Although you often don’t consider it, simple things like thankfulness and expressing gratefulness are important. In the flurry of day to day activity, it’s easy forgetting expressing thankfulness and gratefulness.
Although the slide from forgetting to express thanks to cheating is a long way, it can happen very quickly.
When you forget expressing thanks, it leaves room for resentment and anger to grow. Ask any experienced recovering addict if ungratefulness is important and they will ‘set you straight’ on how vital it is for their recovery.
They know from experience how ‘ungratefulness’ starts a whole series of choices and actions filled with negative consequences. They know simple things like gratefulness make a huge difference in maintaining their sobriety.
Thankfulness also makes a major impact on your recovery from an affair. I know that with an affair, it’s hard finding much to be thankful for, but it makes the difference between surviving and being demolished by the affair.
Thankfulness plays a major role in shaping your attitude. Who would want to reconcile with you and be close to you when your heart is filled with bitterness?
Thankfulness is a way to keep that bitterness from taking root in your heart and life.
Expressing gratefulness also changes the whole atmosphere of your home. When you are grateful, it removes pressure. Thankfulness also validates others. It gives them the message that they matter. I
t ‘humanizes’ others. That may seem like a little thing, but keep in mind that prior to an affair happening, there has to be a de-humanizing of you as the spouse. You have to be removed from a special position in the heart of the cheater.
It’s only after they de-humanize you that they can do what they did. If you ever wondered “How could they do that to me?”.
Well, part of your answer is that they first de-humanized you. Once you were not seen as worthy or of value, then it was easy to do what they did. Being ungrateful/unthankful/unappreciative is one way the de-humanizing starts. That also means that on your way to recovery, you have to humanize yourself and your spouse. Developing thankfulness is a way to start that process.
If you want to make more changes in your marriage, the video, ‘Forgiveness: Stop the Pain, Tear down the Walls and Remove the Roadblocks’ guides you moving past the affair. This is especially important if your attitude has any anger or bitterness in it.
Your spouse is aware of when you have resentments or ungratefulness. Those qualities push them away at a time you want any roadblocks removed that are keeping the two of you distant from each other.
Best Regards,
Jeff
