Hope After Betrayal

Couples in affair recovery who are eventually able to trust each other, have done so slowly and deliberately. There is a dedication. A focus. And after years of working with one couple and another, I see each new relationship as its own work of art. A work of simplicity. Even though the road there had serious ups and downs…and extraordinary pain. The path forward is like hiking. One step at a time. Each new stone that must be trod. The heat that threatens to take you down. Each new incline. Each new seemingly uncrossable hitch in the road. The quiet that begins to develop. The peace after so much time and effort. It is a meditation on repentance. On humility. On acceptance of being human. Walking…and weaving…weaving a self together. Weaving a soul back together. And then weaving a bridge back to each other.

The Bridge at Q’Eswachaka

Every year three Incan communities come together in June to remake the bridge at Q’Eswachaka. They cut down the old bridge from the year before and weave a new one across the canyon. The process is deliberate, painstaking, and slow. It takes everyone from each of these communities to complete the process. The most compelling part of this engineering feat is the preparation of the cords, ropes, and cables that make up the foundation of the bridge. Each rope twisted together into small braids, then twisted together into larger ropes consisting of 30 of these braids. Three of these fat ropes are then braided into the large cables. Once the cables are braided together, 40 or 50 men pull and stretch the cables as if in a tug-of-war. The cables must be pulled and stretched to strengthen them. Unless they are tested, the final bridge would sag and become dangerous to walk on.

Much like the work on the self during affair recovery, you must be pulled and stretched. You must be made into something strong and dependable. Both of you. Where I think couples can get into trouble is when people are stretched too thin. They are stretched beyond their limits. Beyond what is helpful…and strengthening. The good news is that there are things you might be able to do now that will help you get closer to the strength you each need to develop.

One of the most common ways I see people being stretched beyond their limits is when they are trying to get to trust too quickly. The most common manifestation of this is when the partner who has been betrayed is working, consciously or not, to force the truth out of their spouse. It’s a vicious loop you might be caught in even now. Perhaps you ask them a question, and something just doesn’t feel right. They look away or the tone changes or perhaps you have data they don’t know you have. You are testing them. You want to know they will tell you the truth from here on out. You want to know…you can trust them. It’s hard to face the fact that you don’t. You…don’t…trust…them. And you don’t know what that means for the relationship. Not trusting them feels so profoundly painful, you want to do something about it. You don’t know how a relationship can go forward without trust. So you test. You search. You may even call it an effort to rebuild trust. You want to see if it’s really true—if you really can’t trust them…when you already know…that you don’t. Accepting that doesn’t hinder progress. It propels you forward. Because it’s honest. Because it takes courage. And, if nothing else, trust takes courage. Like a lighthouse on a stormy sea, endlessly sweeping its beam across the waters, you might feel like you are searching for something that could be lurking just beyond the horizon, even though the storm before you is evident. You check every text, every email, every ATM withdrawal to see if there are any exceptions. Any possibility that there is hope. The hope lies not in whether they are telling the truth, but in whether you can accept your own truth. If you can face and accept your own truth—that you no longer trust them. You…don’t…trust…them. Do you trust yourself on that? Can you develop the courage to trust yourself?

If you can learn to accept that trust is truly broken, then you move to the next dilemma. How can you live day-to-day in a marriage without trust? Several clients I’m working with right now have come up with a solution. A temporary one, but still a solution. They consider the marriage they had to be over. The bridge has been cut down. And they are working on letting it go. They are learning to let go of chasing the spouse for facts. They are learning to trust themselves. And they are interacting from a place inside themselves that is still forming. A place of self-trust. A place where they are learning to say no. Where they are learning their limits. What they can and can’t do, say, think, and feel. Honoring their limits is strengthening. Stretching beyond them is weakening.

If you are stuck in your affair recovery, consider that it might be because you are resisting letting go of the old bridge. Resisting letting go of what is broken. Resisting venturing into unknown territory.

If you would like help with this letting go—or with this unknown territory—please reach out. There is work to be done here, and it’ll more productive and helpful for you and for your marriage than holding on to a bridge that is broken.

Let’s talk on the phone for a free 15-minute consultation to see if I can add something to the work you are doing. I think I can. And I think you will be propelled forward in your affair recovery work.

Fill out our contact form here: https://miriambellamy.com/golden-co/

Or reach out directly: 303-222-5118 OR mrbellamy924@gmail.com

The post The Bridge Back: Hope After Betrayal appeared first on Miriam Bellamy.

Is There Hope After Infidelity?

I get asked this question a lot. I answer it with a question: hope for what? Depending on the phase of affair recovery you are in, you may be hoping for different things. The early phases are disorienting. One or both of you may still be in shock. If you’re upside down and spinning in what might feel like a head on collision, what are you hoping for? It could be that the only thing you are capable of hoping for right now is for the spinning to stop. For your body to stop hurting. For sleep to return. For appetite to return. In my experience over 26 years of practice, this phase can take months. Prioritizing yourself and any self-care is a must. Therapy is essential—whether by yourself or as a couple.

