Today, while doing a facebook live presentation on family boundaries and marriage, it struck me that this is an issue of concern with affairs as well. Although the topic is a sensitive and unsavory one.
As unsavory as it is, one of the dark corners of affairs is that of affairs within families. I’m not talking incest, but rather affairs with brother in laws, sister in laws, uncles and aunts.
These affairs happen, whether they were intended or the product of seduction. What all of these types of affairs have in common is that it starts with an encroachment on boundaries.
What starts out as a small thing – talking to someone of the opposite sex more often than your spouse, buying them gifts, lending an ear to their problems into the late hours of the night.
The danger of family encroachment is insidious. You don’t have your guard up with family and some unscrupulous members exploit that. They encroach on boundaries with unwanted touches and other actions.
It’s important that your marriage have clear boundaries. Those boundaries need to be clearly defined and enforced. What happens is that with family, those boundaries are relaxed.
The assumption is that you don’t have to be on guard with family members. With a healthy family, this is true. When families turn dysfunctional, the tendency to relax boundaries gets exploited.
What starts as some emotional sharing or inappropriate joking gets taken further and further. Some seducers push boundaries until told “NO” or threatened.
Some don’t take kindly to being told ‘no’. They believe that since you are family, you’ll stay quiet, especially after drinking too much.
They don’t have the self-control to stop when things become inappropriate. Instead, the use of forceful language or threats have to be used with them.
In my Affair Recovery Workshop, I point out that one of the biggest factors behind affairs is whether or not there’s a family history of affairs. This is a statistic that’s often swept under the rug or only mentioned in passing.
This means that you need to be aware that unhealthy family members pose a threat. If you’ve been caught up in one of this situations, there are things you can do. One thing you can do is download the Affair Recovery Workshop. Once downloaded, make sure you focus on the section dealing with family dynamics and family history related to affairs.
Part of recovery that is often neglected is talking about and breaking the family patterns surrounding affairs. With Thanksgiving rapidly approaching, if you or your spouse have been victimized by family, those old feelings may crop up.
Instead of suffering through them, take action and deal with them by starting the healing process.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
