Let’s face it relationships get messy, and sometimes our partner’s little quirks or mistakes get stored on the virtual Bad Behavior List in our head. Then when we get angry, or have reached capacity for stuffing our emotions, we explode and bring up all the mistakes and hurts that our partner has “caused us.” If our partner feels ambushed and retreats, it’s easy to fall into the belief that “He/She/They never listen.”
When couples come to therapy, usually one of them has initiated the need for therapy and feels unseen, unheard, dismissed, or rejected by their partner. If infidelity is involved it ups the ante as the partner who had the affair may be feeling lots of shame, while the partner who didn’t have the affair is resentful, angry, and feeling betrayed. Often the partner who wasn’t unfaithful feels an intense amount of shame around this even happening to them. Regardless of the offense, if a couple is to move forward with any hope or intention of finding connection and trust again, something has to be buried.
I’m not saying we just have to forget what happened or pretend that it didn’t wreak havoc on your life and relational trust. No, you’ve got to face it head on and work through the mucky truth of how you got where you got. When clients whose partner cheated on them want to blame their partner for all their problems, it’s important to dissect the relational dynamic for several months and or years leading up to the event. Sometimes the non cheating partner is unwilling to accept any part of the responsibility. However, affairs are usually the aftermath of long time emotional neglect and or lack of intimacy in a relationship that has become more of a partnership than a marriage.
So how do you begin to repair the brokenness of an event of this proportion? I believe that both individuals need to do some of their own therapy before moving into couples therapy. The partner who was betrayed needs to do their own work, to grieve the experience, feel the pain, and create insight as to their own part in the relationship’s destruction. I believe the partner who acted out with the affair needs to have a safe place to acknowledge what was done and determine if they really want to restore the marriage.
If after some of their own introspective work, the couple wants to restore the marriage and work to move forward, then they will both need to be willing to make changes, and create new memories with this new commitment. In order to do this, there needs to be vulnerability, accountability, trust, and an awareness that the past event needs to be buried in order to appropriately move forward and rebuild the foundation. If the past is used as ammo in a future fight, or as a way to shame the partner into behaving the way the non betraying partner wants them to be, this won’t work. Forgiveness is a difficult concept and often we hear people say “I forgive” but still hold on to the anger toward the perpetrator. Forgiveness requires burying the past and learning to embrace the future as a new norm is created in the relationship.
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