You may have never considered what 9-11 and affairs have in common. Both events have shaken lives, including yours. Even though that have changed things, there are lessons contained in what they have common that can help you.
In each traumatic event, life went on after it occurred. Sure, people were shaken up and dazed, yet that did not stop daily life. You still had to get up and continue with your daily routine. Kids still needed to be taken to school and jobs needed completing. Although you wanted life to stop, it did not. Time may have felt frozen, but the seconds on the clock continued passing by.
The next day, after each event, daily activities had to be done. They may have been done slowly, but they were done. In the weeks afterwards, the government continued to run and you continued with your daily life. Things still had to be done. You found ways of coping and dealing with those events. They changed your life, you made adjustments and continued.
In each trauma, there were unanswered questions. Although you wanted answers, life did not stop so that you could get your answers before continuing on.
This brings me to my point. There are still unanswered questions about 9-11. There are still unanswered questions about the affair. You are not able to get all the answers, or even know what kind of affair it was or all about it before you had to get on with life.
If you are one of those who insists of answers before moving on, you may be stuck for a while. If you insists on knowing the ‘truth’, you will find yourself frustrated. Any answer you find will only be partial truths and pieces of an ever expanding mystery.
Do the half-truths mean that someone lied to you? You may at times think so. It could be that the answers you have in response to the trauma are the best explanation to date. They connect the facts known at this time. This means that you may have to give up knowing the absolute truth and settle for answers that you can live with for now.
The answer you have been given represents the reality that is shared, whether it is given to you by the cheater or the government officials. The answers may not be fully satisfactory. They may never be satisfactory. Those answers do represent the reality they are willing to acknowledge, the reality they are willing to live with and share with you.
As your situation changes, the context of the answers will change. More information will eventually come out. Demanding or insisting on “spilling all the beans” often leads to more questions rather than fewer ones. Those insistences often lead to power struggles rather than cooperation.
In a similar manner, insisting that all the facts and details about the affair be disclosed will lead to power struggles. You have your interpretation of what happened, and if the cheater’s version does not line up with yours, there may well be another fight. Each of you will be operating within your own version of reality of what happened, why it happened and hidden motives behind it happening.
Constructing timelines for these tragic events may give you some sense of control, yet even the timelines can be frustrating. The key events are not always going to line up just right. This is aggravating, since that timeline represents some sense of absolute truths about “when” the key events happened.
To get your marriage and life moving forward you need cooperation more than absolute truths at this time. This is why in my Affair Recovery Workshop, the emphasis is on getting the two of you working together and talking before searching out ‘absolute truths’ and motives behind the affair. When the two of you work together in cooperation, you can better understand where each other is coming from, and know how to help each other through uncomfortable truths.
Both the affair and 9-11 were tragic acts where people were hurt. You can call them evil and speculate on the motives and the motives behind the motives. Each of these events will eat up as much time as you give them. With each layer of discovery, you will find more evasiveness and deception.
Both the affair and 9-11 stir up uncomfortable and painful feelings. Since they are so emotional, they are often hard to discuss. The passionate feelings of all the parties make any kind of objective discussion a challenge at best.
You may to find what truths you need in order to move forward, then together work on discovering the full story.
Best Regards,
Jeff Murrah
