When your children grow up in an environment where lies, distrust, and deception are part of the family fabric,there are consequences. Life is full of cause and effect episodes. Actions have consequences.
Affairs are no different than other cause and effect episodes. Although cheaters may believe that they’re exceptions to the rules and that consequences happen to other people, they cannot escape ’cause and effect’.
Cause and effect eventually catches up with them and your children. The environment filled with selfishness, lies, distrust and deception has an effect. Like ever expanding ripples from a splash, the effects of the affair reaches them as well.
Since affairs play out differently in different marriages, the effects of the affair will vary from family to family. The children learn many lessons from their experience.
They learn how to treat members of the opposite sex.
They learn how to carry themselves and conduct themselves, whether it be with an air of confidence or with dejection and defeat.
They learn the importance of selfishness, and how lies can be used to cover a wide variety of things.
The children also learn about people who are not trustworthy and ways of dealing with them.
Whatever kind of dynamics are happening in your marriage are amplified in the lives of your children. When your marital dynamic includes an affair, do not be surprised with the effects that happen.
When you keep secrets from them, do not be surprised that they keep secrets from you. If the nature of your secrets concern sexual matters, they are not going to be forthcoming in sexual matters with you.
Pathology follows patterns. The effects of the affair on your children will follow the pattern. There will be the reaping of more fruit than you planted. Your actions produce results, be they positive or negative.
If lies, then more lies, if secrecy, then more secrecy, if deception, then more deceit. If selfishness then more selfishness. It reflects what they experienced.
What this means is that in overcoming the affair, you’ll have to address the impact on your marriage along with the impact on your family. Your children may even give you clues as to what needs to be addressed. Their actions reveal where the issues are.
The tell tale signs of them lying, being cruel to others, being secretive, talking bad about the opposite sex are all signals. These signals alert you that you’re facing the consequences of an affair.
You may dismiss their behaviors as attention problems, or opposition to authority, when it’s really their reactions to the affair. Just because you don’t see behavior problems doesn’t mean all is well or that they’ve adjusted well.
When there’s been an affair, you owe it to your family and yourself to get serious help. The “Affair Recovery Workshop” guides you through the recovery process. Click on the link and order yours today.
Best Regards,
Jeff
3 Responses
When home schooling our three children I recall a very wise and practical reason to develop close and loving relationships with children and anyone for that matter ….without relationship reproof and even instruction may bring a response of rebellion.
When I asked my husbAnd about how he had thought he could “parent” children by his adulteress he said he had ” looked up how much time would be sufficient for him to spend with a child and found out three hours three days a week”b
This is the outcome of psychology and perhaps evolutionary thinking but certainly not biblical or love thinking!
Our children would have LOVED to have had that much of his time and focus but I could not get that either while he went about ha inv his secret life!we all accommodated his schedule thinking he was working so hard!
Parenting …especially fatherhood is a major responsibility and priviledge…a true blessing of God.How ripped off people are todY to think soirtle of what their lives teach ….I once reminded him that he needed to think about what he was missing so he did not look back with regret …having played golf instead of being around whenever he was not working. he said he did not want to be the teacher of our children but everything he did DID teach them.
When he would walk out on Saturday to play golf or “other” things while his family were sitting down to have Bible time he taught out son that grown up men don’t need or have to take time to learn or honor God.
Something’s cannot be redone….and this is his “legacy”
all our grown children have him as their father …and it has been a cruel effort on his part as he tries to parent the OC who are not learning the truth of what their mother and my husband have cost themselves and they do not even consider the damage to his wife and family
He is teaching them by example that marriage Nd family matter very little in terms of priority.broken down boundaries and jurisdictions set by God for the best for all are not a part of their world. God help them now as they enter their teens.my husband goes merrily on his way thinking living with no one is the answer and meeting out few hours one day a week for our children is all he is “required” to do as a father to ours….no time or. Intact with me as if I was the one who had violated him!
This too teaches our children even as adults what someone who seems nice and even “moral” is capable of….very VERY damaging 😕
Just reread that post…iPhone typing strikes again…yikes!
The auto-correct of phones certainly has a way of messing up messages.