Not Just Friends Part 6

Nevertheless, early decisions to stay or leave are not written in permanent ink. Even the person whose mind seems to be made up today can have a change of heart tomorrow. The partner who is fed up or emotionally detached one day can initiate romantic overtures the very next day. The partner who is convinced he or she would walk through fire to save the marriage may end up walking into divorce court. Nothing you say or hear this early in the game is set in stone.

In a nationwide survey, 25 percent of couples who filed for divorce never completed the process.1

This chapter is for all of the couples who have not experienced discovery as a moment of decisive insight. In a purgatory of indecision, people seesaw back and forth between wanting to stay and wanting to leave. Either partner may doubt that doing the work of trying to resurrect the relations.h.i.+p is worth it. At this point, throwing in the towel can look a whole lot easier than picking up the pieces, but I urge you to wait for at least three months before you make a final decision.

It's no wonder that people get tired and feel like giving up. When they are together, they remind each other of the pain. He looks into her eyes and sees his fallen image. She looks into his eyes and sees someone who lied to her. It feels unbearable to both of them. Adding to the sense of unreality are feelings of despair and isolation alternating with moments of pa.s.sion when they feel an intensity they haven't felt for years.

Whether the affair has triggered certainty or uncertainty, it is productive to remember that at this early point, anything can happen. Ambivalence is common during the first few months after disclosure. n.o.body knows in these early days how things will end up.

If you are feeling stuck, give yourself the time you need to make up your mind. Don't give up too soon. The mistake I see most often is people trying to move through the ambivalence too quickly and giving up on the marriage too soon. In these first weeks, everything is still s.h.i.+fting. Aftershocks are still ripping through the marriage, disrupting whatever stability has been hard won. Sometimes it's hard to tell exactly what you feel in the midst of all the confusion and high emotion.

At this point, it may help you to tell yourself that your staying means only that you are committing to a process of grieving and healing. You're taking a close look at yourself and your marriage to face whatever problems there may be. Right now you may not be able to conceive of a time when you and your spouse will attain enjoy a relations.h.i.+p based on love and trust, but your job is to work closely with your spouse in forging a new partners.h.i.+p for the future. You will both need time to see how you feel in the aftermath of the trauma, when the aftershocks have subsided.

To figure out a rough timeline for yourselves, you need to look at the timeline of the affair itself. An affair that took a long time to heat up may take a longer time to cool down than one that ignited rapidly. When a friends.h.i.+p slowly progresses after many months or even years into a full-fledged love affair, the unfaithful partners will try to move backward across the timeline and maintain the friends.h.i.+p without the romantic attachment or s.e.xual intimacy. Although this is an unrealistic goal, they are reluctant to put up walls in the affair and can't help sliding the window open just a crack from time to time. Ambivalent partners will have great difficulty following the recommendation to cut off all contact with the affair partner.

Ambivalence Barometer: Walls and Windows a.s.sessing the relative placement of walls and windows in both relations.h.i.+ps provides us with a way of measuring ambivalence. For one thing, walls and windows tell us how far the unfaithful partner has moved back into the marriage. We can get an indication of where current loyalties lie by noticing what communication goes on between the marriage partners versus what remains between the affair partners. Keep in mind that things are constantly fluctuating. The window that's closed today may be thrown open tomorrow and vice versa. But for the moment at least, we can see what the emotional terrain looks like.

Walls In the first few months after disclosure, there are many walled-off areas within the marriage. Involved partners are often reluctant to expose secrets and reveal continuing contact with their lover because they are not yet sure what they want. They may mistakenly believe that telling the truth about their ambivalence would only upset their spouse. They play their cards close to the vest and do not want any decisions to be taken away from them. If anything, involved partners tend to erect walls in both relations.h.i.+ps in order to control the situation and keep it from blowing up before they have decided what they want to do.

