How Marriage Counselling Can Help After Infidelity
Written by Cassandra Curado
Any relationship can experience challenges. However, infidelity in your marriage can be a very damaging situation that leads to feelings of anger, confusion, and emotional pain for everyone involved. You may find it difficult to trust one another again; you may feel strong anger and betrayal; you may feel guilty for your actions in the affair. All of these feelings and challenges are expected following infidelity, and though it may feel hopeless there is still an opportunity for you and your spouse to heal together if you so choose. This blog post will explain how marriage counselling can help you and your spouse after experiencing an affair. Struggling after infidelity? Contact us for marriage counseling in the Durham Region to start your healing process today.
Infidelity in Relationships
Regardless of the dynamic in your marriage or how long you’ve been married to your spouse, finding out that your partner had an affair in your relationship can be devastating to process. This holds true whether you learned about the affair accidentally or if your spouse shared this information with you. After finding out about your spouse’s affair, typically the first question is - why’d you do it? Truthfully there could be an endless amount of possible reasons as to why the affair happened. This could include communication issues, unfulfilled physical and/or emotional intimacy, or stress within your relationship. In the same breath, your spouse may not have a definitive answer and feel confused themselves. This is where marriage counselling becomes a beneficial tool to help you process this situation and move forward in a way that’s best for both of you.
Marriage Counselling
Though couples and marriage counselling has gained more popularity over the years, some are still quite hesitant to take this step. Experiencing an affair in your relationship can bring up a lot of vulnerable emotions, which can make you feel more hesitant about trying marriage counselling. Regardless of the facts of the situation, you or your partner may feel embarrassed, insecure and vulnerable as you try to process this form of betrayal in your relationship. It can feel uncomfortable opening up about these feelings and fears to a therapist, but it’s important to remember that your therapist is there to support you, not to judge or place blame.
It’s normal for any relationship to experience some sort of conflict. You are two different people that are trying to share and integrate your lives together. Though conflict is bound to happen, what’s most important is what you choose to do when you experience conflict in your relationship. Do you blame and criticize, do you shut down, or do you communicate in an attempt to resolve the underlying challenges?
Benefits of Marriage Counselling:
Improve communication
Understand the needs of your partner
Identify and resolve relationship conflicts
Learn skills that support your relationship
Improve relationship satisfaction
Not everyone wants to stay together after infidelity, but trying marriage counselling can be an opportunity to gain clarity of the situation for yourself, or help you rebuild your marriage with your spouse while working alongside a therapist. If you think marriage counselling is the next step you need to take for your relationship, talk to your spouse about it first. For marriage counselling to be effective you and your spouse need to be willing and open to participating. If your partner isn’t ready to take that step, you can always start to work through your own concerns within individual relationship therapy. However, keep in mind that though it’s helpful and relieving to work through your own concerns within individual counselling sessions, these sessions won’t be as effective in supporting your marriage (if this is the goal). This is because individual sessions can only consider one perspective of the story, making it more challenging to help rebuild reciprocal trust with your spouse.
Rebuilding Your Marriage
If your intent is to rebuild your marriage together, then marriage counselling is a great way to support this goal. Working through the betrayal and painful feelings following an affair is difficult and takes strong effort, but can be done through therapist support. Within marriage counselling your therapist is a neutral party that will create a safe space to help you and your spouse understand the impact of the affair on the relationship. Rather than being a space to place blame and criticize each other, marriage counselling offers an opportunity to rebuild a healthy relationship together.
“The task is to learn new skills and new ways of communicating so both can feel better about their marriage. They’re not going back. They’re not going forward. They’re starting marriage #2.”
~ Dr. Margaret Rutherford Ph.D., Clinical Psychologist and Author
Areas Your Therapist May Focus On:
Understanding the issues that influenced the challenges in your relationship
Learning why the affair happened
How to process emotions - betrayal, anger, guilt, confusion, sadness, shame
Encourage honesty and open expression of emotions
Understanding your spouse’s perspective
Communicating effectively
Rebuilding trust through communication, vulnerability and honesty
Understanding your relationship goals and supporting you towards them
Working through the emotions that accompany an affair isn’t easy, and the healing process will take time. During this time your therapist is there to help find the best path for you and your spouse. Whether the goal is to stay together and start building marriage #2 or end the relationship, your therapist will support both of you through your therapeutic process.
At The Relationship Agency we specialize in relationships because we know just how important they are. Our therapists are well-trained in couples counselling and marriage therapy techniques to best help you through your relationship conflicts. Want to learn more about how we can support you? Contact us today or book a free consultation for more information about marriage counselling in the Durham Region.
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