfesteem building process. Although everything gets blown to smithereens, in one sense, redefining and rebuilding, putting the pieces back together. And the pieces that are brought together after the affair, since they literally survived the affair, they are typically stronger than what you had pulling yourself together before the affair. Linda: I can attest to that. Jeff: When I talked to you earlier about with self-worth we have an upper and lower limit, sometimes those get readjusted. I think part of those upper and lower limits makes it hard to work on things, because with those blinders you re not always able to hear what your spouse is telling you and your spouse can t always hear what you re telling them. Linda: You mean after the affair what your spouse is telling you or at any time? Jeff: It can impact things at any time, but more dramatically as you re starting to talk through the issues about the affair. The funny thing about self-esteem, a lot of times we say we ve hit rock bottom, typically we ve hit the lowest level that we re willing to admit. Some people do get to the point where they quit bathing and they quit caring for themselves, but usually there is a point that we re not going to hear any insults or anything below that point because it just doesn t register in our minds. We say we hit rock bottom, but typically we can usually go further. If we wanted to we could. Linda: I think one of the difficult things and I hate to measure self-esteem by how a person reacts to you. Isn t it supposed to come from within yourself? Jeff: Self-value? It would be nice. I think that healthier, more stable people have that. But not everybody functions that way. Some people base it on personal performance; in other words, the things that they achieve. It may be a certain salary range, it may be being in the right neighborhood, getting the right promotions. Those are performance type people.
And then there are people-pleaser people. These are folks that base their selfesteem on what key people say about them in their life. It might be their parents, it might be their spouse, it might be their kids. They can ignore what people outside say, but if it s anybody in that inner circle, it s devastating. One of the problems with affairs is you re dealing with somebody doing the equivalent of throwing a hand grenade into that inner circle and blowing it to smithereens. If you re one of those people who based your whole sense of your worth on what other people say about you, that s going to be particularly traumatic. The people who are the strongest, yes, it s nice if they have an internal sense of value. I have value because I m a good person. This is where religious belief can come in and get their sense of value outside of themselves. That s a real plus to have that in people s lives. Linda: I put myself in the category of a people-pleaser, so I think yes, Doug s words did throw a hand grenade at me. I think the difficult part is that the things that he said during the affair and what he says now is very hard for me to understand - how those opinions of me could change. I think a lot of people on the blog feel that way, that when they said those things, those things stick with you. It s hard to understand how the opinions or emotions and things like that can change, because I felt that I really didn t change that much as a person. Why am I okay now and I wasn t before? I guess it s all the people-pleasing things. Jeff: That s exactly what it is. One of the things that you were hoping for is that Doug is going to change, and then once Doug changes, then you ve got him in this double bind. Well, how can I believe what you re saying now? How could you have changed so much? That s one of the things that you were wanting. You were wanting him to change. Linda: Right. But when he does, it s like, Why?
Jeff: That people-pleasing side of you has to change as well, because it makes you vulnerable to what people say. The insults hit much worse and it has to be redone. That takes some work. I know that there has been one or two comments on the blog that, when I read them, they ripped my heart out. One wife in particular, the husband said some really terrible things and she was believing it. Linda: I think a lot do. I did. I tried to talk myself out of it, but I really truly believed what he was telling me and I think I almost fell to what he was telling me. I was that person. Jeff: It gets really weird in the sense that when you re into some hardcore people-pleasing, it s almost like your spouse (assuming it s your spouse) is the only thing that matters. You can have all kinds of cheerleading squads around you telling you that you re wonderful, that you re great, that you do all these good things and they can get you pumped up in the morning, but one or two words from that spouse that you ve built your life around, you re down in the dumps again. Linda: You didn t know you had so much power, did you, Doug? Doug: No, I certainly didn t. Jeff: It happens that way. If you had a giant scorecard, you could have nine compliments to that one insult and that one insult hits you with much more severity than those nine good things. It overweighs them. That s a tough one. As we re struggling with it even now with self-esteem, when you re in the midst of pain and going through it, it s hard for people to grasp because you re wanting to pin the cheater to the wall and they don t feel they ve done anything wrong. And they re right. They haven t done anything wrong, but in their thinking, they ve got to make some changes. They ve got to get out of this mess that they re in and it s hard for them to realize that they ve got a role to play in the recovery. Linda: The cheater or the betrayed spouse?
Jeff: The betrayed spouse. They ve got to change the ending and how they put so much self-evaluation on what their spouse says. It sets them up for failure, and that s a hard pattern to break. Doug: Is there something or some way that a person in that situation can recognize that they re suffering from low self-esteem? Is it something that most people understand and realize or a lot of times they attribute it to something else? Are there warning signs or anything like that? Jeff: The warning signs I usually look for I call SDB. That can stand for either selfdestructive behavior or self-defeating behavior. Are they doing anything that is not good for them? That s usually a sign that they re stuck in one of those rut type of things. Also whether or not they are being realistic. And by being realistic I ll give you an example. A couple comes in. The husband had an affair and the wife is feeling very devastated. She ll make comments How can anyone be interested in me? I m so ugly. In terms of the ugliness, she shows up, she s got makeup on and she s actually an attractive woman, but she sees herself as very ugly. I usually have to work with her and say, Let s talk about your physical attractive on a one to ten scale, with ten being the most physically attractive and one being the least. She ll turn around and rate it a three or a four. I say, Well, usually when people come in and they rate themselves a three or a four, I usually expect to see scars or missing a few teeth. I do that with a sense of humor to wake them up as to how much reality they re distorting. They re not being honest with themselves. So if they re not being honest with themselves by looking at it realistically and they re engaging in self-destructive behaviors, they re probably caught up in the people-pleasing. I think this is where some of the revenge affairs come in. Well, they cheated on me. I m going to go cheat. Linda: I m going to find someone who will find me attractive!
Jeff: Right. One session blew me away. The person who was cheated on came in and they told me, I m just going to find the first person of the opposite sex out there and have sex with them. Wow. And they meant it! That is definitely self-destructive behavior. But they re so devastated, they don t care, because in their mind, the cheater feels good about themselves because they had sex, so that must mean if I go out and do it, I m going to feel good about myself. That s the lie they tell themselves. Of course the reality is once they do it, they usually feel even worse about themselves than did before because guilt kicks in and makes this whole situation much worse. We can get them out of the pain, but it s not going to fix the situation at all. I know I gave you kind of a skeleton key with the self-destructive behaviors and being unrealistic, but with self-esteem being such an emotional topic, it s hard for me to give you one key that fits it all. In some cases, it will be people putting themselves down all the time or not being able to accept any compliments at all or making derogatory comments about themselves. And this is not limited to a public conversation. Where it really gets bad is when it also shows up in the bedroom. The derogatory statements can become so engrained because they re a part of the intimate times between the two people. It s almost like they take those insults and drives it in deeper and deeper and deeper into the person s soul. And then they re stuck to that label and they can t escape that. Linda: I see that. What does a person do to turn that around? Jeff: The first thing is to wake up and recognize what s going on and that this is not normal. I know that sounds simple, but many times when you live in a particular lifestyle day in and day out, you start to think because you ve lived it for so long, this must be the way life is. Waking up and realizing, Hey, this is really not the way life is
Linda: So even if you are saying to yourself, I m not attractive enough, I m not this, I m not that, that becomes the way of your lifestyle and that s not the way most people think. Is that correct? Jeff: Right. And in terms of getting out of it, besides waking up to it, you re going to need to be honest with yourself about what is going on and get out of all that distorting. In my book, I use the phrase telling yourself the truth. You ve got to tell yourself the truth about what s going on around you and also about yourself about your attractiveness, about your qualities and about your abilities. Linda, in your case, you made reference when you were going through that time, you told yourself that you were a good mother and that you were a good teacher and you played up those skills. Now there are times that you were just using them like mantras because you were having a hard time accepting it. Exactly, it s almost like the scales fell off and you were able to finally accept, I do have skills, I do have value, I do have worth, and it s not dependent upon what that lousy cheating husband of mine does. Linda: Yeah. This is really strange, but I found myself, when I was angry at him, I felt so much better about myself. I didn t care what he thought of me and it sort of set me free. Jeff: it makes perfect sense. One of the things about anger is it s not so much that anger is the magical thing, but it s a byproduct of the anger because it energizes you. Many times you ve got to get angry in order to get the energy to take action. The magic is really about the energy; it s not so much about the anger. Linda: Can you get that energy other ways than getting angry? Jeff: You can, but for most people, anger is the one they usually go to because anger is very powerful and it works quickly. But they ve got to find some emotion or something that comes up and gives them the energy to block out all the noise. What I mean by noise all those messages that they are receiving from the cheater.
