Although you are told to be thankful for all things, it is hard to be thankful for anything related to your spouse having an affair. You can be thankful that you survived it, or that you have not been exposed to some communicable disease or something along those lines. It is a struggle to come up with much to be thankful for. One of the few benefits of an affair is that it puts you in a place where you re-evaluate things in your life and marriage. While you are in such a state, you may want to consider breaking free of control games. One of the things that makes affairs more devastating are the control games in marriages that hold you hostage to even greater pain. Whether it is driven by fear, shame or disgust, the control games often make you suffer more than you may need to.
When you are in a ‘re-evaluation’ mode, your mind and emotions are willing to make changes, including breaking free from such bondage and choosing to no longer be trapped by them. I am not asking you to give up your commitment to the marriage. This is about giving up the games. It is about letting go of the threats, intimidation and coercive things that have been going on. Typically, affairs do not easily occur in marriages where there is healthy functioning. You may have thought that all was well, yet if all was well, no one would have been seeking out an affair. The silver lining is that now, while you are in crisis mode, you can change that. You can make things healthy rather than unhealthy. You can stop the name calling, put-downs, threats, withdrawal games and other tit-for-tat type of dynamics that have been a part of your marriage. You don’t have to just make it through the crisis, you can make the relationship better and healthier. In order to do this, you will have to honestly assess what you and your spouse do that are control games and then stop them. Choose not to play them, since no one wins at such games in the first place.
You can learn more about this topic in my e-book dealing with trust, How Can I Trust You Again?.
Best Regards,
Jeff Murrah
