Telling your brain that the affair is OVER

One of the first requirements for recovering from the affair is making sure it is over. I want to talk to you about ending the affair and your brain.

When you start recovery without ending the affair, it amounts to healing from a wound that is wide open and bleeding. You are busy cleaning up and trying to heal, while the wound is still fresh and bleeding.

Not ending the affair will turn your life into a Kardashian-like circus of relationships, where you have people and affairs coming and going.

Ending the affair in your brain is something that both you and the cheater need to do. If either of you haven’t ended it, the drama continues.

There will be new relationships before the old one is over, which may have you feeling like you are caught in a revolving door. Ending the affair is a way to stop that from happening.

It keeps ‘complex-relationships’ from forming. Ending the affair is the antidote to …”it’s complicated”.  Ending the affair keeps relationships from becoming ‘complicated’.

Ending the affair is important for you and the cheater. When the affair is ended, it gives you a solid transition point. You can shift from discovery to recovery when that happens.

Until the affair is ended, you’ll be shifting back and forth from one to the other.

Discovery is a very different task from recovery. When you bounce back and forth, it makes a difficult situation worse. It keeps you in a state of uncertainty.

Ending the affair is also important in terms of having an anchor point. Your brain and the cheater’s brain both need a specific point in time when the affair was ended.

When you don’t have a specific ending point, it keeps the door to the affair wide open in their mind. In terms of how the mind works, it still thinks that the affair is continuing, just in another mode.

The brain, left to its own devices often uses denial to ‘keep those things that turn it on going’.  The ending of the affair has to be strong enough and specific enough to break through any denial, on any one’s part.

When a brain thinks that an affair is on-going, it will constantly be scanning for ways to connect and reactivate whatever turned it on. Brains like being turned on. The affair is a HUGE turn on. When the affair is not over, it fully alive as far as the brain is concerned.

The cheater may give you all kinds of song and dance about how they need to have ‘closure’ and say good-bye. The best way is to end it swiftly and suddenly.

You may want to have the cheater call the lover, in your presence and end it then and there. No long goodbyes, no explanations, no let us spend a little time saying farewell.

It is imperative that the cheater end it. If you end it, then it is not really over for them. When you end it, their mind does not register that the affair is over.

When the affair is ended …mark it on the calendar. Your brain needs a specific date that it ended. Your brain and the cheater’s brain need a specific anchor point when it happened. There’s something about marking an event on a calendar that makes it more real.

Marking it creates a visual anchor that reminds your heart AND your brain that it’s over.

When your brain doesn’t have a specific point in time when the affair ended, the affair continues. It has no closure.

For this reason, you may need to make references to that specific date. The more references to the date, the more real it becomes for the two of you.

If you want more help in moving past the affair, the video “Preventing Affair Relapse” guides you through the high risk situations and relapse prevention plans (that’s where you and your spouse have a game plan for various situations).

Best Regards,

Jeff

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