If I asked the question “Is your spouse a priority with you?” I’d likely receive many positive responses. If your marriage and your spouse weren’t priorities, you wouldn’t likely be reading emails like this one.
It’s one of those questions that on the surface most people present the image that their spouse is a priority. This is why you have to look at what people do rather than getting caught up in what they say.
With a cheating spouse, they made the choice of putting someone else ahead of you. Someone else became their priority. They cared more about making someone else happy rather than delighting themselves with you.
I’ve also seen this with swingers in that the spouse pushing the swinging makes their enjoyment a higher priority than their marriage. They rationalize it as ‘making their marriage better’ even though their spouse suffers as a result of their ‘fun times’.
Things go smoothly with the one driving the swinging. You’ll even hear how it ‘improves’ their marriage.
This goes on until the other spouse wants no more of their swinging. They want just a relationship between husband and wife. That’s when you see the sparks fly and their REAL priorities come out.
They may even get mad at the suggestion that they no longer sleep around. What they get mad at gives you a clue to their TRUE priority.
The priority may have been the lover, themselves or even revenge. Whatever the motivation or reason, they put others ahead of you. You were not their top concern.
The affair is part of a chain of events which began with wrong priorities. Typically, you see a pattern of choices where you’re not their ‘real’ priority.
You always make time for what’s important for you.
If it’s your spouse, it’ll show. They’ll make time for you.
The theologian Oswald Chambers noted that you can tell a man’s priorities by his wallet and how he spends his time. His statement was true when he said it and is true now.
Between how your spouse spends their time and their money, you see their true priorities. Look where they invest themselves.
If you haven’t been the top priority, now is the time for you to start taking action. Waiting until something major happens or a crisis occurs won’t lead to better decisions. On the contrary, decisions made at those times are typically worse since they have an added sense of urgency.
There comes a time when you have to confront the cheater on their cheating. You’ll also face confronting them on their priorities.
Confronting on their REAL priorities often brings more fireworks than confronting them on their cheating. The reason for this is that things suddenly get very real.
When you’re recovering from an affair, it helps having others to talk to. Consider joining the support community at Restored Lifestyle, where you can share your struggles with others going through similar things.
Best Regards,
Jeff
