infidelity

Infidelity - Everything you Need to Know
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Infidelity: Everything you Need to Know

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Noel McDermott
Noel McDermott
Founder
Mental Health Works Ltd

The first thing to understand is that infidelity is a lot more common than is thought, it is believed that about 25% of men are thought to have extra relational affairs, and about 15% of women. There are biosocial reasons for this behaviour in humans, common with our nearest social animals such as chimps etc in terms of seeking a healthy gene pool.

We are all familiar with the apocryphal stories of the kings and queens of yore having sickly babies due to inbreeding, which doesn’t help if you are the victim of a cheating spouse, but it does help to make a distinction between normal cheating and abnormal cheating and it should be pointed out that the 25% and 15% are not the same group of people but it’s at any one time.

We may all at some point be the perpetrator or victim of this scenario and really should head the adage around stones and glass houses. The decision about whether you stay with the partner who cheated will largely depend on the circumstances of your relationship.

If you decide to end the relationship it’s unlikely it will be due to solely the infidelity, but that will be one of the factors and maybe the most important of the factors that mean the relationship is unsustainable. Why this is important is for several factors that will mean you can move on cleanly and not bring this dynamic into you next relationship. Crucial to this is to normalise the experience and to take some power of decision making and authorship.

Allowing oneself to experience the infidelity as an event which turns us into a victim disempowers and possibly sets up a situation in which you will blame yourself inadvertently for the cheating of your partner.

You will ask yourself what is wrong with me, rather than what went wrong with the relationship or with the situation and in thinking about what was wrong with the relationship it’s not, ‘what was wrong with the relationship that led to the cheating’ as this is another trap, but what was wrong with the relationship that I didn’t want to or couldn’t forgive the infidelity?

In relationships we forgive because we want that person in our lives, and we refuse to forgive because we want them to go.

As much as possible we want in this situation to move to a place where we can accept it’s an event that happened, that happens to many people, and it was the last straw. The effort involved in repeating the rupture wouldn’t yield enough return as there were problems anyway. We move from being potentially the victim of a soap drama to someone who has had a challenging life experience who wants to move on and heal.

Being able to reframe in this way does mean we are very much less likely to be processing the experience in our next relationship, and by processing, I mean carrying dumping the baggage from the infidelity into the next relationship.

During this process of ending and moving on it’s going to be important to avoid those folk in your network who feed on drama. Even though this may feel tough at first, it’s important to have voices in your life that ask you to be reflective, avoid dramatising the situation, try to normalise it, look at the bigger picture, look at your part without self-blame and at what you gain from moving on, above all avoid angels and demons.

Angels and demons are simplistic, black and white, infantile ways of thinking about people and life. Life and people are complex and muddy and there is good and bad in all of us.

It’s important to look at abnormal cheating and by that, I mean cheating that should not be normalised. This will tend to be of the serial nature and often the person doing it will have other issues, such as drinking, substance problems and for sure intimacy issues.

Generally, the partners of the type of hyper-sexual person will experience significant harm over time due to the range of manipulations, the love bombing, the lying, the intimacy problems that lead to attachment issues and self-doubt in the person being cheated on. You will be very likely to need professional help to deal with the damage done in this type of situation as you will have been living with someone with a chronic relationship problem.

Often the partners of the philanderer in that type of situation will experience significant trauma and need help to overcome it. As the partner there is little you can do to change them, in the same way you can’t change an alcoholic, unless they do the work to get help and stop.

You are better off getting out of an unhealthy situation and seeking help to ensure you don’t carry the damage with you.

Read more articles by Noel McDermott.

About Noel McDermott

Noel McDermott is the Founder of Mental Health Works Ltd. He has created unique, mental health services in the independent sector. Noel’s company offer at-home mental health care and will source, identify and co-ordinate personalised care teams for the individual. They have recently launched a range of online therapy resources to help clients access help without leaving home.

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after the Affair
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How to Survive after the Affair – Dr Lori Bisbey

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I got the chance to interview Dr Bisbey on how to save your marriage after the affair or put it another way, can a marriage be saved after infidelity or adultery?

Dr Biseby is a Psychologist and Relationship Coach.

She works with those s in the midst of relationship and want to create a good vibrant relationship and those struggling within their relationships. Lori also works with those who are having issues and are looking to or are wondering if they should go their separate ways.

Can a marriage survive infidelity is more a question like should a marriage survive infidelity?, Says Lori.

The interview is in 5 short parts packed with vital information and advice on such topics as:

  • Can my marriage survive infidelity?
  • What is infidelity anyway.  Lori believes there are different types of infidelity and whether a marriage can survive after the affair or not, may depend on the type of infidelity involved.  “Not all infidelity is equal,”  says Lori.  An ongoing affair for instance is likely to have a far bigger impact than a one off occurrence.
  • What about emotional infidelity?  Where does that come in and how much damage can that cause?  What is so damaging about emotional infidelity anyway?  Lori explains that it comes down to the fact that the “cheater” was emotionally intimate with someone else and not with his/her partner.  That’s what so damaging.
  • “Sexual infidelity can be much easier to cope with and deal with but an emotional betrayal is much harder and takes more work to get over,” she explains.
  • Find out how emotional infidelity comes about in the first place?
  • What about the serial cheater? Is that considered to be long term infidelity?
  • Is it true once a cheat always a cheat?
  • How do you know when some is cheating?  Just the same as you know that someone is lying?
  • Infidelity is often a symptom. The infidelity is a clue that this is done. Like someone is saying “I’ve been unfaithful, I really need out of this relationship.”
  • Polyamorous realtionshiop and open relationships where do they come in?  Can we have multiple partners? If so what are the rules around that?
  • How can you avoid infidelity?
  • Can someone else truly make you cheat?  Is it at all possible that it’s someone else’s fault?  People find hard to take responsibility especially when it’s something that hurts another.
  •  Good sex, as time goes on, is largely a function of the ability to communicate. If you can be emotionally intimate, your sex becomes incredible. If you can share on all sorts of other levels, the sexual relationship can be amazing.
  • What’s physical intimacy really about?
  • What role does pornography play today?  Can it be used to grow physical intimacy?
  • What advice does Lori give to anyone who has just discovered infidelity?
  • Can you have a relationship with no trust?

 

How to get in touch with Lori:

Lori on – Linkedin, Yotango,

Phone: +44 7770 858219
(US cell upon request)

Email: Lori@wolfsfire.com

 Lori can conduct sessions over skype too.

If you’re interested in her couples retreats, please do contact Lori directly and she will be more than happy to let you know when and where the next ones are.

 

 

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tell the truth in coping with infidelity

Tell the Truth!

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Moving on after Divorce
Farhana Dhalla
Author of Thank you for Leaving Me.

“It was Valentine’s Day and I just found out that my husband of 10 years had purchased a gift for another woman. All day I was numb. Surreally, I drifted through my day with heaviness in my heart.

I hung onto denial like it was my last friend in the world. I couldn’t bear the thought of my world disintegrating. It just couldn’t be. He wouldn’t do that. There had to be an explanation.

With a strange kind of calm that only complete shock can produce, I asked him about it when he came home from work. His convincing denials and innocent-looking face almost had me believing him. For a flash, I thought I had manufactured this in my head. If I did not have tangible, physical proof in my hands to the contrary, I would have believed him.

The look of innocence on his face was familiar. I was shocked at how believable he appeared and I wondered how many times in the past I had fallen for his lies. Clearly, I had just not wanted to see the truth.”

Yep, that is the first vignette of my book Thank You for Leaving Me.


And truth be told, Thank You were not exactly the first words that came to my mind… I had other choice words to say to him. If I were to type them here I would exhaust the symbol keys on my keyboard LOL!

But over time, “Thank You” became the words.

When people hear the title of the book there are two expressions I often see… either they are smiling because they too have made the journey to gratitude and their blossoming lives are evidence of their peace and power or… they have a longing or achy look because they desire their freedom. Their freedom from pain, from guilt, from blame and their freedom from fear.

The only way I know how to get from point V (victim) to point F (freedom) is to tell the truth… and be willing to hear the truth… even the subtle truths.

Pay Close Attention to the First Feeling.

Interestingly, when my husband told me that the marriage was over, my first split second feeling was relief.

But right on its tail was fear. I completely ignored my first feeling and attached myself onto a conditioned response of fear and desperation. (ugh!)

tell the truthThe first feeling is always your truth. It is a subtle knowing that can act in complete contradiction to what the situation typically dictates but it is your personal guidance system. Pay close attention to what it is telling you.

The answer always whispers to you. Listen.

Take 100% Responsibility.

He made it pretty easy to be the fall guy in why our marriage went south, but in actuality, I was 100% responsible for co-creating the life that I had been living. That was a big frikkin’ horse pill for me to swallow. When I started to look at all the ways that I had contributed to the demise of our relationship, I would call him up and clean it up. It was the most free-ing thing I had ever done.

