The Conversation to Avoid After an Affair

The disclosure of an affair usually turns people’s worlds upside down for a time. You’re in a situation you hoped you would never be in. You’re in a situation you’d give anything to get out of. Whether you’re the one who participated in the affair or the one who just found out, catching your breath and figuring out how and in what way to move forward is going to take some time.

Needless to say, you’ve got a lot of hard conversations in your future. However, there is one conversation I hope you don’t have in the immediate aftermath of discovering an affair.

Don’t decide if you’re going to end the relationship.

It will certainly come up. But avoid the hell out of making an actual decision about this. You likely don’t have enough information to truly understand what happened, what it meant to everyone, what it means now, or how this was even possible. You are likely so disoriented by discovering the affair or being discovered that you are having trouble making good decisions for your life long term. The time following the disclosure of an affair is usually terrible. But it’s terrible whether you decide to leave or you decide to stay. You need to have time to gather information, process your own experience and reflect on what rebuilding the relationship would require of each person before you can make a thoughtful decision that usually has far-reaching implications. The pain from going through this will make you want to call it quits to avoid the pain, but unfortunately, there is no real avoiding the pain from this. Moving through it thoughtfully, healing and making sure you don’t make decisions you regret is the best case scenario for this awful situation. You may decide to end the relationship, but now is not the time for that decision.

But here is what you can and need to do:

• Each partner needs at least one person in their personal life that they can tell. If possible, I recommend communicating to one another who these people are so both partners are in the loop.

• Slow down and make sure the basics of your life are managed. Caring for kids, eating, sleeping, making sure everyone is safe. Lean on the people you’ve shared this information with to help with these tasks if you aren’t able to manage them on your own.

• If you have kids, do not tell them. If you can barely deal with this, they sure as hell can’t.

• Seek out professional help. It’s really easy to make this bad situation worse by trying to address it on your own. Get recommendations or do some homework to find someone that can help.

Whether you ultimately end the relationship or work to rebuild, remind yourself you will get through this, one way or another. There is life and happiness on the other side of this. You just have to get there.

How Therapists Fight in Real Life

Being a therapist is weird sometimes. I spend my working life meeting with folks, hearing their stories, helping them hear and understand one another better, and cultivating with them relationships that are worth being a part of. And then I come home where I have to navigate my own world and relationships, with a self-imposed expectation that I'm going to get it right the majority of the time. Well, I don't. And I'd wager to say most therapists don't practice what we preach often enough simply because relationships are hard work. However, I recently had an experience with my husband that's worth sharing. 

We've been having the same fight about the same topic for about a year and a half now. Since our daughter was born, we've been struggling to figure out how to redistribute the plethora of newfound responsibilities and at the end of the day feel loved, supported, and equally valued by one another. Basically, we are like every other new parent. A friend recently asked, "Do you always know how to deal with conflict with your husband?" The truth is, often I do. And often I can't muster the resolve or energy to actually do it. It's as if I'm driving a speeding car, knowing I'm going to crash, knowing how bad the crash is going to be, knowing how long it's going to take to recover because I specialize in crash safety, but hitting the gas as the same. "You know it's going to be bad if you keep this up" is the voice I'll hear in my head. "You know if you'd do all the stuff you help couples do in therapy that you'd have a different outcome". 

The fight we recently had lasted from about 11:30am until around 3:00pm. We started off like we usually do. Trying to get our points across, frustrated that we are still having this fight, frustrated that the other doesn't seem to understand what we're saying. We went on like this for about 30 minutes. Then went to separate rooms. We tried again about 15 minutes later. Same thing. And again about an hour later. Same f*cking Thing. My husband is usually very composed, and quite funny. And even in a conflict, he is usually very thoughtful and articulate, sans the humor. I went into the room he was in for the fourth time. Usually, this process ends after the second or third round of fighting with us just deciding we need to go see our therapist. However, the fourth time was why this fight ended differently. I went in and told him that no matter what, I didn't want to be unkind. Something I've said before but usually with the caveat that I really want him to understand my hurt and how I go from hurt to angry, and from angry to sharp. It's true. I don't ever want to be unkind, and yet sometimes I am. 

Here's what happened on the fourth try. I decided to just listen. We weren't getting anywhere with this back and forth. He talked for a while, some sharing how my words impact him and impact his feelings towards me, some processing his own feelings about things separate from me. As he talked, I could sense waves of empathy towards him. I would listen for a few more minutes, and then begin to feel my body get warm all over with impatience and defensiveness. Everything in me wanted to blurt out "BUT WHAT ABOUT MY FEELINGS?!”, “DO YOU NOT SEE HOW YOU CONTRIBUTE TO THIS?!” I would breathe, and then begin to feel empathy again. And then impatience again, and frustration again. 

I needed to get it. And even more importantly, he needed to feel like I really got what he's experiencing. So I listened. I breathed deeply, I looked him in the eyes and tried to imagine what he was experiencing and forced myself to temporarily set aside my deep desire for him to understand my side. He shared for a while, who knows how long it really was, but it felt like a long while. Several times I was hoping he was almost done when he wasn't. But I stayed focused on him, listening and empathizing as much as I could, noticing my frustration and defensiveness but not acting on it. All while noticing his sadness and really trying to attend to it.

What I know about relationships is that we would continue to spin our wheels and grow apart if my singular focus was only on him understanding me. Truthfully, I didn't want to just listen and remain silent while he had the floor. The benefit of being a couples therapist and having knowledge about healthy relationship functioning is in the same way I know when I'm royally screwing things up, I know that even when I'm not feeling empathetic, putting in the relational work of simply listening is more likely to help us make progress. That day, my work in this relationship was to just listen. To push through the frustration, impatience, and momentary indignation and just let him share and try to understand his experience in this relationship. There was nothing else I could do in those moments. He was hurting, and hurt people require empathy and attention and space to share if they're going to start healing. 

