During recovery, one of the difficult challenges is separating the cheater from what they did (their behavior). Separating them from what they did is critical in recovering from the affair.
Separating the Cheater from the Affair <<– listen to the audio here
Separating the Cheater from the Affair
The topic of separating the cheater from the affair is an important one during the recovery phase, because it presents some difficult challenges. The difficult challenge is separating the cheater, or the adulterer, from what they did. There’s definitely a difference between who the person is and what they did.
Separating the person from the performance is critical in recovering from the affair. Because when you blur those two it makes forgiveness and recovery harder than it has to be.
A lot of times I think people have difficulty with forgiveness because they try forgiving the behavior rather than forgiving the person. When you have confusion or a blurring of the person and their behavior, that creates problems.
Besides this, when you do connect what they did with who they are, it leads to a type of dehumanizing of them. Because they are no longer viewed as your spouse.
You see them as the cheater, the adulterer, the whatever your favorite word is, where you lump what they did with who they are, into this polyglot mess.
This dehumanizes them in the sense that you quit seeing them as your spouse. All you see is what they did. You see the adultery, you see the cheating. You do not see them as my spouse made a mistake, they made a bad call.
Connecting the Person with Performance
Many times this is a not a problem unique to you. In our whole society we develop such a strong connection between the person and performance that it’s hard to separate the two. During the recovery process you’re going to have to learn how to break that person-performance connection if you’re going to be moving ahead.
With the solution of breaking the person-performance connection there’s several things that you can do. We’re going to be talking about those today.
Who your spouse ‘is’ differs what What they ‘did’.
Number one, who your spouse is differs from what they did. I know this is a whole new way of thinking for many of you. Who they are is very different from what they did. Let me explain.
If I got down on my hands and knees and started barking like a dog does that automatically make me a dog? No. I may be acting like a dog, but that doesn’t make me a dog.
Your spouse may be acting like a cheating loser, but that doesn’t change who they are. They may be acting like something that they’re not, and you’re going to have to start to get a wedge between who they are and what they did in your mind, and break that.
They have not been acting like who they’re supposed to be. They’re acting like something else. That’s important, because once you get that distinction you can work on forgiving the person, which is step two. You can forgive the person without condoning what they did.
Forgiving the Person NOT the Behavior
Because what it is that you forgive is the person. You don’t forgive the behavior. What they did was wrong. Who they are is very different. You can forgive Jim, you can forgive Sally, you can forgive Leticia, you can forgive Mike.
You can’t forgive the adultery. The adultery was wrong.
I think when you do try to say that you forgive the adultery or wrap your head around it, that’s where a lot of people get shipwrecked.
Your Spouse Needs Your Love
The person still needs your love, while the act needs your condemnation. That’s number three. Your spouse still needs your love. That does not mean you approve of their cheating. If anything, you need to have a strong message that cheating is not acceptable. Whether mental cheating, physical cheating, whatever type, that’s not acceptable.
I know it’s hard to send the message to your spouse, I love you but I hate what you did. It’s going to be hard for you to accept that, it’s going to be hard for them to accept it. But that’s the direction that you’re going to need to have to go.
If you can go ahead and succeed in splitting this person-performance link it will help you with the forgiveness process, when it comes time to go ahead and forgive them for what they did.
For instance, even with criminals, you can forgive them, but what they did they’re still going to need to deal with the consequences in terms of legal consequences of their actions. And likewise with the cheater.
They’re still going to have to deal with the fallout from their actions. They can be forgiven, they can be loved, but there’s still going to be consequences.
For instance, in the case of sexually transmitted diseases, just because you’ve forgiven them that disease is not going away. There are laws of cause and affect. They’re still going to have to deal with the fact of what they did. But who they are is still worthy of love and your acceptance.
These are things that will help you during the recovery process as you head in this direction. I realize it’s a whole different mindset, but I’m want to encourage you to start heading in that direction. Because the Affair Recovery Radio podcast series is about helping you through the affair recovery process one step at a time. And this is one of those important steps, starting to separate who they are from what they did, or separating the cheater from the affair.
I encourage you to start this process. It will be well worth it in the long run. There may be times that you relapse to your old way of thinking. Don’t give up, keep pressing on, and eventually you are going to get there.
I know this whole idea of separating the cheater from the affair may be totally new to you and may require some more explanation and some more examples before it clicks in your head. Like a lot of things, many times when we hear some new material we have to hear it several times before it finally sinks in.
This is where the video, “Forgiveness: Stop the Pain, Tear down the Walls and Remove the Roadblocks” comes in. The more you view and review the material, the better able you’ll be in forgiving the cheater.
Forgiveness requires repeating the process. I explain why that is in the video. You’ll find out how to forgive along with walking you through doing it in the video. You’ll also find out the HUGE difference between forgiveness and repentance.
Best Regards,
Jeff