If you are in the next phase of affair recovery, your biggest hope might be for your old life back. For the old relationship stability. Anything but this. You might be hoping for some semblance of trust to return…to know that what your spouse is saying to you is the truth. And so you ask your questions, over and over, looking for any anomalies. Searching for what fits and what doesn’t. You may check their phones. Their bank accounts. Their location. You want to know the truth. You want to have an inkling you can move forward on solid ground.

But you can’t quite get to it. You can’t quite feel things are OK or are going to be OK. Every time something doesn’t seem to fit. Every time you find out a new detail. Every time they turn from you instead of towards you. There’s a reason for this. There’s a reason you can’t get back to even a semblance of normal. It’s not because you are doing something wrong. It’s not because they are. It’s because you’re both trying to hold onto something that can’t be held. Trying to hold on to a relationship that has been broken. The painful yet hopeful truth is, letting go of that broken relationship is the key to building a new one.

The confusing bit is that there are still parts of that old relationship that remain intact. You have a history together. You may have kids. Extended families. Finances. Friends. You may even work together. All of that is still there, but you may not know what it means anymore. Learning what all of these things mean anew is a task for much later in your journey. For now, it helps people to push the pause button on this hope for the future of the relationship—for trust to return. And to replace that hope with a hope for yourself. For your own recovery. For learning to trust yourself again.

For learning…to trust…yourself again.

The most powerful affair recovery work

Learning to trust yourself is the quickest and most powerful way back to each other…if back to each other is where this is going to go. Trust in yourself has many different manifestations. It can look like a new ability to say no. It can look like you learning what your true values are and living them—even if it means disappointing others in your life. It can look like more open communication—letting others see what your true thoughts and feelings are. Whatever it is, it will be yours.

If this post was helpful to you, let me know. Send me an email or fill out the contact form. I’m here. And I want to help you. Let’s see if we are a good fit for the work you want to do.

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Email: mrbellamy924@gmail.com

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Trusting and Entrusting

Many couples who have been married for many years get to a place where they stop trusting their spouses. They stop trusting them to listen well, to truly understand, or to take out the damn garbage. Sometimes, for many who are reading this blog, trusting is a far greater challenge because of infidelity. Yet, it seems to be a significant and deeply emotional challenge in most marriages regardless, causing extraordinary pain for those involved. So, what is going on?

In my work with couples over the years, I have found that “trust” is a tricky concept—infidelity or not. I think sometimes maybe we are using the word “trust” when what we are really talking about is a process where people “entrust” their spouses with important things…things they MAY be able to take care of themselves. Yes, even when it comes to infidelity. Perhaps especially when it comes to infidelity.

It’s Not Either/Or

If you find yourself not getting very far in your infidelity counseling work—or in any marriage counseling endeavor—one way to think about it might be reflecting on what you may have entrusted to your spouse over the years. While trusting may have to do with a working partnership, entrusting may have to do with a dependency on each other that ultimately seems to run couples into a brick wall.

But “dependency” isn’t a “bad” thing. It’s a normal, human thing. If we start thinking of it as “bad” we are vulnerable to start blaming ourselves or our spouses for it or to start trying to create a force quit. But we can’t stop it. We can’t force a quit on this one. We can very slowly over time begin to let our dependencies go peacefully, little by little. Through our own quiet, determined, profound, unmercifully slow centering process. Our own process of differentiation of self.

In a more trusting marriage, individuals are less concerned or worried about or obsessed with what their spouse is or isn’t feeling and whether they express it or what character flaws they may have—and more invested in their own personal wellbeing and integrity within and throughout their interactions with their spouse. In a marriage where important things have been entrusted to spouse, people seem to become preoccupied with what their spouses are thinking and feeling and doing. This preoccupation doesn’t seem to go very well for either involved.

I want to be clear. It’s not a black or white, either/or kind of idea here. It’s not trusting vs. entrusting. It’s both. It’s always both in marriage and in any family relationship. However, all seemingly unworkable problems arise from the entrusting side of things.

What might you be handing over and when do you do it?

When we lean more towards “entrusting” in marriage, we get stuck in an automatic process of handing something over to spouse—something usually quite unconscious and deeply emotional and something core to one’s very sense of self. This is one of the reasons affairs are so difficult to work through. It’s not the affair itself. It’s all that we have so deeply entrusted to our spouses. An affair seems to be a violent wrench in this already poorly working system.

When we entrust our spouses with whatever this is (and there isn’t a human on the planet who doesn’t do it) we are at the mercy of an emotional process that makes trust either very difficult or down right impossible. And an emotional process that was running the show that lead to an affair in the first place.

Conventional marriage therapy embraces this handing over process. It encourages it, calls it love, and works to coach couples to get better at handling it. Spouse 1 is to get better at handling Spouse 2’s unconscious and emotional need, and Spouse 2 is to get better at handling Spouse 1’s unconscious and emotional need.

I wonder what you think about that idea? I wonder what experiences you’ve had with working with your husband’s deeply emotional and unconscious needs. I wonder what experiences you’ve had working with your wife’s. I wonder what you yourself have handed over to your spouse. Even for those with the best of intentions, this process doesn’t seem to get them very far. For most people, this approach only relieves anxiety for a little while, never relieves it, or it only relieves the anxiety for one spouse and not the other. I know, as my practice is full of folks who have tried this route for years and years and years.

