Get Your Kung Fu On!
Elisabeth, whose husband David had cheated more than once, began digging her heals in during one argument by demanding that he tell her the “truth” about his affairs. She had accidentally stumbled across evidence twice now. New details had emerged that didn’t match what she thought she already knew and she was trying to get to the bottom of it. The more she demanded he be forthcoming with the “truth”, the more he resisted, the more she tried to toughen herself up, the more she felt battered and bruised. In her mind she kept saying to David, ‘You will not destroy me! You will not destroy me!’ Elisabeth was positioning herself for war with her on the losing side. Here’s the hard reality as to why.
What Elisabeth was really demanding was reassurance, understandably so, but this gets super tricky, as perhaps you already know. The pain after an affair can be exceedingly intense. Figuring out ways to deal with it is mind boggling and desperately difficult. And desperate is exactly what we become. Acting on our desperation just makes us get worse and keeps us stuck in recovery mode rather than growth mode.
You may wonder at some point in reading my blog posts if I have ever been through marital infidelity. I have not. What I do have are 13 years of helping couples grow after an affair in a professional counseling setting, 10 years of working hard for growth in my own marriage, and a few personal experiences of what felt like betrayal and deception that propelled me deeper into my own humility and freedom as a human being.
This blog takes a fundamentally different approach to infidelity than most.
I believe your path to peace, happiness, and intimacy is about growth, not recovery. I believe you are much more resilient than mainstream approaches give you credit for. I believe infidelity is asking you to embrace a whole new mindset, one that is grounded solidly in self-respect, humility, and in, what some of my clients call, self-love. It’ll be the most difficult thing you’ve ever done, but I believe you can do it.
The concepts and principles you’ll read about:
- How to get you Kung Fu on.
- Trust is the last thing you should be working on now.
- No, really, trust is not the first task of growth through infidelity. It is perhaps one of the last.
- It’s not about standing up for your self.
- Playing the field and then leveling the playing field.
- For the partner who cheated: A Leg to Stand On
- What to do when you’re in love with the other…
- And many other posts on general marriage issues, sex, and parenting.
So, let’s talk about how Elisabeth got her Kung Fu on.
First, the concept. In the most recent Karate Kid movie the Jackie Chan character named Mr. Han is teaching Xiao Dre about self-control and where a person’s power truly lies. When Dre observes a Kung Fu practitioner involved in a kind of mirror dance with a cobra he is mesmerized. He perceives the practitioner as controlling the snake but Mr. Han teaches him otherwise. He teaches Dre that the practitioner is merely controlling herself – keeping herself calm, centered and focused – and that this self-control is what influences the snake to mirror her. He teaches Dre that the only person he needs to learn to control is himself and that one does this by learning to be calm like a well of cool, clear, still water. When Dre perceives this as “doing nothing” Mr. Han says, “Being still and doing nothing are two very different things.”
The most important and powerful thing you can do right now in your marriage is to calm yourself. I know. Monumental. Honestly, when I feel like I just can’t calm myself anymore – when I’m feeling like I just can’t stop my emotions from taking over – I start to imagine myself in KungFu training like Xiao Dre. I imagine the mental discipline that I require to be like Dre working over and over and over again to kick that bell – to reach higher – to focus sharper – to just keep plodding along, keeping my eyes on my task of self-control. What you will find is that the more calm and connected you are with yourself, the more you are connected to your partner in an empowered way, the more your marriage will transform into one of great meaning and sharing.
When Elisabeth got her Kung Fu on here’s what happened.
1. She realized when she was demanding the truth out of David she was really begging for reassurance.
2. And shooting herself in the foot.
3. She stopped denying the fact that even if David had answered her with the “truth” she wouldn’t have believed him anyway.
4. Her self talk during tough conversations changed from ‘You will not destroy me!’ to ‘I will grow from this.’ And ‘I will not destroy myself in this.’
5. She started focusing on self-control and she learned to reassure herself.
6. She grew in both internal peace and in relational influence and both of these were a direct result of her determination to stop begging him for her truth – for what he could not give her in the first place.
7. She became her own source of the deeper truths in life – like learning to live peacefully with uncertainty – and like the inherent worth and dignity of her life.
The less she was begging him to grant her peace of mind, the less defensive he became, the more even the playing field (make link) became. Over time this couple began to meet each other in peace. In other words, over time and with a lot of practice (which means mistakes) their intimacy grew. I don’t mean to over simplify this story but merely to illustrate a point. Get your Kung Fu on! It’ll save your life and possibly your marriage!
