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May 2003 eNewsletter
Infidelity: The Third in a Series

How to Recover Your Marriage Following Infidelity

© May 2003 Penny R. Tupy Marriage and Relationship Coach
Founding Member Coachville, International Assoc. of Coaches

Please forward this to your married and soon to be married friends and family!!

Welcome back to another edition of the Save Your Marriage Central eNewsletter. This month concludes the series on infidelity that began in March, and will discuss the steps needed to recover your marriage, restore trust, forgive, and move on. If you missed the first two in this series they are archived at my site: Newsletters

Speaking of the site. What's in the works? Well, I've doubled the number of pages and they are under construction. First to get attention will be the Infidelity Center. It's sadly in need of some sprucing up and some new material. I'm kicking around some other new ideas and will keep you updated as it progresses.

A new coaching offering that will be available at the end of this month is a three session coaching package designed for engaged and newlywed couples. The sessions will cover what it takes to fall in love, how men and women differ in what they need in romantic relationships, and how to keep love alive for life. A fantastic gift for weddings and showers!! A gift that will continue to be useful long after the china is chipped and the toaster is.. well, toast.

Over the summer months I'll be taking a hiatus from the monthly eNewsletter format. I plan to send updates and articles that you might find interesting, as the spirit moves me. I'll be allotting more time to reworking the site and to other writing and miscellaneous SYMC projects that I have in the works. The current format of eNewsletter will resume in the fall. And perhaps before then you'll have a sneak preview of the novel that's begging to be worked on.

If you are in the Twin Cities, watch for my article on life after the wedding in the Summer 2003 edition of Premier Bride. I was also recently interviewed on CJOB radio in Winnipeg. What a fantastic chance to spread the word that marriage is important, and making it wonderful is possible. I am always looking for speaking and writing opportunities. If you know of something that you think might be a good fit, email me at help@saveyourmarriagecentral.com

My guest writer for this month is John Hazucha. In the first of two parts, he tells the moving story of his wife's affair and their struggles to work through that devastating episode in their lives and how they continue to recover and rebuild their marriage today. It is a fearless and searching telling of their story, free of blame and judgment and full of deep personal insights. I hope you take the time to read it, with your heart.

All the best! - Penny

Recovery Following Infidelity
As I'm sure you've heard me say many times before: almost all affairs end. And as you've no doubt heard me say, most marriages that are struck by infidelity don't end as a result of the affair, they end when the conditions that led to the affair are not addressed. When that happens, as it does in most cases of infidelity, couples bumble around for months or years never really finding a connection to each other, not reestablishing romantic love, and not finding fulfillment in their marriage. Eventually they either divorce or drift apart living separate lives. The risk of a repeat affair is very high.

Even though that is the sad state of most post infidelity marriages, it doesn't need to happen that way. Real recovery is possible. Recovery which is defined by restoring romantic love, reestablishing trust, and finally by forgiveness. The steps to getting there are difficult and often times painful but the alternative is far more difficult and tragic. So what are those steps? Where does a couple begin to pick up the pieces of shattered love and trust? And how do they put those pieces back together to form a picture of a marriage that is very different from the one they knew prior to the affair?

To answer those questions I've decided to tell the story of a real couple who are working at recovering their marriage; doing all the right things, and struggling with the issues most couples face.

This is a true story of a couple I've worked with. Names and identifying details are changed to protect their privacy, but the story is true. It highlights so well the steps that make a successful recovery. My thanks to them both for letting me tell their story.

Matthew and Lisa were married less than a year when Lisa began an affair with a coworker. When Matthew discovered the affair and angrily confronted his wife, she left their home in a huff, moving in with a family member. A few months after she left and after trying to entice her to come home, Matthew sent her a letter stating his love for her and stating as well that until her affair was over he could no longer interact with her. Matthew loved his wife dearly, but he could no longer put up with the pain of the affair, and he was tired of feeling that he was enabling her betrayal of him and of their marriage.

She responded by filing for divorce.

It was about that time that I met Matthew. We talked a little about his situation, but given where it was at that time, separated and with no contact, there wasn't much I could offer. He had done all the right things and taken all the right steps to end the affair. You might think that there was no hope at this point, but as I see every day, love is a miracle that works its magic in our lives.

Just as Matthew was beginning to lose hope and to think of simply going ahead with the divorce, he got a message from Lisa. She wanted to talk. And talk she did. She told Matthew that she had ended her relationship with her lover, and that she was willing to do whatever it took to save their marriage and to return home.

