Infidelity Q&A #11: What Type of Affair Is It?

You can’t fit a square peg into a round hole.

If you want to save your marriage, if you want to have a constructive relationship,
if you want to say something or do something that somehow, in some way will
influence the course of the affair, you must know what type of affair it is.

Otherwise, you’re just like a leaf blowing in the wind. You’re like a loose cannon
rattling on the deck. And what you say or what you do will probably cause more harm
than good.

One size does not fit all. You must know what type of affair you’re facing.

Affairs are different. Affairs have different lengths of duration. Affairs begin
because of different motives of your spouse.

The personality characteristics of your spouse will correlate directly with the type
of affair s/he is having.

When people read my e-book, “Break Free From the Affair”, and they go through the
personality characteristics of the person in a particular kind of affair, often
light bulbs go on and say, “Hey, this is him. This is her. This fits him. This fits
her perfectly.”

To influence the affair or to save your marriage, you must do or say something that
fits the type of affair and fits the personality characteristics of your cheating
spouse.

Let me give you a couple examples.

You respond to the affair, “I don’t want to say no,” much differently than to the
affair, “I need to prove my desirability”.

In “I don’t want to say no,” I encourage an aggressive get in his face or get in her
face strategy. In the “I need to prove my desirability,” a person is much more
passive.

You listen. You try to understand.

As you can see the strategies for these types of affairs are tremendously different.

I also have an affair called “I want to be close to someone but can’t stand intimacy.”

For that type of affair, I suggest using the tactic called “leaping your partner.”

However, if you use that tactic (leaping your partner) in the “I want to get back at
him or her” type of affair, your spouse will interpret your strategy as abandonment
and you’ll do more harm than good.

The resentment or the rage will just be intensified, and you don’t want that.

You must know the type of affair.

By knowing the type of affair that you’re facing, you can strategize and use
appropriate tactics that will have the most impact for the results you want.