Learning How to Deal with the Confusion

Often, especially at the beginning of this journey, the intensity and frequency of the unpleasant feelings and thoughts emerge out of your confusion.

You no longer can trust. You find it difficult to sort the truth from the lies. You have no clue where this will go. You are afraid for your future. A part wants to be with him/her. Another part wants to throw his/her a.. out.

You are all over the map. Pretty normal, although not pleasant.

The intensity often emerges either from the newness – like being punched unaware in the midsection, or from affair #7 I outline in my ebook, Break Free From the Affair.

Here’s an article I wrote describing the intensity of the confusion from that kind of affair:

Some of you write and say: “I’m really confused! I don’t know what’s going on! I can’t pinpoint what kind of affair he is having! One day he says it’s over with me, the next day, no, maybe next hour, I get indications he wants to make it work with me!”

Confusion usually comes from one of two sources. First, the discovery and pain of the affair may be so new and fresh, you are overwhelmed and EVERYTHING seems confusing. As you move beyond the pain and the freshness the fog clears and the kind of affair becomes clear.

Second, confusion is the hallmark of the 7th kind of affair: “I Want to Be Close to Someone (which means I can’t stand intimacy). He’s confused and you are confused. No movement. You feel “stuck.” Here’s how I explain some of this in my e-book.

The underlying dynamic of “being stuck” is a polarity.

Allow me to explain. It’s really not that mysterious or difficult to understand. What makes you stuck? Well, it’s usually that “one part” of you pulls you in one direction and another “part” pulls you in another direction.

One part of you wants to take a fabulous vacation. Another part says, “No, I can’t afford it.” One part says, “I must lose weight.” Another part, “I want that desert.” One part thinks, “I want to have children.” Another, “I want my freedom and a career.”

The greater the emotional investment and the more impacting the consequences, the more difficult it becomes to “decide” which part to follow. So, no decision is made and one continues moving hesitantly toward one part and then is beckoned back by the other.

This process, if the investment is high, generates internal tension. One feels the tug and pull and expends energy trying to decide and manage the resulting tension. One is stuck when it seems that one part does not take precedence. You go nowhere. You spin your wheels and run over the same territory time and time again.

So, one part of him feels pulled toward the marriage where he finds familiarity and stability. Another part feels pulled toward the other person where he believes he can find excitement and freedom. Or he sees the marriage as the place to find authentic intimacy or the freedom to express himself and he also sees that other person providing those opportunities.

He becomes stuck in his ambivalence and movement ceases. He doesn’t know. He has a difficult expressing his desires or needs largely because he has not stopped to be aware of his own ambivalence. He has not given full weight to each part. Instead he is locked in the middle attempting to manage the tension and avoid facing the truth of both poles.

It is vitally important to get off center. You do so by first identifying the poles and start pulling anything you can get your mind around apart.

In Break Free From the Affair, I give you 3 skills that help you get “unstuck.” Briefly:

1. Get to the Real Commitment. I discuss how you can get beneath the surface and identify where his commitments truly lie.

2. Look for the Upset. I teach you how to notice the emotional upset and then jump on it!

3. Step Over Nothing. This tool you use when he is obviously indirect, passive or noncommittal in his communication.