Affairs  -  Part Three  

 This month we will talk about some of the steps that can be taken to recover from an affair and to restore trust.  While I will be writing from the perspective of recovering from an affair, this procedure will help with restoring trust after any kind of betrayal.

So, how does one recover from an affair?  The first step is honesty.  The cheater needs to be honest about what happened, how long, and details of the affair.  There is a tendency when getting caught in an affair to minimize the extent of the involvement, the length of the affair, the emotions felt, or other aspects of the affair.  This can be just to reduce shame the cheater feels, but is often positively motivated to “protect” their partner from hearing painful details.  I have never seen holding back information be a helpful strategy in getting through an affair.  It always backfires, further contributes to the erosion of trust, and makes reconnection and recovery of trust much more difficult.  The truth is if you have cheated on your partner it is too late to “protect” them from the pain.  It is time to be honest, clean the wounds, and get started with the healing.  The first basis of trust is honesty.

I do have a word of caution for those who have been betrayed.  You have the right to have every question you ask answered, but that doesn’t mean you should ask every question.  Sometimes it seems necessary to know all the details of what happened.  It feels like knowing everything and answering all the questions will make it easier to get past the affair.  Often this isn’t true.  Many times the focus of questions is to understand why it happened.  While understanding is important, in early stages people are often asking unconsciously for some explanation that makes them hurt less.  There is no answer that does that.  No answer will make it OK that your partner had an affair and often answers to questions just increase or prolong the pain.  My caution is to be clear about the purpose of asking a question and to try not to ask questions that will just increase your pain and not provide much benefit. 

I should also caution against expecting your partner to remember everything that happened, including specific dates, time line progression, etc.  They also may have relatively vague responses about their feelings. This can make it feel like your partner is hiding things.  While such hiding is a common way of trying to protect a betrayed partner, which isn’t OK, it can also be an accurate reporting of your partner’s experience of the affair.  One of the risk factors for getting into an affair is a disconnection from one’s emotions and people who are disconnected from their emotions generally can’t describe their feelings very well.  In addition, memories of specific dates and timelines are often wildly inaccurate.  I often have people arguing in session with me whether something happened last Tuesday or Wednesday, so expecting someone to have accurate recollections of timelines over a period of months or longer isn’t reasonable.  It can be difficult to be faced with such ambiguity, but the ambiguity itself doesn’t necessarily indicate a problem.  There are other factors that are more important, but we will get into them next month. 

I should also caution against expecting your partner to remember everything that happened, including specific dates, time line progression, etc.  They also may have relatively vague responses about their feelings. This can make it feel like your partner is hiding things.  While such hiding is a common way of trying to protect a betrayed partner, which isn’t OK, it can also be an accurate reporting of your partner’s experience of the affair.  One of the risk factors for getting into an affair is a disconnection from one’s emotions and people who are disconnected from their emotions generally can’t describe their feelings very well.  In addition, memories of specific dates and timelines are often wildly inaccurate.  I often have people arguing in session with me whether something happened last Tuesday or Wednesday, so expecting someone to have accurate recollections of timelines over a period of months or longer isn’t reasonable.  It can be difficult to be faced with such ambiguity, but the ambiguity itself doesn’t necessarily indicate a problem.  There are other factors that are more important, but we will get into them next month.  

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