Managing the Passions

An old Cherokee legend illustrates for us the basic concept of how to manage one's passions.

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. "A fight is going on inside me," he said to the boy.

"It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil - he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego." He continued, "The other is good - he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you - and inside every other person, too."

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?"

The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."

In the first article, Fire of Passion, we examined what the passion are. In the second, The Passions in Christianity, we examined the Christian understanding of the passions, their origin and the main key to being able to manage them. If you've come to this article without having read those two, I highly recommend you do before proceeding on here.

Now we want to examine the various ways we can starve the bad passions and feed the good ones so we can effectively manage them.

How Do We Tell a Good Passion from a Bad One?

The easy answer is anytime a passion damages yourself and/or others, it is a passion you don't want to be enslaved to, but control. The longer answer is it can get a bit complicated at times.

There are two categories of bad passions. One is the inherently bad passion. Some passions are going to be destructive to you 99%+ of the times they are indulged. Many drugs fall into this category. The first time some use a drug like cocaine, they are immediately hooked. It would be a rare case indeed when even trying it once didn't end up causing a lot of pain for the addict and those around him.

The other is abused passions. Some passions are inherently positive and good. Hunger is an obvious one. If we don't eat, eventually we'll die. Hunger insures we don't go too long with needed food. It is a good passion that does help us to survive. But each good passion can be overdone, abused, to the point it becomes destructive rather than positive. Someone who overeats can cause diverse health problems and leave their families/loved ones without a father, mother, or friend before their time. If the passion of hunger is not managed, it can become a bad passion.

The trick, of course, is if a passion already has a pull on you, you don't tend to stop and consider the consequences, evaluate whether it is going to negatively affect you and/or others, and make a decision on whether to do it based on that evaluation. Why? Because here is a truth one needs to be aware of:

Passions motivate you to act. Reason lays the groundwork to support actions through the passions.

Reason doesn't motivate you to act. Reason can stir the passions within you to motivate you to act, but of itself, it is helpless to override one's passions. The stronger a passion is, the less that contradictory reasoning will be at reversing that passion and influencing a change of actions. This is exactly why someone who has become passionate about an affair relationship is not affected by some very logical and rational reasons to not go that route. Instead, they tend to use their reasoning to support what their passions are demanding to have.

However, reason is not helpless when coupled with the spiritual power I mentioned in the last article, and attempting to manipulate the passions through your mind, so that they change course. This is done by learning to feed the right wolf, the right passions. It is easiest to do this at the beginning of a passion's pull on you, but can be done at any stage. The following are tactics you can use to feed the right wolf.

1. Confession

If not to a priest or pastor, find a trustworthy friend who can hold you accountable. Tell them the story around the passions you are struggling with. By confessing it to someone you can talk to, you gain support and help in dealing with it. Confession is the first step toward conquering the passions. Once it is no longer your dark little secret, you are no longer emotionally blackmailed by it and have more freedom to fight against it.

2. Fasting

Based on Genesis 2, the first sin was a failure to fast from eating the fruit of a particular tree. God had told Adam not to eat from one tree. Yet, when push came to shove, he ate from it. When God questioned him on it, the first recorded instance of blameshifting occurs:

And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. (Gen 3:12 KJV)

When it comes to food, we're pretty spoiled.

The passion of hunger is a foundational passion. If we fail to control that one, we will not be able to control any of them. Many of us rarely tell ourselves no with food unless we're already stuffed or can't afford it. Usually the only people who say no than those two are people losing weight, and we know how many tend to fail at that. But if you can tell yourself no to eating a food, simply because you've decided that for a period of time you are not going to eat something, it provides support for saying no to yourself in other situations, like when someone lights your fire.

It is best to have someone else help you establish a regular rule of fasting. If not your religious community, become accountable to a trusted friend. Start off small and work your way up. Maybe you'll decide to fast from meat on Fridays. Then later, for a whole week. Then later, maybe you'll join others in doing so for the Lenten season, or other group fasting periods.

3. Align Your Will with Your Mind

The will tends to be highly influenced by your passions. But it is possible to just say no with your will and mean it. Our problem is we're really good at knowing we need to say no, so we say it, but don't mean it.

Let your no be no.

Shortly after Lenita started her second physical affair, she could see where it was headed and she knew she needed to break it off. So she met her affair partner at the gym and they sat in her car. She told him this had to end. Despite that declaration, within minutes they were hugging and kissing, and it didn't stop, obviously, or I'd not be writing this blog right now. Why was her no not no?

Surprise! Our passions lie to us.

 They convince our brain that we have to obtain this feeling if we are to survive. We become convinced if we pass this up, we'll regret it for the rest of our lives and be miserable. The truth? You'll live, you'll enjoy life. Even more so because that passion didn't win in getting you to do something destructive to yourself and those you love.

You'll have more respect for yourself because you were driven by compassion instead of passion.

Paul stated it this way:

This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. (Gal 5:16-17 KJV)

This is where the key from the last article comes into play. He can help us align our will with the mind and not according to our passions.

But how do we access that power? By being drill-sergeant strict with ourselves.

You see, Lenita's no was not followed up by the corresponding actions. If she was serious about her no, she would have immediately requested he leave her car and to not contact her again, or approach her in the gym. If he didn't immediately respond, she would have stepped out of her car until he left. But she failed to say no with her actions. Why? Because she had not aligned her will with her mind, it was still influenced by her passion for him. Consequently, her words said no, but her actions said yes.

When we say no, our passions start working to wiggle their way back to a yes. They will work like the devil to keep even the smallest foot in the door. To let your no be no, you have to decide to firmly close the door. How?

By doing two things. Identify the boundaries that amount to squeezing a foot in the door for that passion. They tend to feel innocent, but you know where it will lead. List them out on paper if need be.

Then convince yourself that you will now be strict with yourself about those boundaries. Tell yourself you don't care how much you'll feel like you want it, no matter how much begging your emotions will do to cross this one innocent boundary, agree within yourself that nothing will move you to do that, no matter how bad you want to. Divorce the will from the passion. When you get ultra strict with yourself, refusing to allow emotions to influence your behavior, you can start starving the bad wolf.

4. Distractions

The above is preparatory work. But what happens in the midst of temptation to give in? There is a rule that monks have been taught in overcoming the slavery to passions, especially those of a sexual nature.

Frontal assaults on the passions rarely work. Instead, they end up feeding the passions.

Why? Because the more attention you give a passion, the stronger it becomes. A drunk doesn't conquer alcoholism by visiting bars on a regular basis. He does it by avoiding alcohol, by not thinking about it. So it is for overcoming a temptation. The more you think about it, even to focus on not giving in, the harder it becomes to avoid giving in. Because giving a passion your attention feeds it.

Instead, when tempting thoughts come to cross boundariess you know would lead to a bad place, do these or varations on these ways of distracting yourself so as not to think about it.

Use pain. Lenita was instructed by our priest to wear a rubber band around her wrist. When she found herself thinking negative thoughts, focusing on the affair, thinking about her affair partners, she was to snap the rubber band to distract her mind from those thoughts with the sting of pain. For her, it was highly effective.

Use music. Collect some uplifting songs on your portable music player. When tempting thoughts arrive, listen to the music to distract your mind. Sing along with it if possible.

Use prayer. Or if not religious, a saying you can repeat over and over. For Christians, an old short prayer known as the Jesus Prayer can be repeated as many times as necessary until the temptation passes: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." Or the shorter version, "Lord, have mercy." Most religions would have similar prayers/meditations. If you are not religious, a saying like "Que sara, sara," "Whatever will be, will be" can be used.

Use work or a hobby. Keeping your mind busy and your body working avoids a passion from getting a strong hold on your attention. This is one of the reasons why monks will stay busy either working or praying, for hours. Too much idleness leads to focusing on the passions. Invest yourself in a productive hobby or volunteer to help someone rather that sitting around thinking about what your body is saying it really wants to do.

