With the regularity of clockwork I encounter stories of teacher sleeping with students or pastors sleeping with members of their flock. The typical reaction on the news sites and on social media is typically outrage and questions of “HOW can they do that?”
There’s even a website with the 50 most notorious teacher-student episodes. The problem seems to continue growing.
I think it’s also telling that when a police officer, nurse or doctor sleeps has an affair, you don’t have the same reaction, even though they’re in helping professions as well.
Although each situation has some unique attributes, one common factor often ignored by the media is ‘moral paralysis’ or ‘compassion fatigue’. Whatever you call it, your ability to ‘care’ is depleted. Although you’ve read the stories about the affairs, I doubt you’ve encountered this idea before.
The simplest explanation that my wife uses is “A confused mind says no!” What happens is that they are faced with so many choices about morals and doing what’s right, they get overwhelmed.
When your mind is overwhelmed, even by good things or making good choices, it goes into a state of paralysis. While in this state, choices are made without considering consequences. You get to the point where you don’t care anymore.
This is common in professions where the needs of those they serve and the demands places on them is more than they can handle. Add to that all the rules they’re supposed to enforce and it’s only a matter of time before they succumb to some degree of moral paralysis.
Put them in an unnatural environment, surrounded by artificial light, and limited human interactions and the risk of affairs increases exponentially.
Even after leaving their job, they are assaulted by news at home with social justice causes, cries for equality, the burden of massive student debt, threats of bursting financial bubbles and the starving multitudes in around the world.
There always seems to be something greater to be concerned with than their own marriage and home.
When you’re caught in the vices of competing compassions, it wears on you. You can only take a limited about of guilt trips for all the woes all over the world before being overwhelmed. You only have a limited supply of emotional energy and those compassions drain it.
All that compassion puts a strain on your marriage as well..
Your capacity for compassion is depleted. You get to the point, you quit caring what others may think. At that point an affair is viewed as “no big deal” compared with all the issues they’ve been bombarded with.
If the bonds of your marriage are weak, all these competing compassions and moral burdens contribute to creating moral paralysis. When in moral paralysis, you just don’t care what the consequences will be or what may happen. Your capacity for compassion is overextended.
This is where having healthy boundaries, including boundaries on your compassion are needed. In my program on “Preventing Affair Relapse” I cover ways of setting boundaries and their importance in your marriage.
You need boundaries in blocking out the items that don’t matter as much as your marriage. Knowing what structures to put in place makes a difference in reducing the risk of Affair relapse.
Think about the peace of mind that comes when you no longer have to worry about whether or not they’ll do it again.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
