FALL OUT FROM AFFAIRS

Recently while channel surfing, I ran across The Young and the Restless.  I was reminded of what happens when a married man has an affair and is caught. Being caught certainly appears to have a domino effect.  The three main characters in this Soap, Nick, Sharon, and Phyllis become an unlikely triangle.  First of all Phyllis, who is the mistress, is caught by her teenage son.  Slowly word gets around to others such as Nick’s father and his wife.  Nick’s wife puts together clues that pretty much paint the picture to her.  She in turn has decided to take her son out of the country and is telling Nick that she wants a divorce. The son of course though preadolescent is bright and beginning to sense something is not right. Nick’s father fires Phyllis from her job.  The father, Victor is now on the outs with his wife Niki over this. Nick and Phyllis have both seen the light you think and have dissolved this relationship or have they?  In the meanwhile, Phyllis feels guilty because her boyfriend Jack will be hurt by this.

Does all of this sound a little crazy?  Well, welcome to the world of affairs.  This depicts pretty much what takes place almost every time someone has an affair.  But guess what, even though most of us know this, we never seem to learn.    

How can people be so stupid?  Men are notorious for saying; I can separate my sexual side from my emotions.  Well, unless you are a person without a conscience this is impossible.  Most men just don’t realize that once you have sex with someone, that the emotions kick in not to mention the feelings of being in love and caring about that someone you are having the affair with.  When this happens, things spin wildly out of control.

Some therapists will say that as long as a person comes clean, tells all and convinces his wife he is sorry, that things can be good again maybe even better than before.  The problem with that is the affair is not like some tape that can be erased.  The memories from this affair are imprinted on your brain and without shock treatment to completely erase the tape and this is meant in humor; they will always be there and will be rewound on the spur of the moment and at the oddest times and usually are. 

So what do you do?  How do you fix it?  I do agree that a genuine repentance needs to take place on the ones that have caused this.  But this doesn’t erase it. And it will not just go away with time.

To survive this, the wounded parties, will only get help through consultation daily with God.  For the persons that have caused this and realize they have a weakness, I believe there are several things that they must do to keep this from happening again.

1)      Make sure that you start a daily prayer life.  You don’t have to pray for several hours necessarily.  But I would suggest several times per day in short increments to ask for strength. 

2)      Surround yourself with friends that are spiritual and that you trust to pray with you and for you.

3)      Attend church on a regular basis.  By that I mean at least three times per week.

4)      Read you bible daily. Seek scriptures that match your weaknesses and or problems.

5)      Volunteer for work at your church in areas such as a soup kitchen, maintence, or lawn work.

6)      Keep lines of communication open with you wife.  Talk with her about your life and the sex issues especially.  Remember that humans have a need for sex and if left unfulfilled this will cause you some problems. 

And probably as important as anything you do, become aware of your weakness or weaknesses.  If you’re honest you know what they are.  Then ask your minister to pray with you and advise you on this issue. 

Then I believe you will be on the road to making progress for the shortcomings that you know you have.  Now, I don’t believe by these actions that you will turn yourself into a perfect human.  As long as we are on this earth, we will be tempted and we will sin. But we must always keep a vigil and try to do the right thing less temptation swallows us up.