You and your spouse each have a past. Some have secrets in their past. discovering a past affair shakes things up.
Although the affair is past, it changes how you see your spouse. When one of these revelations explodes, you wonder how you can deal with it.
Living With the Past <<– listen to the audio here
Hello, this is Jeff Murrah with Affair Recovery Radio. I’m glad that you’re here listening today. The topic we’re going to be dealing with in today’s podcast is living with the past.
I bring this up because each of us have pasts. We all have some baggage from our past.
You and your spouse each have a past. Some of you have secrets in your past, and discovering an affair that happened in the past shakes things up as much as discovering that they’ve got an affair going on now.
It’s almost like wow, you had an affair years ago. Well, yeah.
You had an affair!
This is an awkward situation to deal with. Although the affair is long past, and it happened in the past, it may change how you view your spouse. They may not have cheated on you.
This may have been something where they cheated before they met you or they cheated it might be years ago in the marriage. It still has an impact.
When one of these revelations explodes, like stepping on a mine or an explosive device, it shakes your world. You may wonder what you can do about it.
Some of these revelations function like time travel, and I say it’s like time travel in the sense that although it happened in the past you can feel like it’s happening right now. You find yourself living in the past rather than living for today.
Let’s say something happened back in the 80’s, you feel like you’re transported back into the 80’s rather than living today. Or it may be some other decade, name your decade there.
When you’re faced with this, what do you? Well, that’s what we’re going to be talking about.
Accept it for what it is
The solution in terms of living with the past is to accept it for what it is, not what it’s not. I know that’s one of those strange sounding things, accept it for what it is, not what it’s not.
1. If it’s dead, bury it. Any time you find a dead body you want to bury it. If the affair is over and it occurred before you were married and it’s over, consider burying it. Put it past you, move on. That’s part of your spouse’s baggage.
2.Lies are lies and secrets are secrets. What I mean by that, if they lied, if your spouse lied to you, they gave you a mis-truth, they didn’t tell you the whole thing, deal with it.
If it was a secret you may want to ‘let it lie like a sleeping dog’. What I mean there, if you’re not part of the problem or part of the solution, if it’s not your problem, leave it alone.
True, there may be issues there. The issues you want to deal with. Like for instance if it caused some difficulty with you being able to trust your spouse, deal with that part of it.
Leave the part about why they chose the affair, why they chose that person, how they got involved, what they did during the affair. Those are the kind of details that are going to bog you down and cause you more pain than it’s worth in this case.
If it was a live affair that’s going on right here and now that’s a whole nother matter. But if this is something that happened several years ago and it’s over and you just happen to come across the secrets, you want to handle that differently.
3. When in doubt, think for the best. A lot of times you discover something about our spouse’s past and you start making a lot of assumptions. You get a few pieces of the puzzle and you start raising a lot of questions and you’re left with a quandary. And that quandary is “Do you assume the worst”, or “Assume the best?”
When you’re left with one of those question mark situations, for your own mental health, assume the best. Because when you assume the worst you start stepping into this world where you begin questioning everything.
When you’re questioning everything, it becomes a very hellacious kind of experience, where it’s almost like living in a nightmare. You don’t want to live in a nightmare.
Instead, assume the best. Like for instance some of those dark figures from their past, just assume that it’s over, assume that they resolved it, and have some faith in your spouse in that matter.
Accepting the situation for what it is.
These are ways of going about accepting the situation for what it is, not what it’s not. Let me go ahead and preface all this.
This is based on the assumption that the affair is over, that they are committed to you, that type of scenario. Not where they’re trying to lead a double life and have an ongoing affair. You deal with that one totally different.
In this case you’re essentially trying to go on with your life, let the past stay in the past, and move on with things. You will need to deal with whatever secrets are there, as secrets. Hey, why didn’t you tell me, that type of thing, as opposed to throwing down and finding out motivations behind the secrets, motivations behind the affair.
It’s already over so you don’t need to do the drilling down into all those kinds of issues.
If they lied to you, deal with the lie. Find out what you need to do to move on with life as opposed to throwing down on that issue.
These are the things that you can do to live with the past. This is not something that you can remake. They’ve already committed to you, they’re in the marriage, accept that for what it is as opposed to trying to use what happened before you were married or situations like that to put dissension between the two of you. You don’t want that.
If you’re unable to leave the affair in the past, then the downloadable “Affair Recovery Workshop” gives you the techniques and tactical strategies you need in moving past their affair.
Strategies for improving communication, increasing intimacy along with breaking family patterns of affairs are included. With the workshop you don’t have to be lost and confused any longer.
Best Regards,
Jeff
