The Conspiracy of Affairs
by Jeff Murrah, LPC, LMFT, LCDC
Although it is unpleasant to consider, one of the ugly truths about affairs is that they are ‘organized wrong doing’ ( I was going to say affairs are organized criminal conspiracies, but my wife said that is taking it too far). Unless you are dealing with a one-night stand, an affair is an organized conspiracy. At the very least, the conspiracy involves the cheater and their lover. In some cases, the lover may have a larger organization behind them. On the surface, it may appear to be their friends and acquaintances, yet the reality is that they are actually conspirators. The cheater’s work associates may also be conspirators in the affair as well.
You may say, Jeff, you are ‘over reacting!’ When you have to match wits with all those people, you will understand about the conspiracy. They are often all working together to outwit and play you. In some cases, you may get out of the situation after some harsh words, threats and turmoil. In other cases, you may have to pay a ransom to either the courts, the lover or the lover’s family in order to get them to stay away from the cheater. When you have to pay the ransom, then you will understand how big the conspiracy is.
In some cases, they may be specifically targeting your spouse and your marriage. In others, the conspirators have an agenda to disrupt any marriage they can, it just so happens that yours is the ‘marriage de jour’. There are many people who have an agenda to destroy marriages. In some cases, it is so that they can have a ‘payday’ in others, it is a mixture of plain meanness and revenge. When some people will go so far as to murder in order to get their way, it is nothing for them to lie, deceive and conspire to squeeze money out of your family.
The conspiracy is real. It may not look like a terrorist cell where there are clandestine meetings in dark places and connections with shadowy political figures where they plot and plan their attacks. Instead, the cheater and their lover may just be meeting secretly in dark places planning what they are going to do, being oblivious to the destruction and desolation it will bring into your life.
I have always been one who believed that if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck, I consider it a ‘duck’. When the cheater meets in secret with their lover, makes plans in secret with others who are wanting to protect the cheater in their dark plans, and these meetings result in the destruction of your marriage, you are dealing with a conspiracy. When others lie for the cheater and hide the cheater’s activities from you, even to the point of manufacturing lies and deceitful stories, you are definitely in the midst of a conspiracy. What makes it worse is that the conspiracy is always to do some kind of mischief. They may not always be doing something criminal, but you can rest assured it is not wholesome.