Sid was walking a tightrope in both relations.h.i.+ps. He had not yet decided to end his affair and commit to his marriage. He wouldn't talk to Sally about the affair because he was anxious to preserve its privacy out of loyalty to his affair partner. On the other hand, he refused to talk to his affair partner about how marital therapy was going. It is actually a small sign of progress for the recovery of the marriage when there is less sharing with the affair partner than there used to be, even in cases where the affair has not been totally cut off.

Injured partners may also put up walls to protect themselves from further betrayal. Sally did extensive detective work to see whether Sid was being truthful, but she seldom revealed to him what she had learned. She was keeping the information "on hold" in case they ended up divorcing. She was not ready to be open and vulnerable to the person who had hurt her.

Windows At the same time that Sally wanted to keep some walls solidly around her own espionage, she kept trying to get Sid to willingly open more windows into the affair. At this point, she knew bits and pieces about the affair. Some of it he had shared voluntarily, but much of it had come out after she repeatedly pressed him for answers.

Sid had opened some new windows with Sally but was still keeping others tightly shut. He told Sally that he occasionally ran into his ex-lover at work, but he made it sound much more casual than it really was. For one thing, he was genuinely concerned about his affair partner, so he kept in touch to see how she was doing since their breakup.

Sid and Sally were both planning contingencies in case the marriage didn't work out. While they were making some efforts to rebuild the marriage, they also wanted to be prepared if their efforts failed. Sid tried to keep his lover "on hold" by checking in with her from time to time "just in case" he was left alone, an indisputable sign of his ambivalence. Sally was also keeping her options open by consulting an attorney on the same day she cooked Sid's favorite dinner for him as a surprise treat.

Two on a Seesaw The ambivalence of one partner feeds off the ambivalence of the other as they teeter back and forth between staying and leaving. The betrayed partner who is desperate to save the marriage easily becomes discouraged by the outright lack of devotion and remorse. The involved partner who wants to be welcomed back with open arms is put off by the betrayed partner's anxiety and hopelessness about the future. Both of them long to look into adoring eyes that will convince them to stay. They move up and down in reaction to each other's changing intentions to separate or rebuild.

Both partners may demonstrate their ambivalence about working on the marriage by withdrawing, attacking, or failing to initiate caring actions or affectionate gestures. Refusal to appreciate or acknowledge positive actions by the other partner is another indication that commitment to working on the marriage is shaky.

Among couples I have seen for marital therapy, those who had a strong commitment to work on the marriage had a high probability of staying together. Each of them was able to say, "I want very much for my marriage to succeed, and I will do all that I can to see that it does."2 Separation was more likely for individuals whose commitment to work on the marriage was shaky from the beginning. Their att.i.tude was, "It would be nice if my marriage succeeded, but I'm not going to do any more than I am doing now to keep it going." Of course, a highly committed partner could end up separated despite heroic efforts if the less committed partner is determined to leave. Separation was more likely for individuals whose commitment to work on the marriage was shaky from the beginning. Their att.i.tude was, "It would be nice if my marriage succeeded, but I'm not going to do any more than I am doing now to keep it going." Of course, a highly committed partner could end up separated despite heroic efforts if the less committed partner is determined to leave.

In my clinical sample, 47 percent of husbands and wives with low commitment to work on the marriage were separated at the end of therapy, in comparison with 20 percent with high commitment who separated.

Ambivalence in the Involved Partner Signs: You can recognize ambivalence in your partner by a refusal to be accountable for his or her whereabouts. Lingering loyalty to the lover is shown by unwillingness to reveal details about the affair. Emotional attachment to the lover is unmistakable when there is greater compa.s.sion for the distress of the affair partner than for the injured spouse. Unfair criticism or contempt for you as the injured spouse is evidence that your partner is moving away from the marriage.

Reasons: If you are an involved partner, there are many reasons why you are ambivalent about whether to go or stay. You could be afraid of making the wrong decision. It's frightening to think that what you decide now can set the course for the rest of your life. Or you may be paralyzed by the knowledge that one of the people you've attached to will be hurt and abandoned. When you think of the years ahead, you can't bear the thought of living without one person or the other. To lose either individual is excruciating, like having to choose which of your children you love the most.

