Since fantasies are a big part of affairs, you’ll have to confront them.
Affairs and Fantasies <– listen to the audio here
Hi, this is Jeff Murrah with Affair Recovery Radio. Today we’re going to be dealing with the question of “What do you really know?”
I pose this question because many times with an affair the role of fantasy is very significant. Many times people get wrapped up in what they think is going on.
What you think is going on is often what gets you into a lot of trouble. Since fantasies are a big part of an affair you’re going to have to confront them (the fantasies).
Before taking off and accusing people and attacking the cheater, attacking the lover, you may have to confront your own fantasies at first. Because fantasies have a way of enhancing affairs, and also the pain of affairs.
And when I say enhance, the fantasy part soups up, or embellishes. It just revs up everything. It takes what is there and literally makes mountains out of molehills. And that works against you in terms of trying to come to grips with it and moving past the affair.
When you’re faced with a challenge in front of you that is as huge as Mount Everest. It’s going to seem overwhelming and it’s going to present itself as a very daunting task.
If you see what’s going on in front of you as just a large hill, that’s something that you can tackle, maybe one step at a time, but you can make it.
That’s why we need to take a look at what do you really know.
The solution is going to be you’re going to have to sort out fact from speculation.
1. Consider what you know for sure. What are the facts?
Once you have these facts, at that point go ahead and write them down. These are your data points. You know that your spouse came home late. You know that there was aftershave or perfume or lipstick on their clothes. You know that there was some evidence.
In terms of what sense you make of the evidence, that’s speculation. You need to sit down and know what are the facts. What has for sure happened. That’s your data points.
2. Separate facts from feelings. Just because you feel something doesn’t make it a fact.
I’m not saying that your feelings are all imagination, at this point, or to be treated like that. I am saying that when it comes down to sorting out stuff that’s going on in the affair you’re going to have to look at it objectively.
Feelings are going to keep you from looking at it objectively, and part of this is going to be separating the facts from the feelings.
In the old Dragnet show there was a character, played by I believe it was Joe Friday,often said “Just the facts, ma’am, just the facts“. And that’s what you want to get to here, just the facts.
Many times our mind takes those separate little incidents, like I mentioned in number one, the data points, and runs off with them. It creates something bigger than it needs to be. And one way to keep that type of phenomena from happening is to stick with what the facts are.
3. Be open to alternative ways of connecting the dots. When your kids, many of you probably did those exercises where you did connect the dots. Since an affair has occurred you’ve got these facts, or these data points, or if you want to think of these as the little dots that you’re going to connect, at this point you need to be open to are there some other ways that I could have connected the dots.
You can’t argue with the dots. The dots are the facts. These are things that happen that you know for sure. What is up for grabs is the sense that you make out of them. Or how you connect them.
Because in your mind you’re going to be wanting to make sense out of things. As human beings we have a very hard time tolerating ambiguity.
One of the biggest challenges that we face, many times, is when we don’t know what’s going on. This works against us, often times, because that’s where your mind starts manufacturing the fantasies about the affair.
Then you find yourself believing the fantasy more than what really happened.
In the old story of the prodigal son it was fascinating because although the one boy went off and spent his money and came back, which is all we know for facts, it was his brother that suggested “oh he spent it all on whores, he spent it all just doing wrong things”. Nowhere in the story does it say that the prodigal son actually did that.
This kind of phenomenon happens with affairs. Many times people know that the money was spent, they came home with these stains, these smells or whatever, and they manufacture things to fill in the holes.
You’re going to have to keep yourself from that practice of manufacturing things and stick with what are the facts. And be open to hearing alternative explanations as to how they connect the dots, or other ways that you can make sense out of what happened.
That does not mean that the cheater didn’t cheat. It does mean in terms of talking to the cheater, and in terms of recovering from the affair, you need to have at least that kind of objectivity.
This will help you sort out what you really know and what you think you know. Because your solutions are only going to be as good as the facts that you know, and what you know for sure.
If you’re making a lot of action based on speculation that’s not going to give you very good solutions.
This is where being part of a support community like at Restored Lifestyle can help. There you can share your thoughts and struggles in helping you make sure what you know and what you are imagining.
Best Regards,
Jeff
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