Use your friends. Especially those you've made yourself accountable to. When temptation arrives, ignore it by calling a friend, or anyone really, and focus on them. If you have an online support group, go there and spill it all on a forum rather than on your mind.

In effect, when a bad passion attacks, you defeat it by ignoring it. Remind yourself that you don't care how much you want something, that desire is a lie, then use one of the above methods of distraction to turn your attention away from the passion, and starve it to death. Over a period of time, you'll begin to realize you didn't need that passion to live, because you've been hardly thinking about it and life is still great. Even better than before.

When we are afflicted with a passion, sometimes we slip and fall to it.

Often when that happens, we'll feel like we're back at square one, and feel like giving up because we don't seem to be overcoming it.

That is the wrong way to think of it. Rather, think of it more like you're working to beat your last record. If one time you last three days before you allow yourself to think about the affair partner, stop. Use the methods above, and see how far you can get this time. If you go a week, that's some success. As you continue to pick yourself up, and go again, the passion will get weaker and weaker as you ignore it for longer and longer. Then at some point it will dawn on you that its been months since you've given your affair partner a second thought.

Then as we train ourselves on how to say no and mean it, it will provide us freedom from the slavery to our passions. We learn to control them instead of them controlling us.

The Passions in Christianity

When you throw the two words--Christianity and passions--together, many people will get varied images. Victorian morality, contradictory, hypocrisy, legalistic, Manichean (oh, okay, maybe not too many on that one), among others. To put it mildly, there is a checkered past on how to understand it and deal with it. But it has not always been so.

Indeed, a proper understanding of passion from a Biblical perspective will unlock the first and major means of managing the passions in a productive manner that is beneficial to all involved. Including when the passion of lust drives a spouse to cheat.

Before we go further, however, if you've not read the first article in this series, The Fire of Passion, I highly recommend you do so before reading this one. This article assumes the context presented there in understanding what the passions are.

To my non-Christian readers, let me relate these thoughts if you've come this far. The following is going to be related from a Christian viewpoint, if that hasn't been obvious to you by this point. For you, I'll sum up the main point you need to take away from this article. Take the principle and apply it in your faith or agnosticism/atheism as the case may be.

Successfully managing the passions requires a power beyond ourselves.

A higher power, as Alcoholics Anonymous puts it. Or more generically still, a purpose and cause beyond yourself. It is the focus on self that feeds the passions. To reach the place of self-denial, to starve the negative passions in our lives, takes a focus, a purpose, and a motivation beyond ourselves.

For the Christian, this goes deeper than merely a focus beyond self, and includes the power to do the above and the tactics we'll discuss in the next article. We'll be exploring that in the following paragraphs, and you are welcome to read on, if for no other reason than to gain an understanding. Because I can just about promise you this will be nothing like your parent's Sunday School class.

Now back to what passions are understood to be and its solution in Christianity.

If there is one Biblical passage that sums up the Christian understanding of the passions, it is the following:

Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.
(Php 4:11-13 KJV)

There are three points to notice here.

1. Avoiding pleasure is not the answer. Paul states that it is not whether one is experiencing a passion or the fulfillment of a passion that trips us up. We need to know how to handle both: when we get what we want and when we don't, in a healthy way.

2. Controlling the passions through contentment is the answer. That is, a particular passion does not control us to the point we have no choice but to fulfill it. Rather, to be content is to remain unmoved by a passion. Sure, we'll feel it. But we are able to ignore it if it isn't proper to fulfill or the timing isn't right. We have the ability to say, "No" and mean it.

3. It is the energy and grace of union with the life of Jesus Christ that gives us contentment. Phil 4:13 is one of the most taken-out-of-context verses of all time. Paul is admitting that within himself he doesn't have the ability to manage and control the passions. Contentment is nigh impossible. But with Christ, he is able.

Why is that the case? It goes back to the Fall of man.

Genesis 1 is not intended to be a list of steps God took to create our world in a series, but in parallel.

Many people don't realize this, but once you look at it, it is obvious. Notice how day one speaks of light being created in general, while day four talks about creating specific lights in the sky. Then on the second day, God creates the sky and waters, and on the fifth day He creates the birds and fish that populate those environments. On the third day, God creates the land, and on the sixth day, He creates the animals that populate the land.

But that is not all that happened on the third and sixth day. On the third day, God creates the plants. On the sixth, man. This comparison is key. For as plant life is the bridge between inanimate and animate life, man is the bridge between animal life and divine life. Thus the divine life inhabits the animals and world through this link, bring it all into harmony.

The divine link in man is described in two ways.

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness . . . .
(Gen 1:26 KJV)

God created man both in His image and His likeness. In His image, because we are created to live with His life in us. In His likeness, because God infused His life in us at creation.

And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
(Gen 2:7 KJV)

Note the two sources of the creation of man. The dirt of this world, linking man firmly to it as are the animals who were created from the earth, that is, dirt, by God calling out for the earth to bring forth the animals. Gen 1:24 In this respect, man was created in the same way the animals were.

But unlike the animals, God breathed into man the breath of life. The word for breath is also translated spirit. In essence, God breathes His own spiritual life, and filled man with the Holy Spirit, which is His likeness.

Man was created to operate as an animal given divine life. A more intelligent animal, perhaps. But it is this divine life in man that gave him complete control over his passions which are inherent from the animal nature.

But as most know the story, that changed. Note what God tells man or Adam (same word, translators arbitrarily pick when to start calling him Adam instead of man).

And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
(Gen 2:16-17 KJV)

Note what God says here: ". . . for in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." God didn't say eventually. He didn't say in 900+ years. He said on the day he ate of it, Adam would die.

Yet, you know the story. Eve gets tempted, ends up having a passion for the fruit of the tree, saw that it would make her like God, and ate of it. So did Adam.

Memo to Christians: if people living in Paradise, with all they could want and need freely provided for them, with divine life coursing through their soul, can give into a passion, rationalize and justify getting what their passion wants, who are you to think you are immune? I used to think my marriage was immune to infidelity. It wasn't. Neither is yours.

Yet, Adam and Eve lived on for hundreds of years after this day. What gives?

The truth is they did die that day. The divine life departed from them, for if it had stayed, they would have been physically destroyed. But spiritually, Adam and Eve died that very day. They lost the divine life that they were created to contain.

The result, as the Church Fathers commonly write, is Adam and Eve are left with their animal life. The power to control the animalistic passions diminished with the passing of divine life. They lost the power to control them as before the Fall. Like the animals, we are more often controlled by them than us, them.

This points to what we mentioned in the last article. Just because one has a passion, a desire for something, doesn't mean it needs to be fulfilled in order to "be who you are created to be." Our current passion-dominated lives are not how God created us to be. Our passions don't dictate who we are. Rather, it is a tool to be used for our and others' benefits. In our fallen state, we tend to be driven to live according to our passions. This is not who we were created to be. It is an unnatural fallen existence that will, unchecked, eventually kill us.

The only solution to this dilemma is to unite your animal life to the divine life found through Jesus Christ.

The route to obtaining this life in evident through Scripture:

Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. . . . For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
(Joh 3:5, 16 KJV)

Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. . . . For he that is dead is freed from sin. Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him:
(Rom 6:3-4, 8 KJV)

It is the Spirit who makes alive; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.
(Joh 6:63 EMTV)

Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.
(Joh 6:54 KJV)

To summarize, if we unite to Him in faith, that is believing in Him, trusting Him, and obeying Him; if we are baptized into the likeness of His death and raised to new life in Him, known as being born again; and partake of Him in the Lord's Supper, our soul will be filled with His Spirit, His divine life as we were created to exist. The only difference between us and Adam is we still live in a fallen world. But thanks to Christ, we no longer need be controlled by the animal-like passions. We no longer need to live as fallen people, even in this fallen world.

