Life After the Affair
Earlier: Recovering From an Affair
The cruelest lies are often told in silence. Robert Louis Stevenson
There is no bigger paradigm shift that a relationship experiences than in the aftermath of disclosing or discovering an affair.The betrayal cuts deep and shreds not only the trust between the couple, but often the ability to trust ones own judgment and the agreements that we believed defined our lives.Less than a third of all couples who encounter the experience, which is more than half of all of us, actually heal the experience. Many couples never get beyond the initial crisis that the affair creates, choosing to leave the relationship with their wounds intactand the rest of the relationship in tatters.
Often this knee jerk response is a result of fear and ignorance. The pain and instability it creates feels all-consuming and we dont know how to navigate the process.Considering how prevalent the experience of affairs is, there has been little education about the process of recovery that can renew a relationship and even spark a whole new level of physical intimacy. Culturally we are trained to vilify the betrayal and rarely consider that the affair may not represent pathology in the relationship but rather be an essential wakeup call that offers an important opportunity to redefine and renegotiate what your monogamous relationship and commitments mean to each of you.
Dr. Tammy Nelson, author of Getting the Sex You Want, is leading the way on the research on affair re! covery f or her new book, The New Monogamy. In our recent interview, she shared, Often affairs are like viruses, in that they are opportunistic and they feed on a part of oneself that is kept underground, unknown even to oneself.
