This is my first posting.
I'm a licensed social worker working in a private setting and I'd like feedback on how to help two of my clients presenting for infidelity. There seems to be a negative feedback loop in both couples: He is hurt/mistrusting and is obsessively wanting to know "THE TRUTH" about the affair from her, and when he pushes to get answers she retreats/puts up walls which in turn causes more suspiciousness on his part and more pushing and so on and so on. Despite interventions to stop the cycle it continues. Despite attempts to let the fever of hurt/betrayl go down, both continue to recreate the cycle and fever. Any ideas? I'm open to any info from either clinicians or folks who have been through this type of un-ending/stuck back and forth. I want to help these folks get out of the trenches. Thank you.

If BOTH want to remain married to each other, one way is to apply the POJA (the policy of joint agreement) to come to an agreement that satisfies both spouses. For example, they may agree to have the WW(wayward spouse) answer ALL the questions the BS(betrayed spouse) asks and in return the BS(betrayed spouse) promises not to ask those questions ever again. While knowing the whole truth about the affair is extremely important for many BS's recovery, it should not be used as a weapon against the WS. It is easy for a BS to feel s/he is the only one feeling the pain of betrayal and forget that the WS is also going through his/her own pain knowing that s/he not only betrayed his/her spouse but him/herself as well.

There is a LOT of stuff you can read here to help these couples. One of the things you could do is encourage them to complete the questionnaires available here on the home page. Another is to read the recommended literature and articles, also recommended via the homepage.

Each case is different, and yet there is the same pattern of grief for us all. The stories are different, but the emotions are the same. I suggest you read as much as you can here to help you understand how people deal with their emotions and frustrations. It will help you understand more where they are coming from.

BUT, I suggest that if you do not have the skills to help them, that you pass them on to a reputable Marriage Counsellor. Your task here may be to steer these people to others who are more able to assist them. I am a teacher, but in my job, I know that there are some who are better equipped to handle some aspects of the job than I am, and I make use of them to assist me in my work.

Love and light,

Jacky

Well there is a simple reason he has to know....because he does.

I know sounds obvious but the point is HE DOES HAVE TO KNOW or there will be NO recovery.

Read noted marriage therapist Peggy Vaughn's link on the need to know:

http://www.dearpeggy.com/com023.html

Now the problem is getting the husband to approach the need to know in a manner that allows her talk about it without fear of reprisals or more anger....toughie.

Perhaps if she better understood that his need to know is not so he can have more things to beat her up with she might be more open.

And if he understood the price of such openess is his willingness to not use it against then they could get past this impase.

Finally I think it would do them both a world of good to list 5 things they would like to change in their marriage...it should be pre or during affair issues since those are the ones that made the marriage vunerable. Have them give that list to you and you pick the ones that seem workable right now.

Address the others when they are better able to deal with it.

But having something to work on in the future will reduce his focussing on the past.

Might add work on one of his items first since he is the betrayed spouse.

You are a liscensed social worker, they are paying you, and you are asking US??? <img border="0" title="" alt="[Big Grin]" src="images/icons/grin.gif" /> <img border="0" title="" alt="[Big Grin]" src="images/icons/grin.gif" />

What did your training teach you on this?

Susan

Susan - "Don't get your knickers in a knot"? Where are you from? We use that saying where I live! <img border="0" title="" alt="[Big Grin]" src="images/icons/grin.gif" />

Jacky

hummm....weeeeell...

I'm a Southern Belle. I'm in Mississippi. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Big Grin]" src="images/icons/grin.gif" />

Susan

zgeoffy -

Welcome to marriage builders! I'm really glad to see a counselor here looking for methods to improve a couple of bad situations. I'd love to see more of you!

I think all the advice you're getting is great, and I'd like to focus a little on a separate issue that you should probably pay attention to.

From what you said, they're in the middle of complete nuttiness right now, and they're both in terrible pain.

So, here are my questions:

Are they taking ACTION to repair the marriage, or is it nothing but hurting and more hurting? Examples:

1. Has she sent a no-contact letter?

2. Have they designed and implemented extraordinary precautions to ensure that contact does not occur?

3. Are they fully accountable to each other for every moment of their time and every word they speak into a phone or type on a keyboard?

4. Have they committed to ending angry outbursts, selfish demands, and disrespectful judgments?

5. Have they committed to spending 15+ hours a week together, alone, focused on meeting the needs of conversation (which does NOT include relationship talk and talk about the affair!), recreational companionship, affection, and sexual fulfillment?