With His life in us, we now have the ability to feed the right passion:

This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.
(Gal 5:16 KJV)

 In the last article, we will investigate the tools we can use to walk in the Spirit--the practical tactics we can use to manage the passions using contentment. Naturally, to do that, you first have to have His Spirit, full of His life, breathed into you once again. It gives you the power and ability to operate the tools effectively. Without it, your chances of effectively controlling the passions are greatly reduced.

Our Recommended Reading List

People often want to know what books we recommend they read to help rebuild from an affair, aside from our own book, Healing Infidelity, of course. We've read the following books and have found them the most helpful in our recovery.

Getting Past the Affair: A Program to Help You Cope, Heal, and Move On -- Together or Apart by Douglas K. Snyder - Comprehensive, balanced, and helpful not only in dealing with the initial emotional upheaval in the days immediately after discovery day, but also in working through the various issues of rebuilding. Ideal for both the hurt and unfaithful spouse to work through together. A good book to get and read as soon as possible.

Not "Just Friends": Rebuilding Trust and Recovering Your Sanity After Infidelity by Shirley P. Glass - The most recommended book and a classic. It is recommended for good reason. It breaks down how friendships turn into affairs, how those affect the marriage, and the needed steps for recovery. If a hurt spouse is only going to read one book, this is the one most would mention.

How to Help Your Spouse Heal from Your Affair: A Compact Manual for the Unfaithful by Linda MacDonald - Likewise, if an unfaithful spouse is going to read only one book (and we certainly do recommend that you read more), this is hands down the one to read. We call it required reading for the unfaithful spouse who seriously wants to rebuild, but needs guidance how to do it. Good for a BS to read as well so they know what they should be expecting a serious rebuilding effort to look like.

His Needs, Her Needs: Building an Affair-Proof Marriage by Willard F. Jr. Harley - A book that rejuvenated our marriage in the aftermath of the affair. A couple may not want to tackle this book first, maybe only after the initial dust has settled from learning about the affair. And the hurt spouse needs to approach it knowing that the discussion of the marriage isn't blaming him for the spouse's affair, but the author discovered that focusing on rebuilding the romantic love after an affair boasted his success rate from the standard 40% range to the 60s. This is the book that helped us not just try to get back to where we were pre-discovery day, but made out marriage better than its ever been. Which spills over into a positive energy in all the areas of rebuilding.

Healing the Wounds of Sexual Addiction by Mark Laaser - If sexual addiction is diagnosed, this is a helpful book in dealing with it. Will be over the top if you're not an addict, but only experienced addictive behaviors. Disclaimer: We read the book, but Lenita was not diagnosed as having a sexual addiction. So we didn't do the practical steps in the book and can't testify how effective it is. Seek out a good sex therapist for help.

The Fire of Passion

One's passions fuel the fire of most affairs. The typical scenario is a spouse crosses seemingly innocent boundaries with someone of the opposite sex (or same sex in the case of homosexual relationships), something sparks between them, emotional bonds are created on some level, and the desire for each other ignites. Or I should say, the desire for the feelings the other person is producing in you ignite.

Even in those who intentionally seek out affairs, the action is based upon some driving desire, whether lust or wanting to feel like a stud/attractive. When a guy pays a prostitute, it is because he enjoys, wants, has to have the sexual feelings that experience provides.

Take away passion, and an overwhelming majority of affairs would never happen.

Likewise, this destroys many attempts at rebuilding from an affair. Often the unfaithful spouse will say they want to save their marriage, but they have difficulties letting go of their affair partner. The passions for him are often raging when it is discovered, and the unfaithful spouse finds it difficult to shut that down. Holding to no-contact with one's affair partner is in most cases the hardest part of rebuilding that an unfaithful spouse will deal with. Why? Because passions have to die over a period of not being fed. Unfortunately, we can't easily switch them off.

Learning how to manage one's passions and let the bad ones die a slow and painful death is necessary both for preventing an affair in the first place, and preventing a re-occurrence later, as well as equipping you with more self-control in other areas of your life.

Therefore, not only do unfaithful spouses rebuilding their marriage benefit from this, but also hurt spouses--who, believe it or not, are more suceptible to having affairs of their own after being cheated on,--the affair partner, and spouses who are as of yet untouched by an affair.

To that end, the next series of articles will deal with what the passions are, how they operate, and tactics to managing them in your life, especially as it relates to rebuilding from infidelity.

What Is a Passion?

In English, the word refers to two main concepts. One, "an intense desire or enthusiasm for something." Two, "the suffering and death of Jesus." The word, derived from the Greek and Latin, means "to suffer."

How does desire and suffering relate to each other?

When you have a strong and barely controllable emotion or desire, you are suffering until that desire is satisfied or the desire dissipates. Most unfaithful spouses can verify that feeling in relation to their affair partner. It is the feeling of suffering a lack which drives an individual to fulfill it so as to quench and end the suffering. It is the suffering aspect that defines what passion is.

This suffering is seen clearly in hunger. When the body needs food to survive, it creates a suffering in the body we call hunger. It causes us to be driven to find food and eat. Out of the passions, it is the primary one. We deal with it daily, often multiple times a day. There is not a more base passion we experience for survival. It is one of the first things a baby does upon exiting the womb, and most likely one of the activities we'll do on the last day of our life here.

Some passions, however, take on survival need without actually being a survival need. An obvious example is someone addicted to a drug. Withdraw symptoms are the body's way of creating the suffering designed to motivate you to get more of what your body thinks it needs. But in this case it is not a real need, no matter how much you feel physically and emotionally that you need it for survival.

Because one experiences a desire, doesn't mean it is needed or beneficial to fulfill that desire.

There are many who justify their behavior by suggesting "this is just who I am, and to be fulfilled, I need to fulfill my desires." Since passions can trick the body and mind into believing it needs something that is actually destructive, obviously we cannot depend on the hedonistic approach to life to find fulfillment personally.

If we do something because our body and emotions demand it, we become slaves to them, and will be led into all sorts of destructive behaviors. Infidelity being one of the big ones. Freedom is when your body and mind say, "I have to have this," and you can say "no" and mean it with your actions.

Passions work on two levels: physical and mental.

Physically oriented passions focus on physical sensations and the body's suffering to get them. Most often seen in withdraw symptoms like fever, sweating, shakes, etc. For sexual/romantic type passions, it is more a mental longing to experience a particular feeling. The body responds by getting "horny" using chemicals. Sexual sensitivity is heightened. The least little external stimulation like a visual or mental image can fire off a physical ache to fulfill that "need."

Mentally, passions generate the emotions that motivate us into action. Because they are emotionally based rather than rationally, logic takes a back seat. Once a strong passion kicks in for something, rational arguments rarely dissuade a person from doing what their body and mind are telling them they have to get.

Passions work on two levels: addictive and being an addict.

When a person first encounters a strong passionate desire for something, an addictive quality comes into play in the person's response. The dopamine reward system triggers in the brain that this is a highly desirable experience and needs to be repeated. The higher the dopamine spike, the more desire for a repeat performance happens to the person.

That desire is passed onto the decision making areas of the brain. Initially, the brain can more easily say "no" to the desire. It has an addictive quality in that your mind is saying you want this real bad, but you still have the ability to rationally say it isn't good for you and reject it as a viable course of action, in word, thought, and deed. But not saying no in all three ways leads to eventually fulfilling the passion.

However, as the person decides, "yes, go get it," in either word, thought, and/or deed, it creates a feedback loop. The experience is repeated, the dopamine reward system sends the message to the brain that this need is critical to have. The decision making part of the brain says, "get some more," and the cycle continues.

Once that cycle has been repeated enough times, the addictive qualities of the experience create "ruts" in the brain, making it harder and harder to break free from that cycle. Such a person becomes addicted.

