It amazes me how both the cheater and the betrayed often justify lying to their children. When you’re faced with an affair, the rules change. It’s at that moment, you discover the difference between your true values and your preferences.
When an affair surrounds you, the relationship rules change. It suddenly becomes acceptable to lie, deceive and misdirect others when you have ‘good intentions’. When what you’re doing is ‘for the good of the children’, you may find yourself excusing many immoral behaviors.
You may say to yourself, “Hey, Jeff, aren’t you taking that a little far?” My response is “I am probably not taking it far enough”. When affairs happen, (as one of my early mentors, Marlin Lance used to say) “you are much further away from God than you think you are”.
When affairs happen, it impacts the whole family. There are no emotional bomb shelters protecting special status family members.
A dark cloud covers your whole home. Under the darkness of that cloud, many lies are told and misdirection given. The intention of the misdirection is that of avoiding guilt and facing uncomfortable issues. The excuse for such misdirection and lies is that it is ‘for the good of the children‘.
Some well intentioned husbands and wives find themselves considering revenge affairs or using language that they’ve never used before. Intense rage becomes more common in your home. The affair takes you places you never thought you’d go.
When the rage invades your home, things like fear and control are used in motivating your spouse and children rather than love and compassion. At that point, it becomes no big deal to lie to your children.
When you first start lying, it may be a struggle. Yet, the longer the affair continues, the easier it is to lie to them.
At first, it is limited to just the affair. The lies often have a way of spreading to where you lie about more things than just the affair, or where the cheater is.
You may excuse it by saying that you were lied to, or that ‘they will understand’ or that they are too young, or that it is for their own good. No matter how you sugar coat it, the lies still destroy trust.
You want to trust your spouse, yet at the same time you are doing things to destroy your children’s ability to trust you.
This lying to your children is common in affairs. It often happens that as you struggle to find your way, you do what was done to yourself. This is also part of recovery.
You’re not only recovering from the affair, you’re recovering from lies and deceptions directed at you. I refer to this in some of my material as ‘telling yourself the truth‘. This is part of the healing process.
I encourage you to start telling yourself the truth and telling your children the truth. When you start telling the truth, then you can start expecting and demanding truth from others.
If you’ve not been telling the truth, then your demands for truth are vacant and hollow.
The ‘Affair Recovery Workshop‘ guides you through discovery and the communication crises that come with the affair. With a little help, you can navigate your way through the challenges both with your spouse and children.
Click the link, fill out the form and start your recovery within a few minutes.
Best Regards,
Jeff
