One of my specialisms is in helping couples rebuild their relationship after discovering an affair. The secret to repairing a broken relationship after an affair is to help them understand why it happened and then help them build a brand new relationship.
Couples who reconnect after an affair and learnt how to create a successful marriage, ultimately see the affair as a wake-up call that actually saved their relationship from years of suffering.
Without doubt, an affair is a shockingly horrible experience, however, an affair is just one of the many destructive symptoms a couple can experience if they don’t learn how to create a relationship that lasts.
There is nothing more emotionally volcanic than discovering your partner is having an affair. Affairs are powerfully destructive because an affair ignites our primary fears that we are not enough for our partner. Not being enough is a very powerful fear.
This fear then creates a powerful force within us that brings into play a survival shutdown mechanism that’s designed to instantly protect us.
The initial anger and disbelief are soon replaced with a powerful battle for the person who’s discovered their partners’ affair. This battle is between the part of them that now can’t trust their partner and the part that still loves them.
So whilst this person battles with what to do, the person who had the affair has their own battle. Some know exactly why they had an affair and some have no idea.
The person who had the affair can also be left with destructive emotions such as crippling guilt and not feeling safe to enter back into the relationship through fear of never being forgiven.
Some people have affairs because they want out, some because they could, some because something was missing and some really have no idea why.
Couples who fall victim to affairs need to repair the relationship in such a way that the affair becomes the wake-up-call that makes their relationship better than it ever was.
Rebuilding a couple’s relationship is formed by helping them build a focus that helps them learn the truth about their specific situation and history.
The ultimate goal is to help the couple discover if they have the ability to create a relationship that’s not only a win-win for both people today, but one that can last.
Lasting means passionate, exciting, connected, loving, the relationship they should have had all along.
Before we can get to this position the couple needs to understand the situation they are in in more detail so they are in a position to start to repair the relationship.
When the couple is able to see the true complexity of their situation and how to understand it properly, then they are armed to make a decision for their future which makes sense.
A lady told me she knew from the moment she married her husband he would have an affair. I asked her the impact of feeling this way. She told me she held back to protect herself. So she held back her love for eleven years! I asked him why he had an affair he said he loved her, but felt she didn’t love him so he gave up.
One lady had multiple affairs and didn’t know why, but desperately wanted to stop. Her husband was understandably at the end of the road with her. By working with her to help her understand why she was behaving this way she could not only explain to her husband why, but she could now change for good and totally reject her self destructive behaviours. This paved the way to help her build a new authentic identity where she could be happy within herself and now safe with her husband. Now she didn’t need or want other men.
Another couple learnt how without knowing they had eroded their relationship by focusing on their careers and kids and starved the relationship of what it really needed to survive. The relationship became vulnerable and no one knew until she met someone new who reignited her sexual energy and she felt alive again. This couple learnt how to rebuild their relationship passion through learning how to become lovers again.
Another couple suffered from years of resentment because an old affair she had years before went unresolved. For him, his new affair was justified because of what she had done. He still loved his wife but was now clearly torn between the excitement of this new lover and if his wife really did love him. I helped her show him her true feelings and helped him understand where this all started and how to protect it moving forward.
These couples and many more needed tailored solutions help to breakthrough the destructive forces an affair brings and rebuild their relationships so they had the best chance of lasting.
Affairs must be resolved so the relationship is free to grow. Brush it under the carpet and it will be back or simply never go away.
So with simple steps, an affair does not have to be the end, learn like other couples how to make it the wake-up call that enables the couple to learn how to build a new successful relationship that’s protected and lasts.
If your relationship has suffered an affair and you would like specialist step-by-step help please make contact with us straight away.
