Bungee

I’ll get back to the tips to stop lustful looking, but I wanted to write a quick reminder post.

This post comes largely as a result of so many men (sometimes including myself) forgetting our connection to the person we love the most on the planet. For many wives, I know this doesn’t make sense. For most women I talk to, they can’t fathom that somehow a disconnect occurs when their husband pulls out of the driveway. But, it often does. I’ll explain.

For a lot of men, when we leave the house it’s as if we are entering a whole different world. One where they are going to fight the battles of the day; be it clients, employees, bosses, quotas, code syntax, administrative stuff or spreadsheets. And it can feel, in many ways, like its us against that world. Since we’re in the war, home life is like a distant country we’ll arrive at somewhere north of quitting time; after we fight the last battle of the day. This unfortunate compartmentalization means that for a lot of us, we forget how deeply impacted our wives and family are by our decisions when we’re away from them. When we shift from the home to the work compartment, we’re actually not moving from one to the other – we are taking one into the other. This is a critical distinction in a post-betrayal marriage.

I think of it like a bungee cord. Picture a looooong bungee cord attached to your wife’s heart. The other end attached to yours. When you leave the house tension mounts on the cord. Every move you make jostles her. The farther away the more tension. The more places you go the more tension. We have to remember that every sudden turn, every inch of distance, every tug on the cord creates reverberations back to our wives that brings into question our whereabouts, goings on, and whom we are interacting with. It taps in to their fear, insecurity, and for many the feeling of being “duped” again.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking work is work and home is home. They are inextricably linked. And don’t forget that every move you make has an effect on the people that share your last name.