Vulnerable to Affairs

In working with affair trauma, it became clear that there are some of you who are vulnerable to affairs and may not realize it. In contemporary 21st century society, you may find yourself so proud of your self-reliance that you do not see your vulnerabilities. You may have been indoctrinated about your strengths so much that you believe the propaganda. You have survived so much, you think that you can handle things.

Although each of you may think of yourself as a superman or superwoman in your own way, if you have been through sexual abuse or traumatic experiences, such as PTSD, you have wounds and scars that leave you vulnerable. If you have been through intense military experiences, you may have vulnerabilities that you are not even aware of.  If you survived sexual abuse earlier in your life, you may believe that you are a strong survivor to the point that you are blind to the vulnerabilities.

Although the current vogue is talking about super powers and abilities, one of the dangers of that kind of talk is that it distracts you from your vulnerable blind spots. Each of those terrible things you went through left scars. They may be little ones on the outside. They may even be so small, few people ever notice them.

Although the outside damage healed, inside there are weaknesses. You may have survived the trauma and abuse, yet with each episode, your mental and emotional structural integrity on the inside has been weakened. It is one of those weaknesses that many people do not see, yet it leaves you structurally damaged in ways you may not have thought of.

One way is that it changes your way of thinking. Each trauma changes your focus and ability to think. The images and memories are still there. The associations with the trauma are still there, even when you refuse to think about them. Those changes in your thinking leave you at less than peak performance. Those weak points leave you vulnerable to affairs in surprising ways.

When your focus and ability to think have been weakened, it leaves you with blind spots. You may not see potential threats when they surround you. The images and memories often interfere with you being able to respond to situations objectively. If you add alcohol or drugs to the situation, it compounds the impact of those blind spots.

The blind spot may be in the area of self control. It may be in the area of assessing threats, it may be in the area of self-control. Whatever area you have blind spots, when you are faced with temptations, those blind spots work against you.

In addition to the mental blind spots, there are the body memories. Your body often remembers things and events outside of your conscious recall. All it takes is the right person touching the right part of your body in a particular way and those memories will take over. You may think you are in control, yet the trigger power of body memories is powerful. You may have good intentions, yet someone could trigger those memories and you find that all that self-control you had suddenly disappears.

Some abusers are even so sophisticated that they intentionally leave trigger phrases and images behind that can be used against you. Although this is often associated with ritualistic sexual abuse, it occurs in other cases as well.

Although you can not change what happened to you, there are things that you can do.

You can see to it that whatever trauma you went through is fully resolved. One mistake that is often made is ending trauma recovery work when the symptoms go away. The danger here is that when you end recovery work based on symptom reduction, the underlying issues are still unresolved. Those unresolved issues contribute to their trigger power.

Incomplete recovery may be intentional or unintentional. In some cases, you had to move on with life rather than fully resolve the issue. It could be that you did not want to deal with it anymore, or that the person working with you focused only on the symptoms rather than resolving the issues.

I mention this topic because you may have blind spots and vulnerabilities that you are unaware of.  Your spouse may have some vulnerabilities. Knowing about them and dealing with them reduces the danger of affairs.

You can de-program the triggers. You do not have to live with uncertainty as to when and where your vulnerabilities will be exploited. You can change the programming in your mind and strengthen your weak points. You can also learn ways of uncovering and handling blind spots

Best Regards,

Jeff