Recovering from Infidelity Has its Moments

October 10, 2008 by 1 Comment

I was talking to a coaching client a while back and she has made tremendous progress in charging neutral, a skill I teach that is highly effective for most of the types of affairs I describe in my e-book. (It’s not as effective or desirable in the “I Don’t Want to Say No” affair and the “I Want to be Close to Someone… but can’t stand intimacy” affair.)

Anyway, charging neutral was triggering an interesting and favorable response from her husband. She was getting what she wanted. The tension was appreciably less and life seemed to be headed in a good direction.

The next time I talked to her, her world had fallen apart again.

Here’s what happened:

Initially his behavior changed in response to her change… charging neutral. He was probably curious and a little frightened.

What frightened him about an “improvement” in her behavior?

Well, she was changing the rules of the relationship. She no longer was playing along with him in ways that were familiar to him.

He no longer could count on her to be there for him in ways that, at least from his perspective, enabled him to continue the affair and his destructive behavior.

And so, what did he do?

He ramped up his old behavior as a way to get her back “playing the game,” so he could continue on the old path.

Hang in there. This too shall pass.

Filed Under: Infidelity Help Tagged With: , , ,

Infidelity and the Other Person: Setting Boundaries

September 10, 2008 by Leave a Comment

Should you confront the other person?

1. What was your purpose for confronting the OP and what did you say/do?

I wanted to hear from her that this affair happened. I couldn’t believe my husband would ever do this. I called her and asked her about it, and she lied and said nothing ever happened. (She was married too.) She told me she wanted to help me.

2. What happened? What was the outcome?

She called my husband later that night and blamed him for everything. Said he was living with a crazy person. I think this was the first step in healing our marriage. He realized that she did not care about him to even admit the affair.

3. If you were to do it again, would you do it differently? What did you learn?

Three months (and a lot of counseling) later, I did call her back. At the time, I knew my husband had kept every e-mail and chat from their time together. It was all pretty graphic. I called her to say that I was sorry she was in a bad marriage but that didn’t give her the right to ruin mine. I told her that my husband kept every contact with her and that she would be wise to stop contact with him. A little threat, yes. But I felt better after that and never called her back.

Coach’s Comments:

1. It appears that husband and wife are fairly well aligned in this case. The husband was willing to divulge information to his wife, which gave the wife considerable power in confronting the other person.

2. The husband seemingly wanted out of that affair. His response to the other person’s phone call to him sealed the deal. He was outa there.

3. Divulging the fact that her husband had evidence was a clear and powerful way of cementing their alignment. As well, it set a clear boundary: stay away!

Interested in 7 kinds of affairs?

Filed Under: Confronting the Other Person Tagged With: , , ,