As a counselor I encountered many ‘strange’ events. One of those events was when Brian
finished his treatment and was discharged. When I arrived at the facility the morning of his discharge, the nurse quickly informed me that he urinated on the toilet seats of all sixteen rooms on that floor of the facility.
I thought I heard her wrong. “He did what?” She repeated her report of Brian’s activity. I had to gather my thoughts and emotions.
I had seen people have strong reactions to being discharged before, but never like this one. He had strong reactions to being discharged.
What he did triggered strong reactions in the staff as well. They were infuriated at him. They wanted him booted out. They wanted to help him with his discharge, the SOONER the better.
He intentionally did something making the staff push him away. He wanted to be rejected.
This is very similar to exit affairs. With exit affairs, the cheater uses the affair as their ticket out of the marriage. Rather than face the marital issues or dealing with good-byes, they instead use the affair to force situations where they are ‘kicked out’.
Exit affairs often include high levels of anger. The cheater and the betrayed spouse are both angry. Your anger is often so intense, that you want them out of the marriage.
The cheater is not interested in saving the marriage. If anything, they want to fire things up and ‘let it burn’, with the attitude of ‘the hotter, the better’. The cheater may say and do things that intentionally make things worse. They want to infuriate you to the point you ‘push’ them out of your marriage to them.
These high levels of anger make interventions challenging. They make any discussions about the marriage painful and high drama. The game plan with exit affairs is often to frustrate the therapist so badly that even they give up hope on the marriage.
The logic is that when even your therapist gives up on your marriage, there is no hope and the marriage is doomed. When the marriage is designated as ‘doomed’, the cheater then has a ‘get out of marriage free’ card which they play.
By making the situation bad, they can get out of the marriage without the encumbrance of guilt. They can tell the world “It was a bad marriage” and “Even the therapist gave up on us”, and ‘The therapist encouraged us to divorce’. This way, you want to initiate the divorce and get rid of them.
At that point the cheater is free to use the victim card, claiming that “I didn’t initiate the divorce.” (Since the spouse initiating the divorce is often seen as the bad one, and women end up initiating divorce in 60-90% of the cases.).
The exit affair is not about sex or love, it is part of the cheater’s exit strategy. You need to keep this in mind when intervening. While you are trying to find out the details of the who, what, when and why of the affair, they are using your obsession with explaining things to add more accelerant to the situation.
Like Brian, who intentionally did things to be ejected from treatment, and stir up negative feelings toward himself with exit affairs, the cheater is intentionally doing things to be ejected from your marriage. It may be hard for you to see this in the midst of your anger. That is part of what the cheater is counting on.
You can intervene with exit affairs, although it has to be done quickly. You will need to take action promptly (like the Affair Recovery Workshop, which you can download NOW).
Waiting two or three months until you get the cheater to a workshop or retreat is a mistake. While you are waiting, your marriage is falling apart. That may be the next available appointment, yet with an exit affair, “delay is deadly”.
When you are dealing with an exit affair, you have a situation like Brian’s. Since many of you react to things in the moment, you are at risk of being played and drawn into the strong emotional reactions of the exit affair.
Best Regards,
Jeff
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