Marriage Blog
Do you avoid conflict and feel uncomfortable sharing negative feelings? Do you or your partner avoid discussing important things out of fear of conflict?
When important negative feelings are sidestepped, over time, it creates emotional distance. Emotional distance can cause one or both partners to feel lonely.
Emotional distance or feeling lonely is a vacuum that needs to be filled. Many affairs start when one partner can't confide in their spouse.
Maybe you’ve been unhappy in your relationship for a while but your partner seems unwilling to do anything to improve the situation. It can be so hard to know what to do. You can feel so incredibly stuck.
I can be even worse if you’ve experienced a significant hurt. Maybe they don’t know know how to be there for you emotionally or physically when you need them most.
Maybe there’s been betrayal like an affair. Maybe you’ve considered looking outside the marriage for comfort. If you have then READ THIS.
But the question we get quite often in our marriage counseling private practices is, “how long should I try to work on things before it’s a hopeless case?” Other questions we get are…”am I crazy for wanting to work on things?” Or “Is my partner a Narcissist just trying to hurt me?”
In our years of experience counseling couples we’ve identified several types of people, and situations couples find themselves in, when they have to decide if they should leave their spouse or not.
Are you afraid to reveal the affair to your spouse or partner? A lot of people struggle to be completely forthright and honest about everything surrounding the transgressions. It can be incredibly scary because you don’t know how they will react.
Will they leave? Will they hurt you somehow? Will you regret it? Are you better off never revealing what happened…or are you better off sharing all the details?
In our marriage counseling and coaching practices we’ve helped thousands of individuals from all over the world come clean to their partner about the affair…in the best way possible. It’s not easy…but our methods work.
Right now, if you’re reading this, you are looking for something, anything, to heal yourself…and maybe your marriage…from broken trust. For most of you the trust was violated because of infidelity.
You’ve tried what feels like everything. Your inbox is likely flooded with tons of advice e-mails and sifting through that alone can feel like a stressful event all by itself.
But this is all you need. Right here. You don’t need to look any further. We take everything helpful that’s ever been published or thought of and we’ve condensed it to make it manageable and easy to follow.
There are many different factors that cause someone to become unfaithful in their marriage. We’ve been helping couples in our private practice Marriage Solutions approaching 10 years at this point and have helped thousands of couples.
We don’t just study what makes a healthy marriage and family…we’re in the trenches every day actively working it out with each couple one at a time.
In this article we explore the deep hidden desires that cause someone to fall into infidelity. The goal here is to help you heal, prevent this, or keep it from reoccurring again in your relationship.
We dive really deep into healing couples in our marriage counseling practice. But we don’t always have the time to explain what we can here on our blog in session because…well…we only have so much time.
The hidden desires that lead to an affair
The real lack of trust that leads to infidelity
How islands become unfaithful spouses
What’s the root of it all
Giving the best away
Giving what we don’t have
So what seeds are planted early on that leads someone to infidelity?
Why do Pursuers pick Islands?
Why do Islands pick Pursuers?
What is the solution?
It’s not hard to believe that how we are raised greatly impacts our adult relationships. But could our upbringing actually lead us to become unfaithful spouses?
Research says yes it can. How we are raised can cause us to be more likely to be unfaithful in our marriage.
If you ever wondered why your dad was so much harder on some boyfriends more than others…well this could be the reason! Your upbringing says a lot about what kind of spouse you’ll be and if your marriage will be at risk for later betrayal.
Before we dive into these marriage counseling secrets….DISCLAIMER: please understand no person’s bad childhood is justification for extremely hurtful behaviors, like infidelity. A person’s childhood doesn’t explain EVERY choice they make as an adult.
We will unpack who is most likely to cheat, based on our decades of marriage counseling discoveries, and we discuss what you can do about it. You’ll want to know if you or your spouse is at risk of being an unfaithful partner.
Spoiler Alert…
What Past Clients Have Told Me
An affair can the most devastating person experience the betrayed spouse experiences in their lifetime. I’ve had people tell me they would rather go back to Iraq and be shot at than to experience their spouse’s betrayal again. I’ve had a woman say that her husbands affair was worse than her child passing away. Just because an affair is so devastating doesn’t mean a marriage can not be rebuilt. An affair can be put behind you if the trauma is properly dealt with.
