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Last edit of this page 02/03/10
There is always an element of unlived life in every triangle and it seems we are sometimes unable to discover that unlived life except through the extreme emotional stress which triangles generate.
In one survey, '73 percent of men and 42 percent of women who have extramarital affairs meet their partners at work' (Barnes, 1999)
'There are probably more scientifically worthless "facts" on extra-marital relations than on any other facet of human behaviour.' NORC 2003 report
2.0 The system of illicit affairs
We are the fruit of many lives.
Infidelity is usually incredibly simple and costly.
By action or omission, someone does the wrong thing once and then extending it a fraction, does it again and again ... the emotional costs rise inexorably like a gambling debt to the mob.
However, it takes place every time in an intimate relationship system that is best understood as a reciprocal process, like wheels within wheels within wheels. It is a multi-faceted, multi-generational ecosystem with a history that precedes and includes the betrayed, the betrayer, the third party and the keepers of secrets.
It is a triangle.
Ending the affair and preventing relapse require understanding the system; building new boundaries; making the commitment to each other's well being and giving due care and attention to the primary relationship.
Beginning and ending affairs are rarely the isolated one-off events the offender would wish they and you believed.
That hope is about saving you any more pain and saving themselves any more exposure, humiliation, admission of responsibility or loss of freedom.
All infidelities begin via a courtship of some kind, if only via text messages or meetings in chat rooms.
Affairs don't just happen one night and boom! it's over a month later.
Infidelity triangles are unpredictable. They are likely to involve people who are peers. Affairs at work are more likely to exhibit power imbalances. Each person is usually in a committed, primary relationship.
That is two sets of triangles and more than double the risk of discovery of only one triangle.
One of my remote area clients involved herself with a close neighbour whose partner provided after school care for the couple's children. It was for them that I began writing these pages on infidelity with some urgency. In rural remote Australia and Canada where neighbours have to rely on each other, the risks and the ramifications of exposure are significant if not life threatening.
In business, it can cause irreparable damage to good will.
Personal financial costs: an extramarital affair of two or more years duration can be deemed a de-facto relationship, exposing the married cheater to financial claims in the Family Court on their superannuation savings, income and property. A de-facto relationship may exist even when the partners do not think so. It is the Court that will define when it began and ended, based on the evidence.
The whole affair mosaic and its development benefit from being explored collaboratively in order to unravel the seed or seeds that flowered into a clandestine relationship. In this, both members of the primary couple are in the hot seat. The attitude of we're in this together is the best way to share the carriage of recovery and healing.
Refusal to join in this process is counter to re-growth of respect and intimacy. This may indicate the affair relationship continues in the same or in another form.
How to mend a broken relationship pages 1, page 2, page 3, page 4, and page 5. on site and how to end a relationship.
2.1 Begin mapping the secret
Most people don’t realize it’s a bigger leap from a platonic relationship to the first romantic kiss than from a kiss to sexual intercourse. Shirley Glass
'Nothing happened, we just sat and had a coffee and talked. That's all.'
'But I remember,' she said, 'you were different after that day, something must have happened.'
'Nothing happened I swear. Let it go for god's sake! It was months ago. What's bloody wrong with you?'
'I know, I know but I can't. It's not about sex, it's not about that, not yet anyway. It's something else, something you're not telling me'.
The probing went on for weeks, Emma couldn't let up. It was alienating them both and all Dennis knew to do was keep insisting they were just work mates, they met once in the mall for coffee, that was all, it's nothing, period.' He had learned to choose words carefully. 'Met' was okay, but 'went out' she would end with 'on a date?'
All Emma knew to do was keep teasing apart his words and testing the unfinished thought for a spark of new information. Dennis had learned the flat reply and how not to appear to pull back a comma, which might reveal a hint of more. It just re-ignited her doubting questions - 'and, and, and...?,' she would say. The process of both Emma's cascading interrogation and his damaging silence, demanded echoless answers like a whisper deadened in deep space. They were damned if they did and damned if they didn't. So they just kept going, often late into the night.
Finally, one morning around 2.00 am exhausted, exasperated, hiding in the bathroom and wishing it would all go away, he blurted it out, 'Do you really want the truth?' Emma nods, her eyes saying, 'doorrh!'.
'The truth is .... I felt something for her. Felt, not feel. FELT.'
'And, and, and ...' completes Julia.
'And ... and ... I hadn't felt it for you for a while.'
'What, what the f...k. What did you feel? What? Ever!?', she screams.
'But I left it there because it's you I want, you're the one I love,' he says trying to calm her.
On the edge of discovery, Emma heard the excuse beneath his declaration, knowing that if his love were true then this conversation would not have dragged on over months.
'Damn, damn, damn, I knew it, I knew it, I should bloody trust myself,' she said to herself, praying to the ceiling, and then took a deep considered breath. 'So ... How can you go on seeing her every day at work and knowing those feelings are there and do nothing about it?'
'That's just how it is. I can live with that, Emma. I have lived with that. I have to live with that.'
'I don't believe you!'
2.2.0 Disclosure
The majority of committed relationships survive disclosure of infidelity if the affair has ended. Many survive and thrive. Few, however, recover from discovery of multiple clandestine affairs over many years involving very close family, best friends of their partner and/or their partner's grown up children (the Woody Allen move).
There are other exceptions to a full disclosure. Firstly, if the betrayed partner has a pattern of memorizing everything that happens in the relationship and then later of using it against you. This is the injustice collector pattern. That fear of cruel, merciless retributions will straightjacket the truth in any conversation. You are then damned if you disclose and damned if you don't.
Secondly, where you have reason to believe your and/or your children's lives would be at risk if you disclosed.
In most other cases, protecting the betrayed from the harm of full disclosure in fact continues to wound them.
One offender steadfastly maintained limited disclosure for the 12 months after he was caught, because he believed it would limit his partner's damaging, prosecutorial interrogation. He believed it was disclosure that would destroy the relationship. It took a while to convince him that withholding the facts exhibits profound distrust of and disrespect for his betrayed partner.
It's not the protected sex but the lying that does more damage. Unprotected sex is, of course, unconscionable. The blood tests will surely follow.
2.2.1 Benefits of recovery, costs of failure
In some cases recovering from infidelity brings the first truly intimate, committed relationship either party has ever had.
If you decide to disclose to the extent that your partner wishes, you can expect full recovery and renewal of the primary relationship to take anywhere from 18 months to 4 years. Sometimes longer without competent professional help at the crucial sticking points. The effects may be felt a decade beyond that, both for good and ill.
Some relationships and marriages continue as affairs waiting to happen, until one partner pulls the plug. The risk of non-recovery is of not growing, repeating the pattern and ending the marriage, which may of course be the point.
Some betrayers are so lacking in mercy, selflessness and self-honesty that they won't help themselves or the other to either mend or end the primary relationship. This pitiless abdication abandons the betrayed to carry the burden of ending the relationship themselves and thus releasing the offender, possibly to return to the affair.
Other primary relationships remain empty after an affair has ended, but without healing in the relationship - like the stuffing has been knocked out of them. In that impoverished emotional life, the primary source of intimacy may then become the children.
Using kids as surrogate partners and having a family driven by them can become divorce training for the next generation. Their model of intimacy is that it comes from outside the primary relationship.
In addition the authority normally held in the parental subsystem is undermined by the cross-generational bonding (parent-child).
This can establish triangulation as the norm for those children. As adults they may seek a triangle to normalise their marriage, in effect out-sourcing intimacy to their children or to a third party.
This continues intergenerational grief for another go around.
Worse than that kind of death of intimacy, is where the wounded partner stays in the relationship in order that the other never be allowed to forget.
Next crazy idea is where the offending partner hides in the marriage from the risk of wounding the other again or worse hides from fear of the rejection that the affair inflicted.
