Asking questions often leads to fights. Cheaters tend to avoid accountability and tough questions are necessary.
How to ask questions without fighting <<– listen to the audio here
Hi, this is Jeff Murrah with Affair Recovery Radio. I’m glad you’re here with me this evening. Tonight we’re going to be talking about how to ask questions without fighting.
As you know, in dealing with affairs, when it comes down to asking questions, those questions are often what lead to fights. It seems as though the more accountability you bring into the situation the more they want to avoid accountability. And that gets awfully aggravating.
There are things that you can do in terms of how you ask your questions, that can reduce the likelihood of it turning into fights. And that’s what we’re going to be dealing with. I know that tough questions are often necessary, because there’s no way you’re going to get out of this affair situation with softball questions. You’re going to have to ask some tough ones.
In terms of asking the questions you want to find out how can you ask a question without starting a major fight. That’s what we’re going to be dealing with.
In terms of the simple answer, you need to be careful what you aim at. I’m going to use the acronym AAT for tonight’s explanation. Ironically the word “at” means toward, and when you are in a confrontation you are heading straight toward your spouse.
Whenever you approach someone or come toward them you need to use some caution. So we’re going to be talking about that “at” principle and being careful what you aim at.
The first part of that, the A, is avoiding questions that don’t have answers. If you’re one of those spouses that you want to ask the cheater all kinds of questions that don’t have answers, that’s going to lead to problems.
When I say questions that don’t have answers it’s going to be stuff like why do men do such and such, why do women do such and such. Those large, generalized questions that don’t have an answer, you’re headed for trouble.
What goes along with that, when you’re asking questions that you know you’re setting them up, you already have the answer and they’re being set up, they can smell that. That’s a close cousin to this one, but questions that don’t have answers, that will only serve to aggravate them and it’s like putting gasoline on a fire.
With this one I know a lot of you are probably excusing it saying well, I was just asking some simple questions. No, you were probably using questions to do some griping and complaining and asking them questions that there were no answers to, or that they didn’t have an answer to.
Because although you may assume that they know, why did you do this, why did you do that, they may or may not have an answer to it. And if you keep hitting them on the question that they don’t have an answer to, the only way that they’re going to be able to get out of the situation is to escalate it to a fight. So that’s why you want to avoid questions that don’t have answers.
The second part of the AAT, have an Attitude of being uninformed rather than accusatory. And what I mean here about uninformed, attitude is critical here. If you approach the questioning with that you really don’t know what’s going on and you’re curious about what’s happening, or what did happen, that’s going to come across much better than if you’re like a prosecuting attorney that’s just trying to pin somebody to the wall.
An example may be, “Honey, can you explain what happened at that bar that night? I know that the music was playing, you had a couple drinks, and that this person came up to you. And you said that they started putting their hand on your leg. I’m a little confused as to what happened next.”
That’s going to come across much better than if you took the approach, “So when the slut put her hand on your leg– what’d you do then?”. Very different. Very different. And it’s going to lead to a very different outcome. And that’s why I’m saying having an attitude of being uninformed or a little bit puzzled is going to go much better than the accusatory.
The T part, that is give them Time to respond before asking more questions. I know that you’ve got lots of questions. No one enjoys being machine-gunned with questions. Because when you hit them with one question after another after another after another they’re going to get frustrated and throw their hands up and leave the situation.
I’ve seen many couples, and I know with me I have found myself in this situation too, where I get hit with several questions. Somebody may throw five or six questions at me, and then you don’t know which one to answer.
Your mind can only handle so much information at once and when you are thrown all those questions at one time it can be very aggravating.
Of course the only way out of that, which one do you want me to answer first. Because all of them may be important. It may be that you’re going to have to do your homework and decide which question to ask first. Because hitting them with all the questions at once, that’s just going to frustrate them. It’s a sure way to get into a fight.
With any of these points that I’m bringing up this evening, if you do just the opposite it’s a sure way to turn things into a fight. So if you ask them a lot of questions that don’t have answers, if you go in there with an accusatory attitude, if you don’t give them time to answer the question before you hit them with the next question, that’s going to escalate. You’re going to have a fight on your hands.
Doing the opposite, which is to avoid questions that don’t have answers, to have an attitude of being uninformed versus one of being accusatory, and three, to give them time to respond before asking them more questions, these are ways that you can get your questions to the cheater without things turning into a fight.
You may be one of those people that is actually shooting yourself in the foot by the way that you’re asking the questions and making it to where you’re not easy to deal with.
When you do these things it’s going to make it easier for them to talk to you. Because their feelings are going to be raw too, as well as yours. I know it’s important and you’re going to have to realize you’re not going to be able to get all the questions answered at once. One at a time, and you’ll eventually get there.
Even though you want to gorge and get all the information at once that’s not a good way to do it. This will give you some ways to ask questions without major fights breaking out. Because our main goal is to get you to recover from the affair, not to keep the fights going.
If you go ahead and you take the things we’ve talked about this evening and you start doing them now it will make a major difference in how things come out. And also it will improve your communication skills. Especially those with your spouse.
I encourage you to go ahead and start practicing these.
Best Regards,
Jeff