To break free of the addiction requires going through feelings of great loss and ignoring a desperate sense of needing what you are wanting. This often is not something a person can do with their own will power, and will need help, support, and accountability to get through the physical and emotional withdraw symptoms and to convince your body and mind that, no, you don't need this to survive.

But due to the ruts established by the addictive cycle, it is also easier for such a person to fall back into those ruts. Such a person recovering from passion-enslavement will have to establish boundaries far enough away from the ruts, more so than most who have no such addiction.

Passions Are Not All Bad

This is not to suggest that all passion is bad. There are passions that do provide for a true survival needs, like food and procreation. If we are to be moved to do beneficial activities, it will often be because we are motivated by our passion for something.

The English word compassion is made up of two Latin words: com and passio. Literally translated, the word means "with passion," or "to join together with suffering." Thereby you get the English word's meaning: to have empathy for someone who is suffering. Without passion, we are also not motivated to do good and beneficial activities for others either.

This is why I talk about managing passion, not eradicating it. We're going to have passion for something. The question is, will we use that passion to motivate us to beneficial goals and actions, or will we let our passions pull us into destructive goals and actions, leading us around like a dog on a collar?

To that end, I'm planning two more articles at least:

A Christian Understanding of the Passions

How to Manage the Passions

How have you managed or not managed your passions to keep them from ruining your life?

Next article: The Passions in Christianity

Should I Tell? - The Full Story

As I stated in my article, Should I Tell, Reloaded, I wrote a chapter in my book, Healing Infidelity, called "Should I Tell." You can read an early version of that chapter on the web. In that chapter, I attempted to appeal to unfaithful spouses whose spouse has not discovered the affair, why they should want to tell if they sincerely want to save their marriage. I tried to write it from their perspective, using a reason they should care about. Because the truth is, infidelity is like a cancer.

My wife's brother-in-law had cancer. Problem was, he hid it from everyone one. Probably even from himself. By the time he went to the doctor and was diagnosed, they gave him a week to live. He died before that week was up.

Whether the hurt spouse knows about the affair(s) or not, it is eating away at the relationship. If he never finds out, he'll always wonder why the marriage deteriorated over the years. The guilt of the unfaithful spouse, and the secrets they hide about something so critical to the marriage, end up letting the cancer spread unchecked because no one is doing much to heal it as long as it remains hidden.

That said, I know even that is not likely to convince an unfaithful spouse in many cases to confess.

Most unfaithful spouses justify their decision not to tell because they don't want to hurt their spouse.

As if they haven't already done that by having an affair. Let's reword that reason to make it more accurate. You don't want to tell because you don't want to face the consequences of having hurt your spouse.

To that end, I felt it would be enlightening, I hope, to now look at the reasons a hurt spouse would want to know despite the pain of finding out the truth. Whether this will convince many unfaithful spouses to fess up, I know isn't highly likely, but you never know what will snap someone out of the fog-thinking and face the truth.

So aside from the healing reason listed in the original article, here are the main reasons from a hurt spouse perspective why you should confess your affair.

1. Most hurt spouses want you to tell them.

Yes, there are some hurt spouses who would rather not know, who would prefer to live in a matrix-like fantasy land, take the red pill, and not face the cancer, like my wife's brother-in-law did. But those are in a definite minority. When polled on our infidelity form we visit, all but one out of around 30 hurt spouses said they were glad they discovered the truth. The reasons for this are linked to the following.

2. The unfaithful spouse violates their spouse's rights in hiding the affair.

By keeping the affair a secret from your spouse, you are making decisions about the course of your relationship with them without their knowledge. They deserve as much say in the direction of your relationship as you are having at their expense. It is the moral equivalent of a spouse spending the college savings fund on a new sports car without consulting you on the purchase. Not telling violates the very reason two people get married: to share their life with each other.

3. Not telling the hurt spouse is a form of manipulative control abuse.

One of the main reasons an unfaithful spouse doesn't want to tell because as soon as they do, they lose control over their spouse and the affair. As long as you have this secret information, you control him. That is the manipulation of another individual through deceit and is a form of abuse, either directly, or broadly in a passive-aggressive manner.

4. Not telling the spouse puts their health at risk.

It is one thing for you to knowingly put your health at risk of STDs. Quite another to subject someone else to that risk unknowingly who you say you love. Out of these reasons, this is the one I exhibited the most anger toward my wife. I could have ended up with a life-long sickness so she could have her moments of "fun." I have a right to know if having sex with her is playing Russian Roulette with my health and life. Yes, protection may mitigate that risk, but it doesn't eliminate it.

5. Deceit compounds the violation of an affair.

Discovering an affair is bad enough. Discovering your spouse has been keeping it a secret from you for months or years multiplies the destruction of trust in the relationship, making it very difficult to heal. While there are no guarantees as to how any one particular hurt spouse will respond when told, a confession will go a long ways toward rebuilding trust. Don't expect immediate trust, but it can be the difference between months and years in how fast that trust can recover, all else being equal.

6. You've made your decision; it is only right they get to make theirs.

Related to reason #2, this deserves its own mention. Yes, confessing might mean the end of your marriage. But shouldn't your spouse have the right to make that decision? If you really love them, you wouldn't deny them excercising their options to respond to your decisions.

7. Secrets about the marriage destroy intimacy.

Whatever secrets related to the marriage you keep from your spouse, that is an area of your life not shared with your spouse. It is an off-limit area. The lack of intimacy there bleeds over into the rest of the marriage, for fear getting too close will result in them learning the truth. That and dealing with the guilt over your violation to the marriage is part of the cancer that will eat away at an otherwise healthy relationship.

8. They deserve to know when the contract has been broken.

I put this last, because it seems wedding vows rarely stop an unfaithful spouse from being unfaithful or deciding to tell. But the fact is, those vows, in most cases, are part of a legal contract that you agreed to whether before a preacher, judge, or other witnesses. If you've broken that legal contract, the other spouse deserves to know that fact, legally.

Is it always a good idea to confess?

In general, if you want a potentially healthy marriage, yes. But their can be exceptions. A clinically abusive spouse is one. If your spouse has a history of suicidal depression would be another. Essentially if there is the likelihood of physical and/or emotional harm from confessing, it may be best to not tell. Keeping in mind if they discover it on their own, that risk could be higher. Not telling doesn't eliminate it; not having the affair does.

But some unfaithful spouses have used these as excuses not to tell, even when there is little evidence it is a big risk. They think that there is some risk (you never know how any one person will respond) so that means they shouldn't tell for fear, however small, that they might commit suicide. If a person has a history of threatening, that is one thing. Without that, however, the slight chance it could happen despite no prior evidence it would doesn't trump the above reasons. It is a rationalization.

Can you think of any other valid reasons to tell?

Rebuilding Intimacy

In discussing marriage, I listed several levels of marital bonding: social, emotional, legal, spiritual, and physical. I pointed out that the sexual union consummates, or fulfills, the other levels by converting them into a marital reality, demonstrated biologically, biblically, socially. Meanwhile, consummating a marriage via sex without the other levels of marriage in place devalues the bond it creates and abuses it by treating it as not intimate.

Except for the legal bond, which is more about protection, benefits, and responsibilities under a specific legal system, these levels of marriage represent levels of intimacy between two people. This illustrates not only why infidelity destroys these marital bonds of intimacy, but also the focus of rebuilding that intimacy.

First, we need to define intimacy, so we know what we're talking about. Intimacy has different levels. We usually think of these in categories of acquaintances, generic friendships, friendships, close friendships, and best friendships. Properly speaking, spouse should fall as the most intimate after best friends.

Intimacy is based upon how much you share of yourself and how many people to whom you share that reality.

Sure, you may find exceptions, but that is going to apply in most situations and people. The more you let someone into your life and the fewer who abide there, the more intimate it becomes. Here is a simple example that most who've experienced infidelity will readily get.

