As a child, I enjoyed reading comic books, including the stories of bizarro world. Bizarro world is something that came out of the Superman and Batman universe. In that world, everything was opposite what our world is like. Ugliness is considered beauty, the world is square rather than round, disrespect is encouraged, and so on. It was a strange place compared to our world.
When you are faced with an affair, you may find that you have entered “Bizarro World“. Suddenly, your spouse becomes your opponent, it becomes more important to indulge in what makes you happy rather than doing what is right and disrespect is encouraged rather than discouraged. What was a thing of beauty and virtue is now viewed as tortuous and rejected. There are times you may wonder if you have lost your mind.
It is as if the rules suddenly changed overnight. Another unsettling aspect is that although you are suddenly surrounded by bizarro world, the people and surroundings look like the world you lived it before all the craziness happened.
With the change in ground rules, you may find that because you love your spouse and want to save your marriage, you are suddenly considered ‘the hater’, while those who do things that destroy your marriage are considered “lovers”. If you fight for your marriage and family, you are seen as ‘the enemy’ by some people, while those who corrupt morals find that they are accepted and celebrated under the label of ‘tolerance’.
Not only have the rules changed, words suddenly change meanings as well. There are times you may wonder if you woke up in another world, or want to go back to sleep and try for a do-over. What was once considered ‘family’ along with ‘family values’ suddenly change with the affair. You may have thought that family meant those who you were related to through marriage or birth. Now that definition includes love children, people who shack up in lustful cohabitation and whoever wants to hang around. These changes are not celebrated under the term post-familialism and seen as a morphing of the family into something new instead of being viewed as the ‘destruction of the family‘ or results of homewreckers.
If you stand up for your marriage and family, and seek their preservation, you are seen by some as being an obstruction to the “new family” brought on by the affair, which includes the lover, their group along with the cheater and possibly even your children. Now in the name of ‘family values’, you are forced to share your time and your children with people whose values are straight out of the alien bizarro world. Despite all the claims that the affairs was a matter between two adults, the reality is that it is a portal to the hellish ‘bizarro world’.
To keep the bizarro values from changing your world and values, you will need clear boundaries, along with making your terms and definitions clear. When dealing with an affair in your marriage, it is not the time to assume you and the cheater are talking about the same thing, or look at the world the same. You and the cheater do not view the world the same. You need to realize that and plan for dealing with different definitions and values.
Best Regards,
Jeff
