OrensteinSolutions

Affair Recovery Therapy

Couples often enter couples therapy in much pain and distress after discovering an extramarital affair. In these situations, we help couples through the painful feelings that often accompany these situations, including feelings of despair, anger, fear, and confusion. The initial counseling sessions are focused on helping clients get through the day, basically coping in a way that doesn’t make matters worse.

We also help couples “affair proof” their relationships by implementing boundaries to certain outside influences (including past affair partners), while building bridges to each other. Our therapists will discuss practical ways to protect your marriage from external pressures and develop a landscape of openness and honesty. We will help guide you in discussing the infidelity in a way that learning and understanding take place, and trust begins to be rebuilt.

This is a very fragile time in a relationship.  Couples often need assistance knowing how to be with each other at this painful stage, and frequently describe feeling as if they’re “walking on eggshells.”  We help partners turn towards each other for comfort and reassurance, and also manage painful emotions without turning to self-destructive behaviors (e.g., alcohol and drugs, overeating).

Then we address the factors that may have contributed to the affair to help couples make sense of the past and to learn more about the vulnerabilities in their relationship. The goal of helping couples understand their past is not an attempt to place blame, but instead in the interest of learning, growing and healing.

We teach couples a model of forgiveness, not in a cheap, superficial way, but in a manner that shows respect and dignity for each partner.  Genuine, rich forgiveness is an interpersonal process of that involves remorse, compassion, a deep understanding of what “not to do” in the future. 

Many couples seek affair recovery therapy to heal from the damage of an affair and to re-build their relationships.  However, sometimes one or both partners are ambivalent about committing to the relationship.  At times, our therapists will work with couples on assessing their commitment to staying together.  Many couples have difficulty making a decision about their commitment when the relationship is in this crisis-state.  In these instances, our therapists will help the couple identify ways to re-create their bond, and infuse positivity and a sense of connection. 

Many couples who enter therapy, stating they “aren’t in love” any more, discover that there are feelings of warmth and affection, that have been dormant, as stronger emotions of anger and resentment have risen to the top.  In the therapy process, we help clients find constructive ways to release these more negative feelings, allowing the more positive feelings re-surface.

In summary, our couples therapists guide couples through the affair recovery process, by taking the following steps:

• creating an atmosphere of honesty and openness
• learning to turn to each other for reassurance and comfort
• engaging in the forgiveness process
• gaining an understanding for their risk factors for affairs
• developing a plan to protect relationships from future harm
• gaining skills for adding pleasure and intimacy into daily life
• identifying a shared vision of marriage together