Many of you experience the worrying over loses. Judging from the recent responses to the previous post on worry, this is an important issue for you. Today, we are going to address some other aspects of worry.
Let me start by pointing out to you that it is natural for you to experience worry over the potential or actual loss of your spouse. As humans, we get more upset over losing what was ours more than worrying over lost potential gains. In other words, it is harder for us to accept losing something that was yours than losing out on what may have been.
This ‘fear of loss’ is natural. It also brings heightened emotional responses with it. People freak out more over losses and threatened losses of what is theirs than they do over not attaining something they want. The problem is that you may not recognize this fear when it happens since you do not want to even imagine losing your spouse.
This is a dynamic you need to grasp in dealing with the affair. For the lover, losing their affair partner is about lost potential. In other words, they really do not have much to loose. You, on the other hand, have a great deal to lose. This difference is why you are more emotionally engaged and tied into things, while the lover can remain distant and aloof.
They can wait things out. With the immediate emotional involvement regarding loss, your emotional strength can run out faster than theirs will. This dynamic also may help you understand how you and the lover look at the situation so differently. For one of you it is a loss, for the other it is about gain. Even if you gain, what you actually accomplished is keeping what is yours.
The whole nature of loss makes you vulnerable to worry.
There are the worries about “what’s next?”, “what are they doing?”, “what have I done wrong?”, “Is there any hope?” and so on. You worry about them, about yourself and constantly look for who or what to blame for what is going on. The less the cheater tells you, the more neurotic your worrying can become.
It is as if you ‘make things up’ and connect the dots, so that you can make sense of what they have not told you. When the cheater withholds information, it makes the worrying worse.
Does this mean that the cheater is a major factor in worry? By all means, yes! If they want you to worry less, they will need to tell you more. There is a reverse correlation between the amount of information shared and the degree of worry. If the cheater fills in the dots and stops withholding information, it will not make all the worry go away, but it will make a major reduction in it.
When it comes to dealing with worry, any reduction in the amount is a welcome relief. Remember an affair does not have to mean your marriage is over.
Best Regards,
Jeff