The betrayed can also decide to stay at all costs, hoping the problems will right themselves in the end. All great material for a play but a hideous way to sit it out in God's waiting room.
2.2.3 Endorphine intoxication
Some folk are hooked on the agony and the ecstasy that like a drug addict they keep hitting repeated infidelity or downgrading the risk to web porn, cyber sex or chat rooms.
If it's like that, then consider the possibility of a sex or romance addiction.
Here is an article about Buddhist perspectives on greed, desire and the urge to consume.
These function to release endorphins (internal opiates) that medicate or kill the pain of some unresolved early life troubles, such as that inflicted by a violent, alcoholic parent or traumatic divorce of one's parents where a child's loyalties were mercilessly played upon. See children involved in affairs Fidelity 4.
Infidelity occurs in a relationship system that is defined by its interlocking circles. Each part of the system affects all the others. I recommend closing the exits to the affair and to those who knowingly kept its secret - these are ripples you don't need buffeting recovery, and then re-build the boundaries.
Expect anniversary reactions to destabilise any system.
Typical anniversaries are the day of discovery or first disclosure; you and your partner's anniversary rituals that were betrayed, for example the affair taking place in the honeymoon hotel; the day you threw their stuff onto the street; the day they reneged on their promise to end it, and so on.
2.3.0 Prediction and prevention
Pre-marriage education and relationship coaching are effective but little used by those who would most benefit from it - those who believe that marriage itself will solve all the present and future problems.
Here's my page on how to mend a broken relationship.
The conviction that you can affair proof a committed relationship is a myth. However, here is some good advice in that direction from the BC Council for Families. Affair proofing is a dangerous game if the belief in it is supported by religious doctrine.
Affairs get in through or leak out of holes in the relationship. Being aware of how affair ready you or your partner are, however, is a smart way to travel the ups and downs of a committed relationship.
Here are seven issues that can alert you to those holes. Together they may show you how affair ready your relationship may have become. Each is important in recovery and none alone can predict infidelity.
- self-differentiation
- self-esteem
- boundaries
- clear expression of wants and needs
- romance
- secrets and
- forgiveness
2.3.1 Differentiation and mental maps
"Differentiation is a natural process in committed relationships that involves developing more of a self while growing closer to your partner. Men often sacrifice their relationship to hold onto their sense of self. Women often sacrifice their sense of self to stabilize their relationship. Differentiation is about having it both ways: having a stronger sense of self and a stronger relationship." Quoted from an interview with Schnarch. There's more on this and related topics free on this family therapy resource page.
To begin differentiating you might start by observing the cognitive map that you have used to navigate your world so far. It is like an inner model of the outer world you traverse. It filters and colours what comes to your attention and also what is not noticed. Knowing your partner's mental map as well as your own, supports good boundaries and self-differentiation. That knowledge is the stuff of real intimacy, vulnerability and tenderness.
2.3.2 Self-esteem
'The conviction that one is competent to live and worthy of living.' Nathaniel Branden
Self esteem gets a bad press from observations of a generation of youngsters entering the workforce who were force-fed false praise and are not coping with real world competition and criticism. They suffer from high self-aggrandisement not high self-esteem.
External Locus of control
External validation of esteem, one which is gained from other people's high opinion of us is a bit like a mortgage. We have to keep paying for it and the bank can repossess our self worth any time we disappoint in our payments. Having a source of esteem given into other people's care is a common vulnerability and necessary to socialization - except for psychopaths who don't care what you think of them. But too much care about how others respond to you allows one to lose the sense of inner truth and follow another's version of the truth. Desiring this validation is a psychological underpinning of both deviance and social control.
External validation is also described as an external locus of control. Often associated with poor health outcomes because of the belief that other people or events are in control of one's life. But that doesn't stop people from hungering for external validation even to the end of their health and family life. Here's a five minute self-assessment quiz to locate yourself.
A mid-life crisis is believed to have a kind of external source of control in the natural process of aging. Aging is something outside of our control. Maturity is within our control at any age. People give an affair external power as well. I don't know what came over me. It was so out of character.