Matthew called me, and we got to work. And make no doubt about it, it is work! The first obstacle was not what to do with Lisa it was what to do with Matthew. He had worked so hard for so long to save his marriage, hurt so much in the process, and was now making peace with the idea that it was over. Matthew was ready to move on. This new development meant that he would need to go back to that place of uncertainty and pain; that he would need to revisit all the issues that he was prepared to pack away. So the first step in recovery was gathering up the courage to take that leap.

When Matthew called me, we talked about the first steps Lisa would need to take to show him that this was for real. He was very fearful that if he agreed to reconcile, Lisa would do the same thing again in the future, or that she would simply restart the affair with her coworker. I suggested interim checkpoints for him. along the lines of a "go/no-go" decision that could be addressed more than once. Since Lisa was not living at home during this time, we established that she would not move home until she agreed to certain conditions and proved that she would follow through.

The first condition was that she needed to quit her job as soon as possible and to end all contact forever with her lover. This was the first and the biggest of the go/no-go checkpoints.

She gave notice immediately, and even skipped her last day of work to avoid the possibility of seeing the lover who was returning from a business trip.

Next Matthew asked her to give him all her phone and email passwords so he could verify that she was not contacting the former lover. He agreed to share all that information with her as well creating a state of complete openness in their marriage regarding communications with others. They each agreed to be accountable to the other regarding their time and whereabouts.

This was particularly difficult for Lisa, living away from home, unemployed, and with lots of free time. She was excellent about calling Matthew with her schedule and with letting him know where she was at all times. She even went so far as to make sure she called from her hosts' home phone so that he could verify that she was where she said she was by the number on his caller ID.

Honesty loomed as a large obstacle in Matthew's eyes. He had been lied to and betrayed for many months, and he had questions and fears that didn't seem to end. Lisa agreed to answer all his questions as completely as possible. This is essential if the marriage is to recover.

This is a very touchy subject for both parties following an affair. Matthew had things he needed to know, things he deserved to know, and at the same time if they were to move along this path of recovery he needed to ask for and receive information in a way that was not destructive. I suggested he make a list of all the things he wanted to know about the affair, and that they meet in a public place to discuss his questions. At their request, I met with them as facilitator and support.

Both Matthew and Lisa handled this incredibly difficult meeting with grace and dignity that would have been amazing in a couple twice their age. Matthew managed to hear the details of the affair without losing his temper or making derogatory statements about his wife. Lisa put on a cloak of courage that I have rarely seen equaled and answered completely questions that I know were embarrassing and terrifying. Neither knew if the other would still want to save the marriage when this meeting was over. It was one of those miracles of love that they stared the ugliness of the affair in the face and then agreed to take the next step in the direction of restoring their marriage.

Although the affair was over, and Lisa was no longer working with her affair partner, there needed to be a definite closure. With Matthew, Lisa wrote a letter to the other man, stating her commitment to her marriage, definitively telling him the affair was over, and asking that he never contact her again. They took the letter to the mailbox together.

It was at this point, when the affair had been completely ended, no contact ever in the future was agreed to, measures for accountability were in place, and the details of the affair were in the open that this couple felt they were really beginning to recover their marriage. Now comes the hard work of picking up the pieces and creating a whole new picture of what their marriage would look like. They knew they didn't want to return to the marriage they had before, and they knew they needed help to create a marriage that was fulfilling and joyful for each of them.

The first step towards that goal was once again, honesty. What things were not working for each of them in the past? What hurt? What did they need that they didn't get from the other? In addition to that information, Matthew and Lisa needed to learn how to be honest about all aspects of their lives, particularly how they felt about the things the other one did.

Once we had that information pathway open, we began to talk about the things either of them did that was objectionable to the other. Lisa liked to spend a little too freely, and Matthew tended to be disrespectful of Lisa's ideas and opinions.

They worked together to create strategies to address those things. Lisa agreed to shop only when Matthew was with her or to purchase only the things they both agreed on. Matthew worked to change how he expressed his opinions and to listen more to Lisa's viewpoint. In turn, she now speaks up when she feels her thoughts are being invalidated so that Matthew can know what to avoid in the future.

With the elimination of things that were painful under way we began to turn our attention more and more to what things would make them happy. As they found they could be together and not get hurt they looked forward more and more to meeting each others needs in the marriage.

Once again, this step requires a courageous level of honesty. Both Matthew and Lisa began to talk about the things they needed in the marriage, and in what way they needed those things. Lisa expressed a need for affection which is a nearly universal need for women. But it's also a pretty generic statement. What Matthew needed to know was what things in particular would meet that need for her.

