One of the challenging tasks in relationships is that of loving your enemy. This is an area of human relationships that often gets talked about and preached but bogs down when it comes time to apply it.
It also takes on some new dimensions when you apply it to affairs. With affairs, you face the question of ‘who is my enemy’?
If you consider your spouse the enemy, you’ve got some major marital issues needing your attention. When your spouse is the enemy, your marriage is in trouble.
At that point, your relationship has become a battlefield and you’re locked into a struggle over power. Each interaction turns into a power play. Your relationship is no longer about love, but about the struggle for power.
If you view the lover as ‘the enemy’, you face some real quandaries. Make no mistake, the lover is a real threat to your marriage.
You also have to consider what ‘loving’ your enemy means and how far it needs to go. If you to the extreme of inviting them over to your home and acting like ‘nothing happened’, you’re inviting trouble.
Something happened that was very wrong. Acting like it didn’t is a dis-service to your marriage and your own mental health.
If on the other hand, you’re idea of loving your enemy means choosing to not seek revenge, then loving your enemy can be part of a healthy affair recovery strategy.
You can also love your enemy by means of setting up healthy boundaries. The boundaries you set up protect you, your marriage and them.
How far you go in loving your enemy varies from situation to situation. I also know that before you can ‘love your enemy’ that forgiveness is needed. Forgiveness is the start of a long journey.
If you aren’t sure about how to forgive of what forgiveness entails, download the video “Forgiveness: Stop the Pain, tear down the walls and remove the roadblocks“. Within minutes you can start learning ways of starting the forgiveness part of your affair recovery journey.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
