One of the reasons that cheaters have trouble moving past their affair is that they have not learned to hate the cheating. When cheaters harbor enjoyable feelings and associations with the affair, they are not over it.
You may have wondered why your cheater is not over what they did. The reason may be that they have not learned to hate affairs. As long as they have favorable feelings toward the affair or the lover, there is a risk of relapse. Cheaters often don’t understand or want to accept this.
They may still view the lover as a decent person, which they may be. Whether or not the lover is a decent person is not what is a concern here. The cheater has to learn to hate the affair if they hope to recover from it.
The lover may have been a nice person, but what happened was not nice, it wasn’t love, it wasn’t acceptable. The cheater has to become an ‘affair hater’. You have to learn to hate what they did, and what they were caught up in. The cheater also has to learn this.
The hating of the affair is a hard concept for many people to grasp. It involves separating the people from the behavior. What they did was not acceptable.
The cheater will have to get out of the defend ‘the honor of the lover mode’ and begin hating what was done. You also need to listen for whether the cheater hates the effects of the affair or hates the affair.
They may hate the consequences, and in your desire to see them make changes, you may confuse their hatred of the effects with the hatred of the act itself.
You and the cheater may never see eye to eye on perceptions about the lover. Although there may not be eye to eye agreement on the person, there does need to be eye to eye agreement on the hatred of the affair.
To see what I recommend for dealing with this situation check out my video on Cheater Recovery. The video covers what they need to change, how to approach discovery along with what happened inside of them during the affair.
Best Regards,
Jeff
One Response
Aside from the trust in scripture’s description of what God defines as ‘good” …this is difficult for anyone to be able to see that a good person does not choose to cheat. Jesus said there are NONE GOOD but GOD,.
When we realize the pain and hurt and damages done to all that have endured this kind of deceit then perhaps one will learn to see the whole thing is the light of how heinous it is .
I think the problem is not solved by the CS viewing their OP as vile…but they need to understand the whole aspect of deceit and cheating in all of it’s wickedness and damage to their own lives …and those they have thought they were doing a ‘good job’ of ‘loving ‘ simply by way of being able to cover their sins up .
Otherwise if only the person they cheated with is one who they see as wicked but not the whole matter as harmful and vile….they may not put the act in the proper context and desire to learn what leads to their attractions that draw them into the messes….and not realize what they must know bout their own vulnerabilities…and what to do to protect themselves from ‘themselves’ in terms of changing their ‘appetites ‘ and learning to govern themselves.
Isn’t it one of the ways people who think they would ‘never cheat’ end up finding themselves in what leads them into these things deeper and deeper….It would seem to be a ‘no brainer’ yet it still goes on until the person is willing to take responsibility for their own choices and steer clear of such opportunities either proactively or defensively …learning to speak to people who approach them seductively with words and actions that get the point across…and to stay out of potential situations and venues that make cheating so readily possible.
All of this depends upon that person’s willingness to even consider the need for this kind of proactive preparation …learning about the various ways this is important to do. It is sad that having seen the pain of one infidelity that many do not think about it and go and do it again ….they simply do not care about those they hurt.
There is something to the aspect of our later push with a self esteem movement in the last several generations that denies the need for learning how to live so that you have self RESPECT that is rooted in the depths of understanding how self respect depends on one understanding the value of keeping one’s moral standards and understanding why that is important for every aspect of one’s health ..body , soul, mind and spirit.