The long tail of infidelity

The long tail I am referring to is the long tail of consequences affairs bring. The pain and damage from an affair has no expiration date.

You or the cheater may want to think that when the affair is over, the damage is stopped. You would be mistaken. As I point out in the Affair Recovery Workshop, the affair is not over when it’s over. The damage from the affair continues long after the affair is over. That long duration of damage is what I am referring to as “the long tail.”

I was reminded of this when writing a recent post on the secondary effects of lies about affairs. Part of those secondary effects that I did not get around to mentioning are the long tail effects of the affair. Lies plant seeds of mistrust. You and your spouse may have taught each other that one of you cannot be trusted. Those are hard lessons to take. They put a weird twist on things. You hear words that sound like trusting words, yet actions show that the cheater cannot be trusted or believed.

The tail gets really long when children are involved. When they are taught that their parents cannot be believed or trusted, the damage lasts a long time. They may carry those lessons throughout their lives. Sure, the initial damage from the affair has been repaired and the obstacles overcome, yet when a child learns that they cannot believe their parents or trust adults, it is a hard lesson that does not go away.

The children pass on what they have learned. The lesson sticks with them. The cheater betrayed their parent, their family, and the previous generations. The betrayal is huge. The damage done to the trust is not only huge, but long-lasting as well.

The Pew Research Center found that parental mistrust of news sources continues across generations. Mistrust of news sources is one thing, but mistrust of a parent is much more powerful. Consider that the mistrust related to infidelity is more intense, deeper, and long-lasting.

Deep down, your children know which parent they can trust, and in what areas they can trust them. When one of their parents is a cheater, the mistrust remains long after the affair is over. It continues coloring any interactions they have with that parent from then on.

In some cases, they may generalize what they learned from that parent to all men or all women. That is where the long tail of the affair jumps from one generation to another. The affair may have ended years before, yet the long tail remains.

The long tail is something to consider and discuss with your children, if for no other reason than damage control related to the affair.

Best Regards,

Jeff Murrah

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