Matthew expressed a strong need for honesty of all kinds. For those who have never experienced the infidelity of a spouse, his need might seem controlling and obsessive, but this was his way of feeling safe and protected after the betrayal and the lies of the affair. Lisa went out of her way to be as open and sharing as possible with every aspect of her life in order to help Matthew regain a feeling of safety. I assured them both that in time the deep suspicion and fear he was feeling would pass.

Like many husbands, Matthew also has a strong need for sex in the marriage. This issue proved to be extremely difficult because he was haunted by visions of Lisa with her affair partner. When they became physically intimate he was often overwhelmed with anger and pain. We talked about letting Lisa know what was happening, in a way that was both honest and respectful. I urged them both to understand that this too would pass, and it would do so sooner if they continued to spend time together rebuilding the connection they once shared and if they made a commitment to keeping the affair in the past as much as possible.

Spending time together as a couple is the element that ties it all together. Even with being honest, eliminating painful behaviors, and attempting to do those things each needs to be happy, without adequate time as a couple recovery never really gets off the ground.

And finally Matthew and Lisa took their newfound habit of honesty to the next level. They used the information they shared and received to make decisions that were good for both of them. No longer would there be choices made about their lives that felt good for one but hurt the other.

Recovery is a process. It's a process that lasts for the rest of your life. At first it's difficult and frightening, but as the days and then the months and years go on couples who are dedicated to making it work will find that walking this path becomes second nature. Intimate relationships are never conflict free. There is always another issue just around the corner waiting to rock the boat. It's not the substance of the conflict that makes or breaks the marriage it's the way in which it is handled.

Matthew finally invited Lisa to move back into their home. At this writing they are negotiating how that will work and what steps they need to take so that they each feel comfortable reintegrating their lives. Matthew and Lisa did all the right things once the affair was ended. It hasn't been easy, and I've had more than a few panicked phone calls and emails. But they continue to hang in there day after day, working the process, growing together, recreating a love they once shared.

Here then are the steps that outline the process of recovery:
First and foremost, the affair must end. There must be a verifiable promise that the unfaithful spouse will never see or speak to the affair partner again
Honesty
Accountability / time, whereabouts, money
Eliminating behaviors and habits that are painful for either spouse
Incorporating new behaviors that make each other happy
Putting it all together by making time alone as a couple a priority

It takes up to two years for a couple to get through the most difficult steps of recovery. After that it's a matter of staying on track and keeping the marriage as a top priority in life. It also happens that after about two years that the faithful spouse finds that the deep suspicion and distrust dissipates. Forgiveness (which I differentiate from letting go of bitterness and resentment, and which should be done as soon as possible) almost naturally occurs at this time as well.

The need for honesty and accountability goes on forever, couples should be aware that we can all fall into the nightmare of infidelity. By keeping our lives open to each other we can avoid even the beginnings of that tragedy. I tell couples that they should distrust themselves and their partner, knowing that we are all capable of having an affair. A few well placed precautions can prevent falling into that trap.

There are many resources available for how to do each of those things I've discussed. In John Hazuchaís fine account below you will be introduced to a wealth of books and links and authors. Check them out, and remember recovery is unique in its details for each couple, but the outline is essentially the same for nearly everyone.

I've invited John to recount his story and thoughts on recovery because he and his wife illustrate so well the roller coaster ride recovery is, and they demonstrate that with care and persistence it can be done successfully. John has read and studied a wide range of authors and brings much insight to the subject with his thoughtful discussion of those views. As you know my philosophies and methodologies draw deeply from the work of Dr. Willard Harley, whose concepts are nothing short of brilliant. John gives you a look at other perceptions and views that can add another layer of understanding to recovery work. PRT

Feedback to this article can be sent to John Hazucha at jhazucha@mn.rr.com

After the Affair: A Perspective on the Road to Recovery

© John Hazucha 2003

Penny has asked me to write about recovery from an affair, I think in part because my wife and I seem to be negotiating the rollercoaster ride fairly well, and in part because Penny has seen me write some insightful things on the subject from time to time while citing authors she has not read or studied as deeply, and hopes to give her readers a perspective that adds to what Dr. Willard Harley writes on the subject. While there are a few areas where I think Dr. Harley and I disagree, I want to start by saying that in my opinion his book "Surviving an Affair" is the best book I have read on affair recovery, it was a tremendous help to my wife and I, and it will give anyone struggling to recover from an affair much more useful information on the subject than they can find in this article. He also has a web site that includes many articles that are in the form of written questions and answers on the subject of infidelity. The first article in the series is found here: How to Survive Infidelity. I am not aware of a better free resource on the subject.

This article is a personal account of my perspective on recovery, and about what we learned and what helped us along the way. Because there are many things that are common to almost all affairs, our experience should be helpful for many of the couples trying to navigate the rapids of recovery after an affair.