During an affair, usually only the unfaithful spouse and the affair partner know the affair is going on. Only those two share that secret. No one else is privy to that part of their life. This creates a deep intimacy in that area between the two.

Then the hurt spouse finds out. Maybe one of the participants told their best friend about it. The cat is out of the bag, and now more people see this intimate part of your life. There is still a high level of intimacy, but now that  more people know about it, it becomes less intimate than it was before.

Then you tell or they find out, your family/extended family about it. Now it becomes a "family secret." While still retaining a level of intimacy, it has been greatly watered down. A whole group has had a peek into this area of your life.

Then you do something like what Lenita and I have done: write a book about what happened and put it out for anyone in the world to pick up and read. More commonly for celebrities like Tiger Wood, the news reporters find out about it and it is broadcast all over the world. Now some dude in India may know all about your affair, who you don't even know exists. That makes the information about the affair the least intimate. Everyone can know about it.

Now lets apply this to the four levels of intimacy in marriage: emotional, social, spiritual, and physical. You may notice a correlation between these four and the article on the four loves in our book: philio, storge, agape, and eros respectively, roughly so.

Emotional Intimacy

This type of intimacy is characterized by the closeness of best friends. You get to know your spouse or potential spouses' dreams, goals, struggles, history, family, accomplishments and failures. The more of their life they share, and the fewer people with whom they share it with, the stronger that emotional bond.

There is an important part of your life that you share with such a best friend that is a huge measure of your emotional intimacy with a person: your time.

Both time spent together and time spent thinking about them and their welfare. You have a limited amount of time, especially discretionary time. Who you decide to spend that time with most says a lot about how emotionally intimate you are with that person. It designates who are the most intimate relationships in your life.

This is an intimacy that naturally runs high at the beginning of a relationship, but as it becomes familiar, and new shiny things attract our interest, we stop spending as much time together. The time we do spend together, tends to be on necessary mundane things that demand our attention. Over the years, what started out as a burning desire to spend most of your discretionary time with a person, dwindles to when you're required to, because you are interested in spending that time in other areas.

That person gets the message that they are not as important to you. You are not that emotionally intimate to share your life, your time, together with them. This happens all too often in marriages. It happened in mine.

When an affair hits, it should be obvious why this further destroys this intimacy. Yes, to many an affair is at least encouraged by a lack of emotional intimacy. This doesn't justify it or blame the other spouse for having one, but it is easy to understand why someone starved of emotional intimacy in their marriage would be attracted to anyone offering a buffet of attention and interest and wanting to spend their time with them.

But it is a death spiral for the marriage. Whereas before, that emotional intimacy was waiting in the wings to be taken, now it is no longer available because it has been given to another without the hurt spouse's knowledge or consent. Intimacy that properly belongs to the one you are united to in marriage has been given to another. As long as that continues, that is emotional intimacy the hurt spouse cannot have.

Likewise, to rebuild emotional intimacy post-affair involves reversing that process. Going no contact with the affair partner cuts off what is feeding the emotional intimacy with him: your time given to him. Going no contact also means cutting off time spent thinking about him.

But you don't cut that off by simply stopping, but by reinvesting that time in your spouse. By purposefully spend time thinking about your love and desire to be with your spouse, and planning to spend your free time with them, no matter what other "priorities" you have on your plate.

That is why a book like His Needs, Her Needs is so critical for rebuilding. You don't just let the emotional intimacy of the affair partner die off, you replace it by reviving your marriage, by making each other important again. By restoring the emotional intimacy with your spouse where it belongs, and not given to another.

Social Intimacy

Social intimacy corresponds with a sense of comfortableness being around each other. It provides a sense of stability and support to one another. It overlaps with emotional intimacy in that social activities are shared and time spent doing them together and being with each other are sought and longed for above any other relationship.

This doesn't mean other relationships, like the kids, are not attended to and important, but that the marital relationship maintains a priority position above any other relationship, even one's children. For the well-being of the children rests in the quality of the marital relationship.

Social intimacy can include several areas. Living together. Financial unity. Inlaw relations. Child rearing. Social activities. How well these and related areas of your life are integrated between two people indicates the degree of social intimacy you have.

Some of these, like living together, may appear easy. You either are or aren't living in the same house, sleeping in the same bed. But are you really living in the same house, or just existing in the same house? Maybe you have an integrated checking account where both of your monies reside, but are you jointly making decisions on how it is spent? The kids might be disciplined, but are you both involved and communicating about how discipline is handled?

Being socially intimate is for both of you to be involved in the decision-making processes, refusing to cut your spouse out of the picture to get your own way. Being the head of the household does not equate to being a dictator. That is the opposite of intimacy. That is cutting your spouse out of your life.

Gaining social intimacy means not expecting to get your way all the time. It does mean acknowledging each other's expectations and being wiling to compromise in order to obtain an "operating procedure" you can both agree to and adopt in any area of your social lives.

If you are having trouble in your marriage with these issues, seek marriage counseling. In addition or if counseling is not a viable option, I'd suggest you both read: The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. Don't settle for allowing the lack of social intimacy to continue, because it can come back to bite you in the end.

Spiritual Intimacy

If you are one that does not hold to any religious beliefs, you may think this section doesn't apply to you. Yes, if you have religious beliefs, it is best they be compatible, and that you can worship as a family. Living your life religiously divided would be a lack of intimacy. That would apply equally if an atheist and a Muslim were married as it would a Catholic and a Jew (I've met a couple like that before).

But spiritual intimacy is more than religious intimacy. This intimacy involves two things: humility and sacrifice.

Humility in that pride shuts the other person out of our inner person. Pride is wearing a mask. Pride is the fence we build around who we are for fear they won't like what they see. Humility breaks down that wall and says, "Here I am, warts and all. What you see is what you get." Humility exposes the man behind the curtain, trying to act macho to hide how weak and small he feels.

Spiritual intimacy involves seeing each other as you truly are. No secrets. No pretense. No masks or walls. Just who you are in all your vulnerability.

But the other leg this intimacy stands on is sacrifice. Being humble opens yourself up to the other person. Sacrificing your own agenda for their needs gives of yourself to each other. Letting each other into your lives and sacrificing for each other fosters a spiritual intimacy that exist at the core of your being.

How does that type of intimacy grown? By submission to one another in love and obedience. "But I don't want to be seen as inferior, as some type of slave." That's not what we are talking about here. We're talking about mutual obedience to each other in humility, doing what is beneficial for each other. I spell this out in my article on using humility to gain self-esteem.

Failure to do this, however, will mean a lack of spiritual intimacy, no matter how often you attend church together.

Physical Intimacy

Most would understand this to speak of being sexual with each other. Certainly it involves this. As I've said in other places, by the time many people get married, sexual activity is no longer that intimate. Or not as intimate as it should be. Remember our definition of intimacy at the start? The more people you share your body with, the less intimate it becomes.

But this intimacy goes beyond general sexual experiences. It focuses onto the one sexual act that forms the basis for marriage as I discussed in my July articles on this topic: sexual intercourse. This is the most intimate of sexual acts in that it joins two people into a union with the potential to create life together. It is this specific sexual act that turns the other types of union into a marital union. Without it, you're left with an intimate friendship, but not a marriage.

This also explains why an affair that results in adultery, whether mentally or physically, create such a cancerous illness in a marriage. For the unfaithful spouse is divorcing his spouse and marrying his affair partner in having sexual intercourse with them. Likewise, if he is having sex with his spouse too, he is continually divorcing and remarrying each of them over and over again. Doing so with no intent to foster the other types of intimacy devalues the marital bond and commitment that sexual intercourse inherently contains. When it is used merely for recreation and entertainment, the marital bond it creates is cheapened.

