During my time working at a drug treatment center known as ‘the Shoulder’ I attended my share of meetings. One of the statements made in a meeting that stuck with me was how ‘alcoholism is suicide on the installment plan’.
The reality of that statement cut through all kinds of denial and game playing. It forces you to face the uncomfortable truth of what’s really happening. When you’re working with people in denial, you need those kinds of tastes of real life in order to wake the clients up.
When it comes to marriage, an affair is marital suicide on an installment plan as well. The affair poisons the oneness that once existed.
That poison takes away any special-ness or humanity from your marriage. An affair transforms the special relationship with your spouse to them becoming ‘just another one in a series‘.
The affair also damages the security and stability that your marriage once provided. It amounts to removing part of the critical infrastructure of the relationship.
You wouldn’t remove critical parts to your car and expect it to operate the same afterwards. Likewise, you can’t damage and remove critical parts of your marriage and expect it to function the same way.
If you jump into swinging, you increased the dosage of the relationship poison. The main difference is that it poisons your soul as well as your marriage. The damage is also more widespread than happens with an affair.
Although the damage is more widespread, the lifestyle mindset puts blinders on your mind to where things don’t seem that bad. Swingers are also affluent enough to delay facing the damage a little longer than with affairs.
Once the damage is done, it can’t be undone. You have to live with a new reality in your marriage. You adjust to the changes in your marriage and compromise your values and vision.
The problem is that eventually it catches up. There comes a time when any special-ness in your marriage is gone. It becomes a matter of your relationship being just who your alienated spouse sleeps with on a given night.
If you need help in overcoming this nightmare, click and download the video ‘Relationship Trauma for Swingers”. It guides you through the numbness and shock that you’ve been living through.
You don’t have to just tolerate or accept things that you don’t feel comfortable with. Your situation can change. Within a few minutes you can start healing yourself and your marriage from the damage done.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