The last day of September, 2001, my wife said to me after hearing a sermon about the Church in Thyatira: "I need to talk to you about something. Can we talk this Wednesday morning after the kids are at school?" At that point, I was pretty sure that she was going to tell me she had had an affair. Wednesday morning October 3rd, in tears, with great humility and remorse, she told me that she had been unfaithful and was not worthy to be my wife. While she asked my forgiveness, she also expressed a willingness to leave if I wanted her to. I could not believe how painful it was to hear the words I had been expecting. The pain became even worse a little later when she told me that her affair had not been, as I suspected, a brief fling about four years earlier. It had been a three-year long relationship, which she had not yet ended. Confessing to me was in fact her first concrete step in ending it. My world turned upside down, I had to mentally rewrite the last three years of our marital history, and my emotions became a rollercoaster ride from hell, which lasted for months. My immediate reaction, after briefly considering beating her and leaving (fight AND flight), I think was partly an attempt to avoid the incredible pain I was experiencing. It was to ask the question: "Why?" Why had she done this? Why had she hurt me so? Why had she betrayed her (our) most deeply-held religious beliefs? Why had she put our family and our health at risk? Why did she tell me she loved me almost every day of those last three years? How could she? Why hadn't God answered my prayers for our marriage?

In answer to my questions, she told me: "We have a good marriage. It wasn't about you, it wasn't about him and it wasn't about sex." Those statements seemed ludicrous to me. But, it was partly curiosity about what those words meant that kept me around. My wife is a very intelligent woman. I didn't understand how she could really believe what she had just said. My dominant thought was probably that she was lying to herself. But, I had a sneaking suspicion somewhere in the back of my head that there was something I had missed - something I didn't understand about those words. Part of recovery was for me to find out what was true about them, and for her to find out what was false.

There were other reasons I wanted to stay, not the least of which was that we had three children together, and I was aware that divorce is bad for children. One reason I wanted to stay was that my wife's confession was one of the most courageous acts I had ever seen. Despite my questions about her actions, I had never doubted her commitment to our family, so I had some idea of how much it cost her to risk a divorce by being honest. (I had told her before we were married that I would divorce her if she was ever unfaithful, and we were both well aware of the fact that the only exception Jesus had made to his comment in Matthew 19:6: "What God has joined together, man must not separate" was for the case of adultery.) It was also by far the most dramatic action I had ever seen her take to work on our marriage. Honesty is a big thing for me, so for her to tell me was a huge step in the direction of healing our broken marriage, and in my eyes, the biggest effort she had ever made to fix things. I had worked my butt off for years in our relationship, and never seemed to make any progress, so it was kind of hard to chuck everything and start over just when there seemed to be some possibility of progress, even though I now had a "theologically acceptable" reason to escape.

My respect for her courage and commitment grew when I learned that her idea in telling me was that in the best case, things would stay about the way they were between us, except that she would no longer deceive me, and no longer let the invisible elephant get between us, if we stayed together. She thought she had to give up the role of "Lover" because she had always thought of herself as my "wife", which included kids, home, common goals, etc., but was distinct from "Lover." She didn't know how dissatisfied I was, and how awful the idea of going back to the status quo sounded to me (after all, she had an affair and I was miserable), and had no idea what changes were in store for us.

Another reason that strongly influenced my decision to stay was that I knew that people who get divorced once are likely to get divorced again, and usually for the same reasons. I did not want to find myself in the same place some years down the road, still clueless as to why I was there.

Lastly, though I did not really believe I was "responsible" for her affair, in part because she had repeatedly told me what a great husband I was, I was aware that I had ignored God in regards to some of the things required of husbands in the Bible. Since I thought ignoring Him might have somehow contributed to her affair, I thought I better get my relationship with Him straightened out and see what God wanted me to do. Later, when I looked in the Bible, it was clear that while divorce was allowed in the case of infidelity, God HATES divorce (Malachi 2:16). So, although biblical arguments could be made to support either pro or con regarding divorce in our case, I felt it was clear that divorce was Man's idea, not God's. Since I felt one of my failings was relying too much on my own and society's expectations in my life and marriage up until that point, I did not want to compound my error and go against God's design by divorcing her.