I guess I'm suggesting that you simply END the cycle by telling them to knock it off. It's not doing anything for either one of them. If they're not willing to let it go completely, then make them schedule an hour each week when he can ask, and she must answer, anything at all about the affair. And the REST of the week, it's absolutely off-limits.

They have a ton of work to do. He's got forgiveness to figure out. She's got guilt and repentance to figure out. They both have a ton of work to figure out their marriage and what they need from it. So... get 'em started.

Get a contract in place, a signed plan for recovery (see the end of Surviving an Affair for a good one), and then get them working on it. They have a lot to do, and letting them continue this pattern sucks as a way to get them to do it.

And again, welcome! I'd love to see you, and others like you, here more often. (And if anyone knows someone who'd be a good marriage advocate in the DC area, please, e-mail me at justj_mb@yahoo.com.)

zgeoffy, as a betrayed spouse, I can tell you that recovery is almost impossible unless she tells him the full truth. He has right to have all of his questions answered and will only imagine the worst if she continues to withhold. It is the LEAST she can do if he has agreed to stay with her.

This vicious cycle is being perpetuated by her refusal to tell him everything. Her refusual to tell him everything only ADDS TO the mistrust he already has. It means that the OM knows things that HE does not know. THAT is an additional kick in the teeth when secrets REMAIN between the affair partners.

Harley felt that withholding information from the BS was so destructive that he called it cruel and manipulative. I agree with him. My own marriage did not start recovering until my H was TRUTHFUL about everything.

I imagine your female client is very scared to tell him the whole story and this is why she is withholding. She needs to understand that she now needs to put her husband's interests first. She is not doing that if she is catering to her fears. She is putting her fears ahead of his best interest because she is afraid of facing the consequences of her actions.

As a result, she ends up facing those consequences over and over and over again as every drib and drab of information that he DRAGS out of her puts them both back to DAY 1 of recovery. It's sort of like dying a death of a thousand cuts. Instead of taking one BIG HIT by getting it ALL OUT and moving on, she drags it out month after month after month. Talk about prolonging the pain!

He will CONTINUE to "obsess" about the truth as long as she continues to obsessively withhold it from him. Its a form of cruelty that is almost as bad, if not worse, as the affair.

Here is what Harley says about it:

“From my perspective, honesty is part of the solution to infidelity, and so I'll take honesty for whatever reason, even if it's to relieve a feeling of guilt and depression. The revelation of an affair is very hard on an unsuspecting spouse, of course, but at the same time, it's the first step toward marital reconciliation.

Most unfaithful spouses know that their affair is one of the most heartless acts they could ever inflict on their spouse. So one of their reasons to be dishonest is to protect their spouse from emotional pain. "Why add insult to injury," they reason. "What I did was wrong, but why put my spouse through needless pain by revealing this thoughtless act?" As is the case with bank robbers and murderers, unfaithful spouses don't think they will ever be discovered, and so they don't expect their unfaithfulness to hurt their spouse.

But I am one of the very few that advocate the revelation of affairs at all costs, even when the wayward spouse has no feelings of guilt or depression to overcome. I believe that honesty is so essential to the success of marriage, that hiding past infidelity makes a marriage dishonest, preventing emotional closeness and intimacy.

It isn't honesty that causes the pain, it's the affair. Honesty is simply revealing truth to the victim. Those who advocate dishonesty regarding infidelity assume that the truth will cause such irreparable harm, that it's in the best interest of a victimized spouse to go through life with the illusion of fidelity.

It's patronizing to think that a spouse cannot bear to hear the truth. Anyone who assumes that their spouse cannot handle truth is being incredibly disrespectful, manipulative and in the final analysis, dangerous. How little you must think of your spouse when you try to protect him or her from the truth.

It's not only patronizing, but it's also false to assume that your spouse cannot bear to hear the truth. Illusions do not make us happy, they cause us to wander through life, bumping into barriers that are invisible to us because of the illusion that is created. Truth, on the other hand, reveals those barriers, and sheds light on them so that we can see well enough to overcome them. The unsuspecting spouse of an unfaithful husband or wife wonders why their marriage is not more fulfilling and more intimate. Knowledge of an affair would make it clear why all efforts have failed.

After revealing an affair, your spouse will no longer trust you. But lack of trust does not ruin a marriage, it's the lack of care and protection that ruins marriages. Your spouse should not trust you, and the sooner your spouse realizes it, the better.

The Policy of Radical Honesty is one of two rules you must follow to protect your spouse from your self-centered behavior, which includes affairs. The other rule is the Policy of Joint Agreement (never do anything without an enthusiastic agreement between you and your spouse). If you were to be completely honest with you spouse, and you were to follow the Policy of Joint Agreement, an affair would be impossible, unless for some reason your spouse wanted you to have one.

