During recovery from an affair, you may find yourself dealing with placating and patronizing. These two “P’s” of placating and patronizing are relationship roadblocks that keep your marriage from moving forward.
The placating often shows up as the cheater giving you their excuse or plausible excuse or reason for the affair thinking that it qualifies as ‘talking about the affair’. When the cheater is placating, they throw these out, hoping that it will shut you up and end discussions of the affair once and for all.
Anytime you revisit the affair after that in search of ‘real answers’, you may be greeted with either verbal or non-verbal disapproval. They hope that their anger will discourage you from any further discussions of topics that make them uncomfortable. (At this point, they place their own emotional comfort way ahead of honesty in terms of priorities).
When they placate you, they are hoping that you will gladly accept their well-crafted excuse. They know that there is a part of you that wants things to move past the affair as quickly as possible and with as little pain as possible. Neither of those is possible if you want real healing. Healing that happens too fast is incomplete. Healing without pain often indicates that only surface symptoms have been dealt with and not the underlying issues behind it.
The other “P” in the placating and patronizing combo is ‘patronizing’. This is talking down to you in some form of fashion. When the message behind the communication is “you don’t know what you are talking about” or “you’re not smart enough to handle this” are what you walk away with, you have been patronized.
Patronizing stifles communication. The communication ceases to be between two equals when patronizing is used. One party takes a superior position to the other. Talking down to each other will bog your communication down rather than move it ahead.
Patronizing also turns each attempt at discussing the affair into a power struggle. The topic is challenging enough without adding a power struggle into it. By changing it from a discussion to a power struggle, it deflects from the original issue.
There are ways of dealing with each of these communication games and ploys.
Recently, I began taking some Krav Maga classes. Since it is a form of martial arts, training consists of learning moves and counter-moves. When the aggressor exhibits a particular move, you train your body and mind to react with a counter move.
In a similar way, you will have to train your communication skills and thinking to recognize and respond to moves such as the placating and patronizing.
Best Regards,
Jeff
