Are You a Victim of Infidelity and Feeling Hopeless About Your Relationship?
It feels like your world has been torn apart when you discover your partner had an extramarital affair. Things you believed in and the stability of life as you knew it are changed forever—ripped from you by someone else—someone you trusted with your life—someone you now cannot trust even to go to the store without further cheating.
Are You Devastated By the Betrayal?
Even if your relationship has been awful for a long time, you never expected a cheating spouse and adultery. After finding out about your partner's affair, it feels like it is the end of the world. You think that nothing good can come from this. Your feelings are intense and might change from moment to moment. You wonder if you will explode with contradictory feelings. Yet, It is possible to fix your marriage after adultery or a marital affair. I work with this all the time and I can help you and your spouse work through the healing.
Are You Asking Yourself:
How Can I Save My Marriage and Survive An Affair?
People ask me many questions about relationships and marriage. Some of the more common questions are: Dr. Gunzburg, can I maintain my marriage after a cheating spouse? And: Dr. Gunzburg, can I save my marriage after an extramarital affair? And even: Dr. Gunzburg, how can I survive an affair? I offer a Free E-course that is a 7 step program to get started on saving your marriage and surviving an affair: How to Survive An Affair
Call me: I can help you stop divorce and save your marriage! I am Frank Gunzburg. You’ve probably seen my name and my marriage articles around the internet, along with several marriage self-help books that I have written. I am a psychologist, licensed in Maryland for over thirty years. I have worked with many relationships over those thirty-plus years. My website on Marriage Counseling and Marriage Help describes more about what I do and what I believe.
If you wonder how to refer to your own marital situation, for example, marital infidelity, cheating, or an extramarital affair, the definition varies depending on many circumstances. The strict definiton of marital infidelity includes sexual behavior, but an extramarital affair can be physical, emotional or both. It doesn't matter if the affair is sexual infidelity or emotional dependence, your feelings are still authentic and can be very intense. The Mayo Clinic, in their overview on recovering from infidelity, also describes the difficulty in finding a single definition of marital affairs or marital infidelity and some of the complexities in surviving an affair. I am offering this reference for your interest, but I hold some different opinions regarding the healing process.
Let’s return to answering the previous questions about surviving an affair or infidelity and saving your marriage. If you receive and follow the right advice on rebuilding trust in your marriage, and you both want to stay married and heal your relationship problems, you can probably stay together after an extramarital affair. There are things you probably want to know after being betrayed and it is important that you learn safe ways of retrieving that information and then dealing with your cheating spouse about the marital infidelity.
The person who was betrayed has needs, and so does the person who cheated. If you are the injured person, you might not think your spouse has any right to his or her own needs at this point. However, just for starters, guilty feelings after an affair are common for the person who had the marital affair. It’s what the cheating spouse does with those guilty feelings after the adultery that will make a difference in whether or not you heal your relationship problems and reconcile your marriage.
First, you have to learn how to treat your spouse and love your spouse like your best friend again. This is easy to say, but difficult for most couples to accomplish on their own. When I work with couples in marriage counseling, I teach a step-by-step plan to overcome anger and treat each other like friends. This is really necessary if you want to repair your relationship.
Relationship help involves more than just holding your anger down. I teach you to bypass angry feelings in the first place. This is real anger management. I don’t usually single one of you out for anger management, but rather, teach you couple’s anger management so in most of your situations, you won’t need to get angry in the first place.
The American Psychological Association offers information on anger and anger management. You can find that information at this link: APA on anger. The American Psychological Association (APA) makes reference to cognitive restructuring to cope with anger and as an effective means for anger management. My step-by-step plan utilizes cognitive restructuring along with other strategies such as problem solving and communication counseling. The APA article covers reducing the angry feelings whereas I work to help you avoid angry feelings in the first place.
Communication skill is probably the single most requested improvement by couples who come to me. Communication skills can be learned. The University of Florida has an easy-reading handout for improving your relationship communication. Here is the link: Communication Skills. Simon Fraser University produced another easy-reading handout for Improving Marriage Communication..
In couples counseling, though, I focus on teaching communication skills at a deeper and more thorough level and individualized to your needs. The communication skills I teach in relationship counseling are more comprehensive and fuller-bodied than either of these University links describes.
When I teach couples to improve communication, not only do I give step-by-step guidance and relationship advice during the communication training, I guide couples in practice sessions to make the communication skills easier to grasp. I do what it takes to help you as a couple to be successful in learning how to communicate in your marriage. I want you to improve your relationship communication skills in your marriage and not just learn to communicate with a counselor.
It is a mistake to think that all counselors approach relationship counseling in the same way. Many will work with the individuals within the session instead of with the couple. In this style of relationship counseling, the spouses each become really good at communicating with the marriage counselor, but fail to learn to enhance relationship communication and relationship skills within the marriage. Another potential problem is when the counselor tells you why you are having your marital problems—and the counselor might even be quite good at personality analysis—but doesn’t know how to teach you to make the changes you want. Still other counselors will try to teach you to be a hedonist—a person who does what he likes with minimal consideration for others—and if your marital situation is too difficult, this counselor might tell you to divorce—that your relationship problem is hopeless and keeping you from enjoying yourself.
The University of Tulsa has an article describing some of the behavioral procedures used in marriage counseling. It is a good general article if you want more information. Just follow this link: University of Tulsa article.
Although I see couples where the man in the marriage is the nurturing and understanding partner, more often the nurturing one is the woman. Psychology Today has an article about men having the strength to overcome this situation and that often it can just be a matter of poor timing. Read that article at this link: Men Can Be Supportive.
You can get started now by ordering my self-help book on HOw to Survive an Affair. The ordering information for this self-help book is near the bottom of the very long page you find at this link: How to Survive an Affair
Don't need the whole program? Look at the links at the top left of this page and select the shorter programs Forgive and Work Through the Past and Rebuild the Honesty. These self-help programs include an audio listening program and accompanying text.
Another Free e-course that I offer is a 10 step program Save Your Marriage and Stop Divorce.
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