Many of you do not know me other than through the blog. If you did, you would be familiar with my sayings and experiences. One saying that I often repeat is “I don’t understand evil”. As a counselor, I recognize it when I see it, I have seen it in action, I can describe it, but grasping people’s reasons for resorting to it is beyond what I can imagine.
One of the ways I have seen evil is with what I call ‘the trap’. This situation occurs when the cheater is set up by family members for the affair. Once the affair happens, the family works at splitting you and the cheater apart. They work against any kind of reconciliation. For whatever reason, they are using the affair as a way to gain control of their ‘child’. I consider this ‘evil’ since the affair is intentionally used as a tool to split the marriage. Although such situations are difficult to imagine, they do happen. Those ‘nice’ in-laws could actually be plotting the destruction of your marriage and resort to desperate measures in order to do so. They could be working against you, and actually be angry with you for working to save your marriage. In such situations, do not be surprised when they blow up at you because you couldn’t just ‘let be’.
The cheater in such cases is a hostage. They are held captive by loyalties to their family and the emotional bonds of the affair. This double bondage is particularly hard to escape from, since the family bonds are being used against them. Your spouse is worth rescuing, although the in-laws will be trying to sabotage your efforts.
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Best Regards,
Jeffrey Murrah
