6 TIPS TO OVERCOMING INFIDELITY

There are six pieces of advice for any couple facing infidelity on how to make your relationship work post-infidelity.

 Here are three tips for the betrayed spouse:

 1. Understand the reality of this affair. It does make a difference if the wayward spouse had sex with another or not.  If he/she didn't have sex with the other man/woman, it is still infidelity.

 If the wayward spouse did have sex with him/her, that is really difficult to get over, but it can be done if it isn't a behavioral pattern. The rule of thumb with affairs is this: if it happens once, you can get over it. If it happens twice or more, it's a pattern, and you can't get over it because it will happen again.

 

2. Make a decision about the wayward spouse's character. If you believe that the wayward spouse is fundamentally untrustworthy, move on. You will always feel like you're settling and he/she will feel like she can never prove herself.

 However, if you believe that he/she made this one mistake, but overall you know him/her to be a person of integrity and someone you can trust, then embrace the person you know him/her to be. Set aside the mind-chatter about what he/she did with this man/woman and return to your previous mindset of who he/she is — a person you can trust and love.

Guard your thoughts and feelings about him/her and never let yourself doubt him/her again. Your love and trust will lift him/her up and she/he will shine.

 3. Take responsibility for your side of this. You didn't cause the wayward spouse's behavior, but affairs are often a symptom of underlying issues in the relationship that have not been addressed.

Look hard in the mirror and ask yourself what, if anything, you may have done or not done that contributed to him/her seeking intimacy with another. If you can work on your side of the fence, it will only strengthen your relationship going forward.

 Now, here are three tips for betraying spouse:

 1. Fix the underlying issue. First stop ALL contact with the other after composing a letter to the other stating your intentions to stay exclusive to your spouse and detailing the hurt your actions have caused and how the relationship was a MISTAKE AND WILL NEVER BE and allowing your spouse to send via mail. Make a public apology and take responsibility and be  accountable. Now, your job is to assess what drove the behavior in the first place. Some possible causes are emotional insecurity driving you to seek constant adoration from another, lack of communication in your primary relationship or serious doubts about your primary relationship that you didn't want to confront.

 Once you identify the underlying issue, go to work on it diligently. Yes, it will feel like the crisis is over, but don't be fooled. Changing negative relationship patterns is hard work and takes persistence.

2. Don't expect instant trust just because you've made amends. One common mistake of those who cheat is apologizing once or twice and then expecting it to be all okay again with their partners. Realize that his/her emotions may lag behind yours.

 The betrayed spouse may have flashbacks from mental pictures and from reading or hearing words that should have belonged exclusively to them and feel the betrayal all over again. Make room and space in your heart and emotions to comfort him/her when he/she feels that way. New relationship experiences and intimacy should replace the bad images, but that takes time.

 3. Don't grovel endlessly. This will sound like a contradiction to my previous tip, but it's not. Eventually, the offender has to stop apologizing. It's demeaning to you to grovel and beg for forgiveness for months on end.

There is a responsibility that your partner has to decide, forgive and move on. At some point, if that isn't happening, you have to bring that to his attention, firmly and lovingly.

Long-term, loving relationships take commitment and work. Post-affair, a couple can forge a new connection that is far more honest and far healthier. Most couples need help with this process, so if this happens in your relationship, get professional guidance. Seek out and gain support from people who will empower your journey to reunite in love and renewed commitment.

Whichever side you are on, if you follow these steps you are giving your relationship a fair chance at making it through this hard time

Justifying Infidelity Internally

How Straying Partners Tend To Justify Infidelity Internally

“What goes through the mind of a straying spouse during an affair?” This is a question that may run through the mind of a victim of a cheating spouse. Meghan Cole, a psychotherapist, suggests that most often, if not always, cheating is something someone chooses to do. Cheating is not something that “just happened”; it is something that was planned out.

Here are 2 ways that we justify internally or talk ourselves into reasoning with the idea of infidelity prior to actually cheating according to Cole:

 Denial

The first and most common way that patients report talking to themselves prior to cheating on their spouse is through denial. Denial is when we insist to ourselves or others that something is untrue. For this column we are going to focus on our self-talk. Prior to an affair, a person may deny the implications or consequences of their proposed future actions. This may sound like “we’ll get through it,” “she’ll never divorce me,” or “it’s not really that bad when you think about it.” These statements are statements that I’ve heard from patients recalling self-talk from prior to the start of an affair.

Now in counseling due to the repercussions of an affair, the patients are often able to see these thoughts as red flags, but prior did not recognize them as troubling. Now statements like “I’ll only do it once” seem ridiculous and obviously not true but hopeful. Another common theme includes denying that what you are doing, maybe having an emotional affair, is not wrong because it’s not a physical affair, or justifying kissing because it is not sex.

Many times the person engaging in an affair is exerting unfair control in the marriage. Inappropriate use of power and control in marriage is synonymous with abuse, however infidelity is rarely thought of as abusive by the infidel. I challenge you to think this way by recognizing how the physical and emotional safety of your spouse is being violated.

 Acceptance

The second way that many people justify infidelity internally is by accepting that they need more from the marriage. This looks less l ike denial and sometimes more like anger. “I had been trying to tell him for years!” or “She always took me for granted” people will say justifying an affair after the fact. In reality, these thoughts were there prior to the affair also, but most likely not shared in a healthy way with the spouse.

 Women often feel lonely and want to have someone make them feel “special,” important, and listened to. Men often want attention, creativity, and to feel handsome or sexy to someone. Men may want to add on perks to their marriage whereas women tend to look for a replacement of an emotional gap. Whether your male or female doesn’t matter when you think about a healthy marriage as an entire pie, and then an unhealthy marriage with one of the above things, a piece of pie, missing.

