The Journey of Recovery After An Affair

welcome to another episode of Facebook live let me just say that it is indeed an honor and a privilege to be back with you it's been some time and I want to reconnect and re-establish an ongoing consistent weekly session with you just to give you some some things that I think may help you and so what I want to talk about today is the importance of understanding the journey of recovery after an affair for instance if you have had an affair in your relationship and you've gone through what would be considered a healthy productive counseling process where there's been restoration at some point the sessions come to an end at some point you've covered the specifics of what's happened and you've gone through a healing process there may have been forgiveness you're still working on trust but once the sessions end the journey does not stop because you haven't reached the final destination you have to realize that the journey is a continuous journey and it may be an anon ending journey to get to your ultimate destination well what is the destination the destination is fulfillment the destination is a healthy foundational relationship so in essence if you've come from pain island and you're trying to get to Pleasure Island it's important that you and your partner discuss what Pleasure Island looks like but along the way I think is critically important to realize that it's a journey that may be comprised of some turbulence there gonna be ups and downs there gonna be bumps and bruises they're going to be pit stops they're going to be flat tires they're gonna be time when you have to pull over and gas up again because you've run out of all steam or fuel and so it's a journey where there's constant course corrections being made in your commitment to being the best version of yourself is critically important you have to understand your relationship will never ever be the same again it can never go back to the way it was now that's not necessarily a bad thing because in essence the affair wasn't the problem to begin with the affair exposed a problem that may have either existed in you as the individual or your partner if they were the one who were unfaithful or it exposes issues that existed in the relationship so with a magnifying glass on things that either you or your partner or both of you who are oblivious to it allows you to see things from a new perspective in a new vantage point and so therefore if you come to responsibility to rebuild recreate restructure how about reevaluate the entire relationship and to put new building blocks in that create a long lasting sustainable relationship and so it never you'll never get to a point where you're no longer going to have to invest and engage in effective conversation meeting each other's emotional needs really understanding the importance of having empathy and sympathy as your partner may continue to go through triggers now the thing about triggers is you never know when it will come a trigger can be based upon a smell a color driving down the highway in passing a particular exit it can be a movie a television show it can be a dialogue or an interaction that you observe from a distance there's so many things that will pull a trigger out of an individual and connect it to something that has happened in the past and so you have you have to be sensitive to a partner who continues to have triggers now the work must be done by both partners because both of you have a responsibility so they're the unfaithful partner has his or her role to play in rebuilding the trust okay honoring the marriage with integrity and intentionality in terms of what one does and knowing that this is a journey ahead now the betrayed partner has his or her work to do as well they have to make a decision to begin to manage their emotions to control their thoughts to not to not allow their triggers to overwhelm them and control them but they have to have a proper management of these particular triggers they have to make a decision to begin to to give their partner a certain level of freedom within the relationship because if a violation has occurred and one has been found out and discovered and you've gone through a process of recovery then there's got to be some sense of freedom that both of you have where you have honesty and integrity and you do nothing any longer to violate that relationship and so Trust is critically important in order to move forward and so I have seen many couples who have had better relationships after the discovery of the affair than what they had before but one of the things that typically sets a couple back is if we're constantly talking about what has happened again and again and again no understand there is a season for that there is a season where you should have a thousand and one conversations or where you possibly ask the same question a thousand and one different times because you may need clarity you may need to have a proper understanding and hearing it the first time didn't do it hearing it the second time you picked up on something a little bit different but that third time that really sealed the deal well let me give you a technique that I think will tremendously help you if you have a phone you should use the power of technology so as you're having these deep conversations where you're talking about the facts and the feelings the what the wind the how and the why of the affair take out your phone and go to your recording app and record the conversation because the fact of the matter is you only retain timbre of what you hear anyway so the other 90% went in one day right out the other and you didn't catch it and so oftentimes you find yourself engaging in the same conversations and it may where your partner down because if I kept how many how many times are we gonna have to discuss this didn't we talk about this already I already answered that question though you didn't guess I didn't read it yes I did no you did yeah yes I did no you did not and so it becomes a tug of war and so the reality is the question may have been answered it may have been answered effectively the challenge is this when I'm hearing something and I'm listening with emotional ears I things on in on one particular thing that was said and then everything else becomes words in the background that don't even process and so I'm missing all of this information because I'm zoomed in on a particular thing and so that is why it is critically important to record your conversations because guess what you can rewind the tape and you can listen to the conversation 1,001 times in order to get better clarity and understanding on what was said so rather than re engaging in another conversation where you're talking about the same things now you're asking better questions now you're asking more intelligent questions because you had the time to process the information that was shared in the first initial conversation after you've gained an understanding of the facts you then may want to transition into the Y a lot of times when information is given the the her partner or the betrayed partner just doesn't get it one of the reasons why I beyond the betrayed partner may not get it is because they're listening to the answer and they're processing the information through their own filter through their own wiring so if you in essence want to understand why would you be unfaithful and the answer is given if you have within your heart in your soul nothing remotely that will ever lead you to ever cheap of being faithful