How are you going to handle things when the cheater comes home? If you have never considered this question, you may need to, before it happens.
The time for finding answers is not when they show up at the door and you stumble and fumble around trying to find what your response will be.
When the cheater returns, you’re faced with some choices. You can choose to welcome them back into the home which includes doing your best to make it safe, you can hold them hostage, or act like nothing happened at all.
When you act like nothing happened at all, you are fooling yourself and them. Something did happen. Acting like it didn’t, only fosters a detachment from reality. The affair has changed you, it has changed them, it has changed your family.
You can hold them hostage. The hostage option is quite tricky. There may be financial reasons that bring them back home. You may have even exploited those financial reasons for the cheater to return and use it as leverage to keep them there. In such cases, you may have them physically, yet emotionally they are not back in the home. Their heart is still not with you.
Another variation of holding the cheater hostage is when you put them in a penitent role. When you have the cheater in the role of penitent, it has some risks with it.
First, having the cheater in a penitent role changes the dynamics of your marriage. It becomes more of a parent-child type of dynamic. The longer such dynamics exists, the greater the risk of pathology developing. When marriages stay in this dynamic for too long, everyone gets dysfunctional.
Second, the penitent role amounts to a quick fix. You make the cheater suffer and pay for what they have done. You keep them in a position where they have to grovel for a while.
This dynamic often gives a quick -fix solution to the pain. Although it may last longer than a quick-fix, it carries with it the mindset that if the cheater confesses and repents enough, all will be restored.
The quick-fix mindset of repent and restore sounds is appealing. Although it is appealing, it also sets the stage for a dysfunction to develop.
Third, the penitent role shifts the pain, but does not resolve it. This dynamic can last for long periods of time. It keeps the marriage unhealthy by not treating each party as equals.
The choice of welcoming them back to an atmosphere of safety poses its own challenge. Each of you has pain and are eager to get rid of it. When you strive to create such at atmosphere in your home, it forces each of you to work through your pain and treat each other with respect.
When each of you has to assume responsibility for your own pain, if forces each of you to face reality and grow up. It puts your relationship back to one between two equals who are working as a team in tackling the issues ahead of you. It forces each of you to treat each other with value, since each of you has value in what you have to say.
Creating a situation where the issues can be talked about without blaming or attacking can be achieved. It takes more effort than the blaming or the hostage approach, yet is a healthier option in the long run.
The cheater will eventually have to face the decision of whether or not to return home. You decision on how you will deal with it often shapes their willingness and desire to return home.
If you are a cheater wanting to come back home and don’t know where to start, the video “Help for the Cheater: Starting the Road to Recovery” will guide you through the necessary changes ahead of you.
Are you making yourself the kind of spouse the cheater wants to come back to?
Best Regards,
Jeff