 Couples that recognize a lack of healthy communication or thoughts like these should seek professional help soon. Professional counseling services can help you organize and share your frustrated thoughts so that they are heard to your satisfaction. Cheating on your spouse is not a way to transition out of marriage.

 Cheating is a complicated issue and never justified.  It's always important to think about how you would feel if it were your spouse cheating on you.  If you are in an unhealthy marriage, try to make it better instead of putting time and energy into someone else.

Post Infidelity PTSD

When you first found out you were betrayed by your partner, it probably felt like the rug has been pulled out from under your feet. Everything you knew to be true and valid in the world, suddenly had no meaning. You started doubting yourself, your judgement, your perceptions. Nothing was as it seemed. Your world was turned upside down. Your perceptions of the world were shattered.
Everywhere you went, there were constant reminders (called triggers) of the affair. EVERYWHERE! Even though you logically now know (hopefully) the affair is over, you can’t seem to shake this panicky, anxiety-ridden feeling. All too often your heart is pounding, your brain is fuzzy, your memory is shot to hell, you get emotional easily. Your sense of trust has been violated, and when that goes, you start questioning, exactly what is safe? Anything??? You might be thinking you are going crazy, but most likely you’re experiencing a form of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD. (There are physiological reasons that pertain to this as well, fueled by your inherent survival mechanism.)
According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition , Text Revision or DSM-IV-TR, the manual used to diagnose psychological issues, PTSD occurs when a “person experienced, witnessed, or was confronted with an event or events that involved actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or other.” In addition, “the person’s response involved intense fear, helplessness, or horror.” It is safe to say, in most cases, a partner’s betrayal had nothing to do with death or physical injury, but the second part is experienced to some degree by all.
However, I believe there’s a case to be made there HAS been a death – the death of your relationship as far as what you previously perceived to be true. With all deaths, according to Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, there are five distinct stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance; which don’t necessarily have to occur in this exact order. Are you beginning to see a correlation? In order to heal completely from the pain of betrayal of infidelity, eventually you will need to go through all of these stages.
Now back to the betrayal and PTSD analogy. I’ll bet previously you had thought only something akin to soldiers returning from a war could cause PTSD, right? Wrong! Many people experience PTSD and have no idea that’s what’s going on – AND there’s a pretty substantial chance this may be exactly what you’ve been going through.
Let me go over some of the other required criteria (somewhat paraphrased here) for a diagnosis of PTSD contained in the DSM IV-TR. See if this sounds all too familiar to you:
1. The trauma is persistently re-experienced in one or more of the following ways:
*Recurrent and intrusive distressing recollections of the event, including images, thoughts, or perceptions
*Emotionally and/or physically reacting more intensely than the situation calls for (as if the danger of an attacking tiger is still in the room, right in front of you)
*Making attempts to ignore or suppress the intrusive thoughts, impulses, or images by trying divert your attention with another thought or action.
*Intense physical reaction to anything either internal or external that remind you of the traumatic event
*Intense emotional reaction to anything either internal or external that reminds you of the traumatic event.

2. Persistent avoidance of anything associated with the trauma and numbing of general responsiveness subsequent to the trauma (as indicated by 3 or more of the following):
*Efforts to avoid thoughts, feelings, or conversations associated with the trauma
*Efforts to avoid activities, places, or people that arouse recollections of the trauma
*Inability to recall an important aspect of the trauma
*Markedly diminished interest or participation in significant activities
*Feeling of detachment or estrangement from others
*Restricted range of affect (i.e. unable to have loving feelings)
*Sense of a foreshortened future
3. Persistent symptoms of increased arousal subsequent to the trauma (as indicated by two or more of the following):
*Difficulty falling or staying asleep
*Irritability or outbursts of anger
*Difficulty concentrating
*Hypervigilance
*Exaggerated startle response
In addition, there are a couple other requirements in the DSM IV-TR, such as a continued duration of over one month. Given most people seem to take an average of 2-4 years to heal from the betrayal of infidelity, I’d say this meets the criteria and the condition is prevalent!

Social Cheating: A Look at Social Media’s Influence on Infidelity

At a rapid rate, the number of couples choosing to divorce because of social media is growing and doesn’t seem to be getting any better.  While social media can be used in a good way to connect people all over the world, it can also be used in a bad way when connecting the wrong people. For example, your ex tries to “friend request” you and innocently starts messaging you, that can lead to flirtatious messaging and very well could be the beginning of an emotional affair.

With the number of affairs arising from social media, this issue is becoming a major challenge for lawyers in court.  According to NerdGraph.com, “81% of members from the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers reported using or confronting information pulled from Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and various other social networking sites.”

• 66% of that statistic was from Facebook, while 15% was from Myspace and 5% from Twitter.
• “27% of wives use electronic information during a divorce case as opposed to only 5% of husbands.”
• For example, a woman’s husband may have logged onto Match.com and presented that he is single and has no kids, while at the same time he is fighting for custody for the kid he claims he does not have. 
• “1 in 5 adults use Facebook for flirting.”

According to NerdGraph.com, men with performance anxiety or are more easily around are more liking to cheat, while women will cheat more when they are not sexually satisfied. The top Facebook evidences that are used in divorce court are: messages to a person of the opposite sex that are inappropriate, a Facebook friend reporting a spouse’s shady behavior, and both spouses using Facebook to attack each other.

To avoid a social network divorce use common sense. Reconnect without doing something that you may regret, don’t keep secretes from your spouse, keep your social network friends at arm’s length, and don’t hesitate to shut it all down. “While social media can be a fun place to reconnect with old friends and keep up with new and current ones, it can also play a deadly role in a marriage. With so many people online and connecting in new ways, it’s hard to predict just how far this problem with go before it’s routed.”