 You ask, we answer. Welcome to Can This Marriage Be Saved, where we go up against common relationship problems and help you determine if this relationship should stay or go. Today's topic is infidelity and why it's not always necessary to end your marriage due to a case of infidelity. We're here tonight with Rivka and Shlomo Slakin. Hi Shlomo. Hi, how are you? Good. I wanted to talk to you about the not so wonderful topic of affairs and infidelity. I know they happen to so many people and I also know that a lot of people think if an affair happens, it's an automatic reason to end a marriage. Let's talk more about that. Is it possible for a marriage to recover from an affair or must you end a marriage because it's the ultimate breach? It depends on really what you want to do. If you want to remain married, then it is possible to save the relationship. It requires work and it requires a real thought process to understand your relationship and why it got to the place it did and how to move forward and create success and to rebuild the trust. But if two people want to stay together, it is possible to heal the relationship. It's funny to hear you talk about it as you're saying that it's really a choice. It's basically a decision. I guess I never felt like an affair and the aftermath of an affair and whether to save your marriage from an affair is a decision. It almost seems like it's this automated, you find out your spouse is having an affair, you freak out and you basically get a divorce. I don't know if that's from the movies or if that's just from my life socialization. I'm not really sure where I got that from. Is that what most people think? Well, most marriages where there are cases of infidelity do end in divorce. The odds are against you. It makes sense that the person who is betrayed would be angry and have a hard time trusting their spouse and wanting to even stay in their relationship. All of that makes sense and makes sense why they would want to end their relationship. However, there are plenty of couples that I've worked with who want to save their relationship. Some of them have children. Some of them don't even have children but they would like to be able to stay married to their spouse as hard as it is for them to forgive them. It's more important for them to stay in their relationship than to terminate it. So it's really a place of decision. It's not like this is a totally different subject but it's not like an abusive situation where the victim almost feels like they have to stay with their abuser due to various psychological feelings. You could probably tell me more about that but it's not like that, is it? No, it's basically whether this relationship is important to them enough to want to stay in it even though their spouse basically did one of the worst things that they could possibly do to their relationship. If the betrayed, the one receiving them, you would call them the victim if they do want to stay in their relationship after infidelity then that's totally a choice and they may have valid reasons why they want to stay married. So it is possible to recover from an affair then? Yes, it is. How do you do that? How do you even start that process? Well, first of all, both people have to be committed to repairing their relationship. I've worked with couples where there has been infidelity and because both people wanted to work on their relationship they were able to save their relationship. Whereas I've had couples with very, I guess you would say, maybe issues that pale in comparison to infidelity and because they weren't committed they weren't successful. So as we talk about in our program about the five steps that the first step is commitment, really commitment determines whether you can even get started and work on something. So that's number one but there are a few other things we need to do. First of all, there has to be a forgiveness process where the person who committed the affair can make amends and their spouse can forgive them. Now it's not necessarily going to happen overnight. It could be an ongoing process because it is hard to deal with the feelings of hurt and betrayal that have occurred in the aftermath of an affair. But there is the element of forgiveness that is important to happen. And then also taking inventory and doing work on the relationship in order to understand why the relationship got to the point where something like this could happen. And then of course erecting any safeguards to make sure it doesn't continue happening. So some couples like to have, they might leave their spouse all their email passwords and Facebook logins, you know, all their various logins, social media logins so that there's transparency there that helps rebuild the trust. That's something that's quite common with a lot of couples I've seen that they've decided to do on their own. It really takes the effort from the person who committed the affair to really show that they're willing to change and do something differently. So it really starts with the commitment that they both decide that they are committed to the process of fixing their marriage, right? And then you said there's a forgiveness process, or did you call it an amends process? Amends process or forgiveness where the person who committed the affair asks forgiveness from their spouse for what they did. Now is this a formal process or is this something they have to do in counseling? Is this something they can do on their own? Well I have a formal dialogue that I often do with couples, especially if I feel that they haven't really gotten to the place of forgiveness. Other couples come in where they feel like they've already worked on it on their own and it could be possible for you to work on it on your own to really talk about it. And sometimes especially I always tell the person who committed the affair that you may need to grovel before your spouse and go out of your way to show that you're contrite because you seriously hurt them and they need to be reassured that this is really that you understand what you did and the ramifications of your actions. How long do you think that groveling process needs to be? Every couple is different. Some people