In this case study the person talks about the importance and effectiveness of charging neutral – a skill I coach and teach and vital to coping with infidelity.
What helps makes charging neutral effective for her are two critical factors:
1. Her spouse seems to be pretty much on board in terms of wanting to repair the marriage. Taking her reactivity out of the equations helps the healing process. This can be true for an emotional infidelity or other types of affairs.
2. She talks about her affair years earlier. This fact gives her empathy and understanding for the plight of her husband. Charging neutral then is an easier skill to employ.
After my initial shock of finding out my husband had been having an affair for about 2 years and after I acted like most people yelling screaming throwing things. I stood back and decided I really wanted our marriage to work. He had made the decision to break away from the affair when I did discover about it so I think that sort of made it easier for me. I think I used the “charging Neutral”method by sitting down with him and acting very cool and just stating the way I felt and what we both must do to try and make it work. I stated the facts like we have been married for 30 years and we do still have a good relationship that we can make it happen again as long as he wants to. I had also had an affair 10 years ago and at that time I told him face to face he did not find out any other way just me telling him. So we bought that up again and discussed the fact that he felt like me all that time again and we made it work again once so why not this time. Maybe my circumstances are a little different to most but it has now been 2 years since his affair was discovered and I think we are through it. I do still get moments where I want to check a few things out to make sure he has really made a clean break but I think that is normal!
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