An article appeared on Huffington Post on December 13th entitled: “A Therapist Explains: Can a Relationship Truly Heal After an Affair? Yes, but expect a different relationship on the other side” (Click on title to be directed to the article).
It is a mailbag sort of article where someone writes in about healing from an affair and an expert, Michael Brown, gives his thoughts. To be clear, Michael brown is a licensed marriage and family therapist (LMFT) and a Certified Gottman Therapist.
I appreciated some of what he shared in his response but was a bit disappointed as well.
A.K. writes:
Q: My partner had a one-night affair with someone he met at work but no longer works with. We’ve been together for 8 years and although we have each grown busier and spent less time together the past few years, our relationship has never felt devoid of love. … But in the months since, my partner has not stopped trying to win me back, promising it was a one-time thing, that he will work on himself, and that our relationship isn’t worth throwing away…. —A.K.
As is to be expected from an industry that runs off of people reconciling and making billable hourly appointments, Brown encourages A.K. to give her partner another chance. He then outlines Gottman principles necessary for the restoration of the marriage.
Before getting into those principles, I wish he had paused long enough to talk frankly with A.K. She needs to be reminded her partner’s cheating is in no way her fault. Her writing, “…although we have each grown busier and spent less time together the past few years…” makes me nervous that she might be blaming herself for his cheating.
Cheating is always unacceptable.
Being busy or spending less time together does NOT make cheating permissible. There is no excuse for cheating on your partner. It is wrong.
Not catching that from A.K.’s letter is the first thing that disappointed me in Brown’s response. The next piece that disappointed me was his willingness to accept the characterization of the cheating as “…a one-night affair with someone he met at work but no longer works with.”
My concern with this is not telling A.K. even if this is true–remember a cheater is also a liar–that a one-night stand comes with a series of betrayals leading to the sexual act. It is more than “just” a one-night stand even if sexual only happened on one night (something to hold with healthy skepticism).
A.K. needs to both not take the blame-shift and needs to understand the problem is a big one even with “just” one night of sexual infidelity.
That is the bad part.
The good part is how Brown outlines the necessary elements for actually restoring a marriage following infidelity. In particular, I appreciated his thoughts about the first of the three “A”s…”Atonement.”
He writes,
The first phase, Atonement, is not about forgiveness. Rather, it is about your partner acknowledging that he has hurt and betrayed you and being willing to listen to your hurt and answer your questions about the affair. It is about accountability and transparency.
I love that he specifically excludes the concept of forgiveness in this early phase. To translate this phase into Christian theology, Brown is advocating repentance. This is what repentance looks like in action from a cheater.
He even adds,
This phase may be quite prolonged and may involve you asking many questions about the affair.
In other words, Brown is cautioning against rushing through this phase without actually dealing with the problematic behavior thoroughly. In other words, there can be no rebuilding without real repentance.
You can read the rest of the article if you would like to see what Brown says about the other two steps. My personal take on the article is a mixed review.
I think faithful partners need the reminder that cheating is always unacceptable in not their fault. The status of the marriage relationship is irrelevant to whether or not it was okay to cheat. It is not. Ever.
Also, I believe it is important to remind the faithful partner that the betrayal is much more than one night of sex (and that assumes the cheater has been truthful about that piece, which is doubtful considering the cheater’s track record).
Only then is the faithful spouse armed to make an informed decision about whether he or she ought to invest more in the marriage.
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I think you are too busy trying to place blame that you miss too much. My wife of 20 years had an affair 11 or 12 years ago. I am in the military, I was gone for long periods of time. She was incredibly stressed, raising children alone, sad, and vulnerable. Someone took advantage of that. Her mistake had layers of complexity on it. Our marriage today is infinitely better than it was, and I am still active duty. But we had to work on problems, both together and individually, that were at the root cause of the issues that led to her affair. You seem to miss that.
Matthew,
It is not so much blame as assigning responsibility. If you misdiagnosis this part, you will end up with a failed “solution.”
Circumstances are not what cause infidelity. Plenty of military couples have experienced the stresses you describe your marriage experienced. However, not everyone ended up with the wife cheating on the active duty husband. My point in that is to remind everyone that it is the person and their choices that cause infidelity.
The only hope for infidelity free marriages after the fact is the cheater making better choices in the future. It is good to remove marriage stress elements, of course. But the stress did not cause the cheating. It merely revealed the crack in the cheater’s character.
A cheater pointing fingers at their spouse or the stress in the marriage is a cheater who is refusing to do the hard work of owning their destructive actions and choices. As a pastor, I call that blaming someone or something else for one’s own sin. Therapists this side of the veil might accept that behavior but God won’t (see 2 Corinthians 5:10).
A good pastor who really cares about the cheater (and the faithful spouse) won’t tolerate this shifting of responsibility onto people/things that did not choose and act in sinful ways.
-DM