Stopping the physical affair is only the beginning. In order to transform your marriage, you and the cheater will have to address how each of you think about the affair. It is only when you and your spouse make changes in how you think about affairs, that the threat is totally eliminated. When you merely change the behavior, it is only ‘window dressing’ or changing the symptoms. Merely stopping the affair does not remove the raging desires inside of them. When you only change the behavior, the cheater often finds another outlet for their passions.
With many physical disorders, you have to do radical surgery. Radical meaning, surgery that gets at the root of the problem. When it comes to affairs, one of the main roots is how the cheater thinks about affairs, and how they think about marriage in general. If there is faulty, distorted or perverted thinking, it will color every other aspect of their behavior. You also have to do ‘radical’ interventions with affairs, if you truly want them to go away. Until changes are made in their thinking, you still have a ticking time bomb on your hands. You never know what is going to set them off or how long you have until the next affair. The only way to eliminate such a threat is to make changes at the root of the problem. When their thinking about affairs is changed, then you have some change that you can count on, rather than just window dressing or change in appearances.
Thinking is not just limited to the cheater’s fantasies, it also involves how they are programmed. It involves their values, what they think about relationships, what they think about sex, how they value themselves, what their self-image is. Each of these items are part of the ‘thinking’ associated with affairs. Besides their thinking, you also have to address how their brain works. This includes how they deal with stimulation and what stimulates them. When you make changes in that kind of thinking and that kind of processing, you have real change.
Best Regards,
Jeff Murrah
