Affairs steal your peace of mind. When that is stolen, it may be hard to be in public settings without your mind ‘imagining’ all the affairs going on and people hitting on your spouse. Such unwanted thoughts can interfere with your interacting with those people. Unwanted thoughts run the gamut from occasional unwanted thoughts to outright paranoia where you make assumptions about anyone who talks to your spouse as threats to your marriage, although you don’t want to think that they are all wanting your spouse, that is what your brain is telling you. Such unwanted thoughts take the joy out of being in public. They can ruin a dinner in no time flat.
Turning off the thoughts is not easy. It starts by consciously telling yourself “NO” to such thoughts and the imagined outcome of what happens next. You will have to stay in the ‘here and now’. You will have to be honest with yourself about what is going on and what people are saying and doing. Reading too much into things soon turns into a tormenting episode. Since cheater often thrive on ‘double-meanings’ and twisting things, their poisonous thinking may spill over and taint your ability to interact with people. You will have to stop reading things into what is said and what the motivations of the people are. Your own fears can create monsters out of innocent interactions.
You will also need to quit fast-forwarding every interaction. Role playing in your head takes a lot of energy. You do not need to be wasting your time and mental energy imagining every potential scenario in your head. This means that you will have to give your brain permission to turn off the fast-forwarding mechanism, which often comes when you feel like you need to be on guard.
The unwanted thoughts will not all go away at once. The more you refuse to give into them, the less intense they will be and the less invasive they will become.
Best Regards,
Jeff Murrah
4 Responses
I almost never leave a response, however I read some of
the remarks here Fighting the unwanted thoughts. I actually do have
a couple of questions for you if it’s okay. Is it only me or does it seem like some of these remarks look like they are left by brain dead folks? 😛 And, if you are posting on additional online social sites, I’d like to keep up with everything new
you have to post. Would you make a list of the complete urls of your social networking pages like your linkedin profile, Facebook page or twitter feed?
Redeaula,
Presently this is the main site where I post. Ezinearticles (ezinearticles.com) does have several of my articles dealing with affairs. Some of my parenting articles are also on Parent University (a project with the Pasadena Independent School District). Since the site deals with a topic where people are hurting, there are often a wide range of responses which I enjoy and endeavor responding to. I welcome your comments or questions as well.
I found your article through a search engine query. I read your article but I’m not sure that it was relative to the search criteria. Your article is covering unwanted thoughts which could lead to paranoia, but what about thoughts which are still unwanted but do not lead to paranoia. I am imagining a scenario of my spouse triggered by an object. My spouse and I are still together and I have no fears of her infidelity but I get unwanted thoughts about what she was doing. The object triggering these thoughts are condoms. I imagine her lover taking condoms to her workplace (where the affair happened) to have sex with my spouse. It’s been a year tomorrow since I found out about the affair and I’m still having problems with it.
Derek,
There are many types of unwanted thoughts, and not all lead to paranoia, although when allowed to continue, they do lead to unrealistic thinking. By unrealistic thinking, it feels as if one part of your brain may know that it does not make sense, yet another part behaves like it is real. You may use the rational part of your brain to dismiss the threat or the thought, yet the emotional part is still reacting.
Since affairs are traumatic, they require some time to heal. The area of thoughts and fantasies often take longer. The example you gave is a good illustration of what is often called ‘displacement’. Although the affair is over, your mind may lock onto an object and have unrealistic and unwanted thoughts about the object. In such cases, the fears about your spouse have been diverted to the object.
In terms of overcoming the unwanted thought. Consider what it is you need from your wife and the relationship with your wife. Do you need assurances of her commitment? need her to change jobs? need to feel closer to her? etc.? The unwanted thought is likely an area that is alerting you to the need for some further healing. The process of healing after an affair can take 18 months or longer, depending on the severity of what happened and the status of the marriage and spouses prior to the affair.
BTW, Great Question! I am glad that you found the site.