At the same time, I was not sure I could overcome the pain, I had no idea how to re-establish trust, I didn't know if I could forgive her and I had no desire at all to go back to the way things were. Frankly, the "way things were" in our marriage was pretty miserable (even pre-A) for me. What my wife did not know (because being a committed conflict avoider I had not told her) was that I was near the end of my rope. For the previous 9 years I felt that the efforts I was making to work on our marriage were going largely unappreciated. There had been a positive change in the six months before she told me about the affair, and she had obviously been putting more energy into our relationship, but while I had noticed and appreciated her efforts, my feelings for her had continued to deteriorate. My head and my heart were at war. I was finally seeing effort to do things I had asked her to do for years, yet I didn't appreciate them. I frequently fantasized about leaving her for other women, and was tempted to have an affair, literally hearing a voice in my head saying: "Why not? She did". I had investigated getting a separate bank account. I had frequent fantasies (which, not co-incidentally, had started somewhere around the start of her affair) about how I would live if she died in a plane crash while traveling for work. All this was continuing, and even getting worse, while I saw evidence of our marriage improving, and saw her making greater efforts. I thought I was crazy, or just plain evil. When she revealed the affair, it all suddenly made sense. Those kinds of thoughts stopped the day she told me. I now believe that those thoughts and fantasies were just my subconscious telling me what I did not want to believe. My heart knew what my head did not want to admit. But once the truth was unveiled, I had to get through many months of feeling like leaving her for hours or days at time because of what I knew she had actually done, instead of some feelings I couldn't explain.

Fortunately, one of the first things we did after she told me was to order Surviving an Affair by Dr. Willard Harley. To drastically over-simplify things, it takes the approach that affairs are symptoms of problems in your marriage, and to recover from an affair you need to fix the marriage. We quickly learned how to improve our marriage by doing the included exercises (in my opinion it is a great book, but not worth the cover price UNLESS YOU DO THE EXERCISES). When we took steps to change how we treated each other based on what we learned, the immediate changes in our relationship were pretty dramatic. That wasn't the whole answer, but it was a great start. We also made an appointment with a marriage counselor right away.

Because this is so important, I have to inject a couple of things about marriage counselors. If you are trying to recover from an affair, see a marriage counselor (or coach). This is hard. You need help. Marriage counselors are professionals. They can help deal with issues the books and articles don't cover, and customize things to your individual situation. BUT, you need one that is committed to saving marriages, to helping couples have great marriages, and who knows how to do that. Unfortunately, they are not common. Before I called an MC, I had read How To Find A Good Marriage Counselor, and that helped me to know that the first one we called was a good one. What I soon discovered by talking to friends who had also consulted with marriage counselors (and yes, those I talked to had all consulted with multiple counselors), is that getting a good marriage counselor with the first phone call was rather unusual. I won't go into the details of their horror stories, but Hazardous Counseling shows how unfortunately typical their experiences are.

One of the things our MC helped us do is to separate affair recovery from fixing the marriage. I think he had the practical goal of getting me to limit my obsessing about the affair, and spend most of my time working on the marriage. As is common for betrayed spouses, I tended to obsess about the affair, especially at first. So, our MC tried to get us to limit our discussions about the affair to about 1-1/2 hours per week. Those discussions were very painful for my wife, and tended to breed new questions which would keep me awake at night, so it was important for us to concentrate on doing the right things in our marriage so we had some new positive experiences together. The affair recovery part involved forgiveness and repentance, and discovering the "Why?" of the affair. The marital recovery part was (and is) about building a really great marriage.

In Surviving an Affair, Dr. Harley states that you can restore your marriage without the unfaithful spouse showing much, if any, remorse, and without the betrayed spouse offering forgiveness. Dr. Harley elaborates on this viewpoint in the article: Can't We Just Forgive and Forget? I was never completely convinced by his point of view, perhaps because I didn't have to be. Dr. Harley does state that although remorse is not required, it does help. Fortunately for me, my wife was both remorseful and repentant. She did not know if I would be willing to continue to stay married to her after she confessed. She simply knew that she had to get right with God and had to get her integrity back, and that being honest with me was an unavoidable part of that.

Despite Dr. Harley's assurances that it is possible, I don't know how we could have recovered without my forgiveness. I had to forgive her because there was nothing she could have done to adequately repay me for what I viewed as three lost years. You can't relive time that is gone. To ask her to try to do so would have been an unbearable burden. In addition, to withhold forgiveness, and hold on to the pain of the betrayal, would have destroyed me with bitterness and resentment. I found Lewis Smedes book, The Art of Forgiving: When You Need to Forgive and Don't Know How helpful in my journey of forgiveness. I was not clear on the differences between forgiveness and reconciliation, and where repentance fit in, and that book helped me clarify things.

