Plan A: Avoid Angry Outbursts, Disrespect, and Demands at All Costs
Jon made a good point when he asked, Why should I care about Sue's feelings? She doesn't care about mine. She had cheated and lied to him over and over again. Why should he treat her any differently than she had treated him? Jon was very angry and felt that what Sue needed was a healthy dose of reality. He was tempted to give her a piece of his mind.
How could I expect Jon to avoid burning his bridges after Sue had behaved so thoughtlessly? I offered him four reasons to try a plan that would give his marriage a chance to recover.
1. Jon was partly responsible for Sue's affair. Jon knew, deep down inside, that his career choices had a great deal to do with Sue's affair. His work schedule prevented him from meeting her emotional needs, and it made her vulnerable to Greg's attention. Even after she was willing to reconcile with him, his job continued to take priority. He now realized what he should have done to help prevent her affair and he needed a chance to prove it to her. He would have that chance if he could be patient. How To Avoid Infidelity
2. Sue had not yet decided to end her marriage. She was trying to justify her affair in terms of Jon's failure to care about her feelings. Whenever he was angry, disrespectful, or demanding, it tended to support Sue's belief that she had chosen the wrong man to marry, a man who was a tyrant at heart. But there was also a part of her that wanted to believe that Jon was the right man for her. I wanted Jon to support the part of Sue that she felt she had married the right man, and prove wrong the part of her that thought he was a tyrant.
3. Jon needed to know that he had done his best to save their marriage. If Jon were to take the initiative to divorce Sue, he would be burdened by guilt, particularly after he saw the effect of the divorce on his children. He would always wonder if he had done all he could do to save the marriage. If, instead of seeking a divorce, he showed his care for Sue under these horrible conditions of infidelity, it would be a good example to his children of how to care for others, even when others don't always show their care in return. Then, if the marriage were to end in divorce, he would have fewer regrets.
4. If Jon followed my plan, and it failed, he would no longer have any feelings of love for Sue. In spite of Sue's affair, Jon was still in love with her. If their marriage had ended in divorce before he followed my plan, he would have missed her terribly. But my plan offered him something that would make a divorce much less painful - he would lose his love for her. The plan had the effect of withdrawing so many love units from Sue's account in his Love Bank that if their marriage ended in divorce, his love for her would be completely gone.
Plan A was simple to understand but difficult to implement. Jon was to avoid doing anything that would upset Sue. Anger, disrespect, and demands were to be completely eliminated. The only thing he could do that might upset her was ask her questions about her compliance with the conditions of separation she had agreed to follow.
What made plan A particularly hard for Jon to implement was Sue's blatant disregard for his feelings. How could he avoid upsetting Sue when just about everything she was doing upset him? For that reason, I suggested a time limit for plan A. Quite frankly, there's a limit to everyone's patience, and Jon was no exception.
Jon agreed to a six-month time limit, which is about average for most of the couples I counsel in his position. During those six months, he would try to avoid doing anything that would upset Sue. At the same time, if she would let him, he would try to meet her emotional needs. How To Avoid Infidelity
I warned Jon that as long as Sue was involved with Greg, she would give Jon little opportunity to meet her needs. The time and attention she had always wanted from Jon were now received from Greg. But I still wanted him to offer to meet her needs anyway, just in case she decided to give him another chance.
Sue was still living with Jon at home, and once in a while, it seemed that Jon was making real progress. Sue would warm up to him and would even tell him that she loved him. He had learned his lesson about business trips and had obtained a job transfer that did not require him to travel. His new job allowed him the time to meet Sue's emotional needs, if she'd let him. But from time to time there would be a setback, and she would return to a more defensive posture.
As long as Sue continued to see Greg, she vacillated back and forth between Jon and Greg, and that drove Jon nuts. But he did everything he could to avoid withdrawing love units. For almost six months, Jon made every effort to avoid angry outbursts, disrespectful judgments, and demands, even when he knew Sue was lying to him and sneaking out to be with Greg. Jon did not tell Sue about his time limit, because she would have interpreted it as a threat - a demand for her to leave Greg. However, he did remind her repeatedly that he loved her and wanted the opportumty to meet her needs.
Sue didn't make it easy for Jon to express his feelings for her. In fact whenever they were together, she either left the room or avoided looking at him when he tried to tell her he still loved her. How was Jon supposed to communicate with her when she didn't want to talk to him? I offered him two suggestions: letters and telephone.
Next post, I'll show you how to communicate with spouses through non contact methods. Before that, you can check out How To Avoid Infidelity for more details.