Making Comparisons If you have been involved in a romantic love affair, it is normal for you to doubt your love for your spouse. I have heard hundreds of unfaithful partners say to the injured spouse, "I love you, but I'm not in love with you." It is common to feel this way right after the affair is discovered and for some time thereafter.

Keep in mind that when you compare your affair partner with your spouse, you are not really comparing two individuals. What you are comparing is how it feels to be in an idealized, romantic relations.h.i.+p with how it feels to be in a reality-based, long-term relations.h.i.+p.

To look at it another way, the choice you are making could be between the part of you that wants excitement and the part of you that wants comfort and familiarity. You are choosing between this part of you versus that part of you. Each relations.h.i.+p calls forth a different aspect of your self. A man may be able to exercise his domestic side with his wife and his adventurous side with his lover. A woman may be conservative and responsible with her husband and s.e.xually daring and carefree with her lover. For people who are torn in two, the prospect of cutting off either relations.h.i.+p feels like cutting off an essential part of themselves.

I have seen people struggling to choose between opposites: between a business executive husband who is meticulous and dependable and a bohemian boyfriend who is disorganized and unpredictable; or between a stay-at-home wife who is warm and easygoing and a career-oriented girlfriend who is ambitious and independent. Strangely enough, the traits you love in your affair partner may be the exact opposite of the traits that originally attracted you to your spouse.

Frequently, what attracts you to your affair partner now can end up being a problem later. For example, the energy and excitement that fire you up in brief binges could be tiring as a steady diet. The jealousy and dependency that make you feel needed could end up getting on your nerves. Although the affair partner might be "a nice place to visit," you might not want to "live there" permanently. Just remember that no relations.h.i.+p can meet all your needs. You can't have it all.

Wanting Both Randy experienced firsthand how painful it was to discover that he would have to let go of someone he loved. He was a deeply religious man; he was the branch manager in his neighborhood bank; he was well-known in his community for his generosity to others and for his ability to give wise advice to the people who came to him to talk about money and personal matters. His wife, Rianna, was also well liked and from a similar conservative religious background. As a married couple, they were content but admittedly reticent with each other about personal and s.e.xual issues. After twelve years, Randy fell deeply in love with a single woman, whom he considered his soul mate. "I've never been as close to anyone as I am to Sophie. I've never felt as happy as when I'm with her."

After a year, Randy confessed his affair to Rianna because he felt so guilty. He wanted to do the right thing and end the duplicity. But he didn't know which way to turn. In therapy he expressed deep conflict between his moral principles and his love for Sophie. How could he so desperately want something he believed was wrong? How could he destroy his wife, whom he had pledged to love? He didn't know how he was going to live with the decision he had to make, no matter which way he decided.

Like so many other involved partners, Randy couldn't decide which pathway to choose: stay in the marriage, go with the affair partner, try to keep them both, or leave them both. When I hear that involved spouses can't decide, I surmise that they have already decided. What they usually want is to keep both relations.h.i.+ps. The involved partner's undeclared wish is understandable, but the worst resolution of this dilemma is living with an extramarital triangle.

It might be tempting to think that a way out would be to figure out an alternative arrangement that would allow you and your affair partner to maintain friendly contact. You may believe that you can continue to spend time together-only without the s.e.x. The thought of going cold turkey and never having another shared moment with your lover may seem beyond your powers to imagine.

Certainly, the longer the affair has lasted and the more satisfying it was, the harder it is to let go of. Letting go takes time. The best solution, nonetheless, is to go cold turkey and stop the affair, so that you and your betrayed partner can commit to discovering whether the marriage has a chance of surviving.

