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.

The Trauma of Infidelity: the Assessment Phase

In order to properly understand where to begin working with a couple dealing with the trauma of an extramarital involvement, a comprehensive assessment in the early stage of therapy is critical. As the therapist, initially we need to understand if the couple is still in crisis because the affair was recently uncovered or whether the affair in an unresolved chronic issue. Establishing the commitment level of each partner early in the clinical process is necessary. For example,  the spouse having the affair may call in to the counselling service quite distraught and trying to rescue the marriage. Here, this partner demonstrates a higher level of commitment as compared to the spouse who is being 'dragged' into therapy by the betrayed partner. Some partner's call in for therapy and request individual therapy because they are ambivalent around their motivation and commitment to remain in the marriage.

After assessing commitment level for each partner, it is imperative to understand if the affair is still happening or if it is over. Couples therapy cannot begin if the affair is not terminated. Exploring how the disclosure occurred gives insight to the degree of the crisis and the extent of deception. Therapist sometimes might use several different testing tool to better assess for capacity for care, love, sex, intimacy, justification attitudes, depression, anxiety, mix-emotions and suicidality. Assessing for acute stress or PTSD features in the betrayed partner is advised.

During the assessment phase of therapy, previous affairs, repetitive patterns and behaviour need to be explored through sexual and social histories to assess out addiction versus culturally sanctioned affairs. Cybersex, online affairs and internet addictions need to considered when assessing infidelity.  During the assessment phase, understanding the courtship phase of the relationship and the evolution of the relationship over time in necessary to explore.

When couples come to therapy, the betrayed partner initially wants to know specific information on the affair such as "who," "what," "where," and especially, "when." The betrayed spouse might also focus on "why" questions. At the early stage of therapy, these type of questions are discouraged as they only lead to the couple getting stuck and raising the threshold of the couples emotions.  Encouraging honesty regarding the extent of the extramarital involvement is critical from the beginning of the therapeutic process, but in saying this, specific details of the affair need to be deferred until a later stage of treatment.

The Trauma of Infidelity: Patterns and Attitudes Regarding Infidelity

In my last blog, I explored the different types of extramarital affairs ranging from emotional to a physical nature. As a next step, I would like to briefly review the the patterns, attitudes and beliefs around infidelity. When looking at marital satisfaction as a predictor of infidelity, there is a common belief, even amongst therapists that infidelity is the result of an unhappy marriage  that is experiencing lower satisfaction. In following this line of thinking, this would suggest that meeting your partner's needs can therefore "affair-proof" your marriage. Well, to some degree this may be the case, but not completely. Although some studies have found that marital satisfaction is lower in some involved individuals, especially with women who are in the combined-type affairs, many individuals who are in an affair describe their marriages as "happy" - especially men in a primarily sexual affair. Glass and Wright (1985) reported in a non-clinical sample that 56% of the men and 34% of the women who were having extramarital affairs reported that their marriages were happy.

So, there is some research that exists suggesting that "lower" marital satisfaction is not always predictor of infidelity and that infidelity can occur within "happy" relationships. Shirley Glass, a couples researcher and specialist reports that "women were less likely than men to agree that extramarital involvement occurs in happy marriages and is not necessarily a symptom of a distressed relationship (47% vs 61%)."

When looking closer at the predictors between genders of what influences one to enter into an affair, women report specifically unmet relationship needs and men seem to be directed more towards individualistic attitudes around sex itself (Glass & Wright, 1992-Oliver & Hyde, 1993). Women's perception of a lack of love, then intimacy are identified as justification for extramarital relationships. According to Hyde & Oliver, men endorse a sexual justification for their infidelity.   

When exploring the different codes for extramarital relationships, Buss (1994) and Francis (1977) suggest that the male code is more permissive about sexual involvement, and female code is more permissive about emotional involvement. Buss and Francis also report that husbands are more jealous of their wives' sexual involvement and women are more jealous of their husbands emotional involvement. As a result of this, men are more likely to deny emotional involvement and women are more likely to deny sexual engagements.

As a final thought, addiction to sex, love and or romance can be described as a compulsive drive towards excitement that temporarily relieves feelings of emptiness. An adult who has a history of childhood or adolescent sexual abuse can struggle with a sex addiction later on in life. Love, passion and romance drives the sex addict to seek the idealism of new relationships. Also individuals who have developed and avoidant-attachment style tend to seek out "one-night" stands according to Hazan, Zeifman, & Middleton (1994). Cross-cultural studies have reveled that a clear double standard exists between men and women regarding extramarital sex. Extramarital sex is "condoned" in men and "condemned" in women according to Penn, Hernandez, and Bermudez (1997). 


In the next blog, I will move this discussion forward to explore and review who we assess and begin to work through this very complex issue.

Cheers,
Ian

After the Affair: The Trauma of Infidelity

Couples therapy is a significant part of my private practice. I thought for this blog and the next few following, I would explore with you the traumatic implication of infidelity, the stages that a couple go through after the affair is uncovered or disclosed, triggers to the affair and then the journey following to restoration.

For today's blog, I would like to provide some understanding of different types of affairs. In therapy, affairs are the third most difficult issue to treat and by far - and the second most damaging problem that couples encounter.  Research tells us that 30% of couples that engage in  counselling do so because of the crisis of an extramarital affair (Glass & Wright, 1998). In my own practice I would suggest that this statistic is fairly close. Along with this, an additional 30% of couples that are currently in counselling also disclose a past/present affair after engaging in therapeutic process (Humphrey, 1983). In one study by Glass, he reported that of 316 referred married couples, 23% of the wives and 45% of the husbands had an affair of some type.

In therapy, clinicians understand "infidelity" to include a:

• sexual secret
• romantic involvement
• emotional involvement

Infidelity of a sexual, romantic or emotional context violates the commitment to the marriage that is viewed as exclusive. Extramarital involvement is defined by Glass, S., (2002) as emcompassing a wide range of behaviours including sexual intimacies, with or without intercourse and extramarital emotional involvement.

Glass and Wright (1984) describes three types of involvement by levels of sexual and emotional involvement. The first level is described as 1) primarily sexual - any sexual intimacy that includes kissing to sexual intercourse, but lacks emotional meaning. 2) Primarily emotional - deep emotional attachment without physical intimacy and the 3) Combined type - extramarital intercourse with deep emotional attachment.

It important to separate out the differences between and "extramarital emotional attachment" and a "platonic friendship." Emotional intimacy, secrecy and sexual chemistry are the factors that differentiate between an "extramarital emotional attachment" and a "platonic friendship."

In today's modern society, affairs have moved into the virtual/online world. The internet has become a means for many emotionally attached affairs. These type of affairs are evident when the online relationship has a greater degree of intimacy than the marriage itself. Another sign would be that emails and private chat room conversations are operating in secret isolation of your spouse or partner. A final sign is that the online relationship has an arousal component to it.

Where an affair has been uncovered or disclosed, this evokes a traumatic reaction in the betrayed partner. Their world is now shattered and having to come to terms with previously held assumptions of being in a committed relationship. The trauma of a infidelity completely undoes safety within a relationship. Deception, lying, and secrecy all compromise the previously held assumptions of honesty and trustworthiness.

In my next blog, I will discuss further the patterns, attitudes and social context of infidelity.

Cheers,
Ian