Little Boxes…

Posted on November 19, 2013 | Leave a comment | Edit

I’m always surprised and to be quite frank, saddened when I hear of wayward spouses and other men/women who think that if a betrayed spouse doesn’t know about an affair, they won’t be hurt. I really wonder how anyone can think that.
It’s really quite depressing and, on some level, quite disturbing. the idea that someone can compartmentalize their life like that so much that one area doesn’t bleed into another makes me wonder what sort of a person could do that. How can they simply shut off that part of themselves? After all, if they love someone as much as they might claim to love the other man/woman, how can they hide it form the rest of the people in their life? How is it possible that no one else can tell?
It’s almost as if some people live their life in little boxes. They put the affair into a box, they put the relationship with their spouse into another, and the other parts of their life into still other boxes. When hey spend time with their other man or woman, that box gets brought out and opened, only to be closed and put back on the shelf when they go home to their spouse. Then the marriage and family box gets opened.
this seems to work for some people, and maybe it;s a coping skill they learned long ago. Maybe separating out their life into these parts is the end result of a traumatic childhood, maybe they learned to do it as an adult, or maybe it’s just the way their personality has always functioned. I suppose that it could be helpful in allowing them to avoid pain and internal conflict (i.e.-guilt) but it would make me very leery of ever being able to trust them. After all, someone who can do this and use it successfully once will have every reason to try and use it again the next time the going gets tough.
This is another reason why, n my humble opinion, counseling after an affair is such a vital component of moving forward. It can help the wayward spouse to learn better coping skills, and it can also help the betrayed spouse to feel more trust and confidence in their spouse and the marriage as a whole.
Of course, it’s not going to be easy. Counselings and therapy has a way of forcing us to face some parts of ourselves and our actions that we may not like. The good news is that there is light at the end of the tunnel, as once a person is will to recognize and admit that they have some negative behavior patterns, they can begin to change them.

Onwards and upwards