Internal Locus of Control
Self-worth resides in and results from a number of internally validating experiences. Validation is the meeting of actuality with recognition. It can be conditional based on what I do - 'I'm only as good as the next goal' and that is an external location. Or it can be unconditional and without reservation based on my very being - 'I believe in myself. I am a good person' and that is an internal, felt sense of my reality.
The foundations of an internal locus of esteem are with how the person was loved and cared for as a child. Failure to grow up leads to a denial of life, of lived experience and perverting the course of sex and love More on site about functional and dysfunctional families.
The first act of esteem in recovery from infidelity and betrayal is usually to differentiate being a bad person from doing bad things or omitting to do the right things. We do that by affirming the goodness at the core of our being. You are a good person who has done rotten things to the people nearest and dearest to you.
This can be distinguished from the self-aggrandizing, righteous belief in entitlement to the occasional fling and the self-justifying he/she asked for it by not giving me what I want/deserve or by being too busy with her/his career and so on.
All excuses.
Depending on others to feel good about ourselves, to feel wanted and desirable as an entitlement is an external locus of control. It requires growing up rather than more of that same, desperate search for it.
Depending on the buzz from the frisson of an emotional extra marital affair in order to feel attractive is a problem that belongs at home.
A shaming family (toxic parents) withholds expressions of affirmation, sometimes capriciously, often cruelly and often themselves dominated by what other people might think.
Numbers of my clients over the years have kept returning to shaming families hoping to get it right, just that once and each time come away hurting. Their partners wonder, why not just cut them out of your life, without comprehending the tyranny of seeking an esteem held hostage by one's parents. Here are some steps to overcome the hurtful legacy.
Toxic shame is not helpful and can be a self-pitying indulgence or a slippery offloading of accountability, I couldn't help it I've had a terrible life and I'd rather be dead. Or from the betrayed's point of view - I don't deserve any better, I'm lucky to have a partner at all.
Not one to cop out, St Augustine's struggled with self-accusation, remorse, guilt and shame in 'The Confessions' written in the year 397. George Orwell's story of the cruel shaming of a boy at school in 'Such, Such were the Joys' will reward the reader who also struggles with low self-esteem. Here is a useful list of questions and literature about the emotions in conflict and justice from School of Law, University of Alberta.
Childhood sexual abuse survivor links to infidelity
Childhood sex abuse is linked to shame by the denial of the injury inflicted by the childhood sexual assault. Boys tend to deny the impact of molestation in childhood, more than girls.
In surveys about the incidence of childhood sex abuse, most guys will not affirm a question like, were you sexually assaulted as a child but the same guy will affirm one like, as a child did an older boy or adult interfere with you in an inappropriate way.
Childhood sex abuse confused affection with sex in the adult mind, especially when the perpetrator was familiar to the victim, such as a grandpa, uncle, older sibling, teacher or parent. It also damages self-esteem.
Survivors will tend to seek sex in order to meet their affectional needs, but feel ashamed asking for affection directly from someone familiar - their partner. Betrayal of their partner produces shame at having cheated. That shame is familiar when paired with sex and affection. We seek the shame in order to feel ourselves shameful. At times even when it hurts us more. It is like a re-enactment of the abuse in an attempt to master its effects.
Anger directed against the self or others is always a central problem in the lives of people who have been violated and this is itself a repetitive re-enactment of real events from the past. Compulsive repetition of the trauma usually is an unconscious process that, although it may provide a temporary sense of mastery or even pleasure, ultimately perpetuates chronic feelings of helplessness and a subjective sense of being bad and out of control. Gaining control over one's current life, rather than repeating trauma in action, mood, or somatic states, is the goal of healing. Vanderkolk
So infidelity with re-enactment as a driver, tends to repeat until the cheater is exposed and healing of their childhood sex abuse begun. But this is not a prediction of who will cheat and who will not.
Here's an external site about working with young males who have been sexually assaulted.
