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| broken people ... breaking hearts
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okay. back to the "anatomy of an affair." or, more accurately, "two broken people finding each other." see? it isn't as exciting when it is called by accurate terms. we (humans) are not taught to stay healthy on a soul level. some of us are fortunate enough to discover this skill by accident, but most of us are a paycheck away from being homeless and a meaningful look away from being in an affair. i am an observer. i notice things that most folks let pass by their eyes without a thought. i know this because people ask me to turn "it" off around them. there appear to be things that most folks are afraid to consider. the question that folks avoid who are having affairs is, "what if i am actually broken?" see, if they get help, they will probably be told to get out of the affair. that would NOT be fun. they are also probably going to have work to do on their marriages. Work. that would also not be fun. can't everyone just lighten up?
people are designed to be counterparts. whole in and of themselves, they have grooves and ridges built in that will mesh with the proper partners. affairs are counterfeit pairings. they are usually instigated by someone who has a miniscule amount of vision into other people's state of heart. i can tell you within minutes when i meet someone who is broken, who is needy, who is walking wounded. the most beautiful woman i ever dated volunteered that her husband had been killed in a car wreck, and for seven years, no one had sat with her long enough to let her cry over it. i was not her counselor, so it wasn't me taking advantage. i simply listened. however, her girls were all three as beautiful as her, and one was brazen about her flirtatiousness with me. "better a good run than a bad stand" i was always told. i decided it was better to leave that little family unit in as good shape as i found it and walk away. the daughter was 16, looked 30, and had wants as old as history. i was not her guy.
if the affair isn't a wildly desperate thing like people in a singles' bar with tan lines around where their hidden ring usually sits, it usually develops something like this: one of the people makes themselves important to the other. baby steps. little by little, the secretary may bring nice things from home. "here are some leftovers. i thought they might be better than a baloney sandwich ... " then the boss brings the secretary something nice that he "happened" to find in an airport gift shop. and each step is savored, thought about over and over, and do you know what that is called? it is called "falling in love." if you go to many counselors about your marriage, they will ask why you got married. they are not being smart-alecks. they are looking for the memories that are the base for your ongoing love. we have mental snap-shots that we fall back on during tough times. when i hated my last wife for the way she spoke to me, i would remember her talking to our kids right after they were born. i would daydream that i would someday hear that love in her voice for me. ahem. still waiting. HA! i crack me up. she has found a wonderful man to love.
sometime in the course of things, the affair snapshots take over the love slots. women almost intuitively know when that is happening, and often, during times of insecurity, say, "what are you thinking?" "a penny for your thoughts ... " i knew one woman who stayed up and listened for her husband to talk in his sleep. NOTHING said in sleep can be trusted as truth. many dreams are gentle hallucinations. so if you hear your husband killing a wooly mammoth in his sleep, that doesn't mean he is having an affair with the hairy waitress at Bob Evans. but probing too often will result in more intense non-communication of the partner. they didn't fall for you because you were nosy, and it is no way to stay married either. people do sometimes become strangers in a marriage, but guess what? you know how to overcome that problem. when you met, you were strangers!
two notes: 1) when i quote something like, "women do less guilt than men over affairs," i am not targeting you in specific. some women do tremendous guilt. you should do guilt when you cheat. cheating is wrong. but studies have shown that on the whole, women make a more thoughtful choice about having affairs, and therefore seem to carry away less guilt than men. 2) men, being a cowboy only works in the movies. beating up her cheating-partner means he has beat you twice. going to jail is not the best form of revenge. and she isn't going to love you for being a beast. i was married to a woman who had a new affair at least once a month while married to me. i kicked one guy's rump. he was the next one she married. vengeance is not the big fat juicy party you think it will be.
the bottom line is that if your spouse has had an affair, there may be several things broken. their view of themselves. their understanding of love and marriage (many people today think dating is sex and marriage is going steady. um, they are wrong.) heck, you may be one of the broken things as well. but affairs are a way to permanently break something that was fixable before random intimacy. "oh, but it's not random. we LOVE each other." SHUT UP! you love them as much as the fencepost you relieve yourself against. they are a diversion. and you are acting like a six-year-old. except instead of taking your ball and going home, you are taking your dignity and the most intimate, personal gift you can give your partner and showing it was too precious to be entrusted to you in the first place. if you stay involved with your affair long enough to get divorced and marry the affair, your wedding will be the emptiest, saddest thing this side of starving children. marriage is "other-centered." affairs are "self-centered." as you can see, there is a rather large canyon to jump from you rubbing yourself against someone to becoming a spouse.
marriage isn't 50/50. i have a few friends right now whose spouses THOUGHT 50% was enough, and used the other fifty percent to marry other people! you read me rightly. i have more than one friend in the same fix at the moment. look, folks. marriage is as close as you can get to 100%/100%. people are not perfect, so some days we may be selfish. but selfish is leaving dirty dishes for someone else to wash, not staining another couple's marriage. if you stay with me long enough, you will hear this a hundred times. if your spouse doesn't know you cheated, then your silent guilt is the consequence you bought. you do not have the right to spring on them that you cheated just "so you can get a fresh start." liar. confession is a slap if you break a heart by doing it. i have a friend i love dearly who feels it is his wife's turn to come back to him because she left when he confessed a lifetime of affairs. so he was "done" with the damaging affairs and elected to break her heart with a confession. if you can't see how that's wrong, seek counseling. NOW!
next time we'll look at how to fall "out of love" with your affair and painlessly turn that attention back to the one who has your "commitment." if we can't fix it, it will at least give you enough time to leave your spouse and have some integrity. it is the definition of love that you can't love intimately two people at once without violating love itself. affairs do not and CAN not have anything to do with love, because love comes from a clean heart. read 1 Corinthians 13. see you on the flip side. |
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Posted by AllThingsBuck on 2008-07-22 13:21:17 | Rating: | Views: 79
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Wow...that was powerful....gives one a lot to think about.
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Posted by slowtolearn
on 2008-07-28 08:32:39
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I was in the mall shopping for a picture frame for a relatively close friend of mine. She had just come home from her honeymoon and we were getting together this coming weekend to catch up and look at her photos . As I was walking into the store I made eye contact with her husband, surprisingly he approached me and we began speaking to one another. Now, I had only met him about three or four times before because after they met she stopped seeing many of her friends as with most new relationships. It was a brief dating period for them, in fact, they were married within five months of meeting each other. He was very pleasant, in fact he was overly nice and was leading into conversations that were making me feel a little uneasy. He started asking personal questions about my relationships and made an inquiry about me going out with a newly married man and how he could really show me a good time. He asked for my cellphone number and would not stop until I gave in,"WHAT A FOOL I AM" Now I don't know what to do, I can't tell my her because it will end my friendship for sure and I can't possibly go to her home and pretend this didn't happen. I confided with another close friend of mine and she told me about this site http://urajerk.com/ At first I thought is was just another one of those sites that pop up here and there but I checked it out. I must say I like it and thats why I am spreading the word. I was able to send him a few cards with some personal anonymous messages, he will know they are from me, but no one else will. I love this site because I can at least tell him that he is a F#%//ng JERK. Has anyone else gone through this crap before? How can men be such assholes? I mean JERKS!!
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Posted by lina4u
on 2008-07-29 06:39:54
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