As you deal with the affair, one issue that you will eventually find yourself dealing with is “failure.” Along the way, you may have tried various things that did not give you the results you desired. When the results are disappointing, you may start thinking that you have failed, or that your marriage has failed.
One of the scars related to affairs is the whole stigma that you have “failed at marriage.” There is a tendency to view an affair as a “failure.” The problem then becomes who is to be blamed for this “failure.”
One BIG mistake couples make—and you may have made as well—is blaming instead of understanding. You may want to find someone or something to blame for the “failure” rather than understanding what happened, and the reasons why it happened.
For an affair to truly be a failure, you would have needed to have failed at something. This assumes that you had the skills and knowledge needed to problem solve within your marriage. My own experience is that many couples have faulty understandings of trust and intimacy. They want emotional connections with their spouses, yet are not clear on how to establish that connection and maintain it during a crisis. They also have some faulty ideas about trust.
So is it failure when you have mistaken ideas about intimacy and trust? When you start with faulty ideas, faulty results are the obvious product. Getting faulty results from poor understanding is not the same as having a complete understanding of marriage relationships and still failing to fulfill the roles and responsibilities that go with the relationship.
If you do not have the complete assembly instructions, or have the wrong instructions, you cannot expect to see pristine results. If you have ever assembled do-it-yourself furniture, you know the truth of this statement. The same applies to marriage and relationships. When your instructions consists of what you saw growing up in your family, or what you saw on television shows, you do not have the complete instructions. You can only build what you have the instructions to construct.
This is why, at SurviveYourPartnersAffair, I strive to give you those instructions. We have a special video that will help you understand and build trust.
So instead of beating yourself up for “failing,” consider getting the right set of instructions. This could be the difference between having an incomplete understanding, and actual failure. You do not have to be a failure in your marriage.
Best Regards,
Jeff Murrah
