When the time comes for closure, how do you know it’s time? A BIG problem is premature closure – bringing closure to the affair before the issues are settled.
Avoiding Premature Closure <<– listen to the audio here
Hi, this is Jeff Murrah with Affair Recovery Radio. I’m glad that you’re here with me today. Thank you for tuning into the podcast and I hope that you enjoy it. The topic that we’re going to be dealing with today is avoiding premature closure.
As you deal with the affair there’s going to be a time that the two of you are going to need closure. Questions come up. How do you know when it’s time for closure?
A big problem with many marriages that are struggling with recovery from the affair is dealing with ‘premature closures.’
Bringing closure to the affair before the issues are settled is a problem. When you bring the sense of closure it’s almost like you’re shutting the door to any further discussion. A lot of cheaters are going to want to quickly talk about the affair, shut the door on the topic, and never bring it up again. It’s like they want to put it away like something that they stick in the attic.
I’m sure that you want to get through the whole affair situation as quickly as you can. But when you’re dealing with an affair and you’re dealing with the betrayal of trust that occurs there. This is not something that you’re going to want to resolve prematurely, or try to say “We’re done talking about it, it’s settled“, before the issues are really settled.
What happens, these issues need resolving more importantly than just being talked at or talked about. I understand the cheater’s viewpoint. They get tired of the issue being brought up again and again.
Many times it’s almost like a broken record. You will find yourself stuck in a rut because you don’t have an answer. You keep asking the question, looking for that answer and it’s not there.
If you close the door on the discussion about the affair before you have that finally settled it’s almost like that record’s still going to be skipping, but just in your head. You’re going to become more like a pressure cooker where a lot of the emotional tension continues building up inside of you and you’ve got no place to take it.
This is not a good situation. Cheaters will want to close the matter before resolving it.
In their mind if they can close the matter, it’s ‘resolved’. As sad as it sounds, if they can get you to make a commitment or agreement that the matter is closed, then they don’t have to deal with it anymore.
They’ll assume that being closed means it’s resolved, and that’s not the case.
In terms of a solution, the solution is “knowing what to avoid and what to look for”. That’s what we’re going to go ahead and go over today.
The first part of the solution.
- You want to avoid the ‘once and for all’ mindset. Some of the people out there have this once and for all mindset that they feel like okay, tonight we’re going to have the big talk. We’re going to lay all the issues out on the table, we’re going to get this thing settled, and then it’ll be done with.
‘Once and for all’, doesn’t work on cars and it does not work on relationships. I know with my car one time I had to have some major repairs done on it.
I had the transmission fixed and all sorts of stuff. It got repaired once. Does that mean it’s never going to break down again?
That there’s never going to be issues?
No. It’s a constant, ongoing maintenance project.
The same type of thing with relationships, and they’re going to require ongoing maintenance. You can’t do it once and think that’s going to fix it all forever. It doesn’t. That’s unrealistic.
It doesn’t work for cars, it doesn’t work for relationships. You’re going to have to set that aside.
I know a lot of people, a close cousin of this is “I said it once I’m not going to say it again!” that doesn’t work. With affairs you may have to say things over and over again.
It’s not that you’re trying to browbeat the person. Many times, the hurts are so intense and you’re dealing with many many types of defense mechanisms. The message has to be repeated so that it can get through all of those barriers.
There’s a reason why things need to be repeated. When it comes down to an affair it’s going to require having to discuss it several times and look at it from several different angles.
It’s not something that you can just sit down with a couple pots of coffee and a long night with the fireplace going. No. You’re not going to be able to do that. Works in the movies, but it doesn’t work in real life.
2. A good confession is needed. You need to have an acknowledgment of what is wrong. You need to have the person accept responsibility for what they did, and they need to ask for forgiveness.
You can refer to this good confession as a AAA model if you want, because you have those three subsets of Acknowledging the wrong, Accepting responsibility, and Asking for forgiveness.
It’s important that you have all three pieces. Some cheaters know what you want to hear and they may give you one or two pieces. Don’t settle for that.
You need all three pieces. Otherwise it amounts to an incomplete type of forgiveness, or ‘incomplete confession’ I should say.
3. When you’re having a big talk, or one of the big talks you want to look for changes in their behaviors and changes in their thinking. With cheaters, if they are only making changes in one of these areas it’s incomplete.
If they’re doing all kinds of talk, talk talk talk, and you don’t see any change in the behavior it’s not going to last.
If they’re making changes in behavior and have not changed the way that they’re talking, that’s not a good sign either. Changes in behaviors are good, but it needs to be accompanied with changes in the way that they’re talking.
With changes in the way that they’re thinking. Because how they talk is going to give you clues to what they’re thinking. If you don’t see changes in the thinking and the behavior they’re just stalling the problem and it’s going to come back again.
That’s why you need all of these.
For further information on forgiveness, order the video “Forgiveness: Stop the Pain, Tear down the Walls and Remove the Roadblocks”. The video covers the when and how of forgiveness. Knowing when is a key way of preventing premature closure.
Best Regards,
Jeff
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