I found out 2 weeks ago that my husband was having an affair. He recently retired from the Navy and met this girl while the ship was in Australia in 7/09. After that they had one other meeting in 2/10 while he was supposedly job hunting overseas...

Anyway, my husband immediately agreed to go to marriage counseling and we went the next day. We have had 3 sessions - the first we told our story, the 2nd session was honestly just filled with tears and anger and the counselor trying to get us to a starting point with each other. I do think the counselor is trying to lead him away from this woman and back with me....she seems to be pro-marriage.

I know that my husband cannot see this girl currently, and he says he has broken off contact and told her he is working on his marriage. He is still in the withdrawal stage I think... I am having a really hard time continuing to give and be kind when I feel so angry and hurt on the inside.

The counselor suggest I write my feelings in a journal and that did help some last week. Yesterday after counseling I just got so upset. My husband is not reaching out to me physically in any way. He offers no reason for this other than it is going to take time. I asked in counseling if he felt like he was cheating on this other woman and he said 'sort of'.... That just sent me off the cliff yesterday - tears, then I blew up at my kids....

I know the tears and blow up just drive him away. I am at a loss... My heart hurts... How do I survive this phase of his withdrawal from the affair without losing my own sanity?

I would ask him to write her a no contact letter. Then you approve it and mail it to her. It should say the affair was a huge mistake, he loves you, wants his marriage and wants no contact with her ever again for any reason. It should be short and not sweet.

The letter is to protect your heart and end the affair formally.

If he refuses, says he has already ended the affair, it is pointless, he can't hurt HER, blah, blah, blah, then you will know he is not seriously wanting to recover the marriage.

Sumac, sorry you are here. the fastest way for you and your husband to fall in love again is to spend 20+ hours together per week meeting these top 4 needs: affection, sex, conversation, and recreational companionship. During that time, no mention of the affair should be made.

Addtionally, I would strongly suggest you do not go to counseling together. That practice is a DISASTER that will put back your progress. I am sure you just leave your sessions angrier than when you come in. Dr Harley NEVER counsels couples together for this reason. It will devastate your recovery to sit there and listen to lovebusters for an hour.

Has your husband ended all contact with the OW? Are you snooping to make sure? Is she married and has her husband been notified about the affair?

When you feel angry, come here and talk to us. We understand and we will listen.

Please pick up the book Surviving an Affair as soon as you can. I want to point you to some key resources that will be an enormous help:
Undivided Attention thread discussion

Undivided Attention

How to Survive Infidelity

Sumac:


She may be pro-marriage, but when a couples session boils down to just confessing the sins of the partner, excuses, blame shifting and a venting session, it can build walls instead of helping to do away with them. This is one of the reasons why traditional counselors are sometimes called "Divorce counselors." When a couple comes here to the forum, they are encouraged to stay off each other's threads.

Confessing the other's sins dodges the issue of finding the boulder in our own eyes. At the end of the day, the only person we control is ourselves. With individual counseling, the therapist can help both sides find common ground and understanding. There is a lot more to it, but you get the idea.


I had no idea that was Dr. Harley's method. But I am not surprised, after all, Dr. Harley is the best of the best at what he does. I posted this "I agree" so sumac would hear it from more than one person. Apparently the initial three sessions were more set backs than step forwards. Pro-marriage is all fine and good, but technique has to match purpose to be effective.

Larry

Thank you for your replies. I really need to think of a courteous way to ask about the NC letter. He feels that he has dealt with it. Of course I don't, because I have no clue about what that supposed final interaction was. I asked if I could see the email and he said no. He has said that she did email back asking him to come to Australia, but he did not respond.

Larry, about counseling couples together, I should point out that STEVE does counsel them together sometimes when they are out of conflict. [and not lovebusting] In the book about Effective Counseling by Dr Harley, he never counseled them together no matter what. He would leave one out in the waiting room while he spoke to the other.

Sumac, part of the problem is that you don't know what the final interaction WAS. Why is that? Have you asked? Why will he not give you the email?

Thanks Mel. I still don't have the book

Larry

I have read somewhere that all marriage counseling should be couples counseling, with the emphasis to break down the communication barriers between them. This article said that individual counseling tends to increase the chance of divorce. The counselor does not really get a sense of who the other spouse is, and winds up getting only one side of the story. The counselor usually ends up validating the one spouse, and makes the spouse more obstinant about making changes.