Claiming your 100% responsibility does not negate the other persons 100% responsibility. But that is theirs to sort out. You only have control on who you are and how you show up.

I just knew that I wanted freedom too much to not undergo this valuable catharsis.

Tell the Truth.

Not just about the crap or that you yelled at the kids or the overwhelm and fear that you experience from time to time… but also about your beauty, your strength, your resilience, your creativity, your resourcefulness.

Tell the truth about THAT!

If you cannot tell the truth about your Magnificence ask yourself if your circle can hold space for your growth and juicy re-invention.

Surround yourself with people who will celebrate you in your pain and in your Magnificence and see them as no different. For they are not. Your pain is just a breadcrumb on a trail to your Magnificence.

And you will know that you are well on your way to Being your Magnificence when you feel the stirring of immense gratitude because you see that nothing was ever done TO you. Everything was done FOR you.

Kiss Kiss,

Farhana

Follow Farhana on Twitter 

Farhana Dhalla is the go-to person for shifting perspectives. Her book titled Thank You for Leaving Me has aided thousands of people in finding their peace and uncovering their powerful selves. 

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Can Couple Counselling Help after an Affair?

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after an affairWe recently had an article by Wayfarer of  Infidelity Help Group  on 10 Steps to Coping with Infidelity and it is from this article that the following post emerges.

There was one point that I needed clarifying – point number 6 “Avoid Marital Therapy” and this was Wayfarer’s response:

Yes, I would actively discourage marital therapy in the immediate aftermath of an affair.

You didn’t cause the affair – so why are you in therapy learning how to ‘prevent’ another one?  The marriage didn’t cause the affair – so how can marital therapy fix it? Poor communication didn’t cause the affair – so how does learning improved communication in marital therapy stop another one from happening?

Marital counselling presupposes that the issues being addressed are ‘couple issues’.

Infidelity is NOT a shared issue – it is owned entirely by the cheater.

Yes, there may have been issues within the marriage, but the affair was caused by the cheater’s internal issues, not any imperfections in the marriage.

If affairs were caused by imperfect marriages and/or spouses, you would both be having affairs!

It’s important to understand that cheating is a mindset of entitlement, self satisfaction and unethical behaviour. Cheaters feel entitled to continue to deceive and manipulate (trickle truth is a common post-affair problem) to preserve their lifestyle despite their behaviour and to avoid any material consequence to their choices.

Marital therapy with a cheater who has not made changes to their world view and personal narrative can essentially teach the cheater what to say and do to keep their faithful spouse firmly in place, hushed up and ‘getting over it’. What it doesn’t do is address the internal non-marital thinking that the cheater employed to give themselves permission to cheat in the first place.

It’s worth nothing that marital therapy is a business that requires dysfunctional relationships in order to survive.

Neither the cheater nor the faithful spouse are encouraged to identify or pursue alternatives to the marital relationship, because the industry requires that fear and convention keep people trying to work though dysfunction.

It is rare for a marital therapist to encourage either party to pursue their personal goals and dreams for themselves if those goals and dreams potentially lead them away from the marriage, and the therapist’s service.

If a cheater requires guidance to help them address their own issues, I would recommend that they seek individual psychotherapy.

The faithful spouse can use this time to observe if there is authentic, clear, and sustained change in the cheater’s fundamental thinking and ethical framework. Only when the cheater has addressed this can there be any meaningful work on the marriage – so marital therapy is an option for much later on in the process.

You asked if it was possible for marital therapy to help in some cases. I would agree that marital therapy can help encourage a Divorce Avoidance Plan.

In our experience, Divorce Avoidance Plans always result in an unfulfilled, miserable, and distrustful faithful spouse who feels that:
  • The cheater hasn’t really changed.  This is because the cheater hasn’t changed at their core because at its core, marital therapy isn’t about the cheater.
  • The cheater hasn’t truly held themselves accountable and hasn’t personally driven marital repair.

Unfortunately, marital therapy seeks to ‘share’ blame and responsibility for repair between the cheater, the marriage, and the faithful spouse. It can be inferred from this and the very suggestion that marital therapy is necessary that the cheater is somewhat relieved of sole accountability for their affair.

For the cheater, post-infidelity marital therapy is externally directed and prescriptive i.e. it is the therapist and the faithful partner who generally drive any ‘recovery’, not the cheater’s inner-directed actions and intent.

