One of the features in neighborhoods where I grew up was bar ditches. These were drainage ditches dug on each side of the road.
In them my friends and I found bullfrogs, crawdads, snakes and various types of minnows. You never knew what you’d find in a bar ditch. With that in mind, it was important to us to check out the bar ditches on both sides of the road.
Although we checked them out, we didn’t want to wade into them, because that’s where you got stuck. That was also where the broken bottles were.
I often think of those bar ditches anytime I encounter ditch thinking. Ditch thinking is when your mind goes from one extreme to the other.
Like the bar ditches of my youth, with ditch thinking, you’re stuck in the middle of one ditch or the other. By going to one extreme or the other, you face dangers at each extreme.
Where I see ditch thinking is when dealing with affair relapse.
Spouses like yourself alternate between enabling and micromanaging. You either allow the cheater to continue their misbehaving or go to the other extreme and try controlling everything.
By controlling everything, you attempt limiting their access to money, who they talk to, where they go and keep guard over them as if you were their personal penitentiary watchdog.
When going through that part of affair recovery, going to either extreme has its dangers. Each of those extremes gives you short term relief, but long term lasting change isn’t possible with either of them.
There are dangers lurking at each extreme getting you stuck in tolerating the affair or coddling the cheater. They don’t need you hoovering over them. They also don’t need coddling, nor do they need too much freedom too fast.
Stopping the affair doesn’t end the affair. The old thinking, fantasies and routines associated with the affair need changing as well.
In the video, “Overcoming Affair Relapse“, I go over ways of handling these challenges, so that you don’t get stuck in the pattern of ditch thinking. There are better ways of handling the risk of affair relapse.
You can learn what to look for and what to prepare when it comes to affair relapse. You don’t have to be surprised or caught off guard again. Click and download the video today.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