And voilà! Everything is better now and we will never fight again... ha, no. 

As lovely as that would be, we're still on our journey of sorting through this particular argument. There's more understanding than there once was, and although we have definitely not mastered how to be partners/lovers and parents, we know each other more deeply and we are figuring out how to make this work a little better for both of us. I knew in my gut that this experience is what progress feels like. Not only did I do the steps to make my husband feel understood, I experienced the happy by-product of actually understanding him and his experience better. And perhaps this deeper understanding of one another is the real end goal of all relational work. We'll have to take turns offering one another this gift of listening without being fully understood countless more times about this fight, and many others. But on this day, we made progress. It was extremely unpleasant for me in the moment but produced the happy outcome of helping us along our journey together. 

I hope this story of our small victory in a smattering of face-plants helps reenergize you to do the essential and often unpleasant relational work that all loving relationships require. I also hope it normalizes what that work can feel like at times, and how many rounds you sometimes have to go with your partner to work through conflict. 

Dealing with Conflict and Getting Intimate with your Partner

Recently, I’ve been teaching a class about the transition to marriage, and one of the things we discussed was some best practices for dealing with conflict. Every couple in the class could identify with the frustration that comes with feeling as if you’re fighting in circles with your partner, and not making any progress. Before you know it, defensiveness and criticism have crept into the conflict, and you have barely touched the issue that needs to be discussed and hopefully resolved. 

The question is not how to get rid of the conflict in our relationships, but how do we engage in conflict in a healthy way that leads to increased intimacy and admiration between partners? Some people may wonder if this is even possible. 

The answer is yes. But we need to understand what’s really going on during our conflicts if we are going to engage in conflict in a way that builds up our relationships, instead of tearing them down. 

Understanding Conflict

This experience of going in circles often stems from what is called a “pursuer-distancer dynamic” in relationships.  We tend to see this most strongly in intimate partner relationships, but it can occur in any relationship. The process goes like this: 

When there is tension about an issue or concern about the relationship - everyone’s anxiety naturally goes up. People attempt to manage their anxiety by either pursuing or distancing. 

• Pursuing: The partner who tends to manage their anxiety by pursuing attempts to get closer to their partner, requests more time, attention, conversation and information. The last thing they want is to feel rejected by their partner. 
• Distancing: The partner who tends to manage their anxiety by distancing will get quiet, avoid talking about the issue, avoid engaging with their partner, request more alone time, or even pretend like the issue is not valid. The last thing the distancer wants is to feel overwhelmed or criticized by their partner. 

The writing on the wall is not hard to decipher. 

The very behaviors the pursuer is using to decrease their anxiety (trying to get close to their partner), inadvertently raises the anxiety of their distancer. The distancer usually responds by withdrawing as a means of decreasing their anxiety (trying to get space), which inadvertently raise the anxiety of the pursuer. And around and around they go!

It’s important to note that neither the pursuer or the distancer are solely responsible for starting or maintaining this cycle. Each person contributes to the cycle, and if either party changes their pursuing or distancing behaviors, the cycle changes. Also, in some situations or some relationships you may be more of the pursuer, and in others, more of the distancer. 

But in order to stay out of these unhelpful cycles of conflict, you'll need to find a different way to manage anxiety, be willing to tolerate a new level of anxiety, and risk being more vulnerable in your relationships. 

• For the distancer, this means resisting the urge to withdraw physically, emotionally or intellectually from the conflict. Basically, you’ve got to practice showing up in the conflict instead of running away. 
• And for the pursuers, this means resisting the urge to chase after your partner, especially if you sense them pulling away and breathe through a new and uncomfortable level of distance during a conflict. Generally speaking, the more you dig, the less you get. 

So where does this leave a couple? Surely, never addressing your conflict and permanently feeling anxious is not the solution. Instead, focus on reigning in your tendency to be the pursuer/distancer in order to give each partner a better chance at staying in the conflict long enough to make some progress on the issue. Adjusting your focus to “how” you address conflict is what gives you the best chance at “if” you successfully address the issue (regardless of what the issue is). Then the hard (er) part comes: Now is the time when you bravely share with your partner the thoughts, feelings and desires that seem scary or impossible to share and work towards increased understanding and resolution. True intimacy requires transcending the fears that hold us back and opening up ourselves more fully to one another.  

When discussing this topic with the newly married class, they did something both beautiful and courageous. They requested information from one another about what they could do to support their partners in their efforts to resist their urges to either pursue or withdraw. 

• The distancers shared:
  • “When you have an issue that you want to discuss with me, the more gently you bring it up or the more of a heads up I have, the easier it is to resist running away.”
  • “The more gratitude you share about my efforts to engage with you, the more I want to try and the more confidence I have that I can resolve an issue.”
  • “At the end of the day, remember that it’s not that I don’t want to talk to you. Ultimately, I’m just afraid of disappointing you, hurting you or that I won’t be able to solve the problem.”
• The pursuers shared:
  • “If you don’t know how to solve the problem, or if you’re not ready to discuss it, it would help me calm down if you simply acknowledged there is an issue.”
  • “Communicate your commitment to discuss it at a better time, and that you do care about resolving things with me. Otherwise, it’s easy for me to feel abandoned and scared of losing you.”
  • “The more you speak up about being dissatisfied, the more confidence I have that I don’t have to go searching for what you’re unhappy about. At the end of the day, I want to know you're forthright with me, so I have a chance to adjust my behavior when I need to.”

I hope their bravery inspires you, as it did me. I hope you can see your part in your relationship dynamics more clearly, and that you use this information to engage in conflict in a way that leads to more intimate relationships and more lasting solutions.