When the ‘Gender Mask’ comes out, it’s telling you something
Keeping your marriage healthy takes work. It requires that you invest in your marriage time and effort. Even though it requires work, when you love your spouse, it doesn’t feel like work.
When you love them, you want to invest in them and your marriage. You want to get closer. You want to find ways of connecting with each other.
When there’s an affair or discord, getting close shifts from being enjoyable to requiring conscious effort. At those times, you have to work at getting close rather than running away.
When getting close requires conscious effort, it’s a signal that your marriage is not where it needs to be.
One of the ways spouses run away during such times is by putting on their ‘Gender Mask’. They act more male or female rather than drawing closer to you.
When you or your spouse puts on the Gender Mask, its’ a sure sign that someone doesn’t feel safe. Those masks are objects people hide behind when they are scared of something.
You can even hear it in what they say. Suddenly, there are gender words filling your talks. Words like woman, man, womanly, manly, no man or no woman and so on. When you suddenly hear all that gender talk, it signals that someone is scared of something.
At those times, your response to them makes a big difference in how your conversations will go. It’s also hard talking to one of those masks rather than your spouse.
When the mask gets put on, you may wonder “Where did my loving spouse go?” They’re still there, hiding behind their mask.
When the mask comes out, it’s a signal indicating there’s a safety issue going on. Rather than look for them, look for what the source of the safety issue.
Those safety issues could be signaling that they are struggling with some trauma or be reminded of a previous trauma. If you don’t deal with the safety concerns going back to the trauma, you’ll never be rid of the mask.
In such cases, it helps getting to the root of what’s going on. This is where the video on “Overcoming Affair Trauma” comes in. The affair likely triggered trauma reactions both now and reminders of previous traumas as well.
You can learn ways of getting past the safety and trauma concerns.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