Yet, it goes beyond this. Yes, in the proper context, sexual intercourse is an intimate act. The most intimate physical activity we can do with someone. Any involvement of sexual activity, for most of us, isn't something we invite just anyone to join with us in. So unless we run around naked and participate in sexual activities with anyone who will have us, the number of people we are involved with is a limited number, and so has some level of intimacy, even if not the ideal of one.

Doing the act, in and of itself, doesn't necessarily foster full physical intimacy. For the physical intimacy to be complete means the previous intimacies above are firing on all cylinders, and a commitment to make each other the most important person in each other's lives is manifest. Then the intimacy inherent in sexual intercourse and other sexual activities are fulfilled and meaningful, making physical intimacy complete.

It should be coupled with emotional intimacy, keeping that romantic spark alive. Social intimacy lives out the reality of the physical intimacy. Spiritual intimacy keeps love as the motivation, and its purpose a giving of yourself rather than merely taking. Only then does physical intimacy rise above bodily intimacy and become a complete marital intimacy.

The quality of one's sexual intimacy should be worked on as well. Few of us take classes on this topic, but there are some good books. A book I've read and recommend is Sheet Music. Sometimes problems in the bedroom need a counselor to untie issues you are too close to see or deal with.

We should also note that physical intimacy is much broader a category than sexual intimacy. While a hug or even kiss is not nearly as intimate as sexual activities, it is a selective act. Rubbing a shoulder, scratching a back, massaging a foot can all be very intimate to a person and make any sexual intimacy that much richer. It should be considered a problem if the only physical intimacy that happens is during sex. That indicates a lack of intimacy physically.

As you can see, building intimacy in a marriage takes a holistic approach. It isn't as simple as tweaking a thing or two, or going out to eat together more often. It requires a complete evaluation of the dynamics in the marital relationship and a willingness to modify and/or adopt some core values that foster this intimacy rather than fight against it. I hope the above will give you a decent start on doing just that.

Should I Leave or Stay?

On discovery day of my wife's affair, I contacted my priest before confronting my wife. His first question was, "Do you want a divorce?"

I'd honestly not thought about it. I knew, for the first time in our marriage, it was a possible outcome, but I had no intentions of jumping to that conclusion until I knew what my wife would do.

Yet this is often one of the first questions a hurt spouse will ask themselves. It can resurface again if rebuilding takes some hard hits. Do I rebuild the marriage or "cut my losses" and move on? Many hurt spouses will bounce back and forth between these options, unsure which way to go. Surprisingly, what I've frequently heard is a hurt spouse will say, before discovering the affair, that if he found that his spouse was cheating, the marriage would be over. But after finding out, his tune changes.

There are actually a lot of variables as to whether one might decide to leave or not, and many of them are subjective. So it is difficult for me to tell you what is best in your situation. What I can do is give you some concepts to think about so you can arrive at your own decision.

First, keep in mind you don't need to be in a hurry to divorce.

Shirley Glass in Not Just Friends recommends waiting at least three months after discovering an affair before making any "life-changing" decisions. Others have suggested waiting six months.

Point being, the weeks right after discovering an affair are so emotionally charged, it will be difficult to evaluate what directions to head. It is usually smart to allow the emotional roller coaster to slow down before trying to hop out of the cart.

The truth is you are free to consider divorce if things don't work out, but you may never know if they will work out or not until you try. Once you start the divorce proceedings, your mind will tend to go into give-up mode, not committed-to-rebuild mode.

An exception to that advice is if you are in an emotionally and/or physically abusive relationship. I would highly recommend separating immediately, and potentially considering divorce unless they submit themselves to intensive therapy and treatment. Contact your local social services office to help you, but do whatever it takes to leave that situation, especially if you have children involved.

Second, I would encourage giving rebuilding a chance.

This may be difficult. At first, your heart may not be in it. It may take you a while to get out of intensive care to move forward in healing. The unfaithful partner may not be cooperative, or either of you may start out sweeping issues under the rug to fester.

Within that first six month period, you'll get a feel whether your spouse and you can invest enough commitment to give rebuilding a chance. Some haven't seen any real growth or movement in the first year, and then things change. It can vary a lot depending on the circumstances and persons. In most cases, an attempt at rebuilding is warranted.

Third, if rebuilding isn't a viable option, start with separation.

Some people won't change until it is evident you are headed out the door. Many unfaithful spouses think you won't leave, that there are not any serious consequences to fooling around other than your displeasure when they are caught. After three to six months of separation without any real change, perhaps you'll have your answer on whether they are ready to invest in honest rebuilding or it is time to divorce.

Fourth, if the unfaithful partner still isn't responsive to real rebuilding, it is healthier to let them loose than to keep them in the marriage.

Sometimes the last resort we have for their awakening and return is to let them go.

Some Christians don't believe in divorce. I was one of them. I still don't think it is the ideal. But Jesus did say that due to the hardness of your hearts, Moses allowed a certificate of divorce to be given. He was acknowledging the fact that we live in a fallen world. If one's spouse is hard of heart and won't do the things to heal the marriage, it would be for his best interest to cut him off. Like the father released the prodigal son not because he wanted his son to waste his inheritance on wonton living, but in hopes of his ultimate redemption when he came to his senses, so one might divorce their spouse out of love for them, not hate.

Fifth, some hurt spouses stay because of financial reasons or the children.

On the financial front, there are groups that can help. Check with your local social services office. You can also plan and prepare during your six month wait, in case. Get your financial ducks in a row, lay out your plan, meet with a lawyer to find out what to expect, etc. Then after six months or a year, if you have determined it just isn't going to work and you want out, you'll be ready.

With children, there will rarely be a good time. I would consider the home atmosphere. Are the children picking up that something is wrong? They can be more perceptive than you think. Such stress can be as much, if not more, of a problem for them than separating. If the marriage is miserable, the children will feel that and be insecure in the family. Some may even feel they must be doing something wrong that is causing the difficulty between you and him.

Staying for the children is often not what is best for the children. Especially when you consider what your example is teaching them about marital relationships.

Six, you know your own marriage better than anyone.

If your marriage was hanging on by a thread before learning of the affair, you may feel it is over on discovery day and want nothing more to do with him. Or you may not be ready to give up on your spouse even though everyone is telling you to. Everyone's "I've had enough" line is drawn in different places.

One member of our support group, known affectionately as "L", puts it this way: you'll know when you're done. Until then, keep working on rebuilding. If you have to ask yourself, "Should I leave?" Then you're not there yet.

One caveat to this advice. Some people are in co-dependent relationships and never hear the "I'm done" message. Co-dependency is when you feel responsible for fixing someone, especially if it is perceived they cannot function without your help.

This method of maintaining control, attempting to fix the unfaithful spouse yourself, leaves him free of responsibility. A mother-son relationship is primary, instead of a husband-wife. Such a person will tend to stick with the unfaithful spouse no matter how many times he has affairs and crosses boundaries.

If you find yourself unable to leave a spouse who often shows no progress in healing themselves for months or years, you are in essence enabling their destructive relationship dynamic. For your sake and the sake of the spouse you are hoping to fix, seek counseling to help you let go and move toward a more productive mode of relationships.

Hopefully the above guides will give you some principles to apply to your situation in making this decision. Remember, however, this is your life. Take responsibility for it and do your best not to jump into divorce before you are ready, nor stay in a marriage that will not allow a healthy relationship. Each situation is unique, and no one—not I nor an Internet advice forum/blog—can tell you when you should pull the divorce trigger.

For those who have pulled that trigger, how did you make that decision? For those contemplating it, what is keeping you from pulling that trigger?

Defining Evil

Am I evil?

This question tends to be asked by some unfaithful spouses, either outright or in more subtle ways. This often stems from an attempt to deal with guilt, and perhaps the seeming lack of control the unfaithful spouse experienced.

