Back in May, the group ‘After My Affair’ closed down. There were various reasons given for that decision.
In reading through them, I was struck by the tendency of cheaters expressing a desire for returning back to their AP along with rehashing the details of their affair.
On the surface, the rehashing appears innocuous, yet the reality is that rehashing, especially when the rehashing is romanticized becomes toxic. Each replay allows the poison of the affair to infect your marriage again.
It’s one thing when the cheater is confessing to you, it’s quite another when they replay romantic aspects of the affair in their head. It’s like they’re reliving the affair again.
Each time they rehash what happened with any kind of romantic or wishful thinking, it activates old circuits. It turns on the part of their brain that was ‘all systems go’ at the time of the affair.
Each time they remember with fondness or rehash with romanticism, their brain relives the affair. When the cheater relives the affair, it reignites the danger of the affair.
They may have physically ended the affair, yet the rehashing of it keeps the emotional affair alive in their head and heart. When an affair or even the desire for an affair is activated, your marriage is in danger.
Once that happens, the cheater risks falling into complaining about the marriage. At that point, they are mentally creating a negative fantasy about your marriage. This negative fantasy about how bad things are is typically the counter-part to imagining how good the affair is or was.
The two fantasies together create a one-two punch that puts them at high risk for affair relapse. After a cheater strays once, the danger of them straying again remains high.
It’s important that you recognize the danger of romantically rehashing the affair. It’s one of the danger signs noted in the video “Overcoming Affair Relapse”.
If you feel that you’re at risk for affair relapse or that your spouse is, then take action and do something about it now before its too late. Once the affair fog takes over their brain, they function like their in ‘robot mode’. The time for action is now.
Click and download the video today.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
