One of the most frustrating obstacles to affair recovery is being ‘shut out.’ Being shut out blocks communication, it blocks you from connecting with them. Being shut out is also painful.
It forces you to keep your own pain while denying you common decency. This 1-2 punch of rejection and blocking makes a formidable barrier. Shut outs often stifle communication and slows down recovery from the affair.
Handling Shutouts <<– listen to the audio here
Hi, this is Jeff Murrah, welcoming you to another episode of Affair Recovery Radio. I’m glad that you’re here for our show today. In today’s program we’re going to be dealing with the issue of handling shut-outs.
Those of you who familiar with baseball terminology, you know very well what a shut-out in a baseball game is. When it comes to human relationships, there’s also shut-outs. One of the most frustrating obstacles that people encounter in dealing with affairs is the shut-out. They hate being shut-out. You hate being shut-out.
Because when you’re shut out, it blocks communication. It not only shuts down any type of talking, it also keeps you from connecting with your spouse. Being shut out is also painful. Because when you’re shut out, all the emotions, all the pain, and whatever else you’re experiencing, you’re forced to have to keep it down inside of you.
You have to keep your own pain while your spouse is denying you any kind of common decency of just listening to you or allowing you to finish what you’re saying.
In the case of the shut-out, you have what amounts to a one-two punch of both rejection and putting up a formidable barrier. If you want to think of it in this term, blocking, so you can get hit with the rejection and then you get blocked out. Both very shortly after one another, and you’re shut out.
Shut-outs often stifle communication and they slow down any kind of recovery from an affair. A lot of times people ask me, well how long will it take to recover from an affair? It always is much faster if you don’t have shut-outs. Shut-outs have a way of stopping the clock and making things take longer, force each of you to carry more pain. It’s detrimental to the relationship in the long run.
That brings us to how do you deal with a shut-out? Well, my answer here is clarity, freeze frame, and permission to hurt. I’m going to explain each of those. Let’s start off with the first point.
Number one, clarity. What are they really telling you? You have to consider what the person you’re talking to is telling you. Before making assumptions, get clear on what is being communicated.
As many times, your own assumptions about what you think they’re saying or how you think they’re saying it, or what you think they’re meaning, oftentimes gets you into more trouble than what is actually being said. You need to be very clear on what is being communicated.
There are often many signals given that can give you clues to know what is actually going on. Some of these include the inability to talk about the affair, or your spouse may not be “ready” to talk, which in that case is a timing issue.
They may be very willing to talk about the affair, just not talk about it now. And you need to be aware of that. Just because you’re ready to talk about it, they may not be in a place where they are emotionally ready or even able to talk about it. You need to take that into consideration.
They may need to process through some of their feelings before they talk about it. Just because they had an affair does not mean that they are able to talk about what they did or why they did it or a lot of those details. They may even be too angry to talk, too guilty, or too ashamed to talk about it, or even too depressed to talk.
If you’ve got somebody who’s highly angry or highly depressed or so loaded down with guilt and shame, those are factors that will stop anyone from being able to have a decent conversation.
They will serve as roadblocks to keep things in. This person is feeling some very strong and intense reactions, and they may not be to the point where they can even verbalize it and get those feelings from their heart or from their gut, to their mouth.
If they can’t even get those sensations to the point where they can express them, how are they going to be able to talk about things with you? You need to be aware. What are they really telling you?
Number two, the freeze frame. Affairs do not follow time tables. The books you read, or the experts, may give you guidelines for time frames. I find that real life does not always follow the time frame. This is due to the time distortion, or the freeze frame effect.
The freeze frame effect is what I call that phenomena that occurs with affairs and some highly emotional episodes in our life where literally time is distorted or stands still. Many times with affairs, they have a way of freezing certain events in people’s lives. It might be frozen to an episode during the affair, or it might be frozen to an episode after the affair. It varies from couple to couple.
You’re going to have to be aware of that. Because when you have this freeze frame effect, it’s going to throw off all the time frames and all those estimates.
In one of my ebooks, the one on trust, I talk about the 111 minute expectation window. This is a prime example of that expectation window because people are wanting to get things over with in a hurry. They have the expectation that it’s going to be resolved within a particular time frame. Because the expert said it would. It doesn’t always work that way and you need to be aware of that.
Because with affairs, this freeze frame effect will mess up the timing, big time.
Number three, permission to hurt. What I mean by this, when people aren’t talking to you, they may be in a position where they’re feeling things. Just because your spouse isn’t talking doesn’t mean that they’re not trying to be connected with you. Because when they’re not talking, their pain’s inside, and they’re going to need time to hurt and to work through the hurt.
You yourself need time to make sense out of your hurt and to work through it. You’re going to have to realize that you were hurt and they were hurt. Part of the shut-outs that happen, a lot of times, is the inability of people to deal with their own hurt or even giving permission to your spouse to hurt.
Just because you’re ready to move on does not mean that they have worked through their pain and they’re ready to go on on your timetable. You may have to give them permission to hurt before the two of you can work on the healing.
When you re-frame that shut-out as hurt, it’s going to change how you and the cheater look at it. When you’re sitting down with the cheater, let’s say in this case her name is Juanita, and Juanita shuts you out. When Juanita shuts you out, if you start saying it feels like you’re shutting me out, I understand that you’re hurting and that you need some time to feel the hurt so I’m not going to press you for an answer right now because you need time to sort out what’s going on.
See, that type of approach will give you an open door to where when they’re ready to talk, you’ll get through it. It’ll be more of a thawing out of this shut-out experience.
With today’s show, I gave you several things that you can start to put into place right away, to help you through the affair. Because here at Affair Recovery Radio, we believe that an affair does not have to mean the end of your marriage. You can do something about it, and these are some of the things that you can start doing right away to get you through some of these episodes with the affair.
I hope that you found it helpful today. If you did, please leave your positive feedback at the site wherever you listen to the podcast. And feel free to stop by the blog at www.surviveyourpartnersaffair.com, because I welcome questions about affairs and that’s where I answer them in a public forum. Because the very issues that you’re struggling with may be what somebody else is struggling with and they just don’t know how to put it into words. It’s a place where I believe that you can find some help.
If you need to reach me privately, feel free to contact me at Jeff@RestoreTheFamily.com and I can deal with you question there.
I look forward to hearing from you. Until next time, this is Jeff Murrah at Affair Recovery Radio.
