As much as I despise people being forced into affairs, it happens. Although it’s easy blaming the cheater for affairs, when facing forced affairs, the rules change. What changes things is the use of force. When force is used for people to have their way, blame for an affair changes.
The first forced affair I dealt with concerned a 17-year old woman whose family had arranged a marriage for her. My initial impression was, “This is Texas! It’s the 1980’s, not the Middle Ages!” Although the idea of arranged marriages has some Biblical precedents, the whole idea of a ‘forced’ marriage rubbed me wrong. Forced marriages are nothing more than someone being taken advantage of, pure and simple. In her case, not only was she going to be married to someone she did not love, but the marriage itself was going to be a sham. Her husband-to-be had no intention of living up to his end of the bargain.
To make a long story short, it took some creativity, but the girl ended up not being forced into matrimony at that time.
Now working exclusively with affairs, I didn’t expect to encounter forced situations again and was wrong. With some regularity, I encounter these situations. In some cases, husbands ‘force’ their wives into having affairs. In those situations, the hubby is doing it for his own pleasure. In these situations, the husband uses his position to ‘command’ his wife into cheating. What many wives don’t realize is that even Scripture has limits on authority that do not include forced affairs.
There are husbands who forcibly ‘share’ their wife as a way of paying off their debts. In such cases, they resort to some variation of guilt or obedience. At those times, their idea of ‘submission’ shared commonality with S&M.
There are also some swinger situations where one spouse ‘forces’ the other into things or where one of the other couples has a predatory mindset and forces themselves on a spouse without ‘permission’. A heartbroken wife share with me how she had been begging her husband to stop forcing her into swinging activities, even when she didn’t feel well. Her begging fell on deaf ears. He insisted she continue sleeping around.
What I have found is that, in forced affairs, the blame for the affair changes. Although it is still the cheater’s fault, in a forced affair, there are more factors to consider. The cheater is no longer just someone who decided to have an affair, but someone who was taken advantage of. This changes the dynamics somewhat.
Although the specifics of forced affairs may differ, the fact remains that some affairs are ‘forced’. When you are forced into a relationship against your will and choice, it’s a violent act. Anytime you are handled in a violent manner, it leaves scars.
Some of them heal on their own, others need special handling. If your situation has you experiencing sleeplessness, digestion problems, depressed mood, difficulty thinking, being indecisive, obsessing about the affair, nightmares, or being easily confused, you may be experiencing some degree of Affair Trauma.
Your mind may have blocked many things out, yet body memories remain long after your mind pushes unpleasant events further and further into dark recesses. Your body remembers the violence done against it.
That’s why I put together the “Dealing with Affair Trauma” video. It gives you ways of using special handling in healing those old hurts along with uniting mind and body for healing rather than using one to block out the other.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
