3 Big Reasons Why Marriage Counseling After An Affair Is Critical
“Words left unsaid always sound loudest in the end.” –Murakami
Let’s take a look at today’s marriages, affairs, and why marriage counseling after an affair is critical.
In the last century, our expectations for the institution of marriage have changed dramatically. What once was an economic enterprise, an exchange of property made between families, is now something else entirely. Certainly we are moving away from old-fashioned domesticity and oppression of women. We now have more freedom, more choices and more expectation of happiness than ever before.
Couples tell me that they need their partners to talk about and share their deepest inner workings. They expect their spouse to help them to feel less alone with their fears, feelings, fantasies and needs. The new model for marriage is that we are best friends, lovers, co-parents, intellectual and emotional equals. In other words, we need our partners to be our everything!
Along with this added pressure on marriage, has also come the freedom to leave if you think there might be something better out there. We now have constant media access to images of other people’s lives, making it harder to feel satisfaction for the one you have. Yet, we continue to crave the committed relationship as the place to rear children. Children validate us and give our life meaning, even if the marriage, itself, does not.
So, on the one hand, marriage may not be fulfilling all the needs and desires we had hoped for. Yet, we’re committed to it for the sake of the children. Enter, the affair.
For some, staying in the marriage but going outside it for certain need fulfillment is a natural choice. Over and over I hear from clients that they were “unfulfilled or unhappy” with their partners and were entitled to take care of themselves. For their partners, the discovery of an affair might come as a complete shock, especially if they were unaware that their partner was unhappy.
This usually boils down to a fundamental lack of knowing one another because of faulty or non-existent communication. Although the party who has the affair is 100% responsible for stepping out of the marriage and betraying their partner, both must look at the state of the marriage before it occurred. This takes two people taking some responsibility for the marriage dynamic prior to the affair. A good Couples Therapist can guide you through this in a safe and gentle way.
Counseling after an affair is critical. Without it, people frequently stay stuck in a perpetrator/victim mentality where one is to blame and the other must stay angry and hurt. Counseling helps people to move through the pain and anger so that they can build a new and improved marriage.
Here are the top 3 Reasons why marriage counseling after an affair is critical:
1) You must come to understand how it happened.
Without the help of a skilled Couples Therapist, you are likely to get stuck pointing fingers at one another in an escalating pattern of blaming and shaming. This is not only unproductive, but actually creates a serious spiral downwards making it harder to ever recover. Both of you must feel heard, validated and have your feelings acknowledged for the affair to make sense in any way.
2) You must learn to communicate rather than act out your dissatisfaction.
At best, affairs are bad behavior. They indicate a willingness to put your own needs over your partner’s or the good of the relationship. They pollute the space between you with dishonesty and deception. They are frequently acts of desperation for people who cannot express what they want in the marriage or who feel that their pleas are falling on deaf ears. A skilled Couples Therapist will facilitate deeper communication.
3) You must learn to work together to re-build trust and a better relationship.
One person cannot do this alone. Both must re-commit to staying together and being better versions of themselves. Rather than being at odds over who was right and who was wrong, the couple who survives an affair is the one that works together to design the parameters of the marriage moving forward. Frequently, they create new boundaries, new behaviors and deeper connection. Trust is slowly earned with these changes and the couple has the sense of being in it together
Affairs frequently create a crisis in a marriage and it’s critical to get help. You wouldn’t avoid the ER if you’ve had a heart attack, would you? By working with a Couples Therapist, you can stabilize your situation, analyze the old marriage and build a healthier, stronger one. I can help you through weekly sessions, or perhaps a longer one or two day Breakthrough Session. Contact me here.
Whatever you do, don’t run to divorce court without first giving yourselves a chance to heal.
14 replies on “3 Big Reasons Why Marriage Counseling After An Affair Is Critical”
I just wanted to thank you for going over the benefits of getting marriage counseling after an affair. It’s good to know that the counselor can help you understand more about how it happened in a way that the both of you feel like your feelings are validated. It definitely sounds like it could be beneficial to go into a session like this with the intention to learn more about the situation so that the session ends up being productive.
