Sarah was frustrated in dealing with Derrick. She loved Derrick and was devastated on
finding out he cheated on her. Susan wanted to work things out with Derrick, yet found herself blocked again and again. It seemed that every way she tried and everything she did to connect with him was blocked in one way or another.
Derrick was charming and lovable, yet everyday he seemed to wake up in a new world. With each new day, he had a new excuse or new way of looking at the affair.
He found more ways of justifying the affair than Sarah could count. His constantly jumping around with new ideas and excuses made any kind of accountability impossible.
He often asked her to consider his perspective, which she tried to do, yet when he keeps changing ‘his’ perspective, it became confusing. Sarah had heard it all. “It’s a guy thing, I was bored, It was my addiction, I deserve to be happy…..” She could make try to understand his viewpoint, but which one is the “real” Derrick?
Not only were his excuses changing, so were his account of what happened. It went from ‘she seduced him’ to ‘I was drunk’ to ‘I couldn’t help myself’.
Then there was “it was only one time”, “it was only when we were lonely” to “when I was with her, it was when you were not available”. About the only thing Sarah was certain of was that there was an affair.
Situations like Sarah and Derrick’s are not uncommon, especially these days. The frequent shifting in Derricks accounts and excuses reflect his confused thinking.
It seemed that everyone he went to about his affair took a different stand on the matter. He listened to them and often took their position when discussing matters with Sarah.
He did not want to think he did wrong. He tried many ways of excusing what he did, yet nothing made total sense. If what he did was natural and something he ‘deserved’ why did he feel so unsettled about it?
Some of his friends cheated and swapped spouses, and they saw nothing wrong with what Derrick did. If they saw nothing wrong with it and made it sound natural and normal, he wondered why he felt so unsettled, and why Sarah was so hurt and upset.
Derrick needed a stable set of values. His constant shifting made any kind of resolution impossible. When you change your values, you change the rules.
The way Derrick did things, it was impossible to know what the boundaries were or what the rules were. Not have clear boundaries made it impossible to ever come up with a resolution.
It was like playing a game of football on a field where the boundaries are always be moved and the rules change from play to play. Under such circumstances, it would be hard to determine anything from whether someone was out of bounds or whether they scored.
When Derrick and Sarah finally decided on a set of values to operate under, they were able to finally reach some resolution on the affair issue. They both had to operate using the same set of values.
The constantly changing values made any kind of resolution unachievable. This is one of the challenges of post-modern thinking, where you make yourself the authority on what is right or wrong based solely on your daily changing perceptions and truth.
If you are in a situation like Derrick and Sarah, you need a commitment to a common set of values BEFORE you try resolving the affair issue.
Both of you need to agree on the truths you have in common. You may never totally agree on your perceptions, but you can have shared truths. If each of you has a different value system, it will make any kind of resolution tenuous at best.
The “Affair Recovery Workshop” could help them navigate through the games and chaos. They’ll learn new ways of connecting with each other and communicating that gets past the defenses being put up.
It’s time you learn from Derrick and Sarah rather than repeat their mistakes.
Best Regards,
Jeff
