In affair recovery, having the right kind of friends is important.
Friends or Allies? <<– listen to the audio here
Hi, this is Jeff Murrah with Affair Recovery Radio. In some of the previous sessions I’ve talked some about support systems and nurturing, and we’re going to be continuing along those lines today with the topic of friends or allies.
I mention that because there’s a difficulty with affairs and affair recovery concerning having the right kind of friends. Because having the right kind of friends and the right kind of support system is very important. There’s a big difference between friends and allies.
Allies are those people that go with you into war. Friends are those that accept you, confront you, and they cry with you, and they want your best.
In the case of affair recovery you’re going to need friends rather than allies. The allies are great for wanting revenge or payback on your spouse, but that’s not going to recover your marriage. If you’re hooking up with a bunch of allies your recovery is going to hit some rough spots, I can just about guarantee you that.
In terms of trying to find friends rather than allies I’ve got some steps of action for you to take and we’re going to be going over those three things today.
First, avoid the all, I guess what you would call fill in the blank, all men are pigs crowd, or the all women are pigs crowd. When you are with a group of people and they paint with a broad brush like that, these are going to be more the ally type of people. They’re not going to be the friend type that realize the unique qualities of your spouse and unique situation that you’re in.
Because if all men are pigs, or all women are pigs, or fill in whatever other kind of word you want to, it’s going to create an atmosphere of animosity. That’s the very opposite of what you need. You need an atmosphere of safety, you need to put out the welcome mat so that your spouse will want to come back into relationship with you.
Going to war with them by joining with these people that all men are pigs, all women are pigs, that’s going to create a more us versus them type of mentality. And us versus them is combat mentality. That’s conflict mentality. That’s war mentality. That is not what you’re needing right now.
Number two, you want to look for those who tell you what you need to hear versus what you want to hear. Because when you’re hearing the truth in reality, that’s more important than people feeding into your wishes and fantasies.
There’s many types of wishes and fantasies. There’s the fantasies about wishing that your spouse was dead, that they were in pain, or the whole idea that if you send enough good vibes and sprinkle enough fairy dust on it that it’s going to suddenly transform your relationship. That’s wishful thinking. That’s fantasy also.
The whole idea that your spouse is sleeping with everyone of the opposite sex that they can find, or maybe even sleeping with everyone of the same sex that they can find, that’s also fantasy too. You don’t need people feeding you fantasies.
Because you’re going to have a hard enough time combating fantasies in your own head without somebody feeding more in to you, and trying to encourage more and more of that stuff.
And this is also something that you need to exercise caution about regarding your television and movie viewing habits. Because those can feed into the fantasies as well, rather than encouraging you to face the truth and the realities of the situation.
Number three, in terms of friends or allies and trying to sort out the difference between the two, friends don’t shoot their wounded.
You want to be with people that are your friends, that will take care of you. Because with an affair happening you are wounded. You are hurt. And you need to take care of that hurt. Once the hurt is healed you’ll be fine. At that point you’re no longer damaged goods. But during the point of affair recovery you are hurt, and you’re going to need people that will not cast you off just because you’ve been wounded.
In some circles when a person has an affair it’s almost like they treat you like the plague, we’ve got to stay away from you at all costs. You don’t need those types. You need somebody who’s going to accept you and encourage you. And since you are wounded, you’re not going to be functioning at your 100% best.
And working with the wound is also part of this as well. If somebody realizes you’re only at 40 or 50% of your capacity, and they sense you there, and encourage you to do what you can at that level rather than view you as a failure because you’re not doing 100%, it’d be nice to do 100% but you’re not there yet. Right now you do need a support system.
And your support system needs to consist of friends rather than allies. Because these days there’s all kinds of social groups that will rally round and hate the other person. That’s not what you need right now.
These are three things that will help you sort out whether or not your support group or friends or the allies type, and will also give you guidance concerning finding the kind of support group that you need to help with affair recovery.
These are things that you can do right now, this very day. And I encourage you to do so because the sooner you do it the better, and the sooner you’ll get on with the healing.
Until next time this is Jeff Murrah, saying goodbye from Affair Recovery. Thank you.