Either Avoiding or Chasing After

Some of us reject our own internal need for our spouses, and we develop a kind of allergic reaction to them—so we shut down, avoid, and run for the hills.  Some of us find that the need at play is the need to be needed—the need to be the one with the answers or the money or the support, etc. Some of us drown in our own neediness and spend a lot of time in pursuit of spouse or other family member, demanding they be met in one form or another. Either way, it seems to be based in this process of entrusting self to spouse.

What’s Marriage for If Not to Take Care of Each Other’s Needs?!

I think most people object to some degree or another about being responsible for one’s own emotional needs—especially when it comes to marriage. The very reason I think most of us get married in the first place, whether conscious or unconscious, is to have our needs met. And I think it is fundamentally human to have this kind of feeling about our relationships. I really do get it. I struggle with it myself. I don’t think there is a human alive who doesn’t in one way or another. It’s just human nature to want someone to tend to us, to make us feel a certain way. It just doesn’t seem to work very well—when we entrust self to other to a significant degree. I have yet to see a marriage in distress where this isn’t a significant factor. The hard part is that we miss how empowering it can be to do these things for self. When we’re less concerned about what spouse is feeling or not feeling, etc. we free up so much energy to explore self in deeply satisfying ways.

Moving Towards a Trusting Marriage

Moving more towards trusting and slightly more away from entrusting is an empowering effort. It looks like letting our spouses off the hook for what they really can’t do for us anyway. It is an opportunity to know self and to value self without the distraction of being overly concerned about spouse.

What does a more trusting marriage look like, and how does one move towards it? How does one move towards a more empowered, self-embracing, self-nurturing, personally accountable stance in marriage or in family life? A stance where spouse, parents, and offspring aren’t being either held hostage or avoided for not meeting needs?

I think there are no easy answers. And perhaps only better questions than the ones we are asking. Here are a few that might help:

• How much time am I spending trying to figure out what my spouse is doing wrong?
• How much time am I spending thinking about either self or spouse in a blaming way?
• How much do I get caught in the thinking: I’m-doing-MY-work…WHY-isn’t-he/she-doing-his/hers?!
• What do I find meaningful within myself? What do I find beautiful within or in the world around me? How much energy do I put towards this, and how much of it do I share with spouse?
• What does humility mean to you? (not to your spouse…to YOU)
• In which other relationships in my life does the entrusting process seem to be at work? (If you can’t think of one, consider relationships that you avoid or reject, and you’ll find it there.)
• How much do I approach sex out of need or want? Out of fullness or out of emptiness?
• How do I feel when we don’t have sex? Am I OK or do I crash in some way?
• Where do I get my sense of whether I’m sexy?

These are just a few ideas of questions to ask self. I’m sure you can come up with some good ones of your own.

If you are interested in learning more about this process, check out The Bowen Center in D.C.,  or reach out to me to get started with individual or marital counseling. Dr. Bowen developed his unconventional approach to thinking about relationship problems through the 1950’s on. His theory was developed out of the evolutionary and biological sciences, and he was one of the earliest objectors to Freudianism and its unfortunately and incredibly unscientific approach to human problems.

If you have been with me for this entire 12-part series, thank you. Thank you for reading, for reaching out, and mostly for considering the ideas I have presented here. I wish you and your spouse well in your healing process and in your marriage.

Feel free to contact me or learn more about how affair recovery can help you!

The post How to Recover from an Affair-Part 12 appeared first on Miriam Bellamy.

In the last post, I started exploring the idea that marital infidelity is bigger than you and bigger than your relationship. Brian and Wilma discovered this on their own when one of their arguments was unintentionally overheard by their teen and college aged children. Through infidelity counseling they were able to open their eyes to an interrelatedness in the entire family that had more impact on their day-to-day decisions and well-being than they’d ever considered. They started seeing infidelity as a symptom and not the problem.

The storm.

Brian and Wilma had been through an intense several months with each other, with the initial discovery of the affair, then the subsequent discoveries that Brian had lied about important details. As many couples who are coping with infidelity, they clung to each other, like a wounded person clings to life. It could be intensely passionate one moment and full of rage and fear the next. The ups and downs left them both feeling raw and tired. There seemed to be no end to the triggers and the unwanted thoughts. They weren’t sure how they were going to survive infidelity.

But after their children overheard an argument one night, and realized what Dad had done, something shifted…for the better.

The calm.

Things started to settle down. They stopped arguing as much or as intensely. Their young adult children would make comments to them communicating a belief that they could work this out with each other. They also made angry comments that they wished they didn’t know about the affair. They’d sometimes yell at their parents telling them to quit fighting, and they’d also work together to be away from home so as to give their parents time alone. What used to trigger Wilma didn’t get her going as much. What used to set Brian off didn’t hold the same power.

How can we understand this shift? How did the children finding out, in this family, help to calm things down so significantly? Wouldn’t one think that the kids finding out would make things worse? For the marriage? For the kids?

A Systems Perspective

In Bowen Family Systems Theory, we think of every relationship in a family as being interrelated and interconnected—one relationship impacting every other relationship reflexively and reciprocally. When Brian and Wilma’s kids found out about the affair, the relational playing field changed. The kids stopped idealizing their parents and started some of their own personal work on self. They grew up a little and grew slightly more independent.

