Surrender

I was reading an article about affairs. The author said the betrayed shouldn’t be surprised they have been cheated on, that having an affair is the norm not an anomaly. At first I was angry about that statement. After some thought and continuing with the article, I realized the author was simply stating the obvious, we are selfish and monogamy is not easy. Part of our challenge in life is saying no to things we may desire in order to say yes to ultimately healthier options. When I was having an affair, I was not saying no to an illicit relationship and unfortunately not saying yes to my marriage.

I have a friend who, at times in her life, practices saying no. She prays about what she believes God wants her to say no to and then abstains for a month. What I like about this is the element of surrender. She recognizes her natural inclination is to deny herself nothing, then voluntarily goes to her knees and surrenders the “self”. At first it seemed strange but now, I see the beauty in it.

Are you choosing something in your life today that is indicative of the purely selfish part of you? Want to be different? Surrender.

Removing the Door to Your Life

In the most recent version of the movie Freaky Friday, there’s a scene where the mother removes the daughter’s door to her room. It’s the result of broken trust. I often use that illustration when working with couples who are confronting broken trust. Having an affair means you are no longer trustworthy. Your word is crap. It doesn’t mean a thing to your partner. As the affair-haver, it is your job to do all you can to rebuild trust with your spouse or partner (assuming you intend to repair the broken relationship). You have to want to rebuild trust. If you don’t desire it, this will be ultra hard for you. When you are in the place of sincerely committing yourself to the task of rebuilding trust, this journey will feel more like freedom and less like an intrusion. That’s your barometer for knowing where your heart is. Since an affair is self serving, recovering from one means you are letting go of both pride and satiating your selfishness.

Having no door on your life means your cell phone – voice mail, outgoing and incoming calls and texts are accessible by your partner. You give your passwords to email, Facebook, LinkedIn and any other methods of communication to your partner. You agree not to set up secret email accounts. You don’t use a work phone or other means of communication with the offending party. All of your communication is an open book for your partner. You let her in on everything, holding nothing back. If you fail, you let her know without her having to find it out on her own because eventually she will.

I love when my husband is using my phone. I know he can peruse my voicemail, email and texts and find nothing incriminating because I’m not doing anything that would result in broken trust. I haven’t had an affair in my current marriage, but I had an affair in my first. I know the difference between the nearly constant fear of being found out and the freedom of having nothing to hide. I prefer the door to my life being off its hinges.

Biting the Rescuer

I see this repeatedly: You’re involved in an affair. Someone who cares about you knows or finds out. He confronts you and offers to help. You deny the problem, tell him he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, tell him to leave you alone, question his intentions… Affair-havers are like trapped animals. When someone comes along and attempts to open the trap and free us, we bite and scratch at him. We push her away.

I think two things are going on. The first is we want to preserve our pride. We don’t want people to know the very dark and selfish side of us. We don’t want to be fully exposed. The second is we don’t really want to lose the affair. We get something from it that is just enough to keep us going back for more. If we accept help, then we accept losing the “high”. I want to be careful when I use addict terms, but the truth is, affairs are an addiction. We are getting a legitimate need met illegitimately as my former affair partner would say.

As hard as it may be, accept the help. Begin to allow people in. Let them know you want help but part of you doesn’t, and that part might reisit their efforts. This will be a huge challenge. Maybe you aren’t in a place right now to let people in. Own that. Perhaps begin acknowledging that you are replacing your need for connection with your significant other for an unhealthy yet addictively satisfying substitute. Read my post, “Searching for the Missing Piece” and contemplate how that might be true for you.