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Preventing Future Affairs
There are many pitfalls along the path to recovery, and it’s important to deal with them in a straightforward way. The key to overcoming these obstacles is developing honest communication. This is the critical ingredient that determines whether or not trust can be established in the future.
By recovering from this experience, you’re prepared to face the future without repeating the false ways of thinking about preventing affairs that you may have blindly accepted before. Whether with the same partner or another, you now have a chance to think clearly about what’s at stake and what’s involved in having a monogamous relationship.
Re-reading the following lists can reinforce what you’ve already learned the hard way.
What doesn’t work:
- Repeating the marriage vows doesn’t prevent affairs.
- Love doesn’t prevent affairs.
- Religious commandments don’t prevent affairs.
- Parental injunctions don’t prevent them.
- Being the “perfect” partner doesn’t prevent them.
- “Spicing” up your sex life doesn’t prevent them.
- Having more children doesn’t prevent them.
- Threats don’t prevent them.
- Simple promises don’t prevent them.
- Getting caught doesn’t prevent them.
What is most likely to work:
- Awareness that no one is immune to having an affair.
- Discussion and agreement about your commitment to monogamy.
- Regular renewal of your commitment.
- Acknowledgment that the issue of monogamy is never settled once and for all.
- Ongoing, honest communication about everything that impacts your relationship.
What to do to help heal a broken or damaged relationship:
- Affirm your love regularly.
- Describe in clear, specific terms the kind of relationship you want to build.
- Listen better than you’ve ever listened before (without judging).
- Resist the temptation to punish your partner for whatever “transgressions” you think they committed or any they acknowledge. Reinforce them for being forthcoming and try to get a full understanding of the behavior at the time it happened in the context of your relationship. Finally, together, develop better ways of behaving in the future.
- Acknowledge your joint responsibility for creating whatever problems exist in your relationship.
- Share your ideas about how other people have influenced you for better or worse. Forgive those you believe added to your problems and know that you can choose to act differently from the way they “taught” you to act—starting today. (“The way you are may be your parents’ fault, but if you stay that way, it’s your own fault.”)
- Do your fair share of emotional work. When you’ve been collecting hurts and resentments for quite a while, it’s essential to clear enough of them out to make room for the loving, positive regard you want to have for each other.
- Manage your self-talk. Angry and loving feelings don’t grow well together. In fact, angry, resentful feelings are like weeds; they grow like crazy and tend to choke the loving feelings unless you consciously choose to support them.
- Look for ways to give your partner what they need. Ask for what you need. Don’t be addicted to getting it.
- Acknowledge and celebrate your progress. Don’t wait for major breakthroughs. Notice and enjoy every small step in the right direction.
- Don’t be afraid to laugh and cry together.
- Working on a relationship can be extremely draining—probably because you’re struggling to understand what the other is saying and to clearly express your own thoughts—and you’re intensely emotionally involved. Be sensitive to each other’s capacity to do the work.
- Pace yourselves. Intersperse some time-outs to gather your thoughts and refresh yourselves.
- To the degree you can enjoy having sex together, do it! It can make a significant contribution to the healing process.
Starting Over
Whether with your partner or on your own, you’re in essence starting over on a whole new phase of your life. There are many ways in which you will be affected by this transformation, but it requires your clear thinking to gain the most possible.
- You need to redefine the way you see yourself and your place in the world.
- You need to accept that you are now different because of this experience— but recognize that you’re OK.
- You need to see that while no one would choose this experience as a way of achieving personal growth; nevertheless, that can be the result.
The final challenge is learning to live with reality of what has happened and facing the future as a stronger, wiser person.
