The other day, I received notice that my high school class is having its 45th-year reunion this year. Wow! It surprises me that 45 years have passed since I graduated from high school. Those reunions are often a time for reflection and remembrance.
Today’s society has changed so much that the values and activities I experienced now seem as alien as something from another planet. In high school, I found a sense of identity in the common love and support of our football team. I identified with the things I loved (football, muscle cars, music, etc.).
In today’s society, more of the people who consider themselves cool find their identity in what they ‘hate’ rather than what they love. Every day I find myself astounded at the latest thing that is ‘hated’ from statues to traditions to institutions. The woke movement is filled with hatred for many things. With the rampant spread of hatred, it’s no wonder that the institution of marriage is under fire as well.
When it comes to marriage and affairs, I love marriage and hate affairs. Since I love marriage, I hate those things that threaten it, like infidelity. I love marriage enough to believe that your marriage can recover from an affair.
In order to move past an affair, it’s important to ‘hate’ affairs. When you don’t hate affairs, you leave your marriage vulnerable to back doors being exploited or excuses being made. These days, it’s too easy making excuses for affairs with comments like “I can see why she would cheat on him” or “He can do better than her” or a host of other such statements. It’s important to ‘hate affairs’ in order to protect your marriage.
Hating affairs is not the same as hating people. It’s possible to hate an affair while still loving the person who committed it. In fact, it’s often easier to forgive someone you love than someone you don’t know.
Although hate is a strong word, you need strong passionate hate in recovery. You need to hate the shows that condone or glorify it, hate jokes giving backhand approval to affairs, and hate any kind of excusing of affairs.
When you don’t hate affairs, there’s a good chance you’ll become friends with a cheater or your spouse will. When you don’t slam the door in the face of infidelity, it comes in through the side window.
Those friends influence you and your thinking. They even start weakening your resolve in resisting infidelity. Recall that the decision to cheat often comes by making one small compromise followed by another.
Moral of the story? There’s a time and place for love, and another time and place for hate. In hating the affair, you still have to love your spouse, and love your marriage. Trying to love them without hating the affair only solves half the problem. You need both love and hate in dealing with your marriage and the affair. One without the other only leads to half-baked solutions.
You can learn more about recovering from an affair in the Affair Recovery Workshop.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