Prediction
People with broad self esteem and self respect do not generally put themselves, their partners or families through the pain of an affair. There are many exceptions, so even high self-esteem is not insulation against an affair. Having low self-esteem like the feeling of being a piece of dirt also does not predict infidelity.
People with similar depth and range of self-esteem and self-differentiation tend to get together in a committed relationship - that is their sense of mutual recognition. It is rare to find a high self-esteem, well differentiated person partnered with a low self-esteem, poorly differentiated one. Such an imbalance would be a cause of concern even without an affair's attempt to re-balance it, but that is not a prediction either.
It's not so rare to find a high achieving, driven leader partnered with a comfortable, medium drive follower, where their communication, sex and romance behaviours grow out of that power imbalance. Wide differences in social or sex drives, however, also do not predict an affair.
Power and esteem imbalances and incompatibilities do not cause affairs. It's how we handle the incompatibilities that matter and that matters more than where we are compatible. It's not conflict that is the problem but the methods used to manage it.
A conscious, committed relationship is one of the places we heal self-esteem wounded in childhood and learn how to differentiate ourselves from our origins. It is one place to harbour and nurture the soul. An affair might appear to offer soul food without commitment or seems to meet the 'give it to me now' impulse without apparent consequence. Yet at the same time it breaches the very conditions for developing self-esteem. It's a cover up job, a plastering over of the wounded child that's a bit like an anti-depressant, which removes the weight of hopelessness without teaching the cure.
Conversations and actions, which acknowledge and support esteem and worth in the relationship increases worth and esteem. Five positive interactions to one negative is optimal for intimacy and esteem.
However, the obverse and more usual pattern of five negative interactions or more to one positive is damaging to intimacy and esteem. This negative pattern has to be solved collaboratively. The patterns is sometimes used as part of the excuse for an affair - my lover makes me feel good about myself.
In this context I have concerns believing that another can 'make' one feel or do anything.
2.3.3 Boundaries
The greatest problem in communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished. - Davenport
Some exits from intimacy are secrets even from ourselves but well known to others who hardy know us but are on the prowl. How that works may be in the original attraction of the affair. If you're not sure about what is meant by boundaries read this article and these articles on boundaries. Setting clear boundaries is part of a healthy relationship, of 'prevention' and of recovery from an affair.
Maintaining a friendship or a work relationship after an affair has 'ended' is also a question about defining and navigating boundaries.
Affairs breach the boundary of a primary relationship much like some employment and employers, some in-laws, adult children or former spouses. Viruses breach the boundary of the immune system in an analogous way.
Unexplored conflicts or disagreements about where the boundary is and where it needs to be set and refusals by one person to set or discuss a boundary that would clearly exclude infidelity (don't you trust me?) are best attended to early in a relationship. Apparently irreconcilable differences are best taken to a couple's therapist early in the life of a committed relationship, rather than left to fester.
Intimacy is not compatible with surveillance and distrust
However, it may be worth your while to consciously define the boundaries of outside friendships in concrete terms rather than assume a shared understanding of what exactly constitutes intellectual/emotional/sexual involvements outside of the primary relationship.
It is worth while setting up a way of signaling the presence of the unspoken or the unspeakable that does not seek to blame the other or expose them to humiliation. Like a hand formed into a T for time out. Or a P for we need to process or using de Bono's thinking hats method. Invent your own.
Some say if you have to ask those questions or raise those issues, there's no point continuing toward a commitment or repairing breached boundaries. That could be another cop out. It could also be brinkmanship: if you keep hassling me about the affair you will make it impossible for me to stay.
I also know the objections to codifying anything as subjective as intimacy. However, even a little trip down this path early on can alert you to differences in points of view or misunderstandings about how far friendships and work place relationships can go and what a committed relationship needs to flourish. They are easily and innocently cleared up early in a relationship. They can make a hell of a mess re-defining them later on under the pressure of suspicion, guilt and shame.