I don't know how we could have recovered without her remorse and repentance because it showed me that she believed what she did was wrong. If she didn't believe it was wrong, I don't know how I could have had any confidence she would not do it again. And, without repentance I would not have believed the remorse was real. I use the word "repentance" not just because it is a "religious" word and I am a Christian. I use it because Webster's definition is "The action or process of repenting", implying that actions, not just words, are required. When it comes to affair recovery, talk is cheap. It was her change in attitude that she displayed through her words and actions in confessing to me, and her continued actions to work on the marriage, that made forgiveness easier. She immediately changed her schedule so she could go into work late on Wednesday mornings so we could have some extra time together. That was a strong statement to me that I was more important to her than her job, and the high priority her job had in her life had been a sore point with me for years. She wrote a letter to her affair partner saying she would no longer talk to him or see him except as was unavoidable for work, until one of them found other employment, after which they would have no contact for life. She read through the affair recovery books with me and began to change the way she treated me. We started praying and doing devotions together every day, a positive change for us, and in contrast to how we had both been slowly sliding away from God for many years, much as we had been sliding away from each other.

Beyond simply recognizing her efforts, the work of forgiveness involved a lot of prayer on my part. The first thing I did was go to God and repent of a couple of what I considered to be "minor" but habitual sins, so there would be nothing between God and I that would get in the way of our communication. I spent many hours in prayer. I asked God to give me the ability to let go of the anger and the desire to punish her that I was experiencing, so I would not destroy our relationship. I asked Him to show me my sin, in part because at some level I thought the affair was my fault. While I no longer think that, that time of humbling myself before God was really crucial to our recovery. I HAD sinned, and had gotten so distant from God that I was unaware of many of my sins, so He did show me. As I agonized over what my wife did to me, it became clear that I had done almost identical things to God. She had withdrawn from me, and I had withdrawn from God. She had not appreciated the things I had done for her, and I had not appreciated the things God had done for me. She had made many other things in her life more important than me, and I had made many other things in my life more important than God. In fact, every time I thought of a new way to look at how I had been wronged, I could see how I had done the same to God. That helped keep me from self-righteousness and arrogance, which are poison to any recovery. Also, the Bible says that for God to forgive me, I had to forgive her. That got me a long way down the forgiveness road, and my time with God helped me become spiritually healthier.

Some of the sins God showed me were things Harley classifies as Love Busters. Others were simply failing to do what the Bible says husbands are to do for wives. So, I humbled myself and asked for her forgiveness for my failings as a husband as I discovered them, and committed myself to changing too. Just as I did not want to return to a marriage where I would be betrayed again, I did not want my wife to return to a marriage where my actions would cause her to be unhappy again. While I am not responsible for my wife's affair, or even her happiness, we both bear equal responsibility for the state of our marriage before the affair. For each of our contributions to the lousy state of our marriage, we both needed to ask forgiveness of the other and change our behavior.

As we worked at forgiveness and remorse, and changing our marriage, I was still asking the "Why?" questions. One of the other reasons I like Surviving an Affair so much is because it is BY FAR the best resource I have found for helping one get at "the message of the affair" in terms of what is wrong with the marriage. As is true in the overwhelming majority of affairs, one of the parts of "the message of the affair" was that my wife's most important emotional needs were not being met by me. (see Surviving an Affair or The Most Important Emotional Needs for a description of what emotional needs are and why they are important.) This was a critical link between "affair recovery" and "fixing the marriage" for us, because one of the reasons I was not meeting her most important emotional needs was that she had never told me she needed those things, in part because she did not know what they were. Yet, when we looked at what she got from her relationship with her affair partner, and looked at what she listed as her most important emotional needs on the questionnaire in the appendix of Surviving an Affair, it was crystal clear that he was meeting her top two emotional needs far better than I was, and that was the primary attraction of the relationship from her perspective. That was the single biggest and most important piece of the "Why?" puzzle, and we figured it out using Harley's book and questionnaires in the first week, before we ever met with a counselor.

However, learning that led to me really struggle with my responsibility for her affair. At times, I felt I had "caused" it by not meeting my wife's most important emotional needs. There was actually a certain comfort in that, since if I had caused her affair by my actions, I could prevent a future affair by acting differently in the future than I had in the past. But, unmet emotional needs do not cause affairs, they cause lousy marriages. Dr. Harley does not actually say in Surviving an Affair that unmet emotional needs cause affairs. He says: "unmet emotional needs make a spouse vulnerable to the temptation of an affair". It was hard at times to make that distinction. Our MC worked w/ Bill Harley for 8 years, and his perspective was helpful to me. According to him, in over 40% of mens' affairs, unmet emotional needs had very little to do with it. Yes, there were usually unmet emotional needs in their marriages, because no marriage is perfect. But, having the wife find out about and meet his most important emotional needs did not stop the affairs from re-kindling or stop the husband from having another. Harley is aware of this, which is why his plan for recovery is a lot more complicated than: 1.) Take the Emotional Need Questionnaire to find out your spouse's most important emotional needs. 2.) Meet your spouse's most important emotional needs. Our MC said that in his opinion, for that 40%, if the wife had been meeting the husband's top 5 emotional needs PERFECTLY, the husband still would have had the affair. Todd Mulliken describes this type of affair in the chapter on The Double Life Man in his book, "The State of Affairs". While that may not seem to have much to do with us, it illustrates that the vulnerability to an affair is not always solely an issue of what is missing in a marriage. There are personal vulnerabilities to affairs that have little to do with the quality of one's marriage. Unmet emotional needs are not the whole picture.

