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When it comes to affairs, there is often a great deal of debate about what actions constitute and affair. Discussions about that are often heated. Another area needing attention is where do you draw the line in terms of how much you are willing to put up with? Knowing this will help you know at what point you will take action. When you do not have a clear line drawn, youmay find yourself fudging and compromising your values away.

Since affairs are very messy and entangling, it is essential to set boundaries and draw lines. When you are ready to get yourself out of the swampy mess, decide where you draw the line. You need to have a clear idea of when ‘enough is enough’. You need to first tell yourself where you draw your line. Once that is established, then you will need to let your spouse know what your line is. They need to know 1. That there are limits as to what you will accept, 2. That you will not allow those limits to be violated. When there are no limits, the chaos tends to spread and engulf anything it comes in contact with.

Best Regards,

Jeff Murrah

adultery, affairs, infidelity, relationships, setting boundaries, setting limits in relationships, Understanding Affairs

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Like an earthquake, the emotional pain caused by infidelity shakes the very foundation of your being. The foundation of your marriage becomes uncertain. In the aftermath of an earthquake, there is the ‘fear’ that it could happen again, you just don’t trust the earth. The aftershocks leave you uncertain. Likewise pain and fears of the affair don’t stop when it is the affair is ‘over’.

Oftentimes, there are also tsunamis that hit your heart and drown you in tears and pain. Both partners ask themselves if there is hope for their marriage to survive.

Money problems, time and worries about the kids may all seem like hills compared to the mountainous problem called infidelity. You should understand that infidelity cuts through your foundation like an earthquake. Before you start running to a divorce lawyer, consider several things. You have to sort out your emotions and logically decide what you really want to do.

Get yourself some support. You cannot face this issue alone. The sense of betrayal, guilt, and confusion may rack your mental health. Without support, you can become very frail and who knows, you might break down. Your support group may be your friends or your family members as long as they are willing to listen and help you out.

Give yourself and your partner time and space. The affair is a stressful matter. Give yourself some time to think through things. When the going gets tough in a basketball game, the coach calls for a timeout. This time, however, you may also need a timeout.

Communicate. Don’t give yourself forever to settle your differences and your marital problems. After talking with your support group and spending some time for thinking, you should then communicate with your partner. You will have to make serious considerations on how to move forward in your marriage.

Divorce is not the only option available for your marriage. When you have to deal with the aftermath of the affair, you have to really communicate with each other and talk of the best move that you will do to save your marriage.

adultery, cheating, infidelity, philandering, relationships, Understanding Affairs

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Your Social Network after the Affair

When you are married and have kids, it is so easy to get bogged down by the details of life. You spend your time working and running the household. You have to look after the kids. It is easy to become so busy that you barely have time for your partner and for your kids. Because of your busyness, you might even forget to maintain your relationships with your parents and your siblings. Even your social network of friends and acquaintances might have suffered.

When you forget about everything else and your marriage and your family is everything you’ve got, your whole world may crumble after the affair. Suddenly, you find out that there are just a handful of people beside you. That could be very devastating and depressing.It makes that pain more intense and the loneliness more alienating.

When you are on your path to recovery from the affair, you need your social network. Your friends and your immediate family can help you sort out your feelings and stand on your feet again.You need friends that care about you. You need people that want to see you at your best rather than setting you up for dates with their other friends or themselves. It is important not to confuse intensity with intimacy. Going through intense tough times can bring people together, but that does not make it intimacy.

After the affair, don’t ever forget to maintain your social network. If they helped you go through the affair, they can also help you with your marriage. If your friends are married, they might have gone through several experiences before. When they relate these experiences to you, these can be lessons that you can heed when dealing with your own marriage.

You don’t have to be a psychologist to understand that individuals need support groups if they were to remain sane and go through the challenges of life. The same is true for marriage. When you have a support group through your social network, you can better work out your marriage even after an affair.

affairs, affairs and friends, affairs with friends, infidelity, relationships, Understanding Affairs

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Whenever sailors take a cruise, they often have to check their course against landmarks in order to accurately figure out where they are at. They have some idea where they are, yet with the landmarks, they can check their bearings and accurately know for sure where they are. Once they have the known fixed points, they can recalibrate their position.

In marriages, when an affair occurs, there is a recalibration. When the affair is discovered, spouses find out how long it lasted and then recalibrate or recalculate their lives. Their whole sense of meaning and reality is contrasted with what they just found out. The recalibration is often frightening. When they find out that what they assumed was ‘real life’ was a fantasy, they are often very angry and very confused.

Like the sailor, once they recalibrate they have a clearer understanding where they are. Once they know where they are and where the relationship truly is, they often take action.

Regards,

Jeff Murrah

cheating, infidelity, recalibration after the affair, relationships, Understanding Affairs

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I recently went to hear John Bradshaw speak. The nationally known author had plenty to say about affairs. as his talk focused on ‘rigorous honesty’.  He addressed his own affairs, and what he found to be motivating them. One of the points that I found of interest was that he mentioned his own sexual addiction existed prior to his alcoholism. I suspect as mental health people  and the recovery community begins exploring the issues behind affairs and substance abuse, they will find many cases  of sexual addiction. The sexual addiction does not make their actions more acceptable, it only provides better understanding behind their actions.

Best Regards,

Jeff Murrah

adultery, affairs, cheating, honesty, infidelity, John Bradshaw, philandering, relationships, Sexual addiction

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Honesty, especially rigorous honesty is a challenge to achieve. Although it is a challenge, the rewards of such honesty is well worth the effort. One of the barriers that prevents couples from obtaining the healing and recovery from an affair or sexual addiction is the reluctance to have such honesty in the relationship.

