The shock of an affair is stunning. It’s also challenging knowing how to handle the news with others.
News of the affair brings pain no matter what you do. Keeping it quiet brings pain as does sharing it with others. It feels like a lose-lose proposition.
There’s no winning when it comes to handling the news of an affair.
Handling the News of an Affair <<– listen to the audio here
Hi, this is Jeff Murrah with Affair Recovery Radio. And I’m glad that you’re here for the podcast today. I want to welcome you here. The topic we’re going to be dealing with today is “Handling the news of an affair“.
The Initial Shock
When you hear about an affair, especially your affair, the news is stunning. Just the news itself, it’s almost like a shock blast that runs through your life and leaves you dazed and stunned.
Besides the challenge of dealing with that initial shock, there’s also the challenge of knowing how do you handle the news of the affair with other people. Because no matter what you do it’s going to bring hurt and pain.
On the other hand, if you keep quiet that brings pain, as does any type of sharing. It’s a lose-lose proposition. You’re going to find yourself hurting any way that you go.
If you’re approaching handling the news of the affair in a way where no one gets hurt, you’re going to be in for disappointment. Because people are going to be hurt one way or the other.
There’s no winning when it comes to handling the news of an affair.
That whole idea that you’ve got to find a winning solution is going to set you up for a lot of heartache. With that in mind let’s take a look at how can you handle the news of an affair.
Handle it One Step at a Time
The solution I want to go ahead and present to you is to handle it one step at a time. In order to do this I’m going to take you through the process.
1. Start on a need to know basis. Share the information about the affair only with those that you feel need to know about it. This includes family or your support network.
A way of thinking about this that I have found very helpful over the years is don’t share the news with anyone except those that are either part of the problem or part of the solution. If they’re not part of the problem, they’re not part of the solution, then they probably don’t need to know about the affair and what’s going on.
That’s a way to start, that’s a starting point.
2.Limit your sharing to facts, if possible. This is important, because so many times with affairs you have the initial shocking news of the affair and then you start sharing and a lot of times the sharing is your assumptions.
It includes your judgments, it includes your opinions. And you get away from the facts. So for that reason you want to keep it to ‘the facts’. Sharing your assumptions and judgments often muddies the water.
When you share your assumptions, your judgments, all that type of stuff, you may find yourself finding allies and people joining with you. But not in a good way.
Those type of allies tend to want to help you with the pain, but they’re more tuned into your pain than doing the right thing. When it comes time for interventions and doing what the right thing is, those very people who were emotionally coming to your side, a lot of times they take up offenses and they want to find revenge or find ways of hurting the cheater the way that they hurt you.
That’s not going to improve your marriage, improve your relationship, and move you past the affair. That’s going to keep the hurt going. That’s not in your best interest.
For that reason you want to limit the sharing to facts.
3.Be careful who you make yourself vulnerable with. Because being vulnerable to the wrong people or at the wrong time oftentimes brings more hurt. Especially members of the opposite sex, because there’s something about hearing news of the affair, then some of the people who have been essentially lurking on the sidelines jump at the opportunity of having an affair with you. Or taking advantage of your vulnerable position.
So you want to be very careful about who you make yourself vulnerable with. Those people that you open yourself up to, you’re going to find yourself in a vulnerable position. You want to show some wisdom and discernment in how you go about that.
These are some places to start in terms of handling the news of the affair. Because when the news hits it does blow you out of the water. When you’re in that stunned state you’re what do I do next, what do I do next.
This is to start taking you through that process, to let you know what you do do next, what you share, and what you don’t share.
Because those are important things to know.
Handling the shocking information doesn’t have to ruin your life. There are things you can do in moving past the initial shock. In the video “Getting Past the Affair Crisis”, you’ll be guided through the challenges of such a discovery.
Best Regards,
Jeff
