In the early part of January I came across a story that you’ll find interesting and worthy of your attention. It concerned the finding that when parents cheat, there’s a greater likelihood of their children cheating as well.
The story concerned a survey taken in South Yorkshire. The survey found that women are more likely to cheat if their mothers cheated.
The survey consisted of 2,000 responses. Although it’s presented as news, it didn’t surprise me. If you’ve been with me for a while, your familiar with the finding that affairs run in families.
Yes, a surprising number of affairs follow family patterns. Many couples never realize this or deal with it. They think that once the affair in their marriage is over the issue is resolved. They never considered what’s involved in breaking family patterns leading to the affair.
What I found worth noting about this story is that the survey identified specific numbers.
With men, 52% of cheaters had male members of their families cheat. With women, there were cheating women in their family 32% of the time. These findings make it clear that a cheating parent leaves a lasting impact on their children.
It also makes it clear that the actions of fathers and other males have on sons is powerful. This is one of those situations where reality doesn’t line up with the excuse, “It’s just between us adults.”
It really hit home when respondents voiced that their mother’s affair gave them permission to have an affair themselves. Your actions make a big impact. Whether you want your children to cheat, your actions influence that decision. They look at what is done rather than what is said.
This is why it’s so critical that in recovering from the affair that you address and change the family patterns as well. If you reconcile without changing, addressing or disrupting the patterns, you’re leaving the problem half-dealt with.
There are ways of disrupting the patterns. In order to disrupt them, you have to uncover what they are. This is where genograms come into recovery.
Genograms are tools for identifying and diagramming out family patterns across generations. They help uncover the patterns, including those related to affairs. Once you know the patterns, steps can be taken in changing them.
If your affair recovery doesn’t include work on genograms, you haven’t dealt with the full impact of the affair. This is why I include a section on genograms in the Affair Recovery Workshop.
Recovering from the affair involves dealing with the past, what’s going on now and with the future impact of what happened. Ignoring the effect of the affair or thinking that it only impacted the betrayed, the cheater and lover is stopping recovery too soon.
Just because the betrayer returns home and you reconcile, doesn’t mean that the effects of the affair are over.
If you haven’t dealt with the family patterns of affairs in your situation, I encourage you to do so. You can download your own copy of the Affair Recovery Workshop by clicking this link.
There are things you can do that make recovery go smoother. Make sure your recovery from the affair doesn’t stop before the issues have been fully dealt with.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