Punishing one's self can also be an outgrowth of this view. It can be compounded in frequent affairs, creating a vicious cycle of feeling shame for cheating, which lowers one's self-esteem, which causes them to find someone who makes them feel better about themselves, which leads to more cheating.

Then you have, in many cases, hurt spouses fresh from the trauma of discovering the unfaithful spouse's affair confirming that assessment. If a hurt spouse gets into punishing mode, the unfaithful spouse in some cases gets the clear message: "you are the devil."

But is the unfaithful spouse evil? Is even a serial cheater doomed to be labeled such all their life?

There is no getting around it. Betraying your spouse is a damaging action. One could rightly label the act evil. But one could label gossip as evil as well. True, infidelity has more serious consequences than most gossip, but that doesn't negate the fact that both activities can be called evil. As could many other damaging decisions and actions, even when such is due to human error, like a doctor making a mistake on the operating table, or even no human input, like a hurricane.

But you'll notice a key difference. We can freely label activities as evil, and most of us have committed evil acts, but are humans inherently evil for doing evil? Or is there a sickness of humanity that makes some of us evil and destined to evil works continually?

At this point, we could delve into the theological aspects of anthropology as it relates to creation. Humans were not created as evil but became corrupted and thus prone to evil. The question still to be asked, however, is the unfaithful spouse evil for having betrayed the trust and love of their spouse?

It depends upon whether you allow evil to define who you are, or allow who you are to conquer evil. 

This is more than a nifty turn of phrase. When self-esteem is based upon your value as a person instead of what you've done, as we discussed in the two previous articles on the topic, you do not allow the evil actions to define you as evil. Instead, you seek ways to conform your actions to who you know you are as a person, thus overcoming evil instead of giving into it.

But you will be tempted to give into it. Why? Because giving in is easier than fighting. Because giving in justifies that you cannot change, that you have no control, and are a victim of the uncontrolled evil person you are. Because giving in means you'll settle for the familiar patterns of interactions instead of exploring new ways of living. Because if you are just an evil person, you don't have to change. Fighting for improving yourself is viewed as a lost cause.

We've all made bad decisions. I've not paid back some money I've owed on more than one occasion. Does that make me a serial money stealer who is destined to not pay back bills, or someone who has made bad financial decisions but can do better if I address the issues that lead me into that situation?

To accept the former is to say I can't change. To accept the later allows me to take responsibility and do something about it.

Are you evil for betraying your spouse? No. Did you allow yourself to be put into the position to be tempted to commit an evil act and give into it? Yes. That, however, can be overcome and changed.

Are you using the "I'm evil" card as an excuse to continue? Something to think about.

Narrative Reconstruction

In most major wars, a country will go through a period of post-war reconstruction, especially if your country was on the receiving end of the bombs and attacks. Buildings and infrastructure is destroyed. Schools blown up and churches desecrated. To gain a sense of security requires rebuilding what was lost and healing from emotional damage.

A recent article in the New York Times, "Great Betrayals" by Anna Fels, illustrates a very key part of the rebuilding efforts in infidelity: rebuilding the story or narrative upon which the relationship is founded. If you've not read the article, take the time to do so. It is an enlightening point of view.

What is the relationship narrative? It is the combined expectations of the relationship formed through beliefs and experience. That narrative is constantly in flux, but usually changes in either slight variations or in short bursts. A romantic dinner adjusts the continuing story. A new baby creates a major shift. Usually these shifts are organic to the relationship. They meet expectations even if at times they stretch them. We find them fairly easy to integrate into the ongoing story of the marriage and its relationships.

Sometimes, however, the change is so radical and huge that it puts into question what you've always believed and expected from another person. It is akin to reading a novel, and suddenly the hero you've been rooting for turns into the bad guy you hate, and you no longer trust the author and refuse to read anymore of his books because he deceived you.

When infidelity strikes, it is that jarring, but even more so because it is your spouse and not a character in a book you can close and never revisit. Unlike that character in a book, when a person in your relationship narrative changes so drastically from the friend, lover, or partner to an enemy, deceiver, or betrayer, the hurt spouse is faced with the grueling task of reconciling these two opposite character arcs that directly bear on the relationship narrative. Those hurt spouses who are able to integrate those two people into a narrative that provides them security and trust are the ones with the potential to rebuild into a healthy relationship. Those who cannot either end up divorced or living in a marriage they regret and have given up on long ago.

This dynamic of reconstructing the relationship after the traumatic revelation of infidelity leads us to ask the question: how does a couple rebuild that narrative?

Talk about the affair.

One of the ways a hurt spouse will attempt to reconcile these two opposite messages from their unfaithful spouse is to hash through their feelings and the major events of the affair(s) in an effort to make sense of it. They soon learn that they can never make full sense of it because it didn't happen for logical reasons but for emotional ones. Yet, it is still important for the hurt spouse to gain the best understanding of that section of the story in order to integrate them into a new and continuing narrative.

Unfortunately, either through perception or maybe because there is some truth to it, unfaithful spouses often interpret this need to talk about the affair for months on end as the hurt spouse's attempt to punish them or refusal to forgive and let go of the hurt and move on with life. So they tend to run from it. Avoid it. Dodge it. Anything but talk about it non-stop.

The problem is until this happens, the continuing narrative comes to a screeching halt. No continuing narrative, no continuing relationship. Why?

The unfaithful spouse needs to keep some realities in mind. For the unfaithful spouse, while they've no doubt been on a wild ride and have all sorts of difficult emotions to deal with, they've know the full narrative as it happened. They've been in the driver's seat, even if some times it hasn't felt like it. Consequently, the unfaithful spouse has been able to integrate their narrative into their life while they've experienced it

The hurt spouse, however, has been in the dark for weeks, months, or years. In one moment of time, they discover that all they'd thought was true about their narrative for the past period of time is false. They've been deceived about who the unfaithful spouse is based on actions that violate their expectations.

The hurt spouse has to gain the unknown story before they can even attempt to reconcile them into a continuing narrative.

Getting that story takes time. Integrating it takes even longer. In my own example, for instance, my wife lived through seven months of experiences without me. She was able to adjust her narrative as she went through it. But on the day I discovered her affair, in about five seconds of time, I realized my wife was not who she pretended to be for seven months. If it took her seven months to live it, it would at least that that long for me to not only understand what happened, but even longer to rebuild enough trust and security to base a continuing narrative on. Without understanding what happened, I would have been prevented from integrating our lives into a new relationship narrative.

This is why unfaithful spouses need to be open and transparent.

Not merely about email, social network sites, cell phone passwords and the like, but also transparent about your life, your heart, and the affair(s). When the unfaithful spouse says, "I don't want to talk about it," or "You need to get past this," they are saying to the hurt spouse, "I still have something to hide. There are more secrets I don't want you to find out." Whether it is true or not, that is the message conveyed when you refuse or avoid talking about it.

That message prevents the hurt spouse from understanding the secret story, integrating it, and rebuilding a new narrative into the future. The best thing an unfaithful spouse can do is to lay it all out there and be open to discussing it as often as the hurt spouse needs to, even if they ask a question twelve or eighteen months after discovering it. Yes, at first it can feel like 24/7 all affair radio. The fastest way to get through that, however, is to openly talk about it, knowing it isn't to force you to wallow in it, but to get them up to speed where you are already at in the story, so you can both construct the rest of it together.

Some warnings about this process.

Hurt spouses, get the major outline and events, avoid getting into details. You can't un-know or un-see something once you learn it. Such things can be triggers. Knowing positions, seeing pictures, reading text of them acting in love to one another, can all stick with you. You'll never know if the affair partner was really better in bed by asking. You may not want to know the truth either. Keep it general. Get the broad outlines of the story. If you feel a need to get more detailed, be aware of the risk you are taking.

