“When you’ve been burned by lies, deception and good intentions, you may wonder if the recovery is real. You second guess if you are wishing and hoping or if real change has taken place.
A part of you may want to believe the lies. You want to assume the best rather than endure nightmares about ‘what if’s.‘ The hesitancy to trust is unsettling. you want to know if it is safe to trust again. To trust means you need to know what to look for.”
Is the cheater’s recovery real? <<– listen to the audio here
Hi, this is Jeff Murrah with Affair Recovery Radio. I’m glad that you’re with us today. The topic we’re going to be talking about today is a very real one. In fact, it was a question that one of our listeners went ahead and asked me. It is “How can I know if the cheater’s recovery is real?”
So many people struggle with that question. How can I trust what’s really going on? How do I know if it’s for real? A lot of sleepless nights have been spent dealing with this question.
When you’ve been burned by the lies and deception and good intentions, you may wonder if the recovery that they’re talking about and that you’re seeing, is real. You have second guessed the situation for so long you begin to wonder is it for real, or is this just a rehash of something we’ve done before. Is this deja vu?
A part of you may want to actually believe the lies. You’ve been hurting for so long and you suspect it’s a lie, yet you really want to believe it. You want to assume the best rather than endure all the nightmares that you’ve been going through dealing with all the what if situations.
Because their struggle with the affair is also part of your struggle, in the sense that it keeps you up at night and you’re tired of it, it gets old. You get worn out. And you have a hesitancy to trust that is very unsettling.
It’s hard to settle down knowing well, this may be the turn around, this may not be. How do I know when to get on with life?
You want to know if it’s safe to trust again. You want to know if you move on with life. Because to trust them in this situation means you need to know what to look for. That’s what we’re going to be dealing with, how can I know if the cheater’s recovery is real.
And the answer I want to present to you is CPR. CPR saves lives, and it can also revive marriages. But in this case the CPR, C stands for congruence, P for presence, and R for repentance. I’ll be explaining this congruence, presence, and repentance here in just a moment.
1.Congruence. Congruence is the connection between what they say and what they do. You want what they say and what they do to match up. Real recovery includes changes in thinking and changes in behavior. When you only see change in one area and not the other, it’s not for real.
Because genuine change requires seeing something new in both areas. Because some people, they’ll make changes in behavior but they’re still thinking like a cheater. Some people, they may change the thinking but they’re still engaged in the same old behavior.
In those cases you may have recovery for a little bit, but it’s not going to last. As long as one of them is still a stronghold for the old cheating ways, they’re going to go back to it.
2. Presence. Real change lives in the present. You may wonder, what did he mean by that? Well, the thing is with cheaters, a lot of times, they’ll want to talk about the past and promises about the future, or maybe even talk about returning to the way it was. And you see this talk about either the past or the future, but not hear much about the present.
When they’re for real, they’re going to be in the present. They’re going to be loving you and wanting to be with you in the here and now. Not just promises about what will be, not just a nostalgia trip to go to the way things used to be. They’re going to be with you now. They’re going to be loving you now.
If, instead of loving you and being with you now, they’re either in the future or the past, you’re in trouble.
3.There’s repentance. Now, repentance, a lot of times they tell you they’re sorry for this, sorry for that. But this kind of repentance is the kind where they are repenting without excuses and without blaming.
When a cheater avoids responsibility with the blaming or excuses, they’re not ready to be real. Even though you don’t want to see them hurt, you may have to let them hurt so that they can get honest and get real.
Because when they come to you, oh well please, honey, I made a mistake here and I’m hurting so bad, it’s not for real. The reason I say that word mistake, they need to say I did wrong.
Wrong is one of those words that there’s no fudging. They admit that they did wrong. You want to make sure that they’re not using any of those but phrases. You know, but this, but that, but this, but that, because those are usually excuses.
Or ‘if’ phrases. Those are usually making excuses as well.
When they repent, they repent. In the here and now they repent, they accept full responsibility for what they did. Because they can’t assume responsibility for what you did or what you didn’t do. They can only do it for themselves.
I may have to go into repentance some more in a future podcast.
These are three things that you can look for that will help you know if their recovery is real. You may want to go ahead and mark those on your phone, on your Evernote, or whatever, and keep track of them. When you see those three things then you know you’ve got something.
I encourage you to go ahead and put that in place.
You can reach me at Jeff@RestoreTheFamily.com for any private emails and private responses that you’re interested in.
If your situation is highly sensitive I encourage you to use the email approach rather than the blog. You may want to feel kind of spur of the moment and say something on the blog, but I don’t want you to put yourself in an awkward position or say something embarrassing in a public forum since other people do read the blog.
Best Regards,
Jeff
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