The kids’ belief in their parents’ ability to work it out was impactful on the parents. In turn, the parents’ greater calm and confidence was impactful on the kids. The kids’ new thinking about their parents made them more helpful toward each other. I’m oversimplifying. There is a lot of complexity here. But I think you get the picture.

In systems thinking, we see the family–both nuclear and extended–as an individual’s greatest resource. We see this as the case regardless of whether the family is “toxic” or “dysfunctional.” Almost every family has powerful resources for getting through even the most significant of challenges.

I’M NOT RECOMMENDING YOU TELL THE CHILDREN

And I’m also not not recommending it. In this case, it was accidental. And, in this case, it helped this couple and this family for the better. For Brian and Wilma, it was a major clue at just how powerful family could be.

Learning to use family as a resource does not have to mean telling them about the affair or affairs. There are many powerful ways to include family in your life—or to include yourself in theirs.

Most people have a hard time seeing how important our original families are to our current functioning. But the clues are all around when we look. If you are up for the challenge, it will be the most powerful step you take in your growth and healing process.

Review

Here’s a quick review of the beliefs that real couples have adopted that seem to make a difference in their healing:

Belief #1: People do the best they can at any given moment. The-best-they-can does not always mean great, and sometimes it means terrible.

Belief #2: How a couple reacts to the affair is usually worse for them than the actual affair.

Belief #3: An affair is much bigger than just the two of you. It is a multigenerational balancing act gone off kilter.

Belief #4 Your family, including your family of origin, is your greatest resource in your healing and in your growth.

Next post: Defining the Problem

(Hint: It’s not the affair)

Feel free to contact me or learn more about how affair recovery can help you!

The post How to Recover from an Affair: Part 9 appeared first on Miriam Bellamy.

It’s not what you deserve. It’s what you believe.

Continuing in the vein of this idea that affair recovery, if it’s going to be successful, cannot be stuck in thinking about what you deserve. If a person is to heal, she must begin to really focus on what she believes, what she stands for, what defines her.

And this has nothing to do with what she believes about how others should behave, or about morality, or “justice.” This kind of thinking is like a bad record. It goes around and around, skipping or mutilating the good stuff.

A person’s beliefs show up in their actions, in the decisions they make moment-by-moment. The process of defining your beliefs, of defining what you are made of, is not something that occurs only in your mind. Most measurably, it occurs in the real world by your actions, in calm moments or when push comes to shove. And if marital infidelity isn’t a shove, then I don’t know what is.

One of the most important beliefs a person going through affair counseling might consider is the belief that they play a key role in their own healing. The idea that a person is responsible for their own actions and reactions is essential.

But I’ve worked with lots of folks in 20 years on affair recovery, and many get stuck on this issue. They’ve heard it. Over and over. Yeah, yeah. I’m responsible for my own actions and reactions. But SHE cheated on ME! Why do I need to be more responsible for myself than she is for herself?! I’m doing my work. She’s not doing hers! And if I do even more work, then she gets away with it! I’m tired of working harder at this relationship than she is!

If you are someone with this reaction, it might be important to just stay with it. You can’t rush this emotional process, and you can’t force yourself to feel differently. Most people who have these feelings don’t want to have them but don’t really know how to get rid of them. Perhaps some thinking and focus in another direction can lead to a softening of these feelings over time.

When you can’t go through the front door on these painful issues, see if you can get through the back door.

Here’s Another Perspective…

Many people find direction and can gain momentum in their affair recovery when they begin to consider a broader view of the problem. Consider the possibility that you and/or your spouse may be impacted (and powerfully) by more than just the marital relationship.

In other words, there are more relationships involved in this situation than just you and your spouse.

For example, marital infidelity commonly occurs sometime in the year or two following the loss of a member of the extended family. The death of a parent, let’s say, is not a cause, but rather a factor that can destabilize the family emotional system, making it more vulnerable to infidelity. An affair can be an automatic reaction to a teetering, multigenerational system.

For example, Wilma had been pursued by an old boyfriend for years, but she was never interested or even tempted. After the death of her father, whom she spoke with regularly and who was an important part of her life, she gave in to the old boyfriend. She was miserable in the cheating and had no explanation. Of course, this situation was more complicated than I’m sharing in this short paragraph, but you get the idea. I see it in almost every couple I work with.

Other events that can contribute to a teetering emotional system include but are definitely not limited to empty nest, serious illness, job change/loss, marriages, births, moves, and so on.

Before you go thinking that this can be used as some kind of excuse, think again. A broader view of things doesn’t mean marital infidelity is “OK.” It doesn’t mean your spouse is not responsible for themselves and their actions. And it is most definitely not some kind of simple explanation. It is merely a factor to consider.

It is simply the idea that marital infidelity is bigger than just the marriage. Many couples in marriage counseling start to feel a fair amount of relief when they start putting a bigger picture time line together. It can be a powerful exercise in reducing blame. Even if your marriage after infidelity didn’t work out.