Unfaithful spouses, don't hold anything back. You aren't going to lessen the blow by confessing to only one affair when there are really three, or say it was one month when it was really ten. Any secrets at this point are ticking time bombs, waiting to destroy any progress you make in rebuilding. The hurt spouse will despair if after months of thinking he's getting the full story suddenly learns you've been hiding a significant part of it, requiring trashing the narrative he'd been building and starting over. To be transparent means no more secrets. Deal with it all, once. New revelations will only prolong the need to talk about the affairs non-stop.

To help the hurt spouse be able to continue the relationship narrative, give him time and information to learn the part of the narrative they missed out on, integrate it, and continue it into the future. Failure to do so is deadly to continuing the relationship.

The Path to Self-Esteem

As we detailed in my last article, "Self-Esteem: Infidelity's Biggest Trigger," a low self-esteem often plays into the underlying reason that a person falls into infidelity (there is something missing in me that the Affair Partner completes) as well as getting in the way of successfully rebuilding once the affair is in the open (He's rejected me for someone else; I'm a horrible person for doing what I did; motivates blame-shifting and  rug sweeping mindsets). I pointed out how bad self-esteem does not equal low self-esteem, but that good or proper self-esteem removes a focus on self from the esteem equation. If you've not read that article, I encourage you to click the above link and do so.

The route most people suggest to build one's self-esteem revolve around the band-aid treatment of making one's self feel more important, more respected. Often the list includes things like treating yourself to something special, doing something for yourself, demanding more respect from others, adopt some beliefs that make you feel better about yourself, etc. These are band-aid treatments because they treat the symptoms, not the root cause. Doing those things are a temporary fix until the next message you receive from a source that you're a failure, and it all takes a nosedive again.

I suggested last time that the "cure" for an improper self-esteem is humility. Before we dig in to what this is and how to get it, first we need to clarify what it is not. Because when someone brings up humility, they tend to associate it with the following self-esteem destroyers:

Doormat

True humility is not to become a doormat for people to walk over. The real source of this unhealthy relational model is pride, not humility. It is based on believing if I do the right things to make him happy, he'll like me. Hold onto your questions; I'll explain why in a moment.

Codependent Relationship

True humility does not result in a relationship where fixing the other spouse provides the spouse's esteem. It does quite the opposite, freeing the other person to be responsible for themselves, even while you are cheering them on.

Passive Aggressive Behaviors

True humility will not result in underlying resistance while appearing cooperative and agreeable in order to maintain control and get what you want. Instead, it seeks to truly serve others for the betterment of all, including one's self.

Some will look at a truly humble person and believe they are exhibiting one of the above traits. But the key difference is in the above traits, one is seeking to feel better about their self through some attempt to control the situation or manipulate people. That is always a form of pride, not humility.

Humility, on the other hand, results in not focusing on self. On not seeking to control or manipulate others to feel good about yourself. The goal of humility is to place one's self on an equal plane of worth with everyone else.

The base definition of humility in the ancient Greek is "to lower oneself in relation to another." Likewise, the base definition of pride is "to raise oneself in relation to another." In order to put yourself on equal footing with everyone else, you must view their lives and needs just as important as your own. Any attempt to focus on your own self while using others to make yourself feel good is pride. It is putting your self as of more worth because you are using others to satisfy your desires and wants.

Keep in mind what humility is lowering one's self to. It is not inherent worth. All men and women are equal. It is not respect. It is in a focus of meeting needs and desires. If we are truly equal in worth, then my needs and wants are no more important than anyone else's. So the focus of our efforts cannot be on meeting our needs and wants above others. The moment we do, we put self in a position of worth based on what we do.

How Do We Foster True Humility?

You don't become humble by trying to be humble. The moment you seek it, you end up in pride, because you are doing it to lift self to a higher level than others. "Ah, look how humble I've become!" Then we're back to putting self in the esteem equation.

The key to answering this is control. At the heart of pride is making self important by controlling others or a situation. This is true of the doormat, the passive aggressive victim, or the narcissist. Pride says, "I want to control this for my maximum self interests."

To gain humility, we do the opposite. We give the control to others. I know, I know. This goes against our ideas of proper self-esteem. Seems to open up the door to being treated as a doormat, or abused by an abuser. But not really. Here's the difference.

For a doormat person, they meet any and every need because they hope to be liked and appreciated. Or they do it to control the other person in codependent manner or subvert them through passive aggressive behaviors. For a humble person, they do it purely to meet that person's true need, with no expectation of benefiting from it. Self is out of the picture, so there is no doormat to walk on. If they are unappreciative or don't reciprocate, that is no skin off their back since they didn't do it for that reason.

What loosing control means in practical terms is obedience. We become obedient to one another in love. When you are merely being obedient, you don't have the satisfaction of being prideful.

For example, when I was a teen, I decided on my own to clean out the garage because I wanted to surprise my mother. My motivation was to see her shock and praise me for being so considerate and helpful. It became a source of pride for me to say, "See what I did!"

Now back up. Let's say before my mom left that day she told me, "Rick, would you please clean out the garage for me?" Would I have been nearly motivated to do it? No, because self wasn't going to get kudos for deciding to do it. She might say it was a good job, but she would have expected that. Because I was only doing what was expected of me, I wouldn't have been able to take pride in what I'd done inappropriately, at least easily.

What am I saying? Don't surprise your loved ones with gifts? No. Rather, if you want to remove self from the esteem equation through humility, it is done through obedience to one another.

But we need to make one more point on this to avoid confusion. It is not an obedience to their demands and wants, but to what is in their best interest. To put it in obvious terms, if they say, "Give me a gun, I want to go shoot some kids at a school," you'd be obedient to everyone's best interest by not giving him that gun. A doormat would give him the gun. A humble person with proper self-esteem would not.

So, let's put this in marital terms, which is what our focus is here. What if your spouse is abusive, manipulative, etc.? Do you just obey him?

That will depend, but as pointed out, you are obedient to his best interest. Such types of relationships are not healthy for any involved, including the abuser. Obedience in that instance would be to leave in hopes he'll get a clue and seek help to change his destructive relational patterns. It would be obedient to the best interest of the kids, if any, who might suffer emotionally under such an atmosphere, to leave.

It would also be obedient to your own protection. "But I thought you said self doesn't enter the picture?" As a motivation to control others for your own ego boosting needs, yes. But if you do not protect yourself, there are needs other than your own that will go unmet. If mom is an emotional mess because of an abusive husband, she won't be able to fully meet the needs of her kids as their mother. Taking care of basic needs for yourself is being obedient to the needs of others. If you can't function in a healthy way, you can't help others.

"But what about a spouse who is simply not humble to me? Am I to continue to obey him when he doesn't respect me?" Yes and no. Yes, in the sense his lack of desire to meet your needs doesn't affect your reason to meet his needs. You aren't meeting his needs, if it is from true humility, because you want him to return the favor. So when he doesn't, you don't stop. To do so would indicate it arose from pride and a damaged self-esteem you are trying to shore up.

But, to continue in that type of relationship for long is not good for either of you. It needs to be addressed. It needs to be dealt with an healed. You might need to force the issue at some point by making it clear the situation cannot go on without forcing you to take some extreme measures, like separation. However, letting it go on and on would be an indication of pride rather than humble obedience.

In the end, you are simply being obedient to him/her by doing what is in the best interest of all involved. By so doing, your own needs are not front and center, though your basic needs are getting met that keep you going and healthy. But you are focused on other's needs not to use them for meeting your own, but because their needs are just as important as yours.

The end result is self is removed from the esteem question. You know your esteem is equal to everyone else's. Because of that, what others think of you or your performance matters little as it has no bearing on your self-worth. With self out of the picture, you are free to respond to others and be obedient to what is in their best interest out of genuine love for them as a person of worth.

Fostering humility becomes the path to proper and healthy self-esteem that will not only allow a hurt spouse or unfaithful spouse to heal quicker, but will prevent any self-focused decisions to have an affair to happen in the first place.