Top 10 Worst Pieces of Advice About Affairs

1.You should never give the details of the affair. It will only make things worse.
It is important to ask and answer all of the important questions. Reveal the secrets.

2.Forget about asking your spouse to forgive you. It will never happen.
We often find that the folks who have the hardest time with forgiveness are the one who have the affair. After time, they can not understand how or why they did what they did.
Most spouses do forgive. Others learn to accept and move on and learn to appreciate the goodness in their relationship.

3.After talking about it once, that should be enough. No need to keep opening up old wounds.
You generally have to talk about it until the one who was betrayed feels that they have been heard and understood. A good therapist can help a couple establish guidelines for when and how to talk about it.

4.Affairs only happen in bad marriages.
Affairs can happen in the best of marriages. Affairs can make good marriages go bad.

5.Only “bad” people have affairs.
Good people in good marriages can be susceptible to an affair. Affairs can “creep up” on healthy people in healthy relationships.

6.When you find your soul mate, even if it is not the one you are married to, you should “go for it”.
Not counting those affairs that involve mainly hormones and sexual attraction, it is entirely possible to be in love with more than one person at a time.

7.Having more sex will affair-proof a marriage.
Many affairs are not primarily about sex. They can be about many different reasons from emotional connections to a mid-life crisis to feeling acknowledged and accepted.

8.Once someone has had an affair, they can never be trusted again.
As we have said, even good people in good marriages can have an affair. Amends can be made. Trust can be rebuilt. Forgiveness can happen.

9.You should get a divorce.
One of the worst pieces of advice we have heard about affairs is that once someone has cheated, you should divorce them. Many, many marriages are able to heal and become even healthier than before after an affair has happened.

10.An emotional affair is not at all as bad as a sexual affair. People of the opposite sex can be friends and share secrets and private information and it should be okay.

Sharing secrets and private information with another nice person is often how affairs begin … innocently and quietly. Caution is crucial in relationships with other potential partners.

Unless you have been in a situation, you never know what is really happening. Make your own decisions about your marriage and recovering from an affair based upon what you and your spouse and a competent therapist help you to decide.

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Can I Ever Forgive My Spouse?

Your spouse may have a harder time forgiving himself or herself than you do forgiving your partner.

Unless your partner is someone who has had serial affairs, the guilt usually catches up with them. It is our experience that when someone really gets to the place of understanding and accepting the fact that they have had an affair, they often feel shame and embarrassment.

It is easier to forgive a betraying spouse when he or she has accepted full responsibility for the affair and worked on ways to make amends and build trust. Even if that never happens, however, many find that they truly forgive for themselves and their own mental health.

If you would like to find a way to forgive your partner, we can help you through that process through in person or online counseling or coaching.

Contact us at CounselingRelationshipsOnline.com or CouplesCounselingofLouisville.com.

Do Marriages Ever Make it After an Affair?

Many marriages do recover from an affair. The main difference for those that do recover is a desire to find a way to work through it and a commitment on the part of both partners to do what they need to do to make it work.

In couples who have experienced an affair, it may be quite difficult to walk the path through the “yuck” and out again. Often it is back and forth and in and out of easier and harder times.

Ending affairs are rarely easy and often they go through several “endings” before they are truly over.

Letting go of the hurt, anger and resentment takes time and, again, hard work.

Forgiveness does not come easy. Often it is harder for the partner who had the affair to forgive him or herself than it is for the betrayed one.

Getting over loving feelings for the affaire’ and falling back in love with a spouse may also take some time.

The commitment, desire and motivation to work together is an important factor that encourages spouses to hang in and solve the problems related to or caused by the affair.

One research study noted that 70% of couples who had that desire and commitment reported recovery from the aftermath and were satisfied that they made the decision to remain in the marriage.

What Does “Transparency” Mean When Healing from an Affair?

Most therapists who are working with couples who have experienced infidelity will push the unfaithful party to be transparent with their behavior until trust has been redeveloped.

While to the “offending” party, this may very well seem intrusive and overwhelming, to the relationship it is crucial. It says to the hurt partner that “my life is an open book” and I will tell you everything that you want and need to know.

How to be transparent when healing an affair is best left up to the one who has had the affair as an effort to build trust. When the hurt partner is asking or checking, it is destructive for both and for the relationship.

Transparency means opening up cell phones and email, refraining from deleting any messages and sharing any chance or intended meetings with the affair partner. It means sharing agendas and plans and keeping the spouse informed of daily activities. It certainly can feel a burden; and yet, it is so crucial to building trust.

It Is Hard To Talk About the Details of the Affair and It Is Hard Not To Talk About the Details of the Affair

So, is it better to talk about it or not?

The worst part of an affair is often the secrecy. Healing from an affair requires that there be openness, not secrets. In the long run, it is much better to talk about the basic details of the affair than to cover them up or smooth over them.

Talking about the basic details involves answering the questions of “who, what, when and where”. This does not mean details like the positions that were used. The partner who had the affair should answer the questions honestly. The other partner should only ask the questions that he or she is really ready to hear.

Denial, in the short run, often leads to an explosion in the long run and does not help a couple achieve the intimacy and connection that is imperative to prevent future affairs.

You have just read our opinion … professional therapists who have helped many couples through recovery from affairs. We would be interested in your thoughts and experiences. Please leave them in the comment section or head over to our forum on our Healing from Affairs website and share them on the message board.