There’s a huge difference between when the affair ends and when it’s over.
When is the affair over? <<– listen to the audio here
Hi, this is Jeff Murrah with Affair Recovery Radio, and I’m glad you’re here with me today.
Today the topic we’re going to be dealing with is taking a look at the question of when is the affair over. I find that this is a timely question because there’s a lot of confusion out there concerning “When the affair is over” and “When things are ended”, and “when things are finally settled.”
There’s a big difference between when the affair ends versus when it’s over. The affair ends when the contact between the cheater and the lover ends.
Although the affair has come to an end, they’re no longer seeing each other, there’s still a time period that you’ve got to deal with. During this period your facing where there’s emotions worked up, there’s still fantasies, there’s still a lot of unsettled issues.
Many issues have to be settled. There’s a lot of emotions that have been worked up that have to settle down. Settling the affair, making sure that everything is totally over, means that everyone who has been touched by the affair is going to have to have their emotions settled back down.
In terms of settling the affair, it may take years, if it’s settled at all. Some affairs that began many many years ago are still not settled because there’s still issues that haven’t been resolved that are still left hanging. That’s part of the nature of affairs.
There’s an old saying of make sure the past is dead before you bury it. This is very true with affairs, because so many times cheaters want to say the affair is over, I’m not seeing that person anymore, and they refuse to talk about it.
It creates a volcano type of situation for those of you who are left with a lot of emotions all worked up,without resolution. That’s a dangerous place to be in.
You may wonder “Okay, what can I do about it?” The solution is to take steps to move the affair to being over. The cheater has ended it, but we’ve got to move further down the line to where it is going to be over.
In terms of taking steps in the direction of being over, there’s several things that you can do.
1. Realize that forgiveness is an ongoing process. Many times people don’t understand forgiveness and they think it’s a one-time thing, that once a person’s forgiven that the door is shut and that’s all there is to it.
That’s not the case. Because the feelings that were behind the unforgiveness can come back at a moment’s notice, and it’s almost like you have to let go again and again and again, until you’re finally at peace with whatever it was that led to the unforgiveness in the first place.
Realizing that with your family is extremely important, because the hurts are very personal. They’re very deep.
And in all likelihood it’s going to take asking for forgiveness and giving forgiveness several times before things are finally settled and let go of.
Because although the lover is out of the cheater’s life, it may take awhile before the fantasies, both in terms of the cheater and the family members left behind. You’re still thinking “Oh no, the cheater’s going to do this again, I’ve seen them do this before”. They’re going to deal with their fantasies as well as the cheater. Forgiving that is part of the process.
2. It’s going to be important to treat the hurts and fears as real things. Another error a lot of cheaters make is they want to assume that they want to dismiss these hurts and fears as not real things.
When those feelings, like being scared when the cheater goes back to the workplace where they first met the lover, or goes back to restaurants or whatever, that trigger those fears. When their family members express those fears and those fears are dismissed, with comments like “Oh you’re just overreacting”, “Oh this is no big deal”, can turn into resentment.
When you ignore those fears and you don’t treat those hurts and fears as real things, they can become land mines in the relationship and hurt things later on down the road. For that reason you need to treat them as real things.
The people involved may see it as ‘no big deal’. They’re going to need to recognize it is a big deal to the person who is experiencing it.
You may consider their fears as silly, that’s unrealistic, and it may be silly and unrealistic to you, but it’s not silly and unrealistic to them. They want to be taken seriously, they want to be validated, and it’s going to be important to do so.
That brings me to number three.
3. You’ve got to give people time to heal. Healing always takes times. Forcing a resolution to the issue, forcing people to accept things before they are emotionally settled, is not the same thing as healing. When you assume that forced resolutions are healing you’re in for a lot of heartaches.
These are three things that you can do to move the situation from the ending of the affair to it being over. Once again they are recognizing that forgiveness is an ongoing process, number two to treat the hurts and fears as real things, and number three to give people time to heal.
You put these three things in place it will help move the whole affair situation a little further down the line to where it’s closer to being over and settled, and finally have some peace in your life.
These are three things you can start to work on now, if you’re at that point in your affair recovery and I hope that you are.
If you don’t know how to forgive or want to know more, the video “Forgiveness: Stop the Pain, Tear down the Walls and Remove the Roadblocks” will guide you through this part of recovery.
Best Regards,
Jeff
