When faced with challenging people and/or life circumstances, too often we do the opposite of what's most helpful. Something in our fallen nature instinctively focuses externally rather than internally when we're met with resistance.
Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Yes, that’s what Scripture says. However, if this is where we begin, we’ll at best have spotty success in the actual resisting. Let me explain.
Recently, I was re-reading a very helpful book for affair-proofing marriage titled "Close Calls: What Adulterers Want You to Know about Protecting Your Marriage". It's by Dave Carder, a colleague I've known for many years who specializes in the area of affair recovery and who also (like me) has a big heart for those in Christian ministry. In the book, he gives lots of illustrations of the various risk factors that frequently lead otherwise unsuspecting men and women into either affairs or "close calls" with affairs. One particular illustration struck me. Not so much for the particular story line, but rather for the unintentional three-point outline I noticed that (in my own professional experience) is more at the heart of how we end up flirting with just about any area of sin in the first place.