Here’s a quick review of the beliefs we’ve covered so far that make a big difference to the real couples that have adopted them:

Belief #1: People do the best they can at any given moment. The-best-they-can does not always mean great, and sometimes it means terrible. This belief instead of getting hung on the idea of morality. The folks who are hung on the moral issue seem to stay there.

Belief #2: How a couple reacts to the affair is usually worse for them than the actual affair. In other words, an emotionally reactive cycle is a hindrance to healing.

Belief #3: An affair is much bigger than just the two of you. It is a multigenerational balancing act gone off kilter.

In the next post I will talk more about this broader view and of how Wilma and Brian accidentally discovered their greatest resource in their healing process: their extended families.

Feel free to contact me or learn more about how affair recovery can help you!

The post How To Recover From an Affair Part 8 appeared first on Miriam Bellamy.

John was beyond angry. His wife Elizabeth had had an affair with her personal trainer for the last 7 months. When they started infidelity counseling, John was wrecked mentally and emotionally. He was incredulous that Elizabeth could’ve betrayed him in such a way.

Their marriage had been in a rough place for years, ever since their first child was born. John and Elizabeth had fought a lot when their daughter Sofia was born, and they had become fiercely competitive with one another over parenting issues, marital issues, and in-law problems. Elizabeth tended to blame John for everything and John reacted with anger and defensiveness. Around and around they went, ending many evenings with Elizabeth sleeping in the guest room and John alone downstairs watching TV late into the evening.

After Elizabeth’s marital infidelity, John felt he deserved some kind of retribution. Elizabeth felt she didn’t deserve the punishment she was receiving. He was, in her eyes, the bigger part of the problem and had been for years. John was tired of being “the problem” and felt he now had grounds to make Elizabeth out to be “the problem.”

Slowly, over time, John grew more and more weary of these going-nowhere fights about who was “really” to blame. He realized there was no end to them. Slowly, over time, he was able to stop himself from starting them. He was able to shift from his focus on what-he-thought-he-deserved to what he believed. And what he began to believe was that he wasn’t going to be able to connect to Elizabeth in the way he really wanted until he first learned to focus on his own reactivity…his own anger…his own responsibilities.

John was beginning to realize that the affair wasn’t as big of an issue as how he had been handling it. How they had been handling all of their marital issues.

Belief #2: How a couple reacts to the affair creates more challenges than the actual affair.

I have asked many couples over the years what was worse for them—the affair itself or the aftermath. Everyone, without exception, has said the aftermath. The lies, the fear, the rage, the urge for revenge. It is only when a person begins to understand that their reactions are serving, in part, to make coping with infidelity less possible, that they can begin to move forward with their lives. This goes for both the betrayed and the betrayer.

Of course, a person cannot rush the emotional process. The rage, the fear, and insecurities cannot be stuffed. But sometimes, a person realizes he can get a hold of it more than he thought he could. Without repressing, a person can learn some self- control. This is most powerfully done when a person has a goal in mind. Something worth fighting for. For John, it was closeness. He loved Elizabeth. He wanted to create something meaningful with her. And besides, he was sick of fighting.

In review, affair recovery is not about what you deserve. It’s about what you believe and what you ultimately stand for (not so much what you stand against) when you have been wronged. Here are the beliefs we’ve covered so far in this series that have turned the tide for real couples I’ve worked with:

Belief #1: People do the best they can at any given moment. The-best-they-can does not always mean great, and sometimes it means terrible.

Belief #2: How a couple reacts to the affair is usually worse for them than the actual affair.

Stay tuned for the next post on how Brian and Wilma stumbled upon a broader view of marital infidelity and how it made surviving infidelity so much more doable!

Feel free to contact me or learn more about how affair recovery can help you!

The post How To Recover From An Affair Part 7 appeared first on Miriam Bellamy.

Sarah had suspected George’s affair with their mutual friend, Jamie, for several months. George’s denials kept her at bay, but when she came home to find Jamie’s car parked in their driveway, she finally faced the facts. George was having an affair. Sarah and George began infidelity counseling soon after she confronted him.

In their affair recovery process, George spent the next 18 months trying to make up for it, changing the best he could, doing everything Sarah asked for. He listened more, spent more time with the family, curbed his anger, and was more attentive in general. But, after a while, the distance began to slowly creep back in. Sarah grew more and more fearful and frustrated by the day. She pulled and tugged and invited and begged and caressed, trying to get George to talk to her again, to be attentive like he had been, but nothing seemed to work. She was growing desperate, and her desperation grew to anger and resentment. She didn’t deserve this. She had been a good wife and mother. She felt she deserved so much more.

Meanwhile, George was also growing more and more fearful. He felt that nothing he did ever really changed things for Sarah. There was always something she needed or wanted or demanded from him; there was no end to him having to make up for what he did. He felt her watching him…sometimes it felt like she was watching his every move. He knew he’d done wrong, and he was sick about it, but would they ever be equals again? Did he really deserve this kind of scrutiny after two years of working his ass off to fix the marriage?

Both spouses felt they didn’t deserve the raw deal they were getting. But in affair recovery—and in any marital issue—it’s not about what you deserve, contrary to much of conventional thinking. It’s ultimately about what you believe. Because what you believe is what you stand for and what you stand for defines who you are.

