Have you ever considered the question, “Do you want to stay sick?” Although common sense tells you that no one in their right mind would want to stay sick, reality paints a different picture. When it comes to dealing with affairs, you may actually be choosing to stay sick or unhealthy. You would not be alone in making that choice.
Anytime you delay taking action, you are choosing to stay unhealthy. The longer you wait, the longer the problems fester. It is one thing if you are giving your spouse some time and space to think. This presupposes that you have given them something to think about. Just giving them time without having given then something to think about is procrastination by another name.
Anytime you avoid dealing with the issues surrounding the affair, you are choosing to keep your marriage unhealthy. It is one thing if you are struggling with coping with those issues and trying to handle them. If you are taking steps to finding the best time of addressing an issue, that is still taking action.
Avoidance is when you consciously choose to put off until another day doing ANYTHING to improve your marriage.
Each action you take will either make your marriage healthier or unhealthier. Relationships never stay in the same place. The two of you are either getting closer or further apart. This is the way relationships work. When your marriage is stagnant, you need to wake up. That ‘stagnation’ may actually be that your spouse or you are pulling further away and you do not realize it.
So what can you do? Learn ways to improve trust. Learn ways to improve your communication skills. Spend more time with each other. Ask your spouse for their opinion on things. Learn ways of improving your listening. Improve your self-care. Pray for your spouse. Learn ways of being more encouraging. Develop a better sense of humor. These are all things you can do to improve your marriage relationship, or….you can choose to do nothing.
Choosing to do nothing is making the choice to stay sick. When your relationship is sick, you have a built-in crutch to indulge in bad habits. You also have a built in excuse to avoid being honest, to avoid responsibility, to avoid accountability. Just blame it on your husband/wife/love/bad marriage. Although you may blame those things, the reality is that you choice of inaction or procrastination has only helped it further along toward badness.
Truth be told, you may not be hurting enough to start doing something about your marriage. You may be one of those hard headed people that has to reach a particular level of hurt before you take action. Be it stubborn habits or pride, this is not healthy routine. If you are serious about saving your marriage and surviving the affair, you need to take action now, even if it is just learning more about things, finding out what you need to pray for, identifying what you need to talk about or finding ways of working up the courage to do something, that is a start. You may even have to save up the money to get the needed tools. Remember than investments in relationships are always good investments. They always pay greater dividends than you invest.
Best Regards,
Jeff Murrah
