The other day, I came across a thought provoking quote by Carol Burnett. The quote is ” If someone tells you that you cannot do something and you believe it, they are right.”
The logic of the statement is circular. The person telling you that you can’t do something is proven right when you believe their lie. When you choose not to believe them or prove them wrong, you’re right. This weird circular logic has ramifications for affair situations.
The truth of her statement is something I’ve seen in military strategy. Military strategists know the importance of confidence and how victory or defeat often begin in your mind. When you believe you’re defeated, you might as well run up the white flag of surrender, since you’ve given up.
When you allow the cheater to dominate your thinking in this way, it’s destructive. The limitations never stop with one or two. They go from self-doubt to self-defeat. When you believe those limitations long enough, it becomes a mindset of self-defeat. Eventually it leads to a lifestyle of defeat.
It can even get to the point where the cheater defines your reality. When the cheater defines your reality and your choices, you are not in control of the situation or your thinking.
Rather than allow those messages to take root in your brain and heart, it’s best stopping them right away. This means you’ll have to choose ‘negating’. At least in your head, you’ll have to mentally note whatever you’re told with the label “That’s not true”.
Speaking it out loud can trigger an unneeded fight. What’s important is that you cancel out any of those limiting messages of negativity.
You want to believe what your spouse says about you, yet when there’s an affair, that changes. When an affair happens, you can’t believe everything they say about you, and what you do believe, you need to test before believing.
When you test what they tell you BEFORE you believe it, things change. You start trusting in truth rather than falling for lies.
Moral of the story? Forget what negativity your cheating spouse is telling you about yourself and your abilities. When someone is mentally defeated, the struggle is over, the battle has ended, yet not in a good way if it’s you who is believing the limitations your spouse has put on you with what they tell you.
You can learn better ways of communicating with your spouse in the video, “Let’s Talk: Hurting People and Healing Questions“.
Best Regards,
Jeff
