After the hurt and loss, you need nurturing.
Affairs and Nurturing <– Listen to the audio here
Hi, this is Jeff Murrah with another edition of Affair Recovery Radio. Today what we’re going to be talking about is nurturing.
I went ahead and included nurturing because after you experience the immense pain and the losses associated with an affair, it’s almost like the bottom falls out and your world is devastated. One of the things that you need, and need very much, is nurturing.
I wanted to address this issue because many people don’t know how to nurture, or have the time or the energy to nurture anymore. And this is problematic because it’s almost like with everybody so busy blowing and going these days, to recover from an affair and to have good emotional healing, takes time. It also takes nurturing, and many people do not have either the time or the emotional resources to go ahead and take you through that.
Because nurturing involves feeding, caring, educating, taking good care of yourself, support systems, often feed you. But when they are taking care of you you’ve got to ask yourself are they giving me the kind of nutrition that I need.
And by nutrition I’m not just talking about food. Because, I mean, like for instance, the social service agencies or the support groups or ever the church groups, may bring you meals or whatever, but I’m also talking about the emotional, physical, spiritual, and relationship needs that you have. You still need to be around people. You still need somebody to give you a hug. You still need encouraging words. You still need somebody to keep you motivated to do things.
This is all part of nurturing. It does also include going out and getting exercise and keeping motivated to do that to keep your body moving, as well as eating. Although the tendency with some of you may be that you want to shut down, just lay down in bed and not face the world again, that’s destructive. You want to avoid that.
And I know that you don’t jump out of bed just eager for the day to get going either. It’s going to take time and effort, and plenty of nurturing, to get you back to that point again. So that’s why we’re going to be talking about nurturing here, since many of you don’t know how to do it or don’t have the time to do it.
First off, in terms of improving your nurturing, you need to eat a healthy, well-balanced diet. With greater and greater frequency researchers are finding there are strong connections between diet and how you feel. During this time, after a big loss like you’ve had with an affair, you’re going to need to take care of yourself in terms of your diet.
I’m not meaning in terms of loading up on the comfort food. No. That’s not what I’m talking about. That’s not healthy for you. And it’s not healthy for you to load up on the fast food or a poor diet. Just because you’re not hungry does not mean that you eat a few green beans or pick at some meal and call that eating.
Because that poor diet can leave you feeling worse, number one. And secondly it can also leave you with a lot of fuzzy thinking. Because if you’re not getting the proper nutrients you’re not going to think clearly. You’re not going to have the energy to do things. Your body’s not going to be processing things. They have found that diet is also a factor with some sleep difficulties. I know that you’re not sleeping well, and it could be one of the factors is your diet. You need to eat a healthy, well-balanced diet.
Number two, you’re going to need to associate with winners. People that will encourage you, people that will build you up. If you spend your whole day hanging around people that label you as a loser, that see you as damaged goods, that see you as somehow inferior to them or not as good as them, or anything such as that, you’re hanging out with losers.
You need to be hanging out with winners. People that would give you pats on the back, way to go, and encourage you, and help you see the potential that you can accomplish each day. These are going to be the winners.
Number three, you need to look for a support system that encourages you to make your own choices rather than follow the party line.
There’s a lot of people out there that will want to encourage you. Unfortunately some of these people that want to encourage you, they may want to encourage you for selfish reasons or to push their own agenda. Like if you’re a wife whose husband has cheated on them, there’s plenty of people out there that will chime in to the man-hater’s club and say all sorts of negative things about your spouse, and about men in general. That’s not going to help you get through the affair.
They may provide you with some emotional support, but that, in many cases, they are wanting you to be a part of their team and join up with their party line. And there may be others that will want you to, whether it’s a social group or a church group or whatever, they want you to join their party line rather than you make your own choices and weigh out what is best for your marriage and you. You’re going to have to be wary of that.
You want people that will encourage you to stand up on your own. In other words, to grow up and have your own voice. Some groups out there will try to literally have you emotionally beat down. To be quiet, to shut up and accept the situation, don’t make waves. That’s not going to improve your marriage. That’s not going to help you recover from the affair.
Yes, they will not make waves, but it’s not going to bring healing either. Just because there’s no waves does not mean that things are healed. So you want a group that will encourage you to have your own voice.
In terms of your support system you also want a group that will tell you the truth that you need to hear. Many times there will be people say oh, things are going to get better, everything’ll be all right, it’ll be better tomorrow, and stuff like that. You don’t need that. What you need, you need people that are compassionate, yet they tell you the truth. They come up to you and say yeah, that sucks what happened. That’s terrible, that’s painful. It must be hard getting up each day. But you know, you’re going to have to because you still have to work, you still have to take care of yourself, you still have some responsibilities.
And just because the affair happened does not mean that life ends. That may not be something that you want to hear, but it is something that you need to hear. That is part of nurturing as well. It’s not all just the warm fuzzies feelings. Sometimes it’s the kick in the butt to tell you that you need to do something and get up and do something now.
These are things that you can start today, and start putting into place today. And I want to encourage you that with each passing day where you do these things, it will leave you feeling better. This is part of nurturing. It would be nice to have one-shot nurturing, but it doesn’t work that way. It’s a day by day, hour by hour thing, where you’re going to need to take care of yourself rather than allow yourself to crater.
This is part of your recovery.
This is Jeff Murrah, signing off from Affair Recovery, saying goodbye until next time. Thank you.
