David Carder - Close Calls: What Adulterers Want You to Know About Protecting Your Marriage

I started listening to stories of adultery thirty years ago, and what you are going to read is what men and women who have committed adultery have taught me. Most of the people Ive counseled in their recovery after adultery had thought they would be immune to having an affair. Few would have thought they were susceptible not only to falling into the arms of someone they werent married to, but would not even have thought it possible that they could come close!

Close Calls is the result of years of listening to people who did just that. When I share what Ive learned with couples attempting to recover from an affair, the standard response is, I wish we had known this before.

Well, now you can learn what they wish they had known before they experienced the heartache of an affair. You can recognize when you may be heading toward or having a close call and pull back before you cant stop yourself.

DEVELOPMENT OF CLOSE CALLS

The material in this book will not only help you be more alert to a close callit will strengthen your marriage. The two of you will remember what you first saw in each other and why you decided to choose each other as marriage partners.

You and your spouse will discover what kind of person might fit each of your dangerous partner profiles, youll review your history as a couple, and youll learn to recognize the high-risk factors each of you bring to the table. You will find out how to recognize those high-risk seasons we all pass through and be vigilant in spotting how these times are affecting you.

Youll notice themes that recur in accounts from people who did fall into having extramarital affairs and greatly damagedor destroyedtheir marriage. Learn from them so you can avoid doing the same thing.

Finally, this book will also make you aware of how close you may have come to getting involved with another individual in the past. Youll learn that an affair needs certain components to thrive, and youll see how your close call didnt have all the components, and therefore did not result in an affair. That you even had a close call might startle you! Bad experiences are often created when people are not aware of their history. In this culture, more people than you might realize have close calls, and you might only recognize the close call for what it was when you look back on it. The better prepared you are, the better the outcome will be when the future relationship starts to develop an inappropriate level of attraction.

Some of you are already thinking, Im not sure I want to read this book. I understand. I am sure it sounds intimidating, but here is the encouragement: If you (or better yet, you and your spouse) tackle the material presented here

• you will finish it feeling closer to each other than you have ever felt;

• you will talk about subject matter you never dreamed you would find yourself discussing;

• you will understand your spouse at an entirely new level that will carry the two of you through your future transitions;

• you will find a whole new sense of safety to talk about dangerous information; and

• you will love the way that you can make sense out of experiences that you never fully understood prior to this discussion.

Throughout the book, youll find interesting things to discuss, most of which you probably never had given a lot of thought to before. To enhance your thoughts and discussions, check out the appendix at the back of the book. Youll find plenty of descriptive words to capture just that right message, and youll also find some guidelines to good communication and conflict resolution.

Over the years I have heard hundreds of stories from couples struggling with threats to their marriage, ranging from emotionally charged friendships to sexual addiction.

All of these inappropriate relationships started with a close call encounter that the individual did not turn from and in some cases actually cultivated. All of the outcomes were horribly painful. You will feel that as you read these stories. These accounts have not been solicited and are told to you as they were told to me. Most are unedited e-mails that I have used with permission.