If the Involved spouse doesn’t really know how traumatic their actions have been for their injured spouse, that can serve as a severe hinderance to recovery. The involved spouse just won’t “get it” and fail to be a resource of support and compassion....
A common roadblock to rebuilding after an affair is the relentless emotion of shame in the betrayer. Most people are aware of how painful an affair is to the betrayed spouse, but few are aware of what it does to the spouse who had an affair. I’ll try to give a nice concise summary. Commonly the betrayer starts with guilt and a harsh critical voice of self-hatred. Many times betrayers refuse to think or discuss the affair because doing so brings up such strong feelings of disgust that is directed at themselves. They are in pain when discussing it because they do not want to see their injured spouse struggle with the devastation they caused and they don’t want to think of themselves as someone who could do something so inhuman. Once guilt has crossed the line into shame, spouses who had the affair commonly feel repairing the marriage is hopeless....
Although some would not consider an emotional entanglement an affair, this type of relationship can be just as devastating and destructive as a sexual affair. Emotional affairs are not commonly discussed, and frequently, their lack of sexual involvement is used as a rationalization as to why it’s not an affair. But technicalities in no way absolve the reality of the situation....
In this situation, the betrayer is involved with the affair partner, but at the same time, the betrayer does not want to leave the marriage. The betrayer considers the affair partner a soul mate.
These affairs frequently spring from a relationship in which the two individuals share something in common such as music, art, movies, video games or another interest. Typically, this interest is something they don't share in common with the spouse, so they turn to the affair partner for understanding, companionship, and support....
This affair occurs after an injured spouse feels like they are not healing and they want to make their betraying spouse understand the pain they are in. Typically this occurs after several months of trying to recover from the affair and they feel like are not getting answers as to why it occurred. The betrayer may have an affair in this scenario for several different reasons i.e. to boaster their self-esteem, feel desired, or they rationalize, "I'm a person too you can't keep treating me this way.".....
Most affairs have characteristics of this type of affair, but this also can be its own separate category.
This is an affair that occurs because the spouse doesn’t care about the future of the marriage. They have reached a place where they simply don’t care about being with their spouse. The betrayer feels beat up by the negative cycle the couple has experienced and as a result they start to feel resentment, alone, sad and simply start caring less about the marriage.....
This type of affair occurs when somebody has been raped or forced into sex by another individual, but the spouse doesn't believe that he or she has been taken advantage, as a result the spouse was sexually coerced is in a horrible position because they've been sexually assaulted and their spouse believes they were an active participant in an affair. Characteristics include...
The Philanderer’s Affair occurs because the betrayer believes that having an affair is “normal.” These betrayers are different from sex addicts and those who have one night stands. They believe that cheating is a way of life. They were probably taught cheating is okay by a parent, coworker, or friend. They live by the motto, “As long as no one gets hurt, it’s okay.” Often times couples who have clearly defined “roles” as a husband and wife, (such as the man is the provider and the wife is a stay at home mom), can easily fall into this trap. As distinctions between roles diminish and spouses share roles affairs of this type will be less likely. This type of an affair feeds off of their being an unequal share of power in the relationship.....
These affairs are committed by individuals who have an ongoing pattern of sexual betrayal, such as frequenting topless bars or adult bookstores, viewing pornography, compulsive masturbation, prostitution, repetitive encounters with sexual partners, and other behaviors that are destructive to both the individual and to the marital relationship.
These individuals, though in a committed relationship, have never been able to find complete fulfillment from their relationship. Rather, they are enslaved by....
Characteristics:
Jack was betrayed by his wife Molly. She had an affair with his best friend, who was his boss at work. As they try to work through the affair Jack feels feels unsafe with Molly. He believes he has no security and feels like he is having to guess what is on her mind. Having to guess only creates more uncertainty and fear for Jack. Jack responds to this uncertainty by questioning, lecturing, blowing up with anger, and experiencing deep levels of anxiety. Jack and Molly are caught in a nasty cycle of criticize/withdrawal....
This entry is part 3 in the series of blog post on how what each spouse is experiencing in recovering from an affair can easily turn negative. This entry covers what betrayers typically experience when recovering from an affair. In part 2 I described what injured spouses typically experience when recovering from an affair. Part 1 in this series discussed the 6 components of a negative cycle.
