So imagine this, she enters my session full of anger. Her partner has slept with another woman and she’s livid.
When this kind of trust gets broken it’s totally understandable for the innocent party to experience significant pain.
But when you look at the bigger picture I wonder if your initial perspective changes.
What we discover is she has experienced a tough childhood and when she becomes fearful she copes by pulling her love away.
We learn’t that she was so fearful of being hurt she had never fully opened to her partner and to protect herself she withheld love from him.
She had done this for 3 years.
As their story unfolds we learn that he never felt she loved him, she seemed impossible to please and he was miserable.
Even though he loved her with all his heart one night he was drinking to escape his pain of not feeling loved he was vulnerable to advances from another female prepared to provide the love he craved from his partner.
After the event he was consumed with guilt and couldn’t believe what he had done.
When his partner discovered the truth she felt that withholding her love was the right decision because he was clearly a cheater.
Now lets look at the bigger picture…
Was he right to cheat on her? No of course not there is never a time when this is the right choice.
Do we understand why he cheated? Yes of course, she withheld her love for 3 years.
Whenever couples enter into help most couples want me to change their partner because they have done a wrong of some kind.
Usually we discover that both people have played a part in the presenting problem (the infidelity) and the reason the problem exists is due to a far deeper issue.
When we uncover the real problem then we have a chance of rebuilding a broken relationship.
Helping both people in the relationship take responsibility for the relationship is key at this point. This empowers them and gives them back control.