In many cases people become comfortable living a lie. They even allow their spouses to believe the same lies thinking that if they are honest with them, then their spouse will leave them. The possibility of them leaving is always a risk. If the relationship is so fragile that honesty will cause them to leave, there are even more serious problems in the relationship that need attention. When you are marreid to someone, you want them to love you for who you are, not the image you project onto the wall or onto their lives. We all need genuine companionship, genuine connection with our spouses. This is not possible if you are still living a lie.

The truth may hurt, but living a lie hurts worse than the truth. There may be peace with the lie, but at what cost? What have you sacrificed to obtain a peace based on lies?

If you want such honesty, the time to begin is now. It may start with little things, but eventually you will arrive if you continue living honestly. Living one lie, will lead to more lies and even greater lies, until you find that you have lost your own self.

Honesty is worth the effort.

Regards,

Jeffrey Murrah

adultery, affairs, honesty and infidelity, infidelity, lying, Rebuilding the relationship, relationships, Sexual addiction

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One of the scars of having survived the affair is that you become obsessed with the affair. Not long after, you feel that every single woman that your husband talks to is a potential mistress (If you are the husband, you assume each man is a potential paramour). Your view of the world has changed. When your spouses watches movies, you may wonder which person she it ‘turned on’ by. Each time you ask such questions concerning others, a second question is there as well. That second question is “do I turn her on?” The vulnerability to such questions has been a boon to those selling Viagra and Cialis since they often exploit such questions.

 Even without evidence, you feel that your partner is cheating on you. In the first few months after the affair, this is understandable. However, when this goes on a year after the affair, you better check yourself. If your fears and fantasies have continued that long, you have crossed over the line to obsession.

Rather than obsess, you will need to work towards renewing your relationship with your partner. When you are already in control of your emotions, you should talk with each other and explore your unmet needs. When you do this, you become aware of unmet expectations and needs and you can start doing something about them.

Start doing things together. Such activities may be as simple as shopping, buying things together, and planning things for the kids. In this way, you can become less independent from each other and more dependent. When you start depending on each other, you then start drawing upon the strength of each other. You will then start connecting emotionally again. This way, your love for each other will grow again.  

affair, cheating, infidelity, obsession with affair, obsessions, relationships, Uncategorized

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If there’s one thing gets lost with an affair—that is the connection between you and your partner. The connection that says you love each other as husband and wife. An affair naturally puts a wedge between you and your partner. The spirit of oneness in the marriage has been damaged. If you are willing, you can put the affair behind you and start anew. After all, such kind of testing can strengthen love if you will allow it.

Yet, after the affair, you might have noticed that there is a marked difference in your married life. Ask yourself where the intimacy has gone, and where your marriage is headed to. The only answer is that you have lost the connection that binds a husband and wife together. That connection is part of the spirit of oneness or sense of connectedness.

Bringing back such connection is not your job. Nor is it your partner’s. It is a joint effort, which you should undertake. In the early stages of the affair, you might have displayed emotional independence and strength. Yet, that kind of independence will have to make way to vulnerability and dependence on your partner. If you will both come to the conclusion that you are supporting each other, then the connection will slowly start coming back to your married life. It takes time, but as you continue depending on each other, you’ll see the connection back.

The more emotions you share with each other and the more experiences the two of you share, the greater the capacity for the connectedness.

Rebuilding the relationship, recovering from an affair, recovering from infidelity, relationships

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A popular credit card company uses the catch phrase question, “What is in your wallet?”.  The campaign using the phrase has been catchy to say the least. When an affair occurs, and lawyers are involved, the question arises “What is in your…best interest?” While the lawyers are busy angling for your wallet, they will cite that what they are doing is ‘in your best interest’. They are looking at your legal rights instead of your emotional best interest. There will be many people offering to assist, all in the name of your ‘best interest’. What you need to consider is what angle are they considering your best interest from? Grandparents look at it in terms of access to the grandkids, lawyers look at legal rights, counselors look at emotional status, financial planners look at the bottom line. All these things are important, but you need to consider what is in the best interest of YOUR MARRIAGE. What will bring healing?

Best Regards,

Jeff Murrha

affair, cheating, infidelity, marriage, Rebuilding the relationship, relationships, saving your marriage

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Affairs have a way of distorting behavior. They distort behaviors and the meaning of behaviors. The distortion is so great that you can hardly recognize many behaviors for what they originally were. Flirting is one of those behaviors. Many men and women have a way of interacting with members of the opposite sex that outsiders would consider flirting. It is their usual way of interacting with others. They do not intend to seduce or make anything happen. They just want to enjoy the interaction and make a few people smile.

When the marriage is on a rocky foundation, such behavior becomes threatening. When the marriage is not secure any attention that members of the opposite sex receive is seen as attention that is not being devoted to your spouse. If you are a flirt, or enjoy flirting, make sure that your spouse is receiving your undivided attention.  When there is a history of affairs in the past of either spouse, such behaviors are often taken out of context.

I wish I could provide a hard and fast rule on flirting, but it is not possible since all behavior needs to be looked at in the context of the relationships people are in. What is not threatening  for one couple is threatening for another based on the context of their situation and insecurities. So in response to the question of “Is flirting a threat?”, it all depends on the relationship and its emotional health.

Best Regards,

Jeff Murrah

cheating, flirting and affairs, infidelity, relationships, Understanding Affairs

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