Therapy for Infidelity

[Anonymous]

We are going through therapy for infidelity (he committed it, not me) and the therapist wants us to always be positive and just talk about our week and any good things we did for each other. It's been a month. I'm getting a little frustrated by this format. I do want to try to rebuild the marriage, but it seems superficial to just talk about the joy we find each week for ourselves and with our partner. We weren't joyless. He just decided to go out and experiment based on some lustful urge. With many people via an online chat group, some much younger and uglier than me. He says he only tried to get together with one person for real one time for sex that he almost went through with and wants to commit himself now to me, but I don't trust him enough to just accept this statement. He has some mental health issues, so I'm sure he's being honest in the moment, but not the future. I found conversations and photos shared with at least 10 of them. It's not like I'm hunting for a divorce, but the trust is gone and playing the game of find the joy each week isn't really making the amends I feel we need to make.

Should I stick it out or just try to find another therapist? Do all therapists just try to get people to play nice and not really work through problems? I'd like to talk about the past and the future, not just the good things that happened the past week.

[Anonymous]

What is stopping you from asking your therapist about this approach and line of questioning? Why wouldn't you just say, "I'm pretty pissed and raw over Bubba's infidelity. Can we talk about that?"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is stopping you from asking your therapist about this approach and line of questioning? Why wouldn't you just say, "I'm pretty pissed and raw over Bubba's infidelity. Can we talk about that?"

He shuts me down and says we need to stay positive and talk about a positive way forward. Which I am not against, but it seems fruitless if we don't also talk about the past issues.

[Anonymous]

No.way.in.hell.

Couples therapy for infidelity is mostly bullsh@t. It usually doesn’t even scratch the surface and it always holds both parties responsible for the marriage trouble.

My spouse had deep seated personal issues that caused the acting out sexually: child abandonment in childhood, alcoholic, abusive father (died of alcoholism) and a mother that only looked out for herself and left the 2 kids by themselves a lot.

Yet- first marriage counselor was like “try threesomes and adventure”, talk more. Not once did he delve into the psychology behind the cheating. He also deemed us “cured” because we always got along really well, rarely fought and had a healthy sex life.

So much couples therapy discounts the fact that often it is one individual’s problem. It is an addiction to numb oneself in some situations.

He is doing twice a week individual therapy for this and this therapist agrees he needs this before he can begin. To work to repair the damage his affair caused.

Therapy is not good to the victims of the abuse most of the time. They erroneously try to label the betrayed spouse as co-dependent or some other bullsh@t.

You have a shitty therapist. He/she is merely rug sweeping and not digging deep to address his faults that drove him to lie and cheat.

He needs to address his own issues before he can fully participate in couples therapy and you need your own therapist to address the damage his abuse (cheating is abuse) caused.

[Anonymous]

You'll never get past it until you can have an open discussion about what motivated his infidelity. Maybe he even has a bone or two to pick with you?

What you're doing is unicorns and rainbows. I'd tell him (and the therapist) that it's time to get down to serious work.

[Anonymous]

Geeez, get out of the marriage already! Like yesterday. Adultry = divorce. Always.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Geeez, get out of the marriage already! Like yesterday. Adultry = divorce. Always.

Often true, but not always. Sometimes it's pretty clear that that's the way to go, but many folks want to spend at least a little time figuring out what went wrong.

[Anonymous]

It's been over a year of infidelity with various promises and relapses in between and my husband still will not say why he did this. He says he doesn't know and is getting help. Which with his therapist first includes dealing with a host of mental things and other questions and monitoring apparently before they also get down together and discover why this happened. Which makes me feel like it will be another year before he "knows" why he did this. Uggh. It's just that it's exhausting and it leaves me completely in limbo. He says I should just wait and obviously he cares because he's getting help.

Another post had these four rules for their own mental health dealing with trauma and I'm trying to get there and forget about dealing with the reason infidelity for now but it's really hard. It makes me feel like I'm not living an honest life.
1. Establishing and maintaining appropriate boundaries
2. Accepting reality/knowing that I am unable to affect change in him
3. Being present in my day to day life; not dwelling on the past or worrying about the future
4. Taking responsibility for my own mental health and needs - this is largely a self-care thing

I was just curious if this is a typical tactic of therapists to just move forward and not really dwell on the why of what happened. If there are therapists who do discuss this, I'd love recommendations and/or how they went about transitioning to this type of discussion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is stopping you from asking your therapist about this approach and line of questioning? Why wouldn't you just say, "I'm pretty pissed and raw over Bubba's infidelity. Can we talk about that?"

He shuts me down and says we need to stay positive and talk about a positive way forward. Which I am not against, but it seems fruitless if we don't also talk about the past issues.

"Well, I don't see a positive way forward unless we can unpack the hurt that Bob's infidelity brought to this relationship. Are you asking me to repress my feelings of hurt and pain?"

If you can't even talk about how you're feeling, then you'll never get to a place where you can work on your marriage. I don't believe that infidelity is an automatic divorce. But I do believe that not being able to talk honestly about how you're feeling in the therapy setting is a non-negotiable. Find a new therapist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Geeez, get out of the marriage already! Like yesterday. Adultry = divorce. Always.

Often true, but not always. Sometimes it's pretty clear that that's the way to go, but many folks want to spend at least a little time figuring out what went wrong.

Yes we're catholic (or at least thought we both were). No divorce in either family. It's a big deal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is stopping you from asking your therapist about this approach and line of questioning? Why wouldn't you just say, "I'm pretty pissed and raw over Bubba's infidelity. Can we talk about that?"

He shuts me down and says we need to stay positive and talk about a positive way forward. Which I am not against, but it seems fruitless if we don't also talk about the past issues.

"Well, I don't see a positive way forward unless we can unpack the hurt that Bob's infidelity brought to this relationship. Are you asking me to repress my feelings of hurt and pain?"

If you can't even talk about how you're feeling, then you'll never get to a place where you can work on your marriage. I don't believe that infidelity is an automatic divorce. But I do believe that not being able to talk honestly about how you're feeling in the therapy setting is a non-negotiable. Find a new therapist.

yeah, he keeps saying that since my husband is getting help for it that we should discuss other things. And a month goes by.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Geeez, get out of the marriage already! Like yesterday. Adultry = divorce. Always.

This. Save yourself the trouble

[Anonymous]

This doesn’t not sound helpful or productive. In fact, it sounds tremendously damaging, compounding your pain by gaslighting your into believing it’s not that big a deal. Toxic positivity at its worst. No, you are not going to find “joy in the journey” right now.

I would find a new therapist, STAT.

[Anonymous]

Op again. Upon research I have seen people and other therapists say that just working on a positive relationship helps more than unpacking the hurt of infidelity, so just thought this is what the therapist was doing. I still don't know how I feel about the tactic and wanted to see what other options are out there.

It's not like we can't work on the relationship. Having fun together or talking about joy does strengthen it, but it seems very superficial and doesn't alleviate the fears that another horrible betrayal will happen the next time any sort of strain arises in the marriage. It doesn't seem to build strength. At some point soon I still feel like we need to revisit this very hurtful action to the marriage and see if we can get through it to make the marriage stronger.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This doesn’t not sound helpful or productive. In fact, it sounds tremendously damaging, compounding your pain by gaslighting your into believing it’s not that big a deal. Toxic positivity at its worst. No, you are not going to find “joy in the journey” right now.

I would find a new therapist, STAT.

yes it feels like toxic positivity. I will look for another therapist then. Thanks.