We started up with couples counseling, then went to individual, and since then the marriage just rolled along as usual, with no helpful changes.

Ellen:

I have done some reading on this.


A trained therapist will not allow themselves to take sides. If each person has individual counseling, a therapist gets both sides. Once there are ground rules, the couple can meet with the therapist to practice what they have learned. Although Dr. Harley never sees them both together, his son Steve does after the counseling reaches a certain point. Of course Dr. Harley does see couples interacting during one of his weekends.

There are at least three schools of marriage counseling and Dr. Harley himself first started using one of those schools as he details in his history. Didn't work. So he started trying to develop his own style, which he found to work. One thing about counseling, the method has to fit the therapist and that is a good thing, unless the method doesn't yield results. So there is a minor difference between Dr. Harley and his son on this one point.

The article you read was a baloney sandwich, in my opinion.

Larry

Counseling couples together is a very stupid strategy that has a high potential to cause more harm than good. This is part of the reason why marriage counseling has the most dismal record of all counseling venues, an 84% failure rate. Marriage counselors dont' have the slightest idea how to save marriages and don't even believe that romantic love is possible. MC's have a higher divorce rate than the general population.

Couples in conflict are in a habit of lovebusting, so when you counsel them together, they leave angrier and more bitter at each other than when they came. Fighting and listening to lovebusters does not help "communication" one bit, it just makes them fall MORE out of love and creates more incompatibility.

The solution to "communication problems" is help the couple fall in love again. Couples that are in love don't have communication problems. Dr. Harley touched on this in his newsletter, "When should you tell your spouse, "We have a problem.":

\newsletter here

From Effective Marriage Counseling, pg 27

"Most marriage counselors see spouses together for the entire first session, but I am extremely opposed to that policy. Instead I see each person separately for 15 minutes so I can gain their individual perspectives. During that time they have the opportunity to complain about each other without making matters worse. Then I see them together for the remainder of the session where I explain the next step, which is the assessment.

Don't ever give spouses an opportunity to argue with each other when they are in your presence. Remember, you want to teach them how to make Love Bank deposits and avoid withdrawals. For their comfort and security, let them know that when they are together in your office, they are to avoid saying anything that could be interpreted as being disrespectful or argumentative."

They both abide by the same principle of not counseling a couple in conflict. The only time a couple is counseled together is at the end of a session when Dr Harley or STEVE gives them their assessment and their homework. So it is the doctor doing the talking, not the client. In the book, he recommends this method for all counselors as a best practice.


This is a seminar setting, not a counseling setting.

Larry, you will appreciate the genius behind this next section about taking sides. The stuff he comes up with, WOW!

page 37 Effective Marriage Counseling

"The person you wish to motivate should trust you to be his or her advocate. The person must know you are on his or her side.

Trust is easiest to achieve by coaching spouses individually; so at first, I rarely coach a couple together. They come together for the session, but I talk to them separately. In one-on-one session I tell each spouse that I want him or her to have everything needed, and I'll try and help the person get it. I mean every word of it. I want both spouses to be happy. As their personal advocate, I try to convince each of them to meet the other persons emotional needs and to avoid hurting each other.

<snip>
Some counselors feel they should remain neutral to avoid the appearance of taking sides, but neutrality can convince spouses you are not an advocate for either of them. So I do the opposite. "

Mel

So far as what I have read and heard, probably 95% of counseling training is about not taking sides. Which is why I said what I said. Long ago and far away in a marriage that was doomed, my then wife and I went to a counseling session that was 15 minutes each, then 15 minutes together with some confessing of the sins of the other, and then a follow up which was the therapist telling us how the cow ate the cabbage. One session, in and out. Recommended IC for wife, none for me. I was in shock.

On the other hand,


Dr. Harley, being who Dr. Harley is, has managed to think his way into a position that is effective, sneaky and gets the results he is looking for.

That is just tooooooo good.

Thanks for sharing Mel.

Larry

Mel, here's what Dr. Harley says in How To Find A Good Marriage Counselor, which I thought more or less described his own counseling style:


After that the article is unclear about whether future sessions are done together or separately.