If you knew that your affair would be discovered -- that right after having sex with your co-worker, your spouse were to find out about it -- you would probably not go through with it. And if you were honest enough with your spouse so that YOU would be the one to tell him or her what you did, your honesty would be a huge reason to avoid any affair.

How the victimized spouse should respond to the revelation of an affair is a subject of a later column. I do not have the space to treat it here. But a spouse is twice victimized when he or she is lied to about an affair. Truth is far easier to handle than lies.”

Here is another that TooMuchCoffeeMan posted that is also very helpful. Sorry this is so long but I didn't have a link for it:

Here's an article from Dear Peggy. It may or may not help... Kinda long....

The "Need to Know"
by Peggy Vaughan

Why we need answers to our questions

When learning of our partner's affair, most of us feel an intense "need to know" - asking questions to try to make some kind of sense out of what has happened.

Here's an excerpt about this from my book, The Monogamy Myth

"When a person discovers their mate is having an affair, their world suddenly turns upside down. In order to recover any sense of balance, they need to get more information and understanding of the situation. Without answers to their questions, they convince themselves that the answers must all be bad; otherwise why wouldn't they be told what they want to know. They feel they're being treated like a child, and they resent it.

"If the information didn't exist, it wouldn't be so frustrating and demeaning. But they know their partner has it, and simply refuses to give it to them. This makes a balance of power in the relationship impossible... It's doubtful if trust can ever be restored in a relationship where this persists.

"I remember how tough it was on my husband when I continually asked more and more questions. Intellectually, I wanted to move on and get over it, but emotionally I needed the ongoing support and understanding he gave me. It was extremely important that he never said, "enough is enough, let's get on with our lives." Of course, nobody would choose to go through the thousands of hours of talking about this if there were some other way. In my own case, I think it was an essential part of overcoming my feelings and finding peace of mind."

(end of excerpt from "The Monogamy Myth")

While I have consistently heard this same thing from thousands of people during the past 20 years, there's still a great reluctance on the part of those who have had affairs to answer questions and to continue talking about the whole situation. Unfortunately, there has also been a large segment of the therapeutic community that has reinforced the idea that too many questions and too much talking is not for the best.

I now have statistical data that demonstrates the connection between honest communication and both staying married and recovering. I have posted some results from my Research Questionnaire that may help people see the importance of respecting this "need to know."

While it's important to get answers to your questions IF you ask questions, this does NOT mean you "should" ask questions unless/until you really want to know. It's just that it's essential to get answers if you DO ask.

While for most people, "getting answers to your questions" is a key ingredient in rebuilding the trust and building a strong marriage, no one should be forced to hear things they don't want to hear. But if they DO want to hear details, they deserve to have their questions answered. It's the WILLINGNESS of the partner to answer questions that is so critical, not whether or not you ASK for the answers.

So each person needs to decide for themselves the timing of when/what/how much they want to know. (It's important to determine that you really want the truth, and are not just hoping for some kind of reassurance or disclaimers.) For most people, "not knowing" is worst of all - because their imagination fills in the blanks and the wondering never ceases.

Joseph's Letter

I want to share a beautiful example of a letter one man wrote in his effort to get his wife to answer his questions. This was originally posted on my BAN Message Board before it was closed. While I didn't keep any of the messages posted on that board, this was so exceptional that I got Joseph's permission to include it in "Peggy's Forum" so it could continue to be accessed by people who didn't read his original posting.

So I'm including it here as a clear statement of the "need to know," as well as a clear explanation of why you ask the questions:

"To Whomever,

"I know you are feeling the pain of guilt and confusion. I understand that you wish all this never happened and that you wish it would just go away. I can even believe that you truly love me and that your indiscretion hurts you emotionally much the same way it hurts me. I understand your apprehension to me discovering little by little, everything that led up to your indiscretion, everything that happened that night, and everything that happened afterwards. I understand. No one wants to have a mistake or misjudgment thrown in his or her face repeatedly. No one wants to be forced to "look" at the thing that caused all their pain over and over again. I can actually see, that through your eyes, you are viewing this whole thing as something that just needs to go away, something that is over, that he/she doesn't mean anything to you, so why is it such a big issue? I can understand you wondering why I torture myself with this continuously, and thinking, doesn't he/she know by now that I love him/her? I can see how you can feel this way and how frustrating it must be. But for the remainder of this letter I'm going to ask you to view my reality through my eyes.

"You were there. There is no detail left out from your point of view. Like a puzzle, you have all the pieces and you are able to reconstruct them and be able to understand the whole picture, the whole message, or the whole meaning. You know exactly what that picture is and what it means to you and if it can effect your life and whether or not it continues to stir your feelings. You have the pieces, the tools, and the knowledge. You can move through your life with 100% of the picture you compiled. If you have any doubts, then at least you're carrying all the information in your mind and you can use it to derive conclusions or answers to your doubts or question. You carry all the "STUFF" to figure out OUR reality. There isn't really any information, or pieces to the puzzle that you don't have.

"Now let's enter my reality. Let's both agree that this affects our lives equally. The outcome no matter what it is well affect us both. Our future and our present circumstances are every bit as important to me as it is to you. So, why then is it okay for me to be left in the dark? Do I not deserve to know as much about the night that nearly destroyed our relationship as you do? Just like you, I am also able to discern the meaning of certain particulars and innuendoes of that night and just like you, I deserve to be given the opportunity to understand what nearly brought our relationship down. To assume that I can move forward and accept everything at face value is unrealistic and unless we stop thinking unrealistically I doubt our lives well ever "feel" complete. You have given me a puzzle. It is a 1000 piece puzzle and 400 random pieces are missing. You expect me to assemble the puzzle without the benefit of looking at the picture on the box. You expect me to be able to discern what I am looking at and to appreciate it in the same context as you. You want me to be as comfortable with what I see in the picture as you are. When I ask if there was a tree in such and such area of the picture you tell me don't worry about it, it's not important. When I ask whether there were any animals in my puzzle you say don't worry about it, it's not important. When I ask if there was a lake in that big empty spot in my puzzle you say, what's the difference, it's not important. Then later when I'm expected to "understand" the picture in my puzzle you fail to understand my disorientation and confusion. You expect me to feel the same way about the picture as you do but deny me the same view as you. When I express this problem you feel compelled to admonish me for not understanding it, for not seeing it the way you see it. You wonder why I can't just accept whatever you chose to describe to me about the picture and then be able to feel the same way you feel about it.

"So, you want me to be okay with everything. You think you deserve to know and I deserve to wonder. You may honestly feel that the whole picture, everything that happened is insignificant because in your heart you know it was a mistake and wish it never happened. But how can I know that? Faith? Because you told me so? Would you have faith if the tables were turned? Don't you understand that I want to believe you completely? But how can I? I can never know what is truly in your mind and heart. I can only observe you actions, and what information I have acquired and slowly, over time rebuild my faith in your feelings. I truly wish it were easier.

"So, there it is, as best as I can put it. That is why I ask questions. That is where my need to know is derived from. And that is why it is unfair for you to think that we can effectively move forward and unfair for you to accuse me of dwelling on the past. My need to know stems from my desire to hold our world together. It doesn't come from jealousy, it doesn't come from spitefulness, and it doesn't come from a desire to make you suffer. It comes from the fact that I love you. Why else would I put myself through this? Wouldn't it be easier for me to walk away? Wouldn't it be easier to consider our relationship a bad mistake in my life and to move on to better horizons? Of course it would, but I can't and the reason I can't is because I love you and that reason in itself makes all the difference in the world."

(end of Joseph's Letter)

I will refer you to :
Douglas E. Rosenau: "Extramarital Affairs: Therapeutic Understanding and Clinical Interventions", in Marriage & Family : A Christian Journal, vol. 1, Issue 4, 1998 p355-368.

It can be downloaded from
WWW.sexualwholeness.com/downloads/Rosenau1998.pdf

I will highly recommend you and others to read this. There are many interesting topics covered, but what I found most interesting was his arguments for why answering questions is important to the recovery:


"Methaphors for promoting confession and personal responsibility: Adultery is like a death: You need to view the body. Mates need a thorough, honest confession (viewing the body) to validate that a real loss has taken place; then they can slowly grieve and reclaim the marriage."

<small>[ October 27, 2003, 04:27 AM: Message edited by: Frank57 ]</small>

ZG,
It is refreshing to see a counseler here looking for better ways. I'm curious what is being taught at colleges & universities these days on infidelity? It seems that in general your industry is way behind and that they may still be teaching the same theory that was also taught in the 70's & 80's.

I must have called 5-6 counselers before choosing our current MC. All of them when questioned about need for answers before recovery could begin, answered, with varying degrees of conviction, that it wasn't healthy to ask these questions.

Most professions have to have continuing education in order to get licenses renewed in most states. Where are all of these MCs? They must be going to Hawaii on boondoggles and then never attending class.

I see that zgeoffy hasn't been back. Do you think we scared him/her away? <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" />