Some of you like living on the edge. You only feel alive when there is a potential danger. The greater the danger, the more intense the thrill. Under most circumstances, this ‘living on the edge’ approach to life is stimulating and exciting.
When affairs enter the picture, your getting too close to the edge or ‘brinkmanship’ becomes a high risk activity. What makes this activity more dangerous than others is that you may not be able to stop once your mind and emotions are engaged.
With affairs, you start a series of events in motion. You are not only dealing with your emotions, you are dealing with the lover’s emotions and your spouse’s emotions.
Once the relationship is ‘in motion’, you loose control. If you can’t control your own emotions, how are you going to control the emotions and emotional reactions of the other people involved?
When an affair begins, it’s like a car rolling down hill. The time to brake the car is early on. If you wait too late, the brakes will be unable to stop the motion of the vehicle.
It becomes a matter of physics. The momentum of the relationship is more than any brakes or slowing things down can handle. Your ego may think it can handle it, but you’re mistaken. Although it often takes a certain amount of ego in starting an affair, that same ego works against you when you think you can slow it down or stop it.
Stopping an affair is always going to be messier and take longer than you imagined.
In a similar manner, when the mind and emotions are wrapped up in the affair, it is often hard to stop either yourself or the other person from taking things ‘over the edge’. The risks may make you feel alive, yet the potential price tag contains more hidden costs that a Congressional spending bill.
If you are prone to brinkmanship, this is one activity you do not want to play as close to the edge as you can. The emotional momentum can be overwhelming and push you into something you never considered yourself doing.
Best Regards,
Jeff