Thanks for your comment, Taylor. I’m glad you found it helpful.
I don’t understand how anyone could say that the one who had the affair has their own feelings about being the cheater?.. Um, if you cheated that obviously means you dont truly love the one you cheated on and that you obviously dont want to be in anything commited.. so, in my opinion cheating is an excuse for you to either make yourself feel better or get even with your “lover” cause they pissed you off the wrong way or to just flat out end the relationship.
Thank you for your comment about infidelity in relationships. If only it were as simple as your interpretation! You sound hurt and angry, and I’m wondering if your opinions about this complicated and sensitive topic are coming from your own, or a loved one’s, experience of being cheated on. If so, I’m sorry that you’ve had to go through it. I know it can be a serious challenge.
I agree that it’s very painful to be the party who’s been cheated on. There is such a massive sense of hurt, pain, anger and betrayal. It’s hard to imagine that the person having the affair loves you, once they’ve broken the commitment. Trust is very hard to rebuild. People who cheat make a selfish decision—one that doesn’t take into account the level of pain their actions will cause. That’s true, but in my experience, many feel terrible remorse, sadness, guilt and shame once they “come to their senses” and see the mess they’ve made.
In my work with couples, post-affair, I help both parties to understand what was going on (or not going on) between them that allowed for the one partner to step out of the intimate bond. Healing occurs when the person who had the affair takes responsibility for his/her actions and is remorseful and willing to make amends. Healing also requires the hurt party to forgive and to take responsibility for whatever part she/he played in their relationship problems. To be clear: one person is responsible for the decision to have an affair, but both are responsible for the state of their relationship.
I am talking about affairs here, not ongoing patterns of sexual addiction which often occur for personal reasons having little to do with the state of the primary relationship.
Lastly, “revenge affairs” seem basically immature and reflective of a larger problem in the relationship.
Do you ever find in your therapy that the person who has the affair truly is no longer in love with their spouse? And if that is the case, what is the course of action that you guide them?
Hi Lauren,
Thank you for your question. I do find, at times, that the partner who has had the affair is no longer “in love” or interested in continuing in the marriage.
When he or she is remorseful, empathetic to the pain caused, and willing to stop the affair to give the marriage a fighting chance, therapy can help guide you to a new and better version of the marriage. If, however, he or she has already stepped out of the marriage and doesn’t want to come back, the only thing I can do, as a therapist, is to help you uncouple in a conscious and less painful way. This is particularly important work if there are children involved.
Thank you so much for pointing out that an affair pollutes a relationship with dishonesty and is often caused by a lack of communication in the marriage. About a week ago, I found out that my husband had an affair. He says that he wants to make up for it and try to keep our relationship, but I want to make sure that nothing like this would ever happen again. I wonder if we should follow your tips and look for marriage therapy services in the area.
Hello Greta. Thank you for reaching out. I’m sorry that you and your husband are going through this painful stage of your marriage. Sometimes the crisis of a discovered infidelity, although painful, can serve as an opportunity to build a better marriage. With some guidance, you have the chance to create a stronger foundation, better communication, honesty and trust. I do recommend that you seek marriage therapy in your area.
I recently discovered that my husband had an emotional affair. It wasn’t the first one either. The first time it was with a co-worker who was going through a divorce and he was her shoulder to cry on. The second one was also a co-worker. I found hundreds of texts, messages on various forms of social media and emails, FaceTime etc. He claims that he was her mentor and it was a business relationship. His messages and texts included complaining to her about me and my son and my ex husband. He sent numerous texts about how good she looked, how hot she looked etc. this all was hot and heavy when I was diagnosed with end stage renal disease which required me to go on dialysis and then a kidney transplant. He was very attentive to me during this period while simultaneously having this emotional affair. He thinks we can repair our relationship by him being transparent. I do not trust him and don’t think I ever will again. I don’t feel like he thinks what he did was all that bad because there was no sex involved (as far as I know). I found out they did meet for “lunch” a couple of times, so who knows what that entailed.
