The shortening of most people’s attention span brings problems with it. With all the texting, multi-tasking and other attention sucking tasks, your mind acts like it’s fragmented.
It thinks more in pieces rather than all together. This poses some problems for affair recovery.
If you’re one of those affected, the fragmented thinking leaves you handicapped when it comes time to work through the affair in terms of what it means, how to recover and how to rebuild intimacy.
With a fragmented thinking, you may find yourself looking for quick and easy answers. You want instant results to your efforts.
Tasks that take time, patience and determination are the ones you avoid. In working through an affair, those are the tasks that you need mastery of.
Recovery involves considering consequences, long-term effects and how one person’s actions impacts others.
For example, take the issue of the ‘meaning of the affair’. You know that your spouse cheated. What does that mean?
If you have fragmented thinking, you want a quick and short response. Working through it means you consider, what the affair means to you, to the cheater, to the lover, to your family, what it means now, what it means five years from now, what it means in terms of values, what it means in terms of spiritual dimensions, etc.
In other words you consider it from all angles. If you’re not able to see it from all angles, then you’re being unrealistic in expecting your spouse to see it from any angle other than their own.
The fragmented attention, means that you haven’t thought through everything. You may have obsessed, but that is not thinking through.
Thinking through means considering what happened with the affair. This means sorting out what you know from what you suspect.
It also means sorting out what happened and what the meaning of it is. Deciding whether you can live with that meaning.
Identifying what it will take to move past that meaning. Identifying what is missing from your marriage.
Assessing what your marriage means to you and why it means that. Assessing what your choices are along with your willingness to make tough choices and follow through with them.
With fragmented thinking, you only want someone else to tell you “What should I do?”
If your struggle includes fragmented thinking, which often occurs with the traumatizing effects of an affair, you’ll want to consider joining the support community at Restored Lifestyle.
There you can connect with others going through similar struggles like yours. You can catch up on the latest affair research and articles without having to scour the web. You’ll also gain access to the affair recovery books and videos as part of membership.
Best Regards,
Jeff
6 Responses
This seems to be a very valid aspect of even WHY my husband chose to have his cake and eat it too. He thought through the various aspects of HOW to get to do all he did but not the fall out upon not just his own life but EVERYONE that is immediately dealing with it. Even now he is only interested in what applies to his own life. He has stated he has stopped all contact with people who call him …When I asked why he doesn’t call them back he says he does not care.
I stated perhaps that he could look at the contact more from how it might extend some care toward them …but that does not seem to matter anymore to him
It seems his whole point of any kind of relationship has been what’s in it for HIM …all this time I thought I was viewing him as someone who cared for others but as time has gone by and I have had to take another clearer look at the panorama of our lives it seems that all of our various efforts to entertain others has had a selfish motive at the base of it.
I am sad to learn this because ‘giving’ with that kind of attitude is very unsatisfying . I believe that in TRUE selfless giving lies the greatest depth of satisfaction and has more of a genuine connecting effect.
Perhaps that is why and how he has been able to take so well only ‘giving’ financial or convenient types of exchanges. This may also explain why our sex life seemed so disconnected and mechanical
I wonder if there is any real future for HIM …I would say ‘us’ but I am thinking that without an intervention of mammoth proportions in his heart and mind that I face a future of being maybe a counselor to him at best. He has no ‘need’ for me in any other category. He has been really damaged by this ongoing and lengthy lifestyle of deceit.
Sad
It seems people with the capacity to get whatever their instantly felt needs are without too much effort bore easily with making a ‘game’ of competing for all the toys in life. Nothing seems left for him from what I can deduce discussing his future with him …”OUR” future was apparently given very little thought throughout his career ….I learned once at a company party while he was having a casual conversation with someone else that he ‘never would retire’ …Nice to know that life with his wife was nothing promising to him …of course he was involved with his OW at that time …He simply made his plans with no one else in mind or at least he did not disclose his plans with me even as I asked about it from time to time …
Where are we going ? ” was just not a question he cared to discuss with me …I feel something like one o his life long ‘entourage ‘ appendages….I sometimes wish we had never gone on to this career that brought so much opportunity to this man who did not have the strength of character nor maturity to appreciate the LIFE that he was given to steward.
He still has time but he still does not seem to see the value in learning HOW to live rightly.
I feel tired of trying to orient much more of our lives around his ambivalence but too old , tired and unwell to detach….I am still thankful for my life, my family and my Lord ….all else is non essential .
Pressing on. Sad to watch this man’s self imposed misery.
Zaza,
Your comment about how sad it is watching his ‘self-imposed misery’ struck a chord with me. It is sad, even to the point of being tragic how may people caught up in the affairs, lies and lifestyle are slowly self-destructing. It is sad and painful to watch. The great potential, the great “what could have beens” go crumbling before us, like watching a car crash in slow motion. I had not considered that part of the affair tragedy.
Thank you Jeff,…You know I so appreciate your feed back …I don’t even care if you were to have a difference of opinion ..I do believe feed back and reflections are part of how we grow and think about other perspectives of whatever we are trying to work through ..So much of the things in the past situations in retrospect I assigned to ME as if I did something wrong or somehow was seeing something in error ..Now I realize it was NOT ‘just me’ !
I also think with all our moving around few to none knew what was going on in terms of being able to observe any glitches in the behavior of my husband except me and it was rather rare . This is because he made a routine’ of being ‘at work’ long hours from the earliest part of his career change , His continued promotions also seemed to have reasonable demands in this time factor.
I was very ‘understanding ‘ of this because prior to marriage I had a very demanding career ,One of the reasons I did not marry until I had gotten my career out of my system . I knew I could not do both marriage and the music business as I felt the Word called for and when children came I wanted to be able to BE WITH them,….why have them if you are just going to let other people raise them! Boggled my mind when people we knew were hiring nannies!Not to mention realizing that the influences that we allow our children to learn from may not be of the faith that mattered so much to me …I thought mattered to my husband ….not so much it turns out.
Now the OW has raised the children from adultery to pretty much be opposite of our children so far….a very deadly foundation in them now ….surprise>?????!
Zaza,
Your question, “why have them if you are just going to let other people raise them!” is a gem. It starts getting at the root of many issues. When children are viewed as the by-product of an affair, rather than the part of the blessings and fruit of a good marriage, it tells you a great deal about the values of the people. A person’s attitude toward children often gives you insights as to whether they are self-oriented or capable of loving others. When children are raised by nannies, the parents have delegated away their power, influence, and blessings. Having your children raised by others is a curse, NOT a blessing. Historically, when your children are raised by others, it was viewed as a sign of one’s bondage. Being free was associated with raising your own children. The question “why have them if you are just going to let other people raise them?” examines the attitude behind the action. Those who allow others to raise their children are often caught up in bondage and may or may not realize it.
Bondage to MAMMON most of the time …often though in our society so drifted away from Biblical truth and compromise on scriptural literacy we are way behind the curve on knowledge of what GOD actually has said . His gifts and privileges have been traded for the ‘pottage’ of humanist forms of ‘godliness’ ….like life ‘lite’ …maybe filling but not satisfying…no wonder grasping empty ‘pleasure ‘ has been the carrot on the stick for so many that are ‘destroyed for lack of knowledge’
I see our state of the nation in particular as those who are not ‘entering in
but are going to be darned if they will allow anyone else pursue the life that our constitution once stood for freedom to live a godly life ….
Mar 4:19 And the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful.
and….
Luk 11:52 Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered.
Some things never change….
Zaza,
You are correct. Although some consider it ancient wisdom, it is as true today as the day it was given.