One of the lessons I learned about the importance of warning signs came from personal experience. One holiday, my uncle and his family were coming to visit. They turned left when they should have turned right and ended up driving into the Houston Ship Channel.
They drove right over an old ferry boat landing at Morgan’s Point, through the air and into the water.
The locals said they fortunate in that their car was one of the few that landed right side up that year. They survived the ordeal, yet going through it was scary.
Soon afterwards, warning lights and signs were set up alerting drivers to the dangers at the location. Those warnings kept others from a similar ordeal.
When it comes to your marriage, one of the big warning signs is when your spouse makes merchandise of you. When they start treating you like and object rather than a person, it’s a warning sign of trouble ahead.
At an extreme level, if your spouse gives you to his drug dealers or landlord to pay their debt, you are being used. At that point, you are not being helpful, you are being used. Being used like that is an affair, even though you try excusing it as ‘meeting a need’.
At a milder level, your spouse may have you dress or engage in provocative behavior for their own selfish indulgence. They may parade you around in an indecent manner in public locations.
Incidents like these trigger strong reactions on many levels. Your spouse may redefine the reactions as ‘arousal’ rather than fear, shame, and embarrassing episodes they are.
This does nothing other than playing with your head, and reducing any guilt they feel or shred of decency they once had.
The sensations produced are intense, but they aren’t love. At that point, you’re being merchandised, not loved.
They may even set up websites filled with photos of you, claiming they are ‘just so proud of you’, yet in the end, this is another form of merchandising. You are a marketed commodity being bought and sold.
I mention these situations as flashing warning signs that your relationship is going down a slippery slope. These are warnings that you are being exploited and your marriage is now about you being merchandise.
When you are being merchandised and exploited, it leads down a slippery slope to lifestyle that’s hard to escape from. Such experiences take away your self-respect and peace of mind one episode at a time.
Recovering from such traumatic episodes is possible. You don’t have to remain scarred or lock those experiences in your past hoping no one finds out about them.
If you’ve been through such things, you know the prison it can be. You may think that no one understands the embarrassing things you’ve been through.
In the “Support Community” at ‘Restored Lifestyle’, you’ll find that you are not alone. There are others who understand what you’ve been through and the pain it brought into your life.
You’ll also have access to the videos like ‘Overcoming Affair Trauma’ helping you through the painful memories of your past. You don’t have to be defined by those traumas.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