Linda: The negative things. Jeff: Right, so that they can hear what s going on in their own head. It s almost like they ve got to have the energy to do this. I d rather it be a positive type of energy, and they could get that either from some spiritual type of experiences or from a very supportive group of people, much like the Affair Recovery Group where we have a lot of people trying to help folks through this. That type of environment can facilitate and give that kind of support. Or when you re having to fly solo, you may have to rely on the anger or finding good friends that aren t going to take advantage of you, give you strength and can build you up. Linda: I think so many people do try to fly solo. I know I did. I really had nothing there to help me with that negative energy. I tried exercising. I tried doing things I enjoyed, but it wasn t enough to combat it. I think I would ve been much better off having some kind of support group or system. Jeff: The anger will get you pumped up, but one of the byproducts of when it s the anger is you have a lot of negative thoughts and a lot of thoughts about revenge and things that you want to do to hurt the other person. That s definitely not good. In building yourself up, it is important that you tell yourself the truth and you accept truths. I needed to clarify that. It s not a matter of pumping yourself through a lot of false statements. Every day I m getting better and better. Doug: Affirmations don t necessarily work? Jeff: Well, they ve got to be honest affirmations, not just pumping yourself up for the sake of pumping yourself up. The key to it is going to be the honesty part. Linda: With yourself. Jeff: Right. Now, the spouse, they can help out with that by being honest with them and giving them honest feedback. Let me go back to the dress illustration. Linda: I love that.
Jeff: When you re going through this phase, you ve got to give your wife some honest assessment. You know, honey, that dress does look great on you. And although it looks great on you, it does draw more attention to your hips. Doug: Whoa! You re walking a fine line there, pal! Jeff: I know I m walking a fine line, but Linda: You re being honest, though. Jeff: That s what s needed there. Linda: Yeah. When you re just saying, You look good, to me, that s like, Okay What do you mean? Doug: Point well taken. Jeff: And when you re at this point of building the marriage, the spouse will value what you say more if they know it s honest. It looks good on you, but it doesn t look as good as the other dress that you had on. I know that s walking on thin ice and it s a little gutsy, but you have got to take the relationship to where it s based more on honesty and communication rather than just building each other up trying to avoid their disapproval. Linda: It actually shows that you put some thought into it. It s easy to say, Oh, you look nice. Anyone can say that, but when you really pay attention to the person and you can point out things, that shows that you re actually paying attention to them. And it s not just looks; but other things obviously in their life as well. Jeff: This is one of the reasons why when you ve got a spouse that s very abusive, that can be such a powerful bond because there is the honesty. It s a cruel type of honesty, but that s part of what makes those traumatic types of bonds so hard to break. I know we haven t talked to traumatic bonding, but in terms of rebuilding their self-esteem, you want to get them used to telling themselves the truth because they re struggling with that on the inside and if you, as a spouse, can help them on the outside
Of course wanting to end things on a positive note, but also be honest so that they can believe what you say. If you can be honest with them about the dress, then when you re telling them things like you love them and you re never going to leave them, they ll believe you. If you re just saying, Oh, that dress looks good on you, and they know you re just going through the motions to avoid a fight, then they wonder in the back of their head, Is he being honest with me when he tells me he s never going to leave me and he s never going to fall for another woman? Linda: It s something that no one really thinks about when they get into an affair. They don t realize the implications afterwards and how you are pretty much starting from the bottom and moving your way up on every part of your relationship. Jeff: Right. And if they re going to get it done and get it done right, they really do need to be willing to look at developing the honesty and working