your partner it's hard to receive the answer that's being given because you're processing the information through your wiring through your tendencies through your belief system and that's where becomes problematic you can interpret what's being said through your belief system you're trying to get into the mind and the understanding of the unfaithful partner to figure out why they would do what they would do nothing that justifies what it's been done not that it makes it okay but you're trying to understand the mind and the heart of your partner that led up to this incident so that you two can collectively figure out what can be done to prevent such things from happening again and oftentimes when a partner is unfaithful they may understand from a very simplistic perspective as to what they did and why they did what they did but oftentimes there are deeper roots that are attached to behavior and it takes somebody a third party a counselor a mentor a marriage coach an infidelity recovery specialist to help you connect the dots because through self-discovery you begin to understand deeper things that have contributed to the behaviors that you've become oblivious or not conscious to and so you're asking yourself why can't I shake this why do I keep going down this path why do I keep making the same mistakes well sometimes you need someone else to help you figure that thing out and so this is where counseling comes in this is where we're about we were winding the tape and listening to the messages come in this is where writing down their questions and presenting it to your partner giving them some time to think it through not that they're making up answers not that they're just gonna say what they believe you want to hear but some questions stump the person who you're asking and they have no clue even though they were fully engaged in the experience and so some things take a little bit of time to a process to come up with something that makes sense and so what I'm speaking to here is really the full disclosure process and for some couples last for a couple days summer a couple of weeks unfortunately for some a couple of months and even years because there's no system put in place and so what can really drain a relationship and cause more of an emotional disconnect and give up your will your desire and your fight to want to work it out is when you're constantly bombarded again and again and again and again with the affair though it may have been a year or two or ten years behind you and that is because you didn't effectively collectively go through this process together and so what happens is residue carries on and spills into the relationship and really does a horrible job of helping you have the desire to reconnect with your partner so this is where it requires you giving your all this is where it requires you putting your best foot forward and digging deep and going into the trenches and not putting your tippy toe in the water and testing it but diving in headfirst and getting wet because it is not until you become fully immerged or in it solely because it is not until you become fully submerged in the process can you really deal with the true cause of what has happened I mean you begin to do that healing begins to take place now remember the truth hurts so there's no denying the truth if you deny the truth you're creating more of a insecurity in your partner you're creating more of a reason why they should not trust you because inherently they feel like you're holding back you're keeping something from them you're not being transparent because you don't want to further hurt the partner by sharing these details because you know and they know that the truth ultimately hurts and while that is true I will also say that the truth also heals and oftentimes the trade partners say as bad as what you did actually was what hurt even more is the fact that you've denied the truth from me for so long so not only were you telling a lie you were living a lie and not only do they question that incident but now they questioned relationship now they wonder who are you I don't think I've ever known you is anything that we've had ever been real they question everything because you hold you've held on to this truth for so long that they're not sure what to believe and that's what makes the recovery process so difficult and so rather than tiptoeing and tap-dancing through this process and being so careful or meticulous about what you say and how you say it it's almost taken on the approach up I gotta rip this band-aid off that I want to cause as least pain as possible so I'm gonna slowly tear this thing off but as they're slowly tearing it off you're causing more pain and agony because it's ripping the hair out of the skin and pulling the skin from the bone and it's a really painful experience as opposed to when you just rip that sucker off there's an instant pain but immediately the pain goes away and so when we slow roll the process when bits of truth come out little by little over the course of time you're forcing your partner to relive the pain all over again and even though the information that you're that's now coming out is old to you it's new to them and you're forcing them to relive it and so as they relive it there's negative thoughts the negative emotions begin to embody them and consume them and now they're right back at that moment when the affair first occurred and so to avoid that it's relieving that from your experience make it up in your mind that we're gonna go on in and deal with the gore enos the ugliness the darkness of what has happened so that we can get out and come out on the other side and so I critically encourage you encourage you to go all in it to have discussions that are healing have discussions that move you forward and if you have to have him a few times have them as often as possible with assistance and tools that will help get you to the other side okay so I want you to have let me make a word stick to it to desert I don't want you to give in to Kay to quit because it's taking too long where it's just too hard and if there's a way to avoid the paint there's no way to avoid the pain because what was done was painful and so you've got to be willing to go through a process of pain think about it whenever you're healing an aspect of your body it's a painful process if you broken a leg strained an arm pull the muscle the recovery process can be just as painful if not more painful than the initial incident that took place so there's no way to avoid the pain avoiding the pain makes matters worse and creates more distrust and can ultimately lead to divorce which is the last thing that you ultimately want so go all in be courageous knowing that you're gonna come out on the other side and we're gonna get through this no matter what and when you do that you win every single time

Channel: Couples Academy

Views: 12,012

Rating: 4.80756 out of 5

Keywords: hasani, pettiford, couples, academy, infidelity, sex, marriage, relationship, love, advice, romance, cheating, affairs, counseling, infidelity specialist, mend the marriage, dating, marriage 101, recover, rebuild, betrayal, emotional affair, trust, survive, problems, danielle, infidelity recovery specialist, divorce prevent, marriage coach, how to save, how to get over my husband having an affair, how to get over my husband leaving me, infidelity in marriage, overcome infidelity, cheating spouse

Id: RM_3sH7cxdg

Length: 15min 32sec (932 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 21 2018