As a child, you likely played a version of “connecting dots” at some time in your life. As you connected the dots, a picture emerged. At first it was unrecognizable, but as more dots were connected, the true picture emerged.
In a similar manner, in making sense of the affair you and the cheater will be connecting dots of what happened. These dots are often data points or episodes along the way. As more dots are connected, a picture of the affair will emerge. This picture will impact your marriage, whether it is a ‘true’ picture or the wrong picture.
A mistake made by some cheater is picking and choosing which questions to answer. When you cherry pick your answers or only give certain pieces of information, it will effect the picture that emerges. Your spouse will be connecting dots in the wrong way.
The cheater may think that this ‘protects’ you. What it actually does is give you the wrong picture.
I once had a boss who was an expert at only giving out certain pieces of information. when my wife an I went out to dinner with he and his wife, I saw him in action with the waitress. By carefully choosing what information to reveal about himself, the waitress drew a picture of him and what he did that was very different than the man he actually was. I often recall that episode when I think about the cheaters who do the same thing with their spouses.
Instead of ‘protecting’ their spouse, or minimizing the damage, they instead mislead them and point them to the wrong conclusions, and mobilize to deal with the wrong threat. It is no wonder that in such marriages that the spouses feel that they do not connect with each other.
Some of you may need massive amounts of data from the cheater before you know what is going on. Others may only need key pieces of information. Whichever approach is being used, you need true answers and real answers.
During the discovery phase of a court case, one side subpoenas mountains of information from the other. Lawyers have learned from experience that mountains of information are needed in order to sort out what is ‘relevant’. They have learned that they can not just trust the opposing side to reveal what is relevant in an accurate manner. There are lessons you can learn from the accumulated experience of lawyers of how to find answers and ‘connect the dots’.
Best Regards,
Jeff
