Four Minefields to Avoid

From: Dr. Frank Gunzburg

As you start getting in touch with your partner more and more about your relationship and the affair, there are going to be times when your emotions are very touchy. You might feel incredibly angry at your partner and want to blow up at them. In addition, you might start to try and rationalize the affair or judge the cheater, not only for what they have done, but for how they live their life.

These are natural feelings, and how you express them is going to be important. You certainly don’t want to damage your relationship further.

Specifically, there are four minefields to avoid to keep your relationship from being further damaged. Each of these is discussed below.

Minefield #1: Angry Outbursts

Due to the fact that your emotions are still so tender at this point in the program, it is very easy to feel the desire to blow up at your partner, particularly now that you will be discussing your relationship (and potentially the affair) with them. In fact, angry outbursts are almost inevitable. You might want to blow up at them so that they feel a bit of the pain you have been struggling with, to take revenge on them in some way, or to punish them for doing what they did.

Frequently getting angry at your partner and repeatedly exploding into fits of rage (as understandable as it is) does more harm than good. It frightens people, pushes them away, and makes them want to avoid being with and talking to you. That is not the effect you are looking for right now.

Remember that being angry is a feeling. What you do about your angry feelings is different and separate from the feeling itself. It isn’t the anger itself, but allowing your actions to be dictated by the anger, that is problematic.

Minefield #2: Judging Your Partner

When you are injured in an affair, you have every right to believe that what the cheater did was wrong. It was.

However, this does not give you permission to be self-righteous and assume that everything you do in the relationship is right and that everything your partner does is wrong. Just because your partner cheated on you does not suddenly mean that you are or have been perfect in your relationship, and it doesn’t mean that all decisions should now go your way.

In a relationship, particularly one that has gone through the trauma yours has endured, both people need to engage in the process of healing and changing in order to make the relationship healthy again. Certainly, the cheater needs to make significant changes – including internal character changes and external changes that demonstrate a commitment to not cheat again and improve the relationship. However, the injured partner will also have to change so that the relationship can really improve.

Self-righteousness destroys this feeling of mutual change for the benefit of both partners and their relationship. It makes the process of change and growth one-sided. This is incredibly problematic because when you walk into this minefield you are in danger of inhibiting the forward progress you need in order to rebuild your life together.

Minefield #3: Inconsiderate Choices

There are times when it is important to be selfish and ask for what you need out of your relationship. Indeed, it is important to make choices for yourself in the context of your relationship in order to make sure that you are fulfilled as a person.

However, when you make demands or take actions that have the potential to hurt your partner or that they strongly object to, you have walked into another minefield.

Your relationship exists to benefit both of the people in it. It is there to help you both get what you want out of life, while enriching one another’s existences. It isn’t all about you.

Look carefully at the times you suspect you might be demanding something purely for your own needs at some personal cost to your partner. Check to see if what you are asking for truly benefits the relationship. Think about whether your partner wants or needs it in any way. Ask yourself whether you could live without it if you had to for the sake of your relationship.

Minefield #4: Dishonesty

We talked a great deal about transparency in Section 3. There we discussed how important it is for the cheater to become transparent and why complete honesty is so important in a relationship.

Honesty is fundamentally important to all intimate relationships. It is the foundation for the feeling of trust and safety that you have in a relationship. Without it, these important factors are lost or, at the very least, compromised.

The cheater has some extra work to do here. We already know they lied in order to have the affair, particularly if we consider omission of information a lie. The longer the affair lasted, the more likely it is that lying became a pattern. In changing the cheater’s character, the cheater has to make a special effort against lying.

Remember, it is the slippery slope effect that is such a danger and leads the person predisposed to cheating down the path to infidelity. You start out telling little white lies that don’t seem like egregious offenses to the relationship. One lie leads to the next, each step seemingly innocent, until you end up in a place you never dreamed you could.

Dr. Frank Gunzburg is a licensed counselor in Maryland and has been specializing is helping couples restore their marriage for over 30 years.

For more information about forgiving your partner and working through the past, please visit http://www.howyouforgive.com/

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