Getting blood from turnips is an old folkism about unrealistic expectations. After learning about an affair, you may be eager to have the cheater ‘open up with you’ and expect emotion-filled revelations and secrets.
In some cases this happens. In many cases, it does not. Your spouse’s affair may be as simple as they told you.
Trying to get more out of them may be an unrealistic expectation on your part. How can you know if you are expecting to extract ‘blood from a turnip?’
Blood from Turnips <<– listen to the audio here
Hi, this is Jeff Murrah with Affair Recovery Radio. I’m glad that you’re here today, tuning in. The topic we’re going to be dealing with today is extracting blood from turnips.
“You cant extract blood from turnips” is an old folk expression. In this case the folk expression, or folkism if you will, is about unrealistic expectations. Because in real life you cannot extract blood from turnips.
After reading about affairs you may be one of those people that are eager to have a cheater open up with you, fess up, however you want to put it, and you may expect these talks with them to be filled to overflowing with emotional revelations and secrets.
In some cases that does happen. But in many cases it doesn’t, and your spouse’s affair may be as simple as they told you. That hey, I just slept with them because they were available. Or hey, this happened or that happened.
Unrealistic expectations
Trying to get more out of them may be an unrealistic expectation on your part. Because you may be expecting them to have these heart-to-heart sessions where a lot of tears, a lot of sharing of deep-seated emotions.
Yes, people do have a lot of feelings, but some people really are kind of shallow.
They don’t process at deep levels.
They don’t talk about things at deep levels.
How can you know if you’re expecting to extract blood from a turnip or that’s just the way that they are? Well, that’s what we’re going to be dealing with today.
The solution is going to be what I call the CAVE principle, and by CAVE that stands for capacity, acceptance, and vocabulary.
1. Consider if your spouse has the capacity for intimate sharing. Because if you’re married to someone who is not close to other people, not real expressive, and they don’t have role models that have shown them how to open up and share all these feelings, you may have some unrealistic expectations.
Because if they don’t have the capacity for intimate sharing, expecting them is not going to automatically make it happen.
So they’ve got to have the capacity. If the capacity’s not there, the sharing’s not going to be there. You need to consider whether or not they have the capacity for that type of relationship, that type of sharing.
Then you want to accept them for who they are.
2. Accepting them for who they are. Comparing them to movie stars or counselors or other people is asking for trouble. You may have read some of these romance novels, or you may have expectations that are shaped by movies or shows or things that you’ve read, but that’s not your spouse.
That’s not the way they are. That’s not how they open up. And you’re going to have to accept who you married for the way that they are.
3. You will need to consider your spouse’s vocabulary. What I mean by this, you can’t expect a mechanic to talk like an English professor. They may have all kinds of deep feelings, but they may not have the vocabulary.
They may not have the words to express the various sensations of what they’re feeling.
Because unless your spouse is someone who is used to all the subtle variations of emotions and having the words for it and experiencing it and expressing it, it’s not going to happen.
Yes, you’ve been hurt, but if you’re dealing with someone who spends their day working on diesel engines or repairing guns or something like that, that is not earning their living crafting words and knowing all the subtleties of the English language, you’re barking up the wrong tree.
If the person does not have the ability to express themselves, to turn around and expect them to have this massive vocabulary and be able to convey things to you at this deep-seated emotional level, it’s not going to happen.
If your spouse does have a job where they do a lot of word crafting and they’re very well aware of the subtleties of words and they do have the ability to express themselves at deep levels, then your expectation is realistic.
That’ll do
I know in that movie Babe, the one about the pig, the farmer said “That’ll do”. But when you’re dealing with a farmer that may be as expressive as it gets. “That’ll do, pig”. As opposed to, oh you just made my life so wonderful and so fulfilled, you have overwhelmed me with how you performed, pig, that doesn’t fit. And that’s not the way the farmer talks. That’s not the way it is.
You’re expecting blood from turnips. You have unrealistic expectations. And this is one of those things that often gets in the way of resolving the issues related to affairs.
So I encourage you, use the CAVE principle. If they don’t have the capacity to express themselves at that level, and they don’t have a history of it, you need to accept them the way you are and consider your spouse’s vocabulary.
This will save you a lot of heartache. Because if you’re one of those people that has read a lot of books about affairs, listened to a lot of things, you may have done a lot of the work there, but your spouse hasn’t.
Expecting them to be like the people in the book, that’s not going to happen. You’re going to have to accept them the way they are and work with that. I encourage you to do that.
In the downloadable “Affair Recovery Workshop”, one of the topics addressed is unrealistic expectations. In recovery unrealistic expectations often damages more marriages than the affair itself.
Those unrealistic expectations keep recovery from happening. They keep the emotional wounds open to the point they are unable to heal. Knowing what they are and dealing with them opens the possibility of healing from the affair.
Best Regards,
Jeff
