You may want to know “How long will the pain last?” Since your pain brings discomfort, its’ natural wanting to know how long it will last.
When this question becomes your focal point, you’re not ready for recovery. Focusing on the duration of pain indicates that your priority is your personal comfort, rather than the healing of your marriage.
Pain is a protection of life. It’s also a protection of your marriage relationship. The pain is telling you something. When you remove it or deaden it, you are also removing an important message along with awareness of future dangers.
One of the dangers of leprosy is that the nerve cells are damage to where you do not perceive pain. Likewise, removing the alarm system of pain removes a natural protection. When you don’t feel pain, you may end up damaging yourself or your marriage and not be realizing it.
If you really want to eliminate the pain, the “drugs, sex and rock & roll” are ways to reduce. The more potent the drugs or alcohol, the faster you’ll be out of pain. In some cases, you’ll start reducing the pain within 15-30 minutes. This option will not improve your situation, or heal your marriage, but it will get you out of the pain.
A more important question is “What is the pain telling you?” It’s alerting you to something or some part of your life. It’s telling you what needs to be changed. Ignoring it or deadening it, puts you in a position where you’re running blind.
When wanting to get out of pain is your priority, then the drunk is your hero. They’re not feeling any pain. They exchange a painless existence for the lifestyle they have.
Anything that reduces or shuts down your pain, will also reduce or shut down your emotions. Think about that for a moment. Are you wanting an emotional shutdown? Will your spouse find you as an emotionally shut down spouse attractive? What kind of relationship can anyone have with an emotionally shut down spouse?
You are asking to be an emotional zombie. You’ve seen the zombie movies. What kind of relationship can anyone have with a zombie? Being out of pain makes you an emotional zombie.
There’s not much hope of recovery from an affair when one spouse is an emotional zombie. You may not be going around looking for ‘brains!’ Instead you are wandering around aimlessly looking for ‘love’ or ‘relationship’.
The only options for those around you are to run away or take a stand against you. Those are not good options, yet when you turn into an emotional zombie, you don’t give people many other options for dealing with you.
Instead of taking the zombie route or reducing the pain, take steps at turning your relationship around. The Affair Recovery Workshop starts your recovery.
Best Regards,
Jeff
