Arsonists know how to start fires. They know that a big fire takes more than just lighting a few matches. The metaphor of fire often comes to mind with affairs. Understanding fire will help you understand the inflamed passions that come with affairs.
Lessons from an Arsonist <<– listen to the audio here
Hello, this is Jeff Murrah with Affair Recovery Radio. I’m glad that you’re with us for today’s show. What we’re going to be covering today I entitled “Lessons From An Arsonist“.
I know arsonists are an area that people don’t often talk about, but there’s some things we can learn from them. Arsonists know how to start fires, and they know that a big fire takes more than just lighting matches.
The metaphor of a fire often comes to mind when you’re talking about affairs. It’s not perchance that we used terms like igniting passion, or start something, with these allusions to fires when discussing affairs, because there are a lot of similarities there.
By understanding fire it’ll also help you to understand the inflamed passions that often come along with affairs and affair situations.
An arsonist needs what they call an accelerant. They need motivation, and they need payoffs. Likewise, when it comes to passionate affairs, there are motivation, accelerants, and payoffs as well. That’s what we’re going to be talking about today. Because you are going to need a map, you’re going to need a way to understand what’s going on. That’s “MAP”, it’s a great acronym for that motivation, accelerant, and payoff, and what you can learn about that.
1. Motivation. There’s often an emphasis on unfairness in the days before an affair happens. This may be either in the lover or the cheater. This unfairness mindset shows up with such expressions like he does deserve someone better, or she doesn’t deserve him, or I deserve them. It’s not by accident that this whole thinking of deserve and desire have some common linguistic roots.
Because prior to taking action the cheater feels like I deserve someone better, I deserve someone who will sexually satisfy me, or I deserve someone who looks a certain way. And they tell themselves that enough, until they have the motivation for the affair.
Likewise, an arsonist, a lot of times before they do what they do, they have this thing well they don’t deserve that house, they don’t deserve that business, they don’t deserve something. That’s when the arsonist starts doing their plotting and planning as well.
2. Accelerant. All temptations or flirting end with an affair. Now, when people go about doing their flirting it’s going to lead somewhere. Likewise any kind of temptation starts a process.
Affairs don’t start when somebody drops their drawers or removes their clothes. There’s a temptation that starts before that. It’s that flirting, or those temptations, that act as an accelerant.
In the case of an arsonist they use an accelerant because they know matches don’t cut it. They have to have something with the matches. And likewise cheaters have to have something to accelerate the passions, to get them moving faster, to get things hotter.
This is why you often find drugs or alcohol combined with temptations to move things along at a faster pace. To speed things up, to increase the intensity. You may even find various types of enhancement drugs.
This is one reason why I have difficulty with some of these drugs such as Viagra and their ilk, because they oftentimes act as accelerants, that when combined with temptations, speed the whole relationship up and make the risk of an affair very high.
You will also find that cheater and lovers, when they’re in the midst of these strong feelings, often use the accelerants to “take the relationship to the next level.” That’s the whole role of accelerants, to take things to the next level because of there was no accelerant the relationship may just die out at that point. So they have to have these accelerants.
3. The payoff. Affairs that tend to take off are the ones that have payoffs. And likewise, arsonists when they are going around lighting their fires, there is some kind of payoff. There is a reward that they experience there.
With affairs, although sex can be a payoff, with passionate affairs they often need something bigger. It’s not just getting someone in the sack. For the affair to go on there’s a bigger payoff that they’re after. Many times you have to see that bigger payoff. And that bigger payoff oftentimes includes pregnancy, spouse stealing, or even financial support.
Because there are lovers out there or seducers out there, whatever you want to call them, that actually want to use the affair as a way to get pregnant, or as a way to get their foot in the door to eventually steal your spouse from you. Or to even obtain financial support from your spouse.
They are out looking for a payday. They’re not just wanting to get them in the sack. Getting them in the sack is just stage two of a three stage process. What they’re really after is not that one night stand. They want something that that leads to.
For serious cheaters, sex is not the end game. It’s just a tool that they use in reaching the big payoff. When you start looking at the affair in terms of the motivations, the accelerant, and the payoff, you’re going to wake up to the reality underlying the situation, to the bigger picture.
Because I know with affairs it’s easy to take things personally and you get bogged down in some of that personal stuff and you don’t see those little things that were leading up to the affair. The unfairness, or I deserve more, and that type of stuff. You miss out on the role of the accelerant. And you for sure miss the big payoff. At least until it hits you. Once it hits you, many times it’s too late.
There are lessons that we can learn from arsonists in terms of understanding the passions behind an affair. I’m hoping that from learning these lessons that it will prepare you for dealing with your affair situation.
This is a different kind of radio show today because I’m basically giving you some instruction. Not so many how-to’s today, but just giving you some tools to help you understand the affair situation from a different perspective. And it may wake you up because I know if you’re anything like me, some things have to be explained five or six different ways and finally somebody will say something that things click, the light goes off, and you finally say ah-ha, that’s it.
I’m hoping that this opens up some new perspectives for you.
If you have found this radio show helpful I encourage you to leave your positive comments, either at the site where you listen to it, or feel free to stop by my blog at www.surviveyourpartnersaffair.com and leave your feedback and comments there. I will get to your questions and I encourage you to leave them. Because the only way that we’re going to learn and move past this is to share.
Because there’s other people that are struggling with some of the affairs that you do. Questions that you have may help them, or their questions may help you.
Until next time, this is Jeff Murrah with Affair Recovery Radio, thanking you for tuning in. Until next time, goodbye.
