When you are faced with a situation where you are not in control and don’t have much information, there is a temptation to stalk.
Affairs and Stalking <– Listen to the audio here.
Hi, this is Jeff Murrah with Affair Recovery Radio. Today we’re going to be dealing with resisting the urge to stalk.
Stalking is a naturally occurring feeling that occurs when you’re faced with a situation where you’re not in control, and you don’t have much information. Any time that you’re in that kind of situation it’s natural to want to stalk, to find out more about what’s going on.
Of course, whether or not what you’re doing is stalking, is often a matter of perspective. If you’re the person who cheated of course you’re going to see what’s going on as stalking or some kind of spying, whereas if you’re the spouse who was cheated on you’re going to view what you’re doing as just checking up on things and finding out what you’re dealing with.
Now, I’ll be dealing with that whole topic in another podcast. But today we’re going to be talking about resisting the urge. Because the urge is going to be there. Eventually you’re going to have to get to the point where you say no to that urge. When you’re faced with those kind of choices, and that kind of scenario, you’re left with questions. What do I do? How do I resist this temptation?
Because when it gets to the point of stalking it’s definitely much more serious than just going through cell phone records, or in the old days it used to consist of going through the wallet or credit card transactions. Now days it’s much more sophisticated.
In terms of resisting the urge to stalk and finding some ways to deal with it we’re going to be talking about that.
First thing is to ask yourself do I need to know this, or do I just want to know. There’s often a tension between what you need to know versus what you want to know. If you need to know, in those cases you may have to go ahead and do your stalking. But if it’s just wanting to know more because you want to, not because you have to, you’re stepping over a line into some stalking, obsessing about the person, things such as that.
It becomes a type of voyeurism where you find yourself getting a thrill from just spying on your spouse, or you live under this illusion that somehow if you watch them enough it will give you some kind of magical control. There’s no magical control there, folks.
This does require that you sort out what you must have from what you want to. There’s a big difference between surviving, which is when you have to have the information, versus wanting to have the information, which is voyeurism.
Number two, recognize and accept that you will never know everything.
With an affair there’s many many things going on. Although as humans we want to know all, we want to see all, we want to have it all, you’re not going to get it. You will never know everything about the affair. You will never have all the details.
The appetite of the eye is voracious. The problem with having so many details is when you have more details that’s more you’re going to have to forgive. Many times, when I’ve talked with spouses, one of their regrets is that they learned too much and it was too hard for them to forgive once they learned all the things that they learned. So you have to keep that in mind as you deal with this whole urge.
Number three, recognize that encroachment brings insecurity. What I mean by that, when you violate boundaries it’s going to stir stuff up rather than settle things down. People tend to feel more secure when their boundaries are secure. And if you’re wanting to settle things down in your marriage relationship stalking is not the way to do it.
If you wanted to stir things up, you start doing some spying, you start violating some boundaries, that is sure to get some reactions. And that is one sure fire way to get things fired up.
The urge will still be there. It’s going to take time for it to fade to where you can say no to the temptation. But at first the solution that I presented, asking yourself the question do I need to know this or do I want to know this.
Number two, recognize and accept that you will never know everything. Number three, realize that encroachment brings insecurity.
These are interventions focused on trying to change your thinking, getting your behavior in line with it may take some practice. And it’s going to take that self-discipline of when you say no that you follow through with not doing it.
Everyone finds themselves, at one point or another, having the urge to stalk. The big difference is whether or not you can resist that urge.
Until next time, this is Jeff Murrah saying goodbye.
