After the responses to the post on “giving you spouse permission to cheat”, it’s clear to me, that further attention is needed on this sensitive topic. The biggest offender in terms of what never to say to your spouse is ‘imperative commands’. This is not a common term, so I’ll elaborate on it.
Although I mentioned the ways permission is given in the post, the items weren’t explained in detail. One of these concerns ‘imperative commands’.
This is why you NEVER want to tell your spouse “Don’t call that woman” or “Don’t go back to your lover” The cheater hears the central idea and not the ‘don’t’. In such cases, their mind hears “call” and “go back”.
Think about this. Even though I entitled the post “What Never to say to your Spouse” , you were curious and continued on. Even though it was a negative, you wanted to know what it was. In the same way, the cheater’s mind ignores the negative and instead focuses on the central idea.
This is why you tell them what you WANT them to do, rather than what you don’t want them to do. This is just one of the brain hacks you can put to work for you. I have others in the Affair Recovery Workshop which is part of what I call ‘the direct connect method’ where you learn ways of bypassing defense mechanisms and directly connect to the inner workings of your spouse’s thinking, both in their head and heart (yes, both the heart and the head think. I’ll tell you more about this in future posts).
