What do I do?!

Don't make life altering decisions when in a heightened emotional state.

After discovering your partner's affair, you may be experiencing a roller coaster of emotions. So much may be happening in life and things can move quickly. Your partner may be making rash decisions and you may feel the impulse to react and make your own choices too. By all means, make decisions that empower you and help you feel better. At the same time, when it comes to big choices that are going to alter your course of life (separating, selling the house, moving, changing the children's routine, etc.), there actually is no real rush or time line to operate within. You may feel pressure (from your partner, others, or even yourself) to act, but really, who says you have to? Making a small choice (e.g. for your partner to sleep in a different room tonight) is different than a big choice, like telling him/her to move out. Noticing how the outcome of each small choice feels can inform our big decisions. I prefer to make big decisions in a state of relative calm, centered-ness and peace, and not as an emotional reaction to an external cue. Being in a heightened emotional state may lead us to react in order to shift our feelings, which makes sense. It’s important, however, to be cautious in the kinds of choices we make in those moments. Leave the big life altering decisions for another day, there's no rush.

Image by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash