Key To Resolving Affairs

KEY TO RESOLVING AFFAIRS
By
Bruce Derman, Ph.D.

It can take less than three hours to have an affair. Yet once your affair becomes exposed, and you can pretty much count on that sooner or later it will be public knowledge, you will fairly quickly start to feel that the topic will never end. You will find yourself drowning in a sea of endless repetitive questions, countless accusations and threats, not to mention hearing your name nominated as favorite gossip person in your community. All this reflects the truth that affairs are much easier to get into than it is to resolve them within a marriage. It will be like closing a door on a Tsunami. However long the affair was, once it has been exposed or discovered, you and your mate will spend an enormous amount of time, sometimes several years, discussing it. In many instances, it will never get resolved and remains as a lingering wound which can be used as a justification in many of the conflicts that arise between the two of you. “Of course I treated you unfairly, but that was nothing compared to what you did.”
The reason that the discussion of affairs get dragged out so long, aside from the triggering of childhood wounds, is the way partners communicate following the exposure of the affair. In actuality, the partner who committed the affair NEVER talks to the one they betrayed, even though they will swear that they have many times. In addition, the partner who feels victimized by the affair NEVER really talks to the one who actually cheated, lied, deceived, and betrayed them. They are just under the illusion that they are. Instead, all of the victim’s questions, accusations, and hurt land on the door- step of the presentable representative of their mate who tries to appease, apologize, and say the right things as sweetly as they can. Through all this, the guilty party is hoping they will find the magic words that will put an end to this crisis. To that effect, you will hear a litney of “It was only a brief fling,”” the person didn’t mean anything to me,”” I was drunk,” ”I was just depressed,”” it will never happen again”,” I was lonely,” and “I feel really bad that I hurt you.”
If you are the recipient of this verbiage you will probably notice that you may feel that none of it seems to make a difference to you, nor will it even seem real to you. This will seem very confusing especially when your partner, seemingly sincere, says, “What more can I say to you? I’ve answered every question now for two months and apologized and promised it won’t happen again multiple times.” You may even feel guilty for saying that you still feel deeply hurt and that despite all the answers; you are still in the dark about what happened.
Well, let me be the first to validate you that you are not crazy in missing something in all of this rhetoric. What is missing is obvious, yet since no one does it, we are conditioned to not look for it. I will guarantee that in all your discussions, you have never talked or made direct contact with the part of your partner who really deceived you and betrayed you. As I stated, you only heard from your mate’s PR person who cares about one things and that is damage control.

Because you have only spoken to the persona who wants to repair the emotional and mental damage, at least temporally, you most likely have never heard your partner say any of the following:
Yes I cheated on you because I care more about my needs than yours.
I love the excitement of deception and sneaking
If I have another opportunity, I will do it again
I was bored silly, so of course, I had an affair.
I don’t really like being faithful
I was so enraged with how you treat me that this was the only way to get back at you.
I am willing to bet that your never heard these things expressed with no justifications or presentable phrases mentioned, because none of us are willing to be that straight and direct. We are trained to hedge and cover your, you- know- what. Nor are we willing to be that naked and out there.
Now, I am sure some of you may be feeling uncomfortable to hear the one you love say something that seems so insensitive. But ask yourself, don’t these statements ring truer to you than all the perfume and flowers verbiage? Don’t they reflect what you were thinking anyway? Don’t you feel more trusting of a partner who can come across with no pretense?
So if you have gone through or are going through an affair and you are unable to make peace with the betrayal so that it doesn’t drag out forever, invite your partner to come forward and talk as the ONE who actually cheated, deceived, and lied to you with no pretense, justifying, or defending whatsoever. If your partner expresses reluctance, take that as a testimonial that you have finally moved beyond the blowing smoke part of the saying the right thing” process and repeat that you really want to hear from the cheating voice. You really have nothing to lose and a lot to gain, since your partner has already done the thing you most feared.
If your partner can own his cheating and deceiving behavior 100% with no hedging, you will begin to experience movement through the pain and numbness, and doors will open up where you can deal with what happened in a much more transparent way. In addition, you will share an exchange where the amount of exposure feels totally equal.