We typically see faithful spouses in Divorce Avoidance Plans frustrated and confused, desperate for marital therapy to work. They might limp along in a dissatisfying marriage for years, applying more plasters to the cracks, even when they become chasms. Many hold their fundamental deal breaker as another affair – when the real deal breaker should be the cheater’s lack of change.

Discontinuing marital therapy feels counter-intuitive, I know. Many hope that therapy can keep their marriage together, which it might well do for a time. That hope, fuelled by fear of change and strong emotional ties to the cheater can result in a desperate investment in and commitment to marital therapy.

I want better for you than a Divorce Avoidance Plan – but I also understand that removing marital support exposes the cheater’s real thinking and lack of personal motivation to change – and that’s when things get risky.

I wish you well through this process.

~ Wayfarer

Infidelity Help Group offers free support and education for those whose lives have been affected by infidelity. We are secular advocates of self-esteem, self-worth, personal goals, and self-empowerment.

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Adultery and Divorce

10 Steps to Coping with Infidelity

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coping with infidelity
An affair is an opportunity to legitimately press the pause button on the relationship

Many couples remain married despite infidelity and this is often celebrated as marital success by both the infidelity support community and marital therapists.

What is discussed less often is the quality and nature of the post-infidelity marriage – unfortunately many are little more than Divorce Avoidance Plans, not successful Happy Ever After Reconciliations.

The traditional approach to coping with infidelity might initially prevent divorce but the long-term outlook for the relationship isn’t encouraging.

In our experience, the traditional approach itself is directly responsible for the widespread failure of post-affair reconciliation attempts.

We must stop promoting reconciliation as ‘the successful’ outcome and instead recognise that cheater and marriage-centric strategies are responsible for promoting divorce avoidance despite dysfunction, abuse, or incompatibility.

An affair is an opportunity to legitimately press the pause button on the relationship, creating space to devise a rational, informed and authentic strategy to avoid unhealthy emotional ricocheting.

We should stress that infidelity is not gender specific, and these steps equally apply to faithful spouses of either gender.

 

1. Protect Yourself

Most faithful spouses feel out of control and fearful when they discover an affair and there are basic steps that are necessary to protect yourself and regain some stability:

  1. Get tested for STIs and make a condom mandatory.
  2. Seek legal counsel to understand your risks, entitlements, and liabilities (take advantage of free consultations).
  3. Take inventory of assets and make copies of important documents and financial records.
  4. Ensure that you have sole access to a financial cushion – cheaters can quickly become unreasonable, ugly, and retributive, often using financial muscle regardless of how that affects their family/children.

Affair discovery commonly precipitates abusive, manipulative, and callous behaviour but there are also correlations between violence and accusations of infidelity – keep yourself and your children safe.

2. Get Support

Having a good support network around you is important. Joining a chat room and support forum like ours at Infidelity Help Group can be a lifeline. Don’t rely on friends or family to give informed infidelity advice.

3. Understand Infidelity

coping with infidelity
Affairs are not the product of bad marriages.

Firstly, understand that affairs are not the product of bad marriages or faults in the faithful spouse. You didn’t cause the affair, you didn’t drive them to it, you couldn’t have stopped it, and you didn’t deserve it.

Affairs are similarly not caused by sex addiction, altered brain chemistry, or midlife crisis. Identifying the cheater’s behavioural patterns, understanding their core character, and observing their responses can help you make good, informed decisions for your future.

It can be difficult for the faithful spouse to accept that cheating is a symptom of larger behavioural patterns because many are reluctant to admit that they have tolerated, ignored, or justified abuse prior to the affair.

4. Disengage From Their Manipulations

Resist the temptation to engage in lengthy discussions about the affair and marriage. Instead, disengage from drama and firmly communicate that:

  1. You will not be a convenient fall-back position.
  2. Their affair changed the dynamic of the marriage and your participation in it.
  3. You will take the necessary steps to protect yourself from further harm.
  4. It is incumbent on them to address whatever internal issues created their affair.

If you wish to reconcile be explicit that until you observe evidence of changed thinking you will be moving your own life forward towards your own goals, without them.

Be mindful that cheaters feel entitled to control and manipulate for their own benefit and preferred outcome. An angry/negative reaction can indicate that your approach has frustrated their cheater-centric agenda.

5. Stop Trying to Manage It

Faithful spouses are often codependent ‘fixers’ but declaring your love and promising to change will backfire.

If you want evidence of your cheater’s authentic intent to reconcile, your meddling is counter-productive. Stop ‘guiding’ them to books, articles, or therapy – if their motivation is genuine, they will feel frustrated, bombarded and controlled.

The more you direct, control, or manage reconciliation the more you will feel resentful, devalued, and let down in the long run.

6. Avoid Marital Therapy

It’s tempting to rush off to marital counselling but marital therapy does not facilitate the personal change necessary for reconciliation. Instead, it gives the cheater a platform to deflect blame and teaches them how to further manipulate you.

7. Identify Your Goals

Many people lose their individual identity to their marriage. Be independent, resourceful, and fearless.

Don’t make your happiness contingent on your cheater’s choices.

Take inventory of your life and identify goals and dreams for yourself that are yours alone and within your own control.

8. Be Open to Divorce

coping with infidelity
Don’t stand, waiting for your spouse’s affair to end.

Most faithful spouses will doggedly attempt to engineer reconciliation, entirely unwilling to accept that this may be the worst outcome for their children, their cheater, and themselves.

STOP:

  1. Holding reconciliation as the only successful outcome: unhealthy relationships aren’t successful reconciliations.
  2. Justifying and defending your cheater: infidelity is indefensible.
  3. Rationalising why you have to fix it: it’s controlling and unhealthy.
  4. Insisting on marital therapy: the marriage didn’t cause the affair.
  5. Claiming that ‘staying for the kids’ is selfless: it’s misguided.
  6. Holding ‘marriage’ or an ‘intact family’ as your goal: you can’t choose this for someone else.
  7. Rationalising why this advice doesn’t apply to you: it does.

9. Act, Act, Act

Discovering your spouse’s infidelity can freeze you in inaction, but doing nothing is the worst thing you can do.

Don’t stand, waiting for your spouse’s affair to end. The longer you don’t act, tolerating or justifying their affair, the more it minimises the cheater’s unethical behaviour and normalises their new dynamic with both you and their affair partner.

Even if you don’t file, you must respond to the new reality you’re facing. Doing nothing is a tacit agreement to a unilateral open marriage now or in the future. Your inaction and scrambling to win back your cheater and make them happy doesn’t present them with consequences to their actions – it rewards them.

Don’t wait around unhappy, pining, your self-worth shattered. Start your own life in your own right, making new friends and enjoying new interests that are solely yours.

Be brave, be fun, be interesting – your cheater’s affair has highlighted how tenuous marriage can be so don’t make it your whole life. When your entire identity is tied up in your marriage and your marriage ends, where does that leave you?

10. See the Upside

If the affair does result in a divorce, understand that divorcing a cheater DOES have an upside, despite the challenges it brings.

The affair might have motivated you to lose weight, get a degree, move closer to friends and family, or get more involved in your community. All of these are positive things that you likely wouldn’t have done without the affair.

Truly understand the value of your freedom and celebrate the benefits of no longer having to walk on egg-shells to keep someone else happy. Create a peaceful, content life for you and your children, and nurture the relationships with those who treat you with love and respect.

Don’t idealise reconciliation because most reconciliations aren’t happy and most cheaters are selfish, entitled, and lazy.

Infidelity Help Group offers free support and education for those whose lives have been affected by infidelity. We are secular advocates of self-esteem, self-worth, personal goals, and self-empowerment.
Email: wayfarer@infidelityhelpgroup.com

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Love and infidelity

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Why you should listen to Helen Fisher’s talk on Love and Infidelity.

Helen Fisher’s courageous investigations of romantic love — its evolution, its biochemical foundations and its vital importance to human society — are informing and transforming the way we understand ourselves.

Fisher describes love as a universal human drive (stronger than the sex drive; stronger than thirst or hunger; stronger perhaps than the will to live), and her many areas of inquiry shed light on timeless human mysteries, like why we choose one partner over another.

Almost unique among scientists, Fisher explores the science of love without losing a sense of romance: Her work frequently invokes poetry, literature and art — along with scientific findings — helping us appreciate our love affair with love itself.

In her research, and in books such as Anatomy of Love, Why We Love, and her latest work Why Him? Why Her?: How to Find and Keep Lasting Love, Fisher looks at questions with real impact on modern life.

Her latest research raises serious concerns about the widespread, long-term use of antidepressants, which may undermine our natural process of attachment by tampering with hormone levels in the brain.

Tedtalks

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