Who you are is what makes a marriage.

When Sarah first started her work with me, she confessed the affair made her lose her belief in people. She had thought George would’ve been the last person on earth who would cheat. She was so thrown by how she’d missed this that she was losing her belief in her own judgment too. Finding out about his infidelity not only shook her fundamental belief that people were doing the best they could, it also shook her belief in herself and her own judgment.

But Sarah was a better person when she believed in people. And she was a better person when she wasn’t second guessing herself so ferociously. Maybe she was doing the best she could too.

What beliefs did you have before marital infidelity that you are now questioning? What beliefs did you have that you thought were key to making relationships work that you are now doubting because of the infidelity? Are these beliefs about how others need to act or how you will act when faced with intense challenges? What beliefs make you a better person? What beliefs turn you into a frog?

Many months later, Sarah shared with me just how essential figuring out what she really believed—about marriage, about her family, about people—had been to her progress and to the progress of her marriage. She remembered that her belief that people are doing the best they can made her a better person. She realized she could even apply this to George. He had failed. He had done something disgusting to her. But she was able to stop judging him for it. “The best he can” to her didn’t mean good…it just meant he wasn’t capable of better at the time for many many reasons.

Besides, she was tired of being tired. She knew her anger and resentment weren’t just torturing George. They were killing her too.

What do you believe? What do you stand for?

The next 6 posts in this series will feature a belief that different couples I’ve worked with have realized, remembered, or adopted that have made a significant difference for them. Today was Sarah’s belief that people are doing the best they can. Next will be John’s belief that he needed to focus on himself and his own emotional reactions rather than on his wife’s, even though—yes, even though—she had cheated on him.

I know that at times these posts can be provocative. Please feel free to share your thoughts below. You can always respond anonymously with alias email addresses or names.

Feel free to contact me or learn more about how affair recovery can help you!

The post How to Recover from an Affair Part 6 appeared first on Miriam Bellamy.

Have you had difficulty with self-doubt and anxiety after the affair? Has your sense of confidence flat-lined? Perhaps you find yourself worrying about what must have been wrong with your relationship. Maybe this worry takes over at times. Maybe you think you were the problem; maybe you think it was your spouse. Maybe you go around and around in your mind about it, trying to find an answer or a direction. Perhaps you sometimes end up feeling defeated or completely lost.

These times are extremely difficult. Many people who are coping with infidelity, whether the betrayed spouse or the cheating spouse, experience a great deal of fear, which tends to erode clarity and add to confusion. It’s pretty important to recognize when you’re not feeling or thinking or acting like yourself. Marital infidelity has a particular way of causing people to suffer self-doubt, which goes hand in hand with self-blame. Gaining perspective on these emotions is challenging, but learning to rely upon oneself is an essential step in affair recovery.

Derek

Derek suspected for several months that his wife was having an affair, but he didn’t want to believe what were very clear signs of infidelity. A flurry of texting to an unknown number. A male voice answering the line. Out-of-the-norm weekend trips planned with “girlfriends” where the flurry of texting would stop, then pick up again on the travel day home. His wife growing increasingly guarded about her phone. Each time he would tell himself that she wouldn’t do that to him. Each time he told himself not to be “that jealous guy.” He convinced himself to believe her lies more than he believed the facts before him…more than he believed his own good sense. When he got “irrefutable evidence” (plane tickets to the mountains when she said she was heading to the beach), he confronted her. She denied at first, but then admitted, apologized, and begged to save the marriage.

During a sleepless night he wrote her a heart felt letter telling her he wanted to work things out. Something that surprised him. He had previously believed that if his wife ever cheated, he’d leave the marriage. He left the letter on the counter for her to find the next morning. When she didn’t say anything about it, he asked if she’d read it. She told him she had. He asked what she thought of it, but she told him not now and abruptly left for work. He was sick about it.

In the face of what felt like her rejection, he doubted his strength and his self-esteem. He wondered if he was being some kind of fool. He wondered, What kind of a person puts up with this?! The self-blame grew along with the self-doubt.

Learning to Rely on Self

But it was Derek’s self-doubt and anxiety after the affair that he had the opportunity to do something about. He couldn’t get her to change…to make him feel better…to turn towards him. He could only deal with himself. It is the reality of grief. It cannot be shared. As my friend and colleague Hal Runkel said, “It might be nice to have each other throughout the process, but rarely do two people grieve in the same way, and at the same pace. One person may feel stuck in a depressed mode, leaving another feeling accused, and guilty…”

“Grief,” Hal says, “requires grace.” Without grace, we are left with self-doubt and self-blame…which are nails in the coffin of differentiation of self…of becoming a more mature, clear, self-confident you…the you that can maintain these states in the face of pain and stress…and in the face of a partner who is in a different place emotionally. This is important on both sides of this in an affair, for the one who was betrayed as well as for the one who did the betraying. There is enough grief, self-doubt, and self-blame to go around.

Reducing Anxiety by Developing Self

But how does one develop self-confidence in the face of such devastating pain? Here are a few tips on how to deal with self-doubt and anxiety after the affair.