Now I look back at our life together and feel like it was all a big lie. I am finding it extremely difficult to believe anything he says. He claims he wants to repair our relationship. I love him despite all of the hurt and betrayal, but I also have self worth. I am not sure if I want to stay or go. I feel very confused and deeply hurt right now. He is not the person I thought I knew.
Hello, I’m sorry that you’re going through this traumatic betrayal with your husband. Everything you said that you are feeling makes complete sense. Infidelity is a very difficult thing to work through and it’s essential that you get some help, both individually and as a couple if you want to work on the marriage. You can learn tools for working through your confusion and make a better decision about whether to stay or go. He needs to figure out what these relationships were about for him and how to be a faithful spouse. Healing does occur, but it takes time and a lot of guidance. Best of luck to you and please let me know if I can be of help.
My husband of ten years recently had an emotional affair and I feel gutted. I thought he loved me and that we had a strong relationship. How could I have been so blind? I made him cut off all contact that I knew of and emailed her husband to let him know what was going on. She denied everything. I looked like the fool.
This started when they were working on a project at work. They both complained to each other about their spouses and there were hundreds of text messages, emails, face time sessions, lots of communication on all kinds of social media, Facebook messenger, Instagram messenger, LinkedIn, you name it and I found it. There were very flirtatious texts as well.
This affair was hot and heavy for 3 years as far as I know. We were married in 2015 and they met around this time, he acting as a mentor to her on LinkedIn and then offering her a project they worked on together in 2018. In 2018 I was diagnosed with end stage renal disease. It led to dialysis and then to a kidney transplant. Throughout all of that he was very attentive and supportive of me while at the same time carrying on with his affair.
He says he wants to repair our marriage, but I look back at our life together and think it all was a lie. It is so painful to look back at pictures and think to myself “He sure put on a show” because it was all just a big fat lie. He was an actor who should have won an Oscar because I had no clue. I discovered this affair because she kept texting him and the texts became very frequent, definitely way more than someone with just a work relationship would text. I even asked him if her husband knew about the frequency of their texts. He claimed that he did.
Then I became a detective and saw all of the evidence first hand. He claims he wants to repair our relationship, but how can I ever trust him again? How do I know he won’t betray me again? I feel like if I say ok to the relationship repair I am in effect saying that it was ok that he did this to me, to us. It’s like giving him permission to do it again. He isn’t being held responsible for what he did. How do I ever get past this, or can I ever get past it?
Is therapy essential in this instance? I feel very hurt and angry and extremely distrustful. I don’t know what to do.
Hello, I’m sorry that you’re going through this traumatic betrayal with your husband. Everything you said that you are feeling makes complete sense. Infidelity is a very difficult thing to work through and it’s essential that you get some help, both individually and as a couple if you want to work on the marriage. You can learn tools for working through your confusion and make a better decision about whether to stay or go. He needs to figure out what these relationships were about for him and how to be a faithful spouse. Healing does occur, but it takes time and a lot of guidance. Best of luck to you and please let me know if I can be of help.
Hey, I am the betrayer in this situation. My wife is deeply hurt and uncertain that our marriage even meant anything. I want and always have wanted to deeper our connection through outside sources and help and could never achieve that goal. My betrayed spouse never took the initiative to think things were as serious as I did about seeking help from different types of outside sources. Now that I’ve Made a regretful choice, I’m still as eager as before to make our marriage better than ever. I do not know still if my betrayed spouse will or is willing to seek outside help. To either help fix this or even move on. Any advice ?
Spencer, it sounds like you have been trying to get your partner’s attention for a long while. Having an affair is not the best way to go about it, but perhaps the current crisis will open a window of opportunity for you to discover your mutual needs and desires for the relationship. My advice is to ask again. Make sure your spouse knows that you take full responsibility for your bad choice in the betrayal and that you want to work on rebuilding trust and establishing a stronger foundation. You will most likely need guidance for this, so make sure that you find a seasoned Marriage Therapist to help you find your way. Best of luck to you!