Yesterday I talked about ‘why’ you didn’t see the affair coming. The answer to that question needs some further discussion.
Let me start with a simple, yet insightful truth. That truth is that you’ll find what you’re looking for. If you are looking for answers about the affair by questioning yourself, that’s where you’ll start finding answers.
Those answers may give you someone to blame and incidents to attribute to the affair, but those answers may not be the truth. An explanation isn’t the same thing as the truth.
Confusing explanations and truthful facts will point you in the direction of wrong solutions. In those cases, you’ll start fixing the wrong problem.
When it comes to affair recovery, blaming yourself for not seeing it coming isn’t the best solution. It gives you someone to blame, but doesn’t hold the cheater accountable for their choices.
They made choices to step outside of your marriage. Even if you did make bad decisions prior to the affair, they ultimately made the decision to have the affair.
Putting blame in the wrong place only shifts guilt around. Blame doesn’t provide lasting solutions to the affair situation.
In affair recovery, how you handle guilt is important. If you short-circuit or diminish it before its work is done, you limit what it can accomplish.
During the recovery process, guilt is your friend. Guilt and conviction put pressure on the cheater to change their ways. This is why you don’t want to point it in the wrong direction.
Blaming yourself also keeps your focus from where it needs to be. It gives you the illusion of control to where you think you are doing something, when not much has actually changed.
What is clear is that changes are needed in your marriage. Changes in the relationship, in how the cheater does things and how you do things. When your focus is misplaced, the changes you make will be misplaced as well.
In my video on ” Getting Past the Affair Crisis”, I share with you what areas need changing in the early days of affair recovery. Even if it’s been a while since you discovered the affair, you’ll benefit from knowing where to make changes.
Changes in the right areas lead to healing. Click and download your copy today.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