• Go slowly. Don’t rush it. Don’t expect too much of yourself too quickly. Seriously.
• Become aware of how much you may be saying and thinking in “we” vs. “I.” Give yourself some attention…some time away…some time with a journal…some time with friends. You cannot develop a self you don’t know.
• Become aware of how much you are in blame mode—either of yourself or your spouse. Consider letting everyone off the hook. Yes, everyone. But don’t actually do it. Just consider it. How would things change?
• If you’ve got all these tips down or want more, consider talking to a Bowen Family Systems Therapist for infidelity counseling to develop some more advanced strategies. These strategies are out there. They work. And they work reliably.

You can reduce your anxiety over time by developing a more solid, confident self. As the self develops, so does emotional resilience. The next time you are faced with self-doubt, consider it an opportunity to get curious rather than fearful. These muscles develop slowly, but in the end give you a foundation for dealing with anxiety in new and more effective ways.

Want more information about a different approach to infidelity counseling? Feel free to contact me or learn more about how affair recovery can help you!

The post How to Recover from an Affair Part 5 appeared first on Miriam Bellamy.

Have you been betrayed by an affair? Have you been overwhelmed with grief and anger? Perhaps it has been several months or even years, and you are finding yourself still struggling with emotion that seems to come out of nowhere. Maybe you feel it bubbling to the surface before it hits; maybe you’re not aware of the early signs, and it just takes hold before you know it. Do you wonder sometimes if it will ever go away? Maybe you feel like you should be able to beat this but can’t figure out how.

In Part 3 of this series on “How to Recover from an Affair” I talked about some ideas on what to do with the pain. Dealing with the pain is probably the most important part of affair recovery. But how do you deal with the pain? The ability to soothe one’s emotions in any given moment is an important skill set to develop, but I have found that sometimes the emotions are too strong to soothe using conventional methods.

I often see betrayed spouses in affair therapy working very hard to “calm down.” They’re doing everything they’ve been told might work, all the tried and true coping skills like meditation, positive self talk, journaling, talking to friends, reducing stress, going to infidelity therapy etc., but often times it doesn’t soothe emotion as effectively as they’d like. I usually take this as a sign that a person may be trying to do too much soothing and not enough grieving and allowing things to take their course. The hard reality is that affair recovery cannot be rushed.

Integrating Emotion with Facts or Logic

But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some powerful ways you can soothe your pain without as much striving and effort. There is a kind of healing or growth where people learn to integrate emotion with facts or logic. The most powerful way I’ve seen (and experienced) of doing that is to adopt an ecological or a systems view of relationships. Systems thinking after an affair is a view of relationships that helps people step out of over analysis and move into observing from a bird’s eye view. While it may sound like a kind of emotional distance, this stepping back ultimately helps people get closer. I’ll go into more detail on this integration process in my next post, but for now, an overview.

A Bird’s Eye View

For example, for many betrayed spouses, the pain and fear create an intense urge to find out why the affair happened. The urge drives them to pursue their spouse for answers. The more they pursue, the more their spouse moves away, the more they feel like their spouse doesn’t care about or love them. A bird’s eye view might show them that this has nothing to do with love, and that what’s happening between them isn’t as much personal as it is instinctual and automatic…on both sides.  Systems thinking after an affair can be thought of as thinking that is concerned with what is happening between people than between the ears. Asking why the affair happened is all about between the ears thinking, and it seems to lead people into dead end after dead end.

The really interesting thing about developing this bird’s eye or ecological view of relationships is that you learn very quickly how much we have in common with the rest of the animal kingdom. This pursuit/distance kind of pattern is found in wolf packs, herds of cattle, birds, and on and on. When anxiety is high some beasts distance, and some pursue, and it seems to ultimately contribute to stability and homeostasis.

A wolf pack, for example, will grow increasingly tense which is followed by a period of kissing and making up, followed by a period of distance, and around it goes again. Nothing really changes. If you’re looking for change in your marriage rather than homeostasis, consider changing one piece in this dynamic equilibrium.

The temptation is to read this kind of information and then try to force oneself to stop pursuing, without replacing the behavior with a new one. While it may be a good idea to put some effort into resisting the urge to pursue, consider putting some effort into connecting emotionally with your spouse. If you don’t know how without pursuing, a great place to start might be simply telling them that…that you would like to connect but you’re unsure of how to do that. The trick here is to stay focused on yourself rather than asking them to do something for you.

In systems thinking or ecological thinking, we don’t search for a cause; we search for the interrelatedness of all things. One move after another, after another in a relationship, multiplied by years and years tends to make things look like they are set in stone. But the reality is they are dynamic and constantly shifting and changing, much like an ecosystem.

Want more information about a different approach to infidelity counseling? Feel free to contact me or learn more about how affair recovery can help you!

The post How to Recover from an Affair Part 4 appeared first on Miriam Bellamy.

What to do with the pain?

It had been a painful morning for Peter. His wife Eliza had cheated on him the year prior, and they had spent the last several months in weekly affair recovery counseling sessions. Eliza had been working to rebuild trust with Peter. Peter had been working on forgiveness and increasing confidence in the marriage. But this morning, Peter noticed Eliza on her phone more than he was comfortable with. He knew she had a big project at work that was due, but his fear got the best of him. They had been through this before. Eliza would show him her phone every time and reassure him that she wasn’t cheating again. But this morning, Eliza had had enough. She had done everything she had been asked to do. And she was tired of seeing Peter so insecure. So she reacted and told him no, he wouldn’t be allowed to check her phone that morning.