Examples outside the mainstream: a sex worker has the limit of no kissing with her clients thereby not betraying the one special thing she has with her partner; a swinging couple agrees on no private sex at the couples swap venue and no sex away from the venue, otherwise everything else is okay; an open marriage is okay as long as one does not 'fall in love' with lover or leave home for a fling.
The variations are limitless, almost anything can be negotiated but it still forms a kind of moral contract that bind two people in trust, in a covenant. When that is breached for any of the couples at the extreme, it is just as devastating as it is for the couple who has a water tight, no exceptions, monogamous relationship contract under God.
2.3.4 Wants and needs
'There are many legitimate needs we have for closeness, affection, appreciation, community, love, trust, understanding and warmth that we often have to live without and this is most difficult, though most people do find coping strategies to alleviate the pain of not satisfying these core heart needs. If we loose touch with these needs completely though we end up out of touch with our real self that has these real needs.' Quoted from the worldpsychology site.
Wants are negotiable. Strictly speaking needs are not.
The heat of an affair feels like a need, whilst the partner betrayed feels unwanted.
It helps to have a language and permission to explore and differentiate desires, needs and wants. Where they are met and where they are not. Which needs, wants or desires were or might be met in illicit relationships.
In common usage 'I need a coffee' describes a very different map of what constitutes 'need' from 'I need a hug'. That is different again from 'I need a good night's sleep'. I need somebody to love? I need somebody to take care of me? I need to be understood?
Some of these are not needs but wants raised to the level of a survival necessity by framing it as a need.
If you are unsure here's a little bit more info and here an exercise to differentiate needs from wants and decide those that are both.
Communicating clearly about our wants and needs is a challenge. Even saying 'I want...' as an adult can be difficult if we have been taught that we should wait until we are given.
Judgments, criticisms and interpretations of each other are sometimes alienated expressions of our desires. What we are criticizing in the other we may be asking to receive ourselves.
For example, 'you're always looking after other people' - could be a request for quality time or to be looked after.
'You know what your problem is, you're lazy' - could be a desire to do nothing themselves or get permission to be lazy or just to hang out with the other.
Where intrinsic needs are out of awareness, unfulfilled or not acknowledged in a primary relationship they may press for external resources to satisfy them. Our primary relationship cannot be the only source of fulfillment of all our needs. The question is about appropriate transactions that outsource our unmet wants and needs.
Peak experiences occur when a fully functioning person experiences a moment when the world seemed utterly perfect. These experiences permanently alter the way the person sees their surroundings.
An affair can provide the illusion of that moment, whilst furtively it damages self-esteem - 'I've become a liar and a cheat and that's not me'.
This undermining of esteem sets in train the grounds for retreat from an inherently esteem damaging affair. Then esteem recovers in everyday activities supporting self-worth and one is then pulled back into the affair to burn up more esteem. This is the agony and the ecstasy of advance and retreat. It is the dynamic of infidelity and it is the drug.
Knowing and trusting each other well enough and with both willing to share deeply at that level of vulnerability where true wants and needs reside, is part of the contract for a conscious committed relationship. As we grow our needs change and our partner's knowledge of that keeps pace with us as we grow. The mental map is then adjusted to the change.
When knowledge and willingness to be vulnerable and share at this level are present equally, the relationship can be oriented better and ongoingly to fulfil those needs without recourse to a third party or some other compulsive activity.
These are an idealists view since in reality, it is only the cost of not sharing at that depth that leads to the awareness of how important it is to share so intimately.
Do you remember how you thought you understood something you had heard or saw or felt and years later you experience it again and realise you missed something pivotal the first time, which turned what you had understood on its head? It is important to learn and discover again how to listen actively with all your senses awake and to assert yourself in the intimate realm, with your body and with your heart.
This works well if each clearly indicates the emotional, romance and sexual wants and needs they are aware of. Mind reading does not work so well. Openly negotiating a mutually satisfying way for these to be met within the ever present differences and incompatibilities works well. Review it regularly.
