When the cheater returns to cheating after a period of being monogamous only to you, it is know as a relapse. Some cheaters never make it that far. For them, the cheating never stopped, but only slowed down.
Some cheaters continue chasing their dreams and fantasies. Although some sex gurus promote using role play and fantasy as a way to improve your sex life, for a cheater, such activities are like putting gasoline on a fire. They accelerate cheating rather than improve intimacy.
Affair Relapse Basics <<– listen to the audio here
Hi, this is Jeff Murrah welcoming you to another episode of Affair Recovery Radio. In today’s we’re going to be dealing with a topic that I know many of you are interested in. We’re going to be talking about affair relapse.
In today’s radio show I’m going to be covering relapse basics. Many people, they hear about affair relapse and they just need a foundation, an understanding of the basics. And that’s what I’m going to go ahead and go over today and provide you so that you’ll have a place to start.
The term affair relapse, it refers to when the cheater returns to cheating after a period of being only with you, or I guess what you would call monogamous. When they go back into this cheating pattern, after they had been only with you or had been only monogamous for awhile, we typically call that relapse.
Some cheaters never make it that far. It’s almost like they never ended the affair in the first place, or they never settled down to only being with just you. When they have never stopped cheating that’s one thing. So for us to go ahead and call it an affair relapse, there had to be this period where they had stopped their cheating.
In the other case they’re only slowed down, and you handle that differently.
Some cheaters, even though they are monogamous to you, they continue their cheating in their dreams and fantasies. So on the surface, they’re not cheating. But in their mind and in their heart, it never stopped. It’s almost like all they did was just switch the channels that the cheating behavior and cheating mindset was showing up in.
Although some sex gurus promote using role-plays and fantasies as a way of improving your sex life for the cheater, getting them to engage in fantasies and role play is pouring gasoline on the fire. It gets things going. They accelerate their cheating rather than these things improving intimacy.
I know the sex gurus say this is a way to improve your intimacy. I think they’re wrong on this matter and you need to be aware of that.
So the question comes up, how do I stop affair relapse. Assuming that you’re dealing with a relapse situation, how do you stop it? And that’s what we’re going to cover.
1. Make sure the affair’s over. When I say make sure it’s over, you’ve got to end it physically, mentally, and emotionally. As part of ending it physically, emotionally, and mentally, this means you’ve got to remove the lover from the contact list of their phone, from any friends on their social media, from any connections that they have.
You’re going to have to remove all their photos, their trinkets, the jewelry. You’ve got to get rid of all this.
In some of my previous blog posts and radio shows I talked about affair ghosts. This is part of what you have to do. You have to remove all remnants so that they don’t have anything to serve as a trigger. You’ve got to cut them out.
There’s no halfway in this thing. You can’t stop the affair and still have the regular contact. This is one of the problems that occurs when you have affairs at work, because although the affair stops, the lover’s still there and still a constant reminder, a constant irritant. And that’s a very stressful situation you have to deal with.
2. Cease and desist from role-play activities and fantasy. Both in the bedroom and on the computer. The question may come up, does this include fantasy role-playing games like ‘World of Warcraft’. Yes.
It’s been well established that some people engage in affairs in a second life and World of Warcraft type of worlds, and all they do, they may be one type of person in real life and once they get into that fantasy world they keep the affair going.
If you’ve got someone who’s very heavy into those games, part of their recovery is going to involve pulling away from the games, pulling away from anything that gets that fast thinking, affair functioning mind into that mode.
Because when you’re dealing with an addicted mind, it’s looking for action. Those games get them into that action minded and just wanting to satisfy the drive. And that’s not what you want.
If I had to put it another way, it gets their engine going. And you don’t want that happening, because once that engine gets going, they start just acting out wherever and whenever. You’re trying to reduce that.
3. Make sure the cheater is emotionally and physically monogamous and at peace with it. They may be loyal to you, but if they don’t have this sense of peace about it or they’re not okay with it, it’s only going to be a matter of time before they relapse into an affair.
You want to make sure that they’re not only monogamous with you, but they’re at peace with it, they’re okay with it. There’s not this restlessness inside of them.
Because if they don’t have the serenity, you’ve got problems. If you have monogamy without serenity, or them being at peace, it’s only a matter of time before relapse. You need monogamy and serenity if you’re going to reduce the risk of relapse.
With the material I’ve covered, I’m just scratching the surface of relapse basics. There is a whole lot more to it. Yet I also know that many of you are not familiar with the world of relapse and the world of addictions.
It is a whole other way of thinking. But this will get you started and give you some of the basics that you need to understand concerning affairs.
Because here, at Affair Recovery Radio, I’m dedicated to helping you through the affair one step at a time. I not only want to get you through the crisis, I want to keep the affair away. Because an affair does not have to mean the end of your marriage.
For more specialized help in dealing with Affair Relapse, the video “Dealing With Affair Relapse“. The video is a great starting point for developing Relapse Prevention Plans, identifying triggers, telling the difference between a slip and a relapse.
Just click the link, fill out the form and within minutes, you’ll be started on preventing affair relapse.
I encourage you to leave your comments there, and also your questions. I do make it a point of answering all the questions.
If is is of a private nature, send me a private email, because those questions that are posted on the blog I go ahead and deal with in a public manner. You can also reach me through my email, Jeff@RestoreTheFamily.com.
Best Regards,
Jeff