are going to be more reactive and more hurt than others so if you want the relationship to work then it's up to you to be patient to give your spouse all the time they need to recover. But you know it does take time. It takes time for the trust to rebuild but in a lot of couples come in, sometimes they complain and they say you know I really was hoping that I would be over this by now but I'm still bothered by it and that's okay. And we want to validate that and in no way do we want to, the person might say you know I'm getting annoyed that you're not willing to move on already. But it's important to validate the feelings because you know you did a quite serious act and you really hurt them and it's important to realize that they're going to need all the time they have to heal and the more that you can be patient with them the more benefit will be for your relationship in the long run. It sounds like getting counseling and doing a formal process would be helpful for healing. Yeah I mean I think it's quite difficult. I mean I believe the divorce rate is 70% for affairs. That's not necessarily including people who go to counseling or not but just in general. So the more help that you can get the better and I found that it's really necessary even if you decide that you're not going to do it again and you set up you're more transparent but there are a lot of feelings that need to get worked out and even more importantly to understand why this came about and how you can make your relationship stronger. Because if you don't do that it can happen again. So let's go back to when the spouse that was cheated on find out initially that they were cheated on. I mean it's very hard to control your feelings in the moment but are there to-dos and not to-dos for how to react once you hear about it or find out about it? Well it's really hard to tell somebody who hears this on the receiving end that they shouldn't be upset or they shouldn't get angry or lash out. Obviously they're very hurt and they have every right to feel what they do and some people may have extreme reactions. I mean especially if it's a surprise if they thought that this kind of came out of the blue it could be quite shocking. So if you're the one who's telling your spouse that you had an affair be prepared that you're going to hear some strong reactions and do your best to be patient and to realize that even if they do lash out at you they're coming from a place of hurt and reactivity and they're not necessarily trying to be malicious. They're just shocked and dismayed and feeling betrayed. Now if you can control yourself from the receiving end obviously the harsher you respond you know it will potentially affect your spouse even though he or she did the act and you know you could say that they're to blame for what they did. Still the way that you respond if you want to win them back you may want to think about how to do it in a way that creates more safety and that's why sometimes it's helpful to do it in the context of the formal process because at least when I work with couples I help them share their feelings. But I really try to do it in a way that's not explosive and in that way the person who's listening can really understand it better and appreciate it better and really validate the feelings. Whereas if you just start yelling and screaming at your spouse for what they did as much as your spouse realizes that they did something wrong it's going to be hard for them to hear that and it's not necessarily going to be advantageous to you in terms of healing the relationship especially if they're not quite sure that they want to stay married. So if the person who had the affair wants to stay in the relationship then they may be able to tolerate some of the backlash and that reasonably so but if they're not quite sure of course if they're still having the affair then they might definitely want to end the marriage. That happens in a lot of cases even if they don't want to end the marriage that they're not sure if they want to stay married because the marriage wasn't so great in the first place so a strong reaction could encourage them and provoke them to just to completely check out. So again you're entitled to your feelings if you were betrayed and no one should tell you that you should not have them but if you are able to tone them down a bit or take some time before you respond it may be helpful for the in the long run. It's so hard to tell somebody to hold back I would think you know the person that just finds out I can't even imagine like telling them to hold back and not react or overreact. Right I mean that's not something I would never tell anyone not to do that not to react but I would let them know that the way that they will react could have an impact on their spouse. Do counselors out there I know that you don't but do people advise a couple to separate like right away is that a common piece of advice given to couples that just you know found out. What do you mean separate in terms of moving towards divorce or just so they can have time to think things through. I guess so they can have time to think things through or I'm just thinking you know if you just found out about it like you know would you want your spouse to be living in the same. I don't know I guess for me my reaction would be fighter flight you know is it worthwhile to separate for a few days or that's probably not what you would advise I would think. It's tricky because I mean some people will probably want their spouse to kick them out if they found out that they did that they had an affair so. I don't know if it's advantageous really to separate usually people come to me after they've already they don't reveal it in the session they've already revealed before they're coming because they want to repair the relationship so. I'm not necessarily getting people at that place where they're not sure about whether they should have some time alone you know every couple is different. Some people need a space and don't want to talk to their spouse at all but you know I think at some point they need to work on it together. So if the separation is temporary for the purpose of them kind of cooling off and getting