I often find myself amazed at what I learn from just listening to people. I was reminded of that while reviewing the “Affair Recovery Index” findings. There have been many surprises along with validation of observations from over the years.
One of the surprises concerns the questions that respondents ask regarding the affair they are dealing with.
The surprise finding is that although in a previous survey ‘trust’ was identified as the #1 issue that concerns you. In the Affair Recovery Index, your actual most frequently asked questions center on “why” and ‘lying’.
The findings tell me that although many of you want trust, the issues that often have to be dealt with are those of ‘why’ along with the lies concerning the affair.
The pairing of ‘why’ and lies is intriguing. You know that the cheater will lie to you, yet you continue wanting them to give you an answer to the why questions. In the days following D-Day (Discovery Day), they likely don’t know ‘why’ themselves.
It’s often easier for them to lie than to tell you “I don’t know!” Many times if they did give you an honest answer, it may not be the true answer to why.
The answer the cheater gives you to ‘why’ is what they understand it to be in the heat of the moment. They may truly not know the reasons behind their actions.
How often do you know the ‘true’ motivations behind all your choices and actions?
Could you answer your spouse if they asked you the ‘why’ behind your own acts?
The true motivations behind an affair are often not clear until years later. This is one reason why I approach affairs and recovery from the perspective of ‘what’ you need to do and ‘how’ to survive your partners affair, rather than bogging you down with ‘why’ and finding an answer to ‘what kind of affair it is’.
Like the proverbial ‘elephant in the living room’ that no one wants to talk about, these two issues of lying and why are right there in front of you. The assumption is that if you understand the ‘why’ of the affair, it somehow gives you control over it.
This assumption becomes a stumbling block. The ‘why’ becomes an obsession in many of your minds. You may find yourself purchasing numerous books in search of the unicorn-like ‘why’. The search for why often takes on the characteristics of a mission.
The hope is that on finding the answer to the why, that you will have everything explained to you. You may find yourself spending years of your time and vast amounts of emotional energy chasing down the answer to ‘why’ that you could’ve instead been spent reconnecting with your spouse and rebuilding your marriage.
The time you spend chasing down the ‘why’ is gone. When it’s gone, there’s no going back, no reclaiming, no instant replay. When time is gone, it’s gone.
When ‘why’ becomes your mission, you’ll stay bogged down in self-doubt, replay old fights over and over, and end up keeping the same dynamics in your marriage that set the stage for the affair.
If you want different results, you must take a different approach.
This is one of the reasons for the approach I take in the “Affair Recovery Workshop’. I start by having you start making changes long before addressing the ‘why’ questions.
You can start making changes in your marriage and yourself now rather than seeking out the why followed by a too little, too late recovery.
When you start affair recovery, you’re not ready for answers to the ‘why’ questions.
Best Regards,
Jeff
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