Do You Have an Agenda for Your Affair Partner?
And it might not be helping you.
Your affair partner is married. They’ve said they want to leave their marriage so the two of you can have an above-board relationship, and you believe them! And you really want this, too!
But your married affair partner is dragging their feet. They keep saying they’re going to take steps toward leaving their marriage, but they really aren’t doing all that much.
This has been going on for a while now! You’re beginning to see a pattern — and you sure don’t like the look of it.
So, it seems perfectly reasonable for you to intervene.
It seems perfectly reasonable for you to offer your affair partner some HELP.
Or a few suggestions here and there.
Or a well-put-together PowerPoint deck or two on what you think they need to do next in order to leave their marriage like they say they want to.
Or maybe you just give them a list of a dozen books to read and then text them every other day — or you know, maybe every two hours — to ask if they’ve made any progress on their reading list yet.
And it seems PERFECTLY REASONABLE to you to do these things! Because you know your affair partner SO WELL!
You know their tendencies, wounds, hang-ups, fears, and hopes better than your own— and you know this because they’ve told you as much!
And since you have such great insight into how they operate AND such a deep interest in helping them live their best life, it’s only natural for you to try to help them leave their marriage, right? It certainly seems that way to you. Plus, you may have WAY MORE EXPOSURE to personal development-type stuff than your affair partner does. You have all sorts of insights and tools in your toolkit that they just don’t have. So, obviously, you’re the expert in the situation, and it makes sense for you to tell them to do all of the things that have helped you so very much.
If you’re nodding your head in recognition of any of this, you just might have an agenda for your affair partner. (Or maybe you’re nodding because you think your affair partner has an agenda for YOU. More on that another time!)
Here’s the deal: it is not unreasonable for you to have an agenda for your affair partner!
You love them, and you want to be with them, and you may truly have some great insights into how they operate! You may also have exposure to tools and perspectives that would help if they were to make use of them.
However. Even if all of this is true, it still isn’t your job to try and “help” your affair partner leave their marriage, and you may want to loosen your grip on your agenda for them.
Here’s why:
First.
Even when you are as sure as you can be that you know what would help your affair partner, it’s also important to be aware that your insights into what’s going on with them and your opinions about what they should do might NOT be quite as astute as you think they are. Your insights might be pretty darn good, but they also might NOT be.
Second.
Even if your ideas about what your affair partner should do are great, that doesn’t mean you need to turn them into an agenda that you attempt to enforce. It’s your affair partner’s job to leave their marriage — if they indeed want to do that. You can’t possibly do that job for them. Can you offer SOME advice or suggestions? Sure, perhaps. But if they’re going to leave their marriage, only they can actually do that.
Third.
By attempting to get your affair partner to leave their marriage, you may drive yourself crazy — and you may drive your affair partner crazy, too. When you’re fixated on trying to get someone else to do something that you want them to do, you create a pretty unpleasant experience for yourself. And your affair partner may not love having your agenda thrust upon them. All of this can make for some pretty un-fun relationship dynamics… and that’s probably not going to do much to help your affair partner leave their marriage.
If you’ve been trying to “help” your affair partner leave their marriage, or if you have subtly or not-so-subtly trying to get them to do anything else, it may be time to ask yourself whether pushing your agenda is doing anything great for you, or for your affair partner, or for your relationship.
If you find that your efforts aren’t getting you your desired results, here’s what I suggest:
Start focusing on what you have the power to take responsibility for — within your relationship with your affair partner, and within your life as a whole.
Sometimes, trying to get someone else to do things we want them to do, does serve as a great way to avoid dealing with things that we really need to deal with, but don’t want to.
For instance, some of my clients who are trying like hell to get their affair partners to leave their marriages are still married themselves.
If you haven’t left your own marriage yet, but have been working really hard to get your affair partner to ask their spouse for a divorce, it might be time for a priority check. If you want an above-board relationship with your affair partner, and you are currently just as married as they are, work on leaving your own marriage. That’s just as essential to your desired outcome, and it’s actually within your power to control this piece of the puzzle.
If you are not in any kind of a committed relationship yourself, and you think waiting for your affair partner to leave their marriage is a form of sheer hell that you shouldn’t have to experience, it might be time to take a close look at the power you have to make choices.
You don’t have to stay in your affair relationship for another minute if you don’t want to. If waiting for your married affair partner to leave their marriage is unbearable, you have the option to walk away from your relationship with them.
Many of us associate our experience of love with a specific person, and we get the idea in our head that if we want to experience love — or intimacy, or connection, or particularly great sex, or whatever — it can ONLY be with that particular person. But that’s only as true as you allow it to be. If what you want is to be in a relationship with someone who is fully available to be with you, you can have that — but in order to get that, you might have to relinquish your relationship with your current person.
You also have a choice about how you experience waiting for your affair partner to leave their marriage. You don’t even have to think of what you are doing as waiting! You can pour your energy into creating a great life for yourself, and you can allow whatever your affair partner does or doesn’t do to be a minor subplot within your existence rather than the central drama.
Or if living your life without much concern about whether your affair partner leaves their marriage or not really isn’t an option for you, decide how much longer you are willing to wait for them. Give YOURSELF an agenda. Give YOURSELF a timeline. Take responsibility for the choices you have the power to make — instead of attempting to get someone else to do things that only they can do.
Let me conclude this missive by emphasizing that it is totally and completely human to attempt to get other people to do things we want them to do. If you have been trying to “help” your affair partner leave their marriage, or if you have been attempting to impose any kind of agenda upon your affair partner, that is not an indication that there’s anything terribly wrong with you. Not at all. However… attempting to get other people to do the things we want them to do rarely helps us get more of what we truly want in the long run.
