Affair Recovery
Last week we talked about what common causes of infidelity are and what those relationships serve. This week, we’re addressing a second common question that gets asked when couples enter into couple therapy following infidelity: Can we come back from this? (**this is in the context of monogamous relationships)
As I said last week, relationship recovery from an affair is absolutely possible and, in fact, most couples who experience infidelity do recover. Let’s get into some of the hows.
The first dual step of affair recovery is honesty and responsibility taking. Partner who engaged in the infidelity: OWN YOUR SHIT. You made an inappropriate and hurtful choice. And now you owe it to your partner to be honest with them an allow them to make an informed choice about whether or not they want to recover with you. When I say be honest, I don’t mean just stating that you’ve had an affair, I mean answering any questions your partner has these can include but are not necessarily limited to: When did it start, how did you meet, how long has this been going on, how far has this gone, did they meet our children, where did this take place, is it still ongoing, how did you plan to meet or connect with one another (social media, texting, calling, work, etc.).
Now, after being honest and taking responsibility, IF you both decide you want to try and move forward, the first thing to do is end the affair if it has not already been ended. You cannot move forward with one partner if you’re continuing on with the other. There is not room for healing when you’re continuing on with another partner (the affair partner) when the agreement of your relationship is that you’re only with one another.
Second, acknowledge the hurt. I find that oftentimes the partners that did not engage in the affair feel like if a couple moves into the pre-infidelity exploration of feelings too quickly that their pain is minimized or ignored. The hurt and damage has to be acknowledged and owned. (Probably more than once, this cannot be rushed). This also helps to start rebuilding emotional safety. Within this step, it’s important that the partner who did not engaged in the affair at some point make a specific decision if they want to move forward that they are going to have to take some part of the responsibility for building something new.
Third, start exploring the state of your relationship before the affair started. Take this slowly. Build emotional safety. Work up to expressing vulnerability with one another. How were you feeling before the affair started? When do you think you started feeling disconnected? What made it difficult to share or work through this with your partner in those moments?
Fourth, go back to the sound relationship house. Your relationship house crumbled in some areas. Go back to love-maps. Be explicit about the kinds of things that support trust in your relationship and the kinds of things that you feel support suspicion in your relationship.
Expect that you’re going to feel triggered at some point. You may be moving beautifully through these steps and then one day find yourself feeling that hurt as though it just happened. You may find that you start having trouble owning your behavior because it feels overwhelming to have done something wrong. These are things to share too with one another.
If you’re finding you’re getting regularly triggered and having trouble building emotional safety and going back through the floors of the sound relationship house- enlist professional help. I don’t always suggest that a couple have concurrent individual and couple therapy for every situation but I find in affair recovery it is extremely helpful for both partners to have their own therapists and for the couple to have a dedicated couple therapist (that does not also act as one of the partner’s individual therapists). This allows space for each partner to feel singularly supported while the relationship also gets extra support.