It always surprises me where new insights regarding affairs come from. The latest one happened while listening to Attila Ponger-Juhasz concerning his experiences during a taxi ride in Budapest.
Soon after being picked up, the driver launched into a tirade about the latest shortages and problems he faced.
His tirade didn’t surprise Attila. He’d encountered this mindset of scarcity among his fellow Hungarians time and time again. He knew this ‘scarcity mindset’ cripples many people, keeping them from taking risks.
He views this scarcity mindset as stifling to them and their situation.
At that moment, a flash went through my mind regarding how that same scarcity mindset hurts couples as well. When things like love, encouragement, trust and affection are missing from your marriage, you’re at risk of developing the scarcity mindset.
In times of scarcity, spouses grow desperate. In desperation they make impulsive choices. They start thinking unrealistic thoughts.
When the scarcity mindset takes over your spouse’s thinking or even yours, massive changes begin. Your mind focuses on what’s missing in your life.
You identify what’s missing that you don’t have. You also tell yourself about how your life will be complete if you obtain that missing thing.
A feeling of helplessness smothers you. Any enthusiasm you had is extinguished. You need the thing that’s missing.
Part of those changes include viewing life in terms of ‘trade-offs’. Rather than taking steps toward increasing the threatened qualities, you instead assume that things aren’t going to change.
You begin accepting trade-offs out of reluctance. You start feeling defeated.
The scarcity mindset has you thinking about loss and threats of loss. You start seeing affection and attention drying up.
When faced with the threat of losing important parts of your marriage, your thinking changes. The cheater, in their desperation has an affair as a way of dealing with the scarcity.
You assume that this is ‘just the way life with your spouse is’. If they cheated, you realize, that’s just who they are. Not only do you accept that that’s life at the same time you devalue yourself and your dreams.
You start giving up thinking that what’s going on is just part of the price of admission to being married.
You may even find yourself accepting the affair as a ‘necessary evil’. Even the thought of making change is viewed as ‘too risky’. You feel trapped in a cycle of affair-recovery-affair-recovery where nothing really changes.
All of this is part of the ‘scarcity mindset’ when it comes into your affairs and your marriage.
The good news is that patterns can be changed, even the scarcity mindset. You don’t have to accept affair after affair. Instead, you can interrupt that pattern and take a different path.
One of the best ways of changing this pattern is putting into practice the lessons from the video “Preventing Affair Relapse“.
With a well-developed Relapse Prevention Plan, as mentioned in the video, changes can happen. You can instead have early warning when the cheater is in a high risk situation or struggling with urges. Rather than being victim of an affair happening again, you can instead do it differently this time.
Best Regards,
Jeff
