Information is power. This is very true regarding affairs and dealing with them. Since emotions cloud your thinking, documenting will help you make sense of things.
Cheaters often keep spouses ‘in the dark’ and in some cases the lover may be keeping you in the dark. The secrecy is often framed as ‘it’s for your own good.’
If they need to hide, what they’re doing is likely dubious. So what do you need to document to protect yourself?
Documenting to Protect Yourself <<– listen to the audio here
Hello, this is Jeff Murrah with Affair Recovery Radio. I’m glad that you’re with me today. The topic we’re going to be dealing with today is that of documenting to protect yourself.
This is a topic that has come up because a lot of times when there’s an affair situation a lot of things are up in the air concerning the relationship, concerning the marriage, and what have you. I’m going to be talking about this as a way to protect yourself, to keep things from getting worse.
Documenting will help you make sense of what is going on
With documenting, the principle that ‘information is power’ is very true there. This is very true in any affair situation and you’re dealing with the affair situation. One of the reasons for this is that since emotions cloud your thinking, documenting will helps you make sense out of what’s going on.
It also give you documentation protecting yourself in the event that things go to court, or protect yourself in the event that you do have to get a private investigator involved. Any time that there’s the possibility of lawyers you definitely want to have documenting.
Cheaters often keep spouses in the dark. They keep you in the dark. And since they want to keep you in the dark and not know what’s going on, the documenting is a way to go ahead and find out what is going on.
In some cases the lover may be keeping you in the dark. Often times, whether the person behind it is the cheater or the lover, it becomes pointless in a sense. Either way, they’re keeping you in the dark.
“It’s for your own good”
This keeping you in the dark is often framed as “it’s for your own good.” The thing is, if they need to hide what they’re doing is most likely something dubious. It’s only roaches and critters and people that are up to no good that tend to want to hide and keep all of what they’re doing secret.
What you need to document in order to protect yourself, that’s what we’re going to go ahead and look at today.
The solution is going to be “know your facts”. Because so many times people will shoot their mouth off about what they suspect, or what their judgments are, what they deduce. That gets you into a lot of trouble because then it becomes a matter of he said, she said type of situation.
That’s what drives a lot of fights. We want to avoid that as much as possible. You’re going to need to know your facts, and the he said she said stuff definitely keeps a lot of stuff going in the courtrooms. We want to avoid that as well.
Let’s “know your facts“.
1. Record observable phenomena. You can’t record what you think or what your feelings are. That’s not going to stand up in any situation. That’s not going to help you. Record what is observable. That means what is said, what people do, where they go, the times of events.
Once you have things documented then you can work on interpretation. Many times what happens, your mind starts trying to connect the dots before you have all the dots. You’re going to have to document what’s observable, then make sense out of it.
That’s why you want to document what did they tell. Not what you think they told you, what they said. Record their words, because a lot of times the way the mind works when somebody leaves a blank space or insinuates, many times our mind will go ahead and jump. You don’t want to record the jump. You want to record what they actually said.
Like for instance, did they say I’m going out for a few drinks after work, or did they say I’m going to the bar after work. Big difference. Many times cheaters will play on that type of situation. Record what is actually said.
2. Even lies and small talk contain useful information. A lot of times people want to generally dismiss what the lie was about or how they lied, and dismiss small talk.
People tend to be creatures of habit, documenting even what the lies are, you can start to pick up what their patterns are. There’s typically a pattern and the lie pattern may concern where they go, or who they’re with, or what time of day it happened.
When you know what the pattern of the cheater’s lies are, that’s going to give you some helpful information. Even though you know you’re being lied to, or even though you know that they’re making small talk, even that can give you clues. Recording that is helpful. Don’t just dismiss it right off the top.
3. Everything leaves a trace and is trackable. This includes money, phone calls, toll booths, etc. When you realize that everything leaves a trace you realize that everything is trackable. Now, sometimes it may require a little bit of effort, but you can track things if you know where to look and how to go about it.
This will give you a place to start, because I know so many times people find themselves with affair situations and there’s a lot of things that they document. It may be documenting what happened with the affair.
In situations where the affair becomes a divorce situation you will need documentation as well. In the case where there is stalking going on you definitely need to know what you need to track in order to protect yourself.
High Profile Lovers
If the affair is with some high profile person you definitely want to have documentation. Because your spouse may be having an affair with someone who’s dangerous, because some lovers are stalkers.
You can look at the movie Fatal Attraction, and one reason why that movie is so popular is because it hit on a theme that occurs many times. I know when I’m reading background material I see the stories all the time about the devious things that lovers do, and they are out there.
You’re going to need to know what you need to document to protect yourself in those kind of situations. This is not a thorough list but it is a place to start.
I know when you’re in that situation you’re left with more questions than answers, and more question marks in your head. Like what do I do, what do I do? This is where you start.
Record all observable phenomena. You can do it in a little notebook, you can do it on a calendar. There’s a lot of ways to do it. Record what is said. Not what you think is said or what that means, but what they actually say. What people do, where they go, times of events.
Remember, document then interpret.
Number two, even lies and small talk have useful information. Number three, everything leaves a trace and is trackable.
An added bonus, you want to document as close to the time that things occur as possible. Because information becomes more unreliable every day. They’ve done studies, I don’t remember the numbers right off the top of my head as to how much information we think we retain, and that diminishes markedly each day.
So you want to go ahead and record this stuff right after the interaction, that day. You don’t want to put it off saying well, I’ll do it tomorrow morning or I’ll do it a couple days from now because I have some doubt.
Know that even if it’s just a few sketchy notes, you can fill in the details later, at least do that.
These are things that you can do to protect yourself right now. Because Affair Recovery Radio and what we provide here is about helping you get through the situation that you’re in, one step at a time. And these are things that you can do right now.
When you need help in dealing with the affair or even your own healing, the downloadable “Affair Recovery Workshop” guides you through these challenges.
Even when you don’t want to work things out, you still need healing and will still have to deal with the cheater. The workshop guides you in taking charge of communication and breaking patterns associated with the affair.
Best Regards,
Jeff
