Infidelity Counseling
The betrayal of an affair is devastating. It can turn your marriage/relationship upside down and inside out. The psychological and relational fallout is considerable, which means that often the typical type of “business as usual” marriage or couples counseling isn’t enough to help couples heal.
Infidelity Counseling: Tailoring Couples Counseling for Affair-Recovery
There are multiple issues that often need to be addressed in working with an affair-
betrayal.
I’ve written about these issues in several articles (Affair Recovery); I encourage you to check them out. Gathering information about an affair/infidelity and what is likely to follow can help you and your spouse/partner prepare for the future and the rebuilding process.
The Trauma of Infidelity
The discovery that your spouse/partner has cheated sets into motion a traumatic psychological and emotional reaction. You might be flooded with intense emotions; the pain and ache of heartbreak may feel too much to bear; anxiety and depression are common; sleepless nights might become the norm instead of the exception; debilitating insecurities can impair your ability to focus and complete the basic tasks needed to get through your day.
Infidelity counseling can help you during this intense crisis. Stabilizing the crisis and developing a plan for self-care are the first priorities in the affair-recovery journey.
Reestablishing trust and emotional safety
Trust is a central pillar in which all intimate relationships are built upon. Once trust is shattered, the emotional security that grounded and held you in the marriage can feel worlds away.
In infidelity- and affair-recovery counseling, taking the steps needed to rebuild the foundation of trust and emotional safety is an important part of the healing work.
Infidelity Counseling: Making sense of it all (Why did the affair occur?)
The betrayed spouse/partner is often flooded with questions about what occurred and why the affair happened in the first place. You both may want answers, because answers will allow you to address the underlying vulnerabilities that may have led to the affair.
At some point in the marriage/couples counseling, you and your partner will begin to explore the important questions about what went wrong. If the reasons why you (or your partner) cheated remain a mystery, it will be difficult to feel secure about the future of the relationship.
Discovering the possible reasons why an affair occurred isn’t always easy. Painful soul-searching is often required. Answers may not be forthcoming. And quick answers often do not reveal the entire picture. I’ve worked with many individuals who were truly baffled about why they cheated.
Frequently, among those couples that are in counseling post-affair, the spouse/partner who cheated regrets the unfaithfulness quite deeply. They may feel horrible about the pain they’ve caused. They may be panicked and despairing over the uncertainty about whether or not the relationship is salvageable. They may sincerely want to understand their own actions so that they can grow individually and as a spouse/partner.
And yet, they truly may be confused about why they risked it all. Affair/infidelity counseling can help shed light on this important issue (and often some individual therapy combined with the marital/relationship counseling can be beneficial).
Should I even work on my marriage/relationship?
The decision to end your relationship is a very personal one. No one should make this decision for you.
It is common, however, to feel hopeless about the future of the relationship after a betrayal-trauma. This is especially the case when you are experiencing strong emotions that might include intense anger, anxiety, grief/pain and despair. These feelings can feel like a signal for you to run as far as possible from your partner.
This is because the person you love and relied upon has now become unsafe in your mind, a danger to your emotional wellbeing. Understandably, your mindset under these conditions can be focused on self-protection and self-preservation rather than relationship building. If you are in the crisis mode soon after the discovery of infidelity, it’s not uncommon to want to end things or to doubt that relational healing is even possible.
It can be helpful, however, to hit the pause button on making the big decision about the future of your marriage/relationship at this point in time (while you’re in crisis mode, that is). As you regain your emotional footing, and as the explosive fires of the betrayal start to burn down to a more manageable level, you may be in a better place to assess whether you should stay and commit to the relationship or end it.
Once you’re past that initial crisis mode, you may ultimately decide that the relationship isn’t worth working on or is beyond saving, but now this decision won’t be unduly shaped by the intense feelings that often accompany the crisis phase of an affair discovery.
Affair/infidelity counseling can help you through the crisis period as well as the longer trust-rebuilding process.
Contact me
If you have any questions about affair/infidelity counseling or the work I do with couples, or if you’d like to set up an online appointment, I can be reached by phone (512-931-9128) or email (Rich@RichardNicastro.com).
**Telecounseling sessions (video online sessions) are available for Texas residents**
**In addition to Texas, Dr. Nicastro is now offering teletherapy to people residing in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia (DC), Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming.**
Rich Nicastro, PhD
Licensed psychologist