My wife chose to deal with her unmet emotional needs by looking outside the marriage, and having them met through work, other friendships, and eventually, her affair partner. That was why she could say and believe "we have a good marriage" - because she had found an alternative way to get her needs met, didn't even know she was "supposed" to get them met in our marriage, and did not FEEL the lack of emotional sustenance she should have been getting from me. I, on the other hand, while being in the same boat in terms of unmet emotional needs in the marriage, had chosen to deal with it by "looking on the bright side", trying to focus on and appreciate the good parts of our relationship, and denying to myself that I needed the things I was missing (as in telling myself: "I'm strong enough to take it" - is there such a thing as emotional machismo?). So, my emotional needs stayed unmet, and I was miserable, depressed and in denial.

I eventually made an uneasy peace with the idea that there are "marital" reasons for an affair, and "personal" reasons for an affair, and there are the choices we make. The fact that our marriage was bad was my fault every bit as much as hers, if not more. I was responsible for my contributions to the problems in our marriage, and responsible to change my behavior to fix them. The fact that she dealt with the problems in our marriage by having an affair was not my responsibility. Those decisions were hers alone, and she chose to make them and hide them from me. I say "uneasy peace" because even though I can write those words - and believe them - I still feel like I have been a failure as a husband. I hope at some point to get past that. I think the main reason this feeling lingers, is that I did NOT believe "we have a good marriage", and yet I took no effective action to change things.

In our discussions about the affair, most of which were an attempt by me to ask the "Why?" question a different way, it was hard for me not to get angry and verbally beat my wife with some of the information she was providing. One way to avoid most of that was to read books a chapter at a time, and then discuss what we read, and work through the exercises. We worked through Surviving an Affair, Torn Asunder by Carder, and The State of Affairs by Mulliken this way. Each book had a slightly different perspective, and each was helpful in its own way. I think I might not have pursued understanding of the personal reasons for the affair as aggressively if we had relied entirely on Surviving an Affair. It would have been too easy to jump on the "unmet emotional needs" explanation and not explore the other underlying issues. When we read Torn Asunder, I thought that it was even better than Surviving an Affair, except for the section on getting at the emotional needs part of the "message of the affair", but one year later I can remember little of what I read, and I still think about marriage through the "lens" of what I learned in Surviving an Affair. I appreciated the insights offered in The State of Affairs about how issues of control affect the quality of a marriage and how they affect recovery.

Interspersed between the book chapters were regular discussions about the affair. The fact that my wife was always completely honest was so important I cannot emphasize it enough. I asked for a lot of detail, which is not necessarily recommended. She might ask me why I wanted to know, or how knowing would help, but if I wanted an answer and she knew the answer, she would give it to me, even though it was painful for her and she knew it would hurt me. That really helped me trust her. During her affair, she had hidden things from me, in part to "protect" me from the truth. In contrast, she was now telling me the truth even if it was painful for me to hear. That was a big, if painful, step toward rebuilding trust.

The first "Why?" discussion was the day she confessed, and started when I asked a question something like (read the capital letters as shouting, though I was probably close to shouting the whole time): "HOW could you LIE to me by telling me you loved me all the time?" and she answered, probably in tears just based on my tone of voice: "I cared about you". Since this was very early on (maybe even the day she confessed) and I was definitely not in control, I continued to rant on about how she "must not have cared VERY MUCH", and that she "KNEW that is not what I thought she meant when she said those words, since we had talked about my view of love extensively in the past, and she was just doing it to COVER UP HER AFFAIR". Despite that kind of start, I managed to get control of my anger and disrespect during those discussions. If I hadn't, they could not have continued, because the guilt and shame my wife felt for what she had done made going back to those experiences very painful even without my berating her.

