The Trauma of an Affair: Telling the Story

In my last blog, I explored the stages of restorative couples therapy after the trauma of an affair and the importance of establishing "Safety" and "Hope". Reconnecting a couple to doing the behaviours that they hope their emotions will become in the relationship is critical. Reconnecting caring behaviours, even when it feels very difficult to do, is critical at this stage. At best, some couples are only able to be 'considerate' or 'respectful' because caring is to difficult. Time, energy and caring are essential reinvestment's to restoration of the relationship. Building a process of safety and hope takes time, but it is necessary in moving forward to the next step of 'Telling the Story'.

Telling the story or recalling the story is the beginning process of healing. Before the story is told, it is sometimes helpful to have the betrayed partner write out all of their questions and then I would hold on to these questions. The betrayed might have significant difficulties accepting the story that might differ from what they know or believe to be true. As we begin the journey of piecing the story together, it needs to be co-constructed by both. Initially, the early stage of truth seeking is an adversarial process. As the therapist, it is our goal to move the truth seeking to a more neutral process of information seeking. This shift is evident toward a more empathic neutral process when the goal is focused on 'mutual understanding' rather than explicit fact finding and details. As we go through the process of telling the story, earlier lies and secrets are likely to be unearthed.

As this journey begins for the couple, the betrayed partner will often focus on where the involved partner and affair partner went, what gifts were exchanged, were they planning a future or other things together and finally, the degree of the emotional and sexual intimacy. The involved partner is usually opposed to discussing these details, so the betrayed partner needs to be able to communicate appreciation for the truth, even if it is painful, for healing to begin to occur. The therapist's role going forward is to begin discussions around the meaning of the infidelity. Exploration needs to occur regarding 'values' and 'vulnerabilities' of the involved partner in giving themselves permission to cross the boundaries and threshold to infidelity. Underlying this, it is important to understand from the involved partner "What did you like about yourself in the affair that can be brought back into the marriage" A deeper knowledge needs to be gained towards understanding the context that created the vulnerabilities for the extramarital affair. Contributors associated within the marriage, individual, cultural double standards, community, transgenerational patterns, social and occupational norms and values must all be reflected on within the disclosure in order to better understanding the individual's reasoning to engage in the affair. Also it is important to explore other contributing vulnerabilities such as underlying attitudes and beliefs along with symptoms of depression/mood disorders/narcissism/personality disorder/ and sexual disorder/impulsivity/attachment style and compulsiveness features. Exploring how power operates within the individual and their marriage and what role it played in the affair is also important. Finally, it is important for the therapist with the couple to better understand the deeper marital problems that lead to increase vulnerability without being caught in justifying the choice to become engaged in the affair.

Establishing 'Safety' & 'Hope': Struggling Through The Trauma Of The Affair

When couples come to therapy to explore whether they can restore their relationship after an affair, it is not uncommon for the betrayed partner to experience trauma features and responses. These features might include obsessive rumination about the affair, difficulty sleeping, intrusive thoughts and dreams of the lies and secrets, the moment of the disclosure or uncovering, and sexual images of the affair. These thoughts can be highly consuming for the betrayed partner. Flashbacks can also be cued through anniversary dates, music that references 'cheating', area of town, TV shows or movies. Emotional and sexual intimacy may also trigger flashbacks in the betrayed partner. Flashbacks have the potential of extending up to a year. Trauma can be characterized with having feelings of 'hypervigilance'. Hypervigilance is a term used to describe  feelings of elevated fear in response to a perceived lack of safety or trust. When the betrayed partner begins to search for more 'clues', becomes overly suspicious or jealousy, hypervigilance is evident. As you can see, there are many significant difficulties that the betrayed partner goes through as a result of the affair. Juxtaposed is the other partner who now is potentially feeling in crisis as a result of the affair being uncovered. Their crisis is best described as 'what do I need to do to fix this....to be able to save our marriage'. Often times the partner who had the extramarital relationship want the process of therapy to move at a far quicker pace than what the betrayed partner is able to manage. When it come to this type of therapy, you can not move faster than the slowest person in the room. In this case, it will be the traumatized betrayed partner.

Before, any trauma work can be started, it is critical to begin establishing 'safety' and 'hope'. Initially, safety is established by contracting with both parties to agree to attend 6-12 counselling sessions. At times, couples struggle with this especially if one person is ambivalent. In order to establish 'safety', the involved partner MUST STOP and terminate all verbal and physical contact with the affair partner. Then all unavoidable communication or interactions with the past affair partner must be 'shared' openly with the betrayed spouse. In short, a reverse must happen by which the betrayed partner is now on the inside and the affair partner clearly and evidently is placed on the outside of the relationship. The process of recovery cannot begin until the extramarital relationship is clearly terminate and no longer a threat.

In the restoration and rebuilding phase, the couple need to be encouraged to understanding that 'time' and 'energy' into the marriage are critical to reexperiencing their bond. Emotionally, it can be very difficult for a couple to feel motivated in doing things together again. I encourage couples to start doing the behaviours that they want your emotions to become in reestablishing this bond.

In the early phases of therapy, emotions cycle. Having the couple reflect on establishing 'Caring Behaviours' and behavioural expectations is important upfront in therapy despite the underlying anger, mistrust and pain. Generally I will ask couples 'what caring did you receive in the past week' from each partner. Sometimes partners are too implicated and depleted to respond to the notion of 'caring'. In this case, I try to have the couple focus on being 'considerate' and 'respect'. Partners who are hostile and angry might be remind to treat each other as appropriately and respectfully as they would treat a stranger. 

In the next blog, I will begin to share the 'telling the story of the affair' process.