I have a gem of an article on site about sexuality and the hearing impaired. You will get the point of it in this context as you read it.
In the crisis following discovery of an illicit affair Maslow's hierarchy is thrown out the window. Nothing in it measures up. The only thing that matters is to make sense of what has happened - to make some meaning out of the damage and to review the beliefs that have been shattered in betrayal trauma.
2.3.5 Re-romancing
Some re-romancing events are the simplest rituals. Just one hour a week for each other, without distractions. Take a walk.
Some folk find romance tough going and have complained to me that they don't have a sentimental bone in their bodies. Here are 60 ways to have an affair with your partner. It is a no-brainer list of some easy and some hard things to do for romance.
Re-romancing a relationship during and after recovery from an affair is a necessary courtship process. Failing to do so will raise other issues to be explored such as taking the initiative in expressing affection and of the sincerity of commitment to relationship growth. A persistent refusal to even consider re-romancing may indicate romance remains invested in the affair.
That's an inner way to continue the affair after it has ended by building a shrine to its stolen moments.
2.3.6 Secrets and privacy in a committed relationship
Commitment may imply a devotion to honesty and transparency but it is not always democratic. It can take decades to develop deep democracy in an intimate relationship. Committed relationships of over 30 years duration may describe an intimacy and sexuality not possible in their earlier years.
There is forgiveness in this observation for those of us who find all of the foregoing an unbearable burden on our imperfections, but it is not permission to go ahead and do the wrong thing. For more on privacy and secrets continue onto the Fidelity 3
2.3.7 Forgiving
'To grant free pardon and to give up all claim on account of an offence or debt' OED
'Forgiveness is the accomplishment of mastery over a wound.' Beverly Flanigan
Fiercely holding on to the past; resenting past wrongs and unable to let go; blaming yourself or others for their part in it; trying to bargain with your partner for behaviour change - all represent something unforgiven.
There are layers and layers of forgiveness. One person was told by her parents at the outset that her partner was wrong for her and that the relationship would end badly and it did, in an affair. So not only did she have to forgive herself and her partner but also herself as a teenager for going her own way and her parents for being right.
Forgiveness does not lead to forgetting a wrong nor giving permission to offend again. You can both forgive and leave the situation. A premature forgiveness or a hurried departure can rebound painfully on the betrayed. However, when it is time and all is said and done, you will forgive yourself and maybe some of the others, you will let it go and live on.
Here is my step by step forgiveness process.
Here is the article 'Healing the Wounds of Infidelity Through the Healing Power of Apology and Forgiveness'
2.4 Professional Help
A dirty little secret is that couples therapy may be the hardest form of therapy, and most therapists are not very good at it. But most discussions of marital problems occur in individual psychotherapy, where a lot of the damage to marriage goes on. Source
Good counsel is expensive, poor counsel is more expensive especially when navigating the complexities of disclosure. Professional help is likely to be less expensive than divorce, interruption to a career path or paid for sex, if the latter was part of the history you are now dealing with.
However, individualistic therapy approaches to couple problems can be hazardous to an enduring relationship.
Depression, substance abuse, bereavement or anxiety problems before or after the affair in either person may require one-to-one assistance integrated with and yet separate to couples therapy.
Word of mouth referral and a telephone chat before making an appointment are usually good initial indicators of the potential for a working relationship. Theoretical models are not as useful as the ability to engage you and your partner in changing behaviour.
More on site about how to choose a therapist and how to mend a broken relationship.
The 5 fidelity pages here and the resources below, worked together and collaboratively are likely to be more useful than first engaging a counselor inexperienced in couple dynamics, intimate betrayal, trauma and addiction. Fully informed, one can employ inexperience for the benefit of their providing a neutral space.
Eventually information also has a use by date, when both people have enough of it to get on with the work of repairing and growing again or not.
2.5 Some external sites and articles:
- Life Saviors with an excellent moderated forum on surviving infidelity.
- Moderated recovery forum for the betrayed and another at marriage builders. Betrayers end up on both sites and some of those discussions are quite lively. Lots of resources on their site. I suggest start here.