Despite getting control over my outward expressions of anger, what I learned made me extremely hurt, angry, frustrated and at times, fearful. I spent hours (usually lying awake at night) stewing over what she had said, frequently getting angrier and angrier. I would sleep 3 hours or less per night for days at a time, become exhausted, get one good night of sleep, and then repeat a series of short nights. I lost about 18 pounds in two months (no, I don't recommend the "infidelity diet"). This was the "emotional rollercoaster" that every betrayed spouse rides. I had good days, and bad days. But, with that first discussion, somewhere in the back of my brain a dim light began to glow. That glow was the realization that some words meant different things to her than to me. The emotionally charged discussions about the affair were not necessarily the best place to figure this out, because I had repeated episodes of spending days stewing and losing sleep over something she said, only to find out that what those words meant to her were perfectly sensible, not what I thought they meant, and not something I should get upset about. At some point, I started expecting that there was something I had not understood correctly whenever I started getting angry with her.

This realization that I was misunderstanding her was EXTREMELY important to recovery, and not just because it helped me deal with my anger. It prompted me to do more exploring in ALL my conversations with her, and that led us to better understanding each other, which helped lead us to greater intimacy on all levels. My conversations showed more interest in her, which helped her feel like she was important to me, and loved for who she REALLY was, not just who I thought she was. This is now a part of how we stay emotionally connected. The other thing I realized somewhere along the way, probably because of what I read in Gary Smalley's book If Only He Knew, was that sometimes it is not the meaning of the words that is important, it is the feelings behind those words. So some of my exploring of what she says was not about the meaning of the words as much as about what she was feeling. This has been a powerful way for me to improve our communication. It's helped a lot in communicating with my kids, too.

Even as our marriage was improving, I had some very bad days. In some ways, the better things got, the worse those bad days were, because they sort of surprised me. Our MC helped me with this, too, because he gave me the assurance that everybody goes through this, and pointed out that the bad days were becoming less frequent. So, even though I still had REALLY bad days, things were improving.

Understanding each other better has also helped us resolve our conflicts. In the past, we both tended to avoid conflict with each other, so problems would fester. This was extremely detrimental to our marriage, and contributed to her affair. In fact there is a classification scheme for affairs that includes one called the "Conflict Avoidance Affair" (see the link titled Conflict Avoidance Affairs at: MSC articles), and her affair fit the description pretty well. Learning to resolve conflicts successfully is one of the three key things people with great marriages learn to do according to Dr. Harley, but you have to learn to understand each other in order to do that well. As a reformed (recovering?) conflict avoider, my mantra became a quote from marriage author Gary Smalley: "Conflict is the doorway to intimacy".

Coming in Part II - Causes of the Affair, and Rebuilding Trust

Other Resources:

eNewsletters:
Oct 2002/ Honesty
Nov 2002 / Time
Dec 2002 / Compatibility
Jan 2003 / Romance
Mar 2003 / Infidelity Part I Discovery and Dynamics
Apr 2003 / Infidelity Part II Exposing, Confronting, Separating
May 2003 / Infidelity Part III Recovery
Sep 2003 / Conversation
Oct 2003 / Internal Shift
Jan 2004 / Volunteer
Feb 2004 / Infidelity Overview

Infidelity Resources:
www.symcinc.com
www.dearpeggy.com
www.marrriagebuilders.com
www.shirleyglass.com
www.sexhelp.com (Sexual addiction information)

Not Just Friends Shirley Glass 2003
Surviving An Affair Willard F. Harley Jr. PhD 1998 Revel
In the Shadows of the Net: Breaking Free of Online Compulsive Sexual Behavior Patrick Carnes et al Hazelden

If you would like one on one assistance in implementing these concepts into your marriage call me at 1.877.416.2657

Check out the Coaching Center

Be sure to visit www.symcinc.com for archived copies of the eNewsletter. Changes and additions to the site taking place as you read this!!!

Did You Know?

Infidelity affects an estimated 80% of marriages in the US?

That statistic comes from Peggy Vaughn, author of The Monogamy Myth, in 1989. I suspect that given the passage of time, those numbers are even higher today.

What that means in terms of day to day life, if you are at a gathering with 10 other couples, 8 of those will be struggling with infidelity in their marriage.

Most marriages do not end in divorce because of an affair. Rather they end in divorce when the conditions which led to the affair in the first place are not addressed.

Need Help Now?

If you are dealing with infidelity in your marriage, or if you suspect that your partner may be having an affair, I can help you find your way back to a healthy marriage. Call me at 1.877.416.2657

Free follow up phone coaching session with paid initial consult

© Penny R. Tupy, Marriage and Relationship Coach
May2003

Your feedback always welcome and encouraged!!! Thanks for reading. PRT

Writers!!! I am always looking for guest writers for future issues. If you have a marriage topic that you would like to write about and have considered for a future newsletter, email me at help@saveyourmarriagecentral.com to be considered.

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