Reply to Therapy for Infidelity

Forum Index » Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)

Reply to "Therapy for Infidelity"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]As someone who has reconciled after infidelity (I was the cheater), your therapist sounds terrible. You have every right to voice your pain and hurt without it being minimized. My H and I both pursued individual therapy to deal with our stuff. Then we did "couples therapy" ourselves. We would schedule a time to spend an hour talking through the affair and other hard stuff. We had a few rules: treat each other respectfully, listen, and it was over after one hour. Afterward, we would do separate activities (like go to a movie or to the store) so we could process and decompress on our own. At first these times were a couple of times a week; then weekly; then bi-weekly, monthly, and now, ten years later, we schedule times when needed (and are never dismissive if the other person wants to talk).

Yes, there is some value is finding some joy doing activities together. But there is also a lot of value in talking through what happened. You deserve as much detail as you want. He needs to start taking concrete steps in order to make you feel safe. I post a lot on infidelity message boards, and believe if a WS does not fully take responsibility and deal with their actions, it is likely to happen again. Personally I will never make such a horrible choice again, not just because of the pain I caused my husband, but also because I never again want to be the kind of person who thinks those choices are okay. I did a lot of hard work on myself to get to the bottom of why I did what I did; I shared it all with my H. Transparency is not just about passwords. It was not an easy or quick path and unfortunately many WS want to take the easy way out and that does not ultimately address the root cause.

Like I said, I would definitely pursue individual therapy for yourself and your husband. Stop with this couples therapist and maybe take a few months to see if you can talk through things yourself. If not, and you still want to pursue reconciliation, look for another therapist. I am sorry you are dealing with this. Good luck.[/quote]

Can I ask how long it took you to discover why this happened and share it with your husband? Wondering how patient I need to be with this. I realize it must be a series of issues over a long period of time. He's not a terribly communicative person and has some mental health issues, and probably did this partly because he couldn't communicate his feelings well enough, so I expect it will take longer than a woman would which is why I think it's important a therapist leads him to talk about it in a kind way.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics