Are you trying to keep the status quo in your marriage after an affair? Trying to keep the status quo after an affair is a trap!
In order to keep that status quo, issues you’ll have to be ignored, lies tolerated and values compromised. An affair doesn’t have to mean the end of your marriage, but it does mean that changes are needed.
If you strive to maintain the status quo after an affair, you are perpetuating the environment that made the affair possible. Think about that for a moment.
Keeping things the way they were prior to the affair amounts to keeping the problems alive and kicking!
Keeping the status quo gives the affair a rich breeding ground for expanding and continuing. When you are sick from a disease, common sense tells you to clean up the area where you were ill.
If you were sick you’d want to dispose of the trash, use a fresh toothbrush and wash all dirty linens. You take these steps to keep the germs and disease from spreading.
In a similar manner, you want to make changes in your marriage after you discover an affair. When you strive to keep the ‘status quo’, you are keeping the same habits, patterns and sick behaviors around.
You are choosing to keep the familiar rather than doing what it takes to make your marriage healthy. When ‘the familiar’ takes precedence over ‘the healthy’, you have problems. You have to wake up to the fact that ‘the familiar’ is sick, it is unhealthy. It may be what you’re used to, but it’s dysfunctional.
Change often takes you in new directions. It means taking risks in bringing up topics that may make you or your spouse uncomfortable. It means that you have to be real rather than live behind a mask or avatar.
First, you’ll have to wake up to how the status quo is unhealthy. Yes, like an old familiar blanket or your favorite pair of jeans, it’s comfortable, but it’s sick.
Keeping those old patterns and ways of doing things is familiar, but it’s also what contributed to problems forming in the first place. Keeping familiar routines also has a way of numbing you out to each other.
Moving in the direction of healthy means confronting sick patterns, taking risks, being vulnerable, and getting honest with yourself and your spouse.
You may want to explore marital counseling, weekend marriage encounters, and workshops to know what you can do. You may also want to read some self-help books along with putting some of the ideas into practice. Do something.
You can’t afford keeping the Status Quo. Keeping the status quo will cost you more than getting help will.
If you want to make changes, the “30 Days to a Better Marriage” Program guides you and your spouse in moving past the Status Quo. Rather than settling for what was, you can have a better marriage and we’ll tell you how.
Best Regards,
Jeff
