With tears in her eyes, she said, “I don’t give a shit why, I am just pissed!” When the betrayal hits, your reaction is emotional. There is ANGER, lots of ANGER. The energy of all that anger may at times be overwhelming. in those first few days, the emotions are strong. At that point, you really do not care about what was behind the affair, why the affair happened or what kind of affair it was, you are just angry that it happened.
The calm, peaceful demeanor that you had is no more. Words, shocking words flow from your mouth. They express what you are feeling. In the days after the affair, it is not time for polite conversation. You are angry and hurt. Following social etiquette or having good manners is not at the top of your agenda.
Somehow the use of cuss words expresses what you are feeling better than anything else does. It is not the time for the etiquette police to correct you on how you are expressing yourself, nor is it the time to analyze what kind of affair it was or why they did it. I often find myself astounded that there are some counselors out there who start with having you analyze what kind of affair your spouse had at a time that you “don’t give a shit!”
Not only is it bad timing, expecting you to somehow shift from wrestling with emotions to analyzing and thinking through things is not healthy for you. When your mind is forced to shift from emotions to problem-solving, it immediately stops the emotional healing. Any solution you come up with at that time will be driven more by emotion than by logic.
When you are in ‘problem-solving’ or logic mode, it cuts off your emotions before you have expressed them or worked through them. Those counselors who have you figure such things out are putting an emotional hand grenade into your life while your mind is busy trying to figure out which category your marriage fits into.
This is why I take a different path with the “no drama solution” in the Affair Recovery Workshop . In the workshop, you deal with the emotions and start working through them before trying to figure out the who, what and where of relationship dynamics. When you deal with the emotions, rather than shut them off, you have less drama. Your marriage needs healing before you start analyzing, figuring out and sorting out what kind of marriage or affair you are dealing with.
Your mind is designed to either deal with emotions or solve-problems. Going from one to the other is not just mentally switching gears. You turn off one part of your brain while the other one is going. Your emotions need to be worked through, expressed and dealt with before you are ready to problem solve, figure out ‘why’ and think clearly about things.
If the emotions were strong enough, you may be dealing with affair trauma, which I address in the webinar on that topic. In that webinar, I go into greater detail about WHY your mind is unable to think when you are traumatized.
Some of you may be able to accurately determine what kind of affair your spouse had and their motivations before you have worked through your pain. Although this is possible, I do not see it very likely that when you are in pain to be able to accurately analyze your spouse, when you are emotionally dying inside. If you are able to turn your emotions on and off like that, there are more problems going on than just the affair.
There will be a time for dealing with “why” questions and figuring out what kind of affair happened along with those other details. The time for that is AFTER you have worked through your emotional pain, NOT before.
Best Regards,
Jeff