Well I just wanted to update as to where things were....

The counselor has now started seeing us separately. I went 2 weeks ago, WH went last week, and I will go this week.

I am trying to work Plan A to the best of my ability. I am working on me, and trying to make our home and marriage a place where he would want to be. I have not exposed, as our housing situation is a little precarious right now and I am not in the position to get a place on my own.

I am working on a alternate teacher licensure program - trying to get all of the requirements done, so I can take the class this summer, and hopefully be teaching in the fall. If I can't get all of the pre-reqs done in time, then I'll be hitting the job search...

Once I have my own financial footing, then I plan to expose.

I am exercising, studying for my licensure and think I may have found a church for us. Just trying to get my footing here (just moved here earlier this year). I've also done a much better job with the domestic responsibilities (cooking in particular). I've started running - looking at doing a half marathon in September.

I have done a pretty good job of avoiding LB's, but there are moments.... My WH will not touch me. No hugs, nothing. Definitely no sex. He says, I just don't want to have sex right now.... I am certain that he is still in contact with OW. Yesterday I baited him. I asked him if he wanted to fool around....of course he said no....Then I asked if I was wasting my time...his typical response was 'why do we have to talk about this'. He just wants it to go away, and continue his cake-eating.

He cannot see this woman currently as she is overseas and he is here in North Carolina. I do feel strongly that there has been email/phone/maybe webcam contact.

Anyway, after our exchange I took a shower and then came into the living room. He is basically living like there are no consequences to his actions. Unfortunately Mr. Stupid took pictures of his interactions and I found them (this all happened months ago). I didn't know until March that one of the women in the files was his affair partner. I did a little date matching and was able to figure out who it was. Anyway, I said, 'So are you still talking to..what's her name...oh, it's Danni, right?' He got all freaked out. How did I know her name. Had I been spying on his email. I said he named on the girls on the memory stick - different folders... Basically just his reaction to my knowing her name, I was sure that he is in repeated contact.

After this brief discussion we were able to talk a little bit. We have talked about all of this very little. He doesn't want to talk about. I said that our marriage has been missing brutal honesty. With him, he will beat around the bush, but not be brutally honest with me. For me, I will try and get my point across, but if it is a conversation he doesn't want to have, I often feel shut down and am unable to get my point across.

He has been unhappy with my appearance and our sexual relationship, but was only brutally honest with me after he had gone outside of our marriage. In our discussion I gave an example about if he didn't want to go to the church I had visited, he only needed to be honest about that. I went on Sunday and people from the church visited our house on Monday. He accepted my example, but said he would go there. How can someone who is carrying on behind his wife's back have any kind of OK feeling about going to church? Baffling....

I am working on my problem areas ...and have been reading His Needs, Her Needs. I've been working out pretty consistently since last summer and have dropped 30 pounds. I have ordered Surviving an Affair and it is on the way...

I think my WH has felt very little in terms of consequences for his actions. Yesterday was a small wake up call. He has to be thinking about how I knew her name...that there are big time consequences for taking pictures of your activities.

Wow....what a scramble of thoughts this has turned out to be.

Now how should I proceed in getting the no contact....

Sumac, I am so sorry that you are going through this.

Have you read the basic concepts and Surviving An Affair? It would also be advisable to read the thread, The Carrot and the Stick of Plan A. As long as your WH is still in contact, MC is a waste of your time and money and untill you expose, there will be no chance of NC and your M does not have a prayer.

You need to get in super snoop mode and find out EXACTLY who this OW is and as much as possible about her and then do a nuclear exposure. Affairs thrive on secrecy. Shining the light of day on it will provide consequences and destroy the fantasy. Get a key logger on his computer and find out what is going on.

I hope that Melody comes back on to advise you on this. She is the queen of exposure. Without it, you are simply treading water.

God's Blessings,

Say

Hi Sumac,

Sorry it's taken me so long to find/read your thread after you posted on my new Healthy Habits thread on the Recovery forum.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that Saynomore had posted to you, too....you're welcome to join both of us and others on the Healthy Habits food accountability thread (OT forum) to share how you lost weight and help us lose, too.


Best wishes in your endeavors, Sumac. We'll be praying for you.

Ace