time together then that's fine. Obviously if you have children at home you have to think about how that would work because that would be difficult for them and how do you explain that without things being too awkward. Not hurting the children especially if you are planning to try to heal the relationship so you have to work that out in the most sensitive way. It does sound like there's a few things that can be helpful for the person that was just cheated on you had mentioned going back and taking an inventory and thinking about what led to this can you elaborate more about that. So affairs don't occur in a vacuum and they don't usually know sometimes we think that people cheat on their spouse because they are interested in having a physical act with somebody else. That's usually not the reason why people have affairs they're not necessarily looking for that physical this and physical affairs. They're not necessarily looking for the physical experience. Some people have affairs and there's no physical touch involved. There's sometimes it's emotional affairs. Sometimes people are going on the Internet and looking at you know inappropriate things. So all of these things are ways of kind of checking out of the relationship or trying to get their needs met which don't feel are happening in the relationship and they're not just necessarily sexual needs. There's usually something deeper some emotional needs and connection. So affairs are really a way of kind of protesting the lack of connection that they have and they're looking somewhere else where they can someone else will be nicer to them. Somebody else who will pay attention to them notice them. Now again this doesn't excuse the act. We all have responsibility for anything that any act we do and you know there's no excuse for going out of the relationship. But there is a context for it and if we can understand the void that happened in the relationship that allowed that to happen then we can make sure it doesn't happen again. People in great relationships usually don't have you know there's nothing wrong in the relationship. There's usually not a case of infidelity. So there's usually something lacking that prompts one partner to go look for something elsewhere. So it's really not about sex necessarily. No it's usually not. Hmm that's very interesting. So you're saying that there's needs that were not being met emotionally or just in general the couple wasn't connected and that's possibly what led to the affair. That's usually the case. And do you think people are looking I mean is that something that's almost a home record type of person can kind of pick up on that that a couple isn't connecting and they can kind of wheeze all their way in. Do you think that that's kind of like something that they can do. I don't know if they have antennas but you know they do have I've definitely had stories of clients where you know one person decided to start going on his Facebook after years and accept old friend requests and start talking. And this particular woman that he knew before happened to be a home record she kind of wrecked a few marriages previously. I saw that and you know I can't say I don't know her motives but I wouldn't be surprised if she realized here he was going through a hard time with his wife. And then she started getting involved and appropriately involved with him even just talking to him the spending time with somebody having that emotional connection is also dangerous because it is a slippery slope. And what happens with affairs which makes it so dangerous is that the same romantic phase that you had with your spouse where you fell in love and your neurochemicals anesthetize you to seeing the reality of the situation and you only could see the positive. So that's what happens when people have affairs often if they spend enough alone time with this person or emotional time with this person they actually fall in love with them and it is possible to fall in love with someone else. Even if you're married even if you're I want to say happily married but even if you think you do love your spouse you can fall in love with someone else. So it is important kind of to keep healthy boundaries and when you are associating with members of the opposite sex you know not to have that close relationship that should be only reserved for your spouse. Because people can be naive and they can get in these relationships and then it snowballs into something very serious where they're so captivated by this other person that they can't think straight. And they really think they fall in love and they think that their marriage is you know needs to be left and they don't see the potential harm of the second relationship because usually relationships that start from affairs are usually have a bad ending themselves. But they can't see that they're so blind to it so it is important to be aware of that and the danger of you know letting the boundaries slip. So I guess you mentioned you know social media and Facebook and this person had seen what was it that the person was looking up an old flame. They had received a friend request and they weren't really active on Facebook but they were upset with their wife one night and they decided to go on Facebook and accepted this friend request and they initiated contact with them. And they said you know I wanted to apologize about something that happened many years ago when I kind of like wasn't so nice to you and then they wanted to get on the phone and talking and then all of a sudden here he was who wanted to fix his relationship which was not doing so well. He's in a matter of a week is completely checked out and no longer interested in his marriage because he thinks he's found the one for him. So I guess Facebook is very impactful on marriages. I'd like to ask you about emotional affairs. Are emotional affairs as painful and as destructible as a physical affair? Sure any type of infidelity is it can be as equally destructive because the issue is not actually the infidelity it's the breach in trust. So for example I have couples where one spouse would been talking to other women on the husband was talking to other women on chat groups and when his wife found out it was just as if he had had a physical relationship with someone because there was a breach in trust. So whether it's an emotional affair or even chatting with someone and perhaps you know in an appropriate way those are all breaches of trust. That's really what infidelity does for a relationship it's you're not being loyal. You breach the trust in the marriage and that is painful regardless of what you actually did with the other person involved. So I know that they're very very common these days especially with the advent of Facebook and social media and so I know you talked about boundaries is that how people should really go best about protecting themselves from an emotional affair. Yes I mean I think that everyone needs to know themselves but at the same time you know and trust themselves and realize you know what their weaknesses are. And if they notice that they start gravitating towards these mediums and talking with people in ways that may lead to an appropriate relationship if they're married then it may be wise to curb that. Some people have such a hard time controlling it that the best thing they would do is you know abstinence kind of avoiding it all together avoiding some of these arenas where they could be in contact with people. But certainly you know I don't think it's the best use of one's time and the best thing to do if you're in a relationship to have to be sharing everything with people of the opposite sex. Because it can lead to closer relationships and connections and then you find this person is paying attention to me my spouse isn't and maybe I should spend more time with them and then all of a sudden it develops into something more. So we all have to exercise our own self control and hopefully we're mature enough to be able to control ourselves. But if we're in a real place of weakness in our relationship and we have not gotten help for the relationship then we're much more susceptible to falling prey to some of these easier ways of accessing people outside of the relationship than maybe we ever had in the past. And I just wanted to say Shlomo you touched on a couple of things that is in our marriage mastery program for those of you that are not familiar with it. Marriage mastery is our self guided audio visual program where you can implement these things like we talked about commitment and committing to working on your relationship and we talked about stealing your exits making sure you don't have relationships with members of the opposite sex. You can find that on our website themarriagerestorationproject.com under the tab work with us and you'll see marriage mastery. One last question I have for you is what should you do? Can you do anything if your spouse does not wish to end the physical or emotional affair? So in that situation it is quite challenging because as we said before when a person is having an affair with someone else they're almost in a romantic stage with them they're falling in love so it's quite hard to pry them away. So there are situations where the affair is admitted and it's still going on and those situations are very hard because you really have only one person at the table. The person who's having the affair is kind of checked out of the relationship and they're really not able to see rationally what's going on. So in those cases it's very difficult to get them back. Now it could be that down the line different schools of thought some people would say that the only way to really work on a relationship where there's an affair is to cut off the affair and I do find that that is the most effective way of working. When I have couples where their affair has ended and they're both willing to work on it then it is possible to work on it. Even if the affair has ended but one is not sure about whether they want to work on it still it's easier but if the affair is continuing it's quite difficult because they're really chemically elsewhere. The brain is kind of elsewhere and not in the relationship. So you can try to pursue your spouse you can try to get them to come to counseling and perhaps they'll see really what's going on what they're throwing away by leaving you and the potential problems that they might face with this next relationship. But a lot of times people are just too smitten to be able to really get them back. You know sometimes playing hard to get can be helpful if you kind of say you know okay you know not do what you want but like if you don't pursue them it could be that that actually might make them want to come back more. That is one school of thought. But obviously you know you have to think about whether you're willing to take that risk because what's at risk if you don't pursue them is that they might just get up and leave and think that you're just condoning and giving them their blessing to move on. Well it definitely sounds like recovering from infidelity and stopping an affair really does take help from a professional and you know while we mostly advise or we do suggest that reading your marriage counseling material is something people can do at home. We do want to caution and put it out there for people that really healing from an affair does take proper and very very sensitive marriage help from a professional. It's a delicate subject so you want to make sure that someone really handles it with care and as you can imagine the emotions that are involved that it really is difficult to work on your own and sometimes you need a third party that can help guide you and give you some more clarity along the way. But it definitely is possible to heal and we're really you know happy to be able to talk about this topic with you and we're hoping that it is helpful to you especially if you are experiencing an affair you're in the midst of one or you're healing from one. So we wish you the best and we'd love to stay connected until the next time. Have a great evening. Take care. We hope you've enjoyed listening to today's topic. We'll be back again to focus on another topic that is sure to help you with your marriage. For any questions or concerns please email us at info at themarriagerestorationproject.com with best wishes for your relationship success.