The rude awakening of affairs forces you to face many unpleasantries. You come face to face with many painful and embarrassing items. Affairs often rub your face in many of your own faults. Even when what happened was seemingly not your fault, you still have your face smeared with faults, be they real faults or perceived faults.
One of the commonalities of affairs is ‘the lack of engagement’ in the marriage to one degree or another. For that reason, we will examine it further.
One of those things you have to deal with when faced with affairs is the topic of ‘engagement’ in your marriage. You suddenly have to realize that you did not know your spouse as well as you thought you did. That is a harsh reality. You did the best you knew how to make your marriage work and find that ‘it didn’t work’ as well as you thought it would. I consider this a matter of engagement, since you are dealing with how well you connected withe and interacted with your spouse.
Many couples have problems with engagement. There are many reasons for these engagement problems. One is that few couples understand what marriage is really about. I have addressed the issue of marriage in some previous posts, so today my focus will be on ‘engagement’ itself.
Engagement is about how well you connect with and stay connected with your spouse. Engagement is about ‘being yourself’ with your spouse at deep levels. Spending time with your spouse is critical to engagement.You need to spend time eating together, walking together, and talking with each other about more than just plans for the future.
You also need the ability to share with them in a heart to heart manner. It is hard to share heart to heart at a deep level if you are not used to doing that. You may think that your spouse knows what is in your heart, but if you have never told them, then what intimacy you have amounts to guess work. They guess at what is in your heart.
If you do not know what is in your heart, how can you expect your spouse to? If you have not let them know your heart, they are wandering lost in the woods. They are guessing at what pleases you. Without you telling them, it becomes unrealistic for you to be angry at them for breaking your heart. It is not realistic to lash out at them breaking your heart with their affairs if you have never told them what is in your heart.
You can only take a relationship to depths that you have been to yourself. If you have not opened up or shared in a heart to heart manner, it is unrealistic to expect your spouse to. Some of you may expect them to open up to you, yet have never done so with them.
Engagement initially takes you out of your comfort zone. The reason for this is that you have to take risks. If you are not used to taking risks, it feels weird. Once you have really engaged and connected with your spouse, you will find it fulfilling. It also becomes easier, the more often you do it. You will also find that the more engagement, the more you will enjoy your marriage and experience greater fulfillment.
You may have also been raised in a family that did not know how to engage with each other. If you never were exposed to engagement or shown how to do it, you may want to start learning how to do it.
A saying often spoken by marriage therapists and those in the healing community is that “Healing occurs in relationship”. Part of what that means is that you need engagement in your marriage to heal at those really deep levels. If you do not have it in your marriage, you will need it from somewhere. Some people have taken this to mean you need groups to heal from affairs. Groups are helpful when you don’t have your spouse. When you have your spouse, the relationship you need for healing is the one with them.
If you are still carrying pain around about the affairs, it could be that you need more engagement in your marriage. You do not need more anger management, you need relationship engagement to help with your pain.
Although pop culture often tries selling you the myth that sex is the ultimate engagement and expression of intimacy, you are being misled. If you engage in sex without engagement, it becomes meaningless. Meaningless sex will leave the two of you feeling more distance from each other rather than closer to each other.
With engagement you feel closer to each other, instead of feeling further apart. If you need help with how to start rebuilding engagement and intimacy, you may want to consider the “Affair Recovery Workshop” where I have a whole module on developing intimacy using the “SPRIG” principle.that provides new life.
Best Regards,
Jeff Murrah
