In some affair situations, you will face questions re: your responsibility to the lover. The cheater may even claim that you have a responsibility to the lover or their family.
Your partner may claim that you ‘made’ the cheater have the affair; that the lover is afraid of you; you put guilt trips on the cheater or the lover; your morals are creating the problem; or that ‘you’ made the affair ugly.
What is your responsibility to the lover? <<– listen to the audio here
Hi, this is Jeff Murrah with Affair Recovery Radio. I’m glad you tuned in to today’s show. In today’s show, we’re going to be dealing with what are your responsibilities to the lover.
That’s a tough question that some people ask and struggle with. Because like a hot potato, when there’s an affair, responsibility keeps getting thrown around from person to person. Everybody’s always expecting somebody else to pick up responsibility and to deal with the situation.
In a lot of affair situations, you’re going to find, well, you’re going to face questions regarding your responsibility to the lover. The cheater may even claim that you have a responsibility to the lover or their family. This sounds far-fetched, but it happens more often than you would think.
Just by the very nature of an affair, people are not being responsible and not honoring their responsibilities. Let’s take a look at Ava’s story.
In this case, Ava is the lover. Ava, first of all, she claims that you made the cheater have an affair and that you make her afraid, and that you put guilt trips on the cheater and her, and that your morals are the ones that are what is creating the problem.
They were just going to have a love affair and just enjoy each other’s company, but you, with your morality, come along and turn it into something ugly. You made this affair a big deal and it didn’t have to be a big deal. Stuff like that.
Now, Ava’s case may sound far-fetched, but this happens more often than people realize. These kind of responsibility statements and accusations get thrown all over the place. Where a lot of people get tripped up, and you may have been tripped up as well, is you take a lot of these accusations personally. It’s going to be important not to take them personally.
We’re going to be talking about what are your responsibilities. In terms of the answer, I’m going to lay it out in terms of boundaries, who you’re responsible to, and what you’re responsible for.
- Boundaries. You need to have clear boundaries. And by boundaries, when it comes to affairs, you need to know what belongs to you, what your responsibilities are, along with which ones are not yours. Because many times, since you’ve got so many irresponsible personalities, it’s almost like a bunch of kids looking for a parent to come along and take responsibility.
You’re going to have to resist those kind of temptations. Just because you see something, that does not necessarily mean it’s your issue to have to pick up and deal with. In this age, there are many people that are irresponsible and they expect others to be responsible, without telling them what to do or to hold them accountable. That puts you in a strange dilemma.
They want to blame everything and everyone, without taking any responsibility for themselves. I mention that because you’re going to have to be clear, what are your responsibilities, what are they not. Because if you just jump in, you’re going to find yourself being driven by emotions and not have a clear idea what you’re dealing with. That’s why you have to have this clarity on the front end. Otherwise you can find yourself in a load of trouble.
2. Who you’re responsible to. Your primary responsibility is to your family. This includes your spouse, your children, and so forth. Your family is your main responsibility. How you communicate to them, what you communicate to them, you’ve got a responsibility to honor your own commitments to them.
I realize they may not appreciate it at the time. They may not be worthy of it. This is not a matter of them being worthy of it. It’s a matter of you fulfilling your responsibilities.
I framed it in terms of family because I know, at times, there is the sticky situation of when the cheater has a child with the lover. At that point, in my mind, that child does become part of your family. I know it’s not yours technically, but being your spouse’s, there is a family connection. So you do have a responsibility in that case.
But up to that point, your responsibility is just to your spouse. You don’t have to give your reasons, you don’t have to give excuses to the lover for what you’re up to.
A lot of times you may feel like you do. You may feel like you have to apologize for the cheater, or that you have to clean up for them. No. You’re not their mother, you’re not their father. You’re the spouse.
3. You’re responsible for your actions. Not other people’s reactions.
I mention that, and the guidelines I usually use, usually I ask two questions. One, is it legal, and number two, will it bring healing.
These two questions keep me out of a lot of trouble. Because given affair situations, people will get very emotional. And being as it’s highly emotional, a lot of times boundaries blur and people just react. They don’t think.
A lot of times they do stupid things that get them into legal trouble. So you want to make sure that you’re not doing anything illegal. Usually the guideline there is do no harm. If you’re not doing them harm or inflicting harm, you’re probably safe.
You also want to do what brings healing. I know many times there’s this temptation for revenge and wanting to make them hurt, wanting to make them pay, wanting to show them the error of their ways. And you have to resist that. Only the things that bring healing.
You cannot assume responsibility for the feelings and the thoughts of others. I mentioned Ava earlier. You may have something to say to Ava, you can’t assume responsibility for her reactions to it. Because she doesn’t like it, because she said that she’s scared, that’s not your problem. Her problem is her emotional reactions, not yours.
When you assume responsibility for the feelings and thoughts of others, it’s a way to make you and them dysfunctional, if not out and out sick. That’s very unhealthy.
Because if you came along and you assumed responsibility for all these reactions of Ava, like for instance saying that when she claims that you made the cheater have the affair, that you make her afraid, that you’ve put guilt trips on the cheater and her, that your morals are what’s creating the problem, and that you made the affair ugly, you can find yourself taking on a lot of pain that’s not yours.
When I tell you you’re responsible for what you say, what you do, and not what the reactions are, when you keep that in mind, it will keep you from a lot of hurt. And I know many of you are motivated to try to keep people from hurting.
When you’re dealing with an affair situation, that tendency to want to protect people and keep people from feeling any kind of pain or discomfort, or if I put it another way to play nice, and if you feel like you have this responsibility to play nice all the time, it’s going to end up getting you in trouble.
I want to help you avoid those kinds of troubles. Because here at Affair Recovery Radio, I want to help you get through the affair one step at a time. Because I firmly believe an affair does not have to mean the end of your marriage. You can get through this. I want to give you the tools to do so.
In today’s show, where we talked about your responsibility for the lover, these are things you can start doing right away. As soon as you finish listening to the show, you can start putting these into practice.
If you’re enjoyed the show today, I encourage you, leave your positive feedback at the location where you listen to the podcast. The transcript of the podcast will be posted later at my blog, which is located at www.surviveyourpartnersaffair.com and on that blog I deal with people’s questions concerning affairs, what they need clarification on. If you’ve heard something you have some questions about, or want to know how to apply it, feel free to write. I’ll be glad to get back to you on that.
If the nature of your question or concern is more of a private matter, then feel free to contact me at Jeff@RestoreTheFamily.com. Both of them do reach me, and I will get to them as soon as possible.
I thank you for your time. Remember, an affair does not have to mean the end of your marriage.
Best Regards,
Jeff