- The lieseeker.com web site has extensive interpersonal deception resources
- Most affairs don't develop from chance meetings as depicted in the movie 'Unfaithful' starring Dianne Lane and Olivier Martinez. Most begin as innocent relationships between peers. Several things change them into affairs. How they end and how marriages survive and grow - questions and answers.
2.5.1 Recovery movement
"For most adults, healthy sexuality is an integrated life experience. Sex with partners, with self, or as a part of exploring new relationships is usually a pleasurable act of choice. For sexual addicts however, sexual behaviour can be most often defined by words such as driven, compulsive and hidden. Unlike healthy sex that is integrated into relationships, sexual addicts use sex as a means to cope, to handle boredom, anxiety and other powerful feelings or as a way to feel important, wanted or powerful. While sexual addiction is not defined by any particular sexual act, sexual addiction is defined by the feelings and activities surrounding sex. Patrick Carnes in 'Out of the Shadows' 1978, defines sexually addictive behaviour as sexual activity that often falls into one of three categories: Shameful, Secretive or Abusive." quoted from sexrecovery.com
Key insights about sexual recovery and here is a clear view about disclosing infidelity from within the AA and the Sex Addiction movement - 'disclosure (should) be guided by the spouse’s desire to know rather than by the addict’s desire to minimize'.
The recovery movement is a big industry, which provides invaluable support but at times is doctrinal, so here is a critical review of codependence to balance these worthwhile sex and romance addiction and sobriety and recovery resources and the partner of addiction - codependency links. Although codependency related, this fear of intimacy link is worth a read.
Sex Recovery for women and couples recovering from sex addiction defined there as 'a persistent and escalating pattern or patterns of sexual behaviours acted out despite increasingly negative consequences to self or others.' Linked here are excellent, authoritative articles by Jennifer Schneider
2.6 Recommended Books
- 'Not Just Friends - rebuilding trust and recovering your sanity after infidelity' by Shirley Glass. Out of print but copies on various web book services and extracts on her site. This is a difficult read for the betrayed early in the process, but as one reader put it 'one of the few books that really addresses the emotional response of the betrayed spouse'!
- 'Surviving an Affair' by Willard F. Harley and Jennifer H. Chalmers. Other books by Harley and his marriage builders site
- 'After the Affair - healing the pain and rebuilding trust when a partner has been unfaithful' by Janis Abrahms Spring, 1996. (That Washington Post article link is also available here)
- 'Broken Open - How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow' Elizabeth Lesser, Villard 2004
- The 'Manual On How To Cheat On Your Wife' (or partner), a collection of signals, excuses, and tricks men (and women) use when having an affair, download whilst its free
- 'Don't call it love' by Patrick Carnes. Bantam Books, 1992 - compiled with survey of 1000 sex addicts in recovery
- 'Controlling Your Drinking : Tools to Make Moderation Work for You' by William R. Miller, Ricardo F. Munoz
- For adult children of alcoholics, the free on-line book Taming Your Turbulent Past by Rosellini and Warden.
- 'Giving The Love That Heals - a Guide For Parents' by Hendrix and Hunt, 1997
- Bowen Family Therapy is the source of ideas about self-differentiation and about what is a 'normal' relationship. These ideas were re-packaged in 'Passionate Marriage: Sex, Love, and Intimacy in Emotionally-Committed Relationships' by David Schnarch 1997
- Hiding behind secrets, privacy, ambiguity and vagueness
- 3.2 The other woman and long duration affairs
- 3.3 The 'other friends' and should I tell
- 3.7 A policy on secrets
- 3.12 Ultimatums
- 3.13 Reader's questions answered
On Fidelity 4 - the children involved, those conceived in an affair and how to help them cope if witnesses.
How to mend a broken relationship on site and how to end a relationship
Navigation page for relationship education
© Ziji Fox 2005, 2006 All Rights Reserved www.peterfox.com.au