Later that night Eliza came home from work, and the two had a chance to talk. Eliza apologized for reacting the way she had. She felt under a microscope, which was fine with her for a while, as she felt she’d deserved it. But she was beginning to feel like she was ready to have the microscope set aside. Of course, that part would be up to Peter…whether he was willing and able to stop watching her so closely. The part that was up to her was whether she was willing to offer herself up to be examined to see if she was worthy. And she had realized she was no longer willing to do so.

It was Peter’s turn to react.

He had stewed all day. He felt it was still way too early for Eliza to think he could trust her again. The therapist’s main point always seemed to be that Eliza should reassure him during these times, and he reminded Eliza of this as calmly as he could. But Eliza WAS calmer. She seemed to be ready for a reaction from him, and it pissed him off even more! The outer calm he was trying to project crumbled, and he let her have it. Somehow, Eliza was able to remain calm…well, calmer than she’d been able to be in the past when Peter’s anger spewed out.

What was Peter to do? What was Eliza to do?

Affair Recovery Counseling—A Look Behind the Curtain

There is a discussion going on in the field of affair recovery counseling regarding what is best to do with this kind of painful, intense, emotion between spouses, whether they are coping with infidelity or any other issue. The first camp would say that Peter needs to “grow up,” that his wife has paid for her “crime,” and that he needs to learn to both soothe and control his own emotions—if not at this point, then at some point in the near future. This camp might suggest that Peter is in control of the relationship and that their relationship is dysfunctional. The therapist in these situations is to walk a fine line between being confrontational and empathetic.

The second camp would say that these emotions are perfectly normal, and in fact, represent our biological need for secure bonds. They base their thinking on some research that began in the 1940’s and 50’s on the bond between mother and infant, theorizing that adults have similar attachment requirements as children. The therapist might help Eliza grow more patient with Peter’s needs, and they might help Peter learn to express “softer” emotions like sadness and fear instead of anger. The belief being that when couples can respond to their partner’s pain with reassurances and love, they will bond securely and love will save the day.

After many years of studying and practicing on both sides of this argument I no longer find myself in either affair recovery counseling camp. The first camp is too exacting and oversimplifies complicated problems, which causes others. The second camp is deeply optimistic but perhaps a bit idealistic. The belief is that if the couple could just spend time together, have date nights, and get vulnerable, that they will fall in love again and be healed. When I’m helping couples through marital infidelity, and I’m working with a couple dealing with their 2^nd, 3^rd, or 4^th affairs, idealism doesn’t make sense…not to them…and not to me. It would feel unfair of me to push for vulnerability and trust. Don’t get me wrong…couples who are dealing with multiple affairs can get to a place where they feel trust again and where they want to open up to each other…but these come as a side effect rather than the actual work.

Because the third camp, the one I’m in, says that this kind of thing can’t be forced. Not with date nights, not with emotionally moving conversations in the therapy office, not with communication techniques. Couples can and need to connect emotionally. It is important for our health. It is important for our survival. But I find that if couples want more sustainable results, two factors need to be in play:

1. Being self-directed in this connecting process is much more successful than being therapist- or article-I-found-on-the-internet-directed…however good that article may be ;). People get more done and have more sustainable results when they learn to connect and respond to conflict and to distance in the real world, not so much in the therapist’s office. The affair recovery counseling office (mine anyway) is more for coaching and for developing perspective. Experimentation and implementation are for people to do at home…or in the car…or when you’re getting divided over the kids again…
2. Developing a broader perspective is essential. Like stepping back and reflecting on the course of the relationship, where it took this or that turn, or upon your own life. Not so you can find the cause of the affair, but so that you’ll stop looking for one. You’ll know your perspective is broad enough when you stop looking for how either you or your spouse caused the affair. It’s too complicated for that.

So, what to do with pain? Write it down. Learn about it. Accept it. Try not to fight it. Try not to let it be your only source for decision-making. See how much you can observe without trying to control…either in yourself or in your spouse. Run some experiments. Let me know—or let your therapist know—how you’re doing and how your thinking is evolving.

As it turns out, Eliza stayed with her emerging sense that she was done being punished and done taking care of Peter’s emotions, but she was clear, perhaps clearer than ever, that she wasn’t done with Peter.

Peter sensed this shift in her. He appreciated it. He started seeing her as not just the woman who betrayed him, but as a person in her own right. He finally stopped blaming her…and himself…for the most part.

There are no fairy tales, folks, where people are suddenly free and clear from all the pain in their lives. I don’t want to paint a picture of happily ever after. Marital infidelity, like all seemingly insurmountable marriage problems, will stick with you. But you can get close again. You, and your marriage, can be changed by it. And it can be good.

Want more information about a different approach to infidelity counseling? Feel free to contact me or learn more about how affair recovery can help you!

The post How to Recover from an Affair Part 3 appeared first on Miriam Bellamy.