through the pain. One mistake a lot of couples make is that after the affair, they work at things until the pain level drops, not until the issues get resolved and that s a mistake when you quit working just because the pain is gone. Linda: Do they work a certain way to make the pain go away faster? Are they brushing things aside to alleviate the pain? Jeff: Right. Or to avoid talking about certain issues related to the affair. Getting out of the pain becomes the main focus rather than being honest, rather than rebuilding the relationship. I m bringing this up in relation to self-esteem because some people might feel like, Oh! I m feeling better about myself. I m not hurting anymore. You re out of pain, but that doesn t mean that they re building you up or that they re being honest. People need to realize that. Ideally, let s say if you ve got a relationship with some healthy self-esteem going on, what that s going to be about is your spouse is able to be honest with you, you are able to accept compliments, and you re able to accept negative feedback as well.
It takes a lot of commitment to being able to hear that kind of feedback. You re also able to in terms of being able to self-regulate, being able to control yourself and helping your spouse control themselves and talk about those types of things. Those are just some of the traits I see where there s some healthy self-esteem. Linda: I think that s the most difficult thing is being completely honest with your spouse, because you don t want to hurt their feelings or make them feel bad. But I think it might be the way you approach it with them. Jeff: The approach is key because they ve got to feel like you ve got their best interest at heart. If you just be inane and say harsh things, they re not going to accept it. They ve got to feel like your heart is in the right place and that what you re saying is intended to bring healing. Linda: That you really care about them and what s best for them. Jeff: Yeah. At some level, even though you don t always put it into words, you can sense if your spouse is saying something just to cut the pain or whether their intention is to work through things. There s a big difference. Linda: I think that s why I wouldn t let a lot of things go, a lot of Doug s answers go and so forth, because I felt that he wasn t being completely honest. He wanted to escape my pain and his. So I kept pushing and pursuing until we could get to that point. Jeff: And you can get to that point. It takes work. That s why I wanted to let them know that just because you re not in pain that doesn t mean that the issues are resolved. You ve got to keep going until you get the issues resolved, and honesty is key in doing that. Doug: Well, I think that s some more great information, Jeff. I think we re getting closer to the end of our time. Is there anything else that you would like to add to wrap things up? Jeff: Not at this point. Self-esteem is a tough one. I know it s an awkward one to deal with, and I think that one reason that there s a lot of confusion is because a lot of writers write about it, but they all have different ideas. For some, it s where
you can always have a smile on your face, always be in a good mood. For some, it s always having your family functioning; some you re able to always have selfcontrol. I think that creates a lot of confusion with a lot of couples. They toss around this term and the husband and wife are saying, You re tearing down my self-esteem, and they don t even know what each other is talking about. Are you saying that you re ripping away my confidence? Are you saying that you don t love me anymore? What is it that you re saying? I think that gets in the way of healing, too, because you read a lot of self-help books and they talk about self-esteem and you re not even sure if you re on the same page. Linda: Right. And you feel you have to be what they want you to be or the book says, and it s like, I don t feel that way. That wears you down even more. Jeff: Right. That s why I go ahead and use self-value as a place to start and we ve covered a lot of the challenges that can happen with self-value today. This was a good topic to go ahead and deal with. Hopefully, we ll do some more on it. Doug: That sounds good. Jeff, we appreciate it very much. For those listening, as usual, if you have any questions or concerns or anything, you can use the contact form on the website or post it in the forum. Until next time, this is Doug, Linda, and Jeff with the Affair Recovery Group. Jeff, thank you very much. Linda, thank you. Everybody have a great week.