Ambivalence in the Betrayed Partner Betrayed partners show ambivalence about committing to the marriage by holding back when it comes to doing caring things. They may feel ent.i.tled to be paid back in full before they are willing to take any initiative to invest in the marriage. Their att.i.tude is to "wait and see" how hard their partner is willing to work to make amends.

In the early weeks after disclosure, the unfaithful partner is too ambivalent and sh.e.l.l-shocked to do much reparative work. Oftentimes, the ambivalence of unfaithful partners is so hurtful and so confusing that injured partners react with their own ambivalence, vacillating between a desperate wish to stay and save the marriage and the wish to leave and save themselves from further harm.

If you are the betrayed partner, you're probably more inclined to work on the marriage if your partner shows a strong commitment to you and goes out of his or her way to be appreciative and attentive. If your partner is still grieving the loss of the other relations.h.i.+p, however, acts of devotion may be slow to appear in the first weeks or even months after discovery.

It's important to stay centered while your partner is bouncing off the walls. Remember, inconsistency probably means that your partner is pulled in opposite directions by these two competing attachments. Take hope if the pendulum seems to be swinging closer and closer to you. Don't push your partner away or try to pull your partner in. Sink your feet firmly in the ground and declare your commitment to work on the marriage alongside your partner, as long as your partner is willing to meet you halfway.

When Nikki found out about Norm's affair, she was shocked and filled with self-doubt. She was unsure whether to end the marriage or try to salvage it. Norm's behavior was so erratic that she didn't know whether she was coming or going. One minute he wanted to make love, and the next minute he told her he had signed a contract to rent an apartment.

I advised Nikki not to be swayed by Norms instability but to look for behavioral signs of progress, such as increasing honesty and consideration. She made it clear to him that she did not want their marriage to end, but she would not tolerate secret contact with the affair partner. Two weeks after he moved out, Norm begged Nikki to let him move back home. She considered his desire for reconciliation when he agreed to partic.i.p.ate in marital therapy. The first few months of marital therapy were focused primarily on helping him resolve his ambivalence and commit to the marriage without reservation.

Damage Control for Both Partners During this period of instability, you both need to limit damaging interactions that could negatively affect your ability to reconcile. People tend to act out their ambivalence with confusing behaviors. It is preferable to label yourself openly and honestly as ambivalent. If you cannot throw yourself wholeheartedly back into the relations.h.i.+p, admit that you are struggling with your inner conflict.

As a betrayed partner, you should make it clear what you will and will not tolerate. For example, e-mails or phone calls to the affair partner that are open to you and are clearly for the purpose of terminating the relations.h.i.+p might be acceptable. Staying out late with no explanation is probably not acceptable. Don't go berserk when these expectations are violated. Instead, talk about how you feel and give a realistic deadline of a few months' time for making a firm commitment.

Unfaithful partners should make it clear that they take responsibility for the injuries they have caused, but they do not have to accept days on end of verbal abuse. Physical abuse should never be tolerated, no matter what the provocation. If you can't commit to completely severing the relations.h.i.+p with your affair partner, then you must commit to total honesty about the degree of your indecision. Further deception during this time of ambivalence may drive away your partner forever.

A remarkable thing happens when you are honest with each other, even if it is about your ambivalence. You feel closer because taking down walls and opening windows results in greater intimacy.

Getting Off the Fence Making the decision to go or stay is particularly difficult because both of you are feeling heartsick, stressed, and exhausted. You worry that the damage that's been done cannot be repaired. The involved spouse may be feeling hopeless about coming to a resolution and tired to the bone by the emotional storms that gather and break continually. If you're the betrayed spouse, you wonder whether you will ever be able to stop visualizing your partner with someone else. You don't know if you can ever feel special again. You don't know if you can ever forgive your partner for giving away what you considered sacred to your marriage.

As long as you are ambivalent, there is still hope, because you haven't yet made a definite decision. In this initial stage of indecision, each member of the couple has to decide whether he or she is capable of going through the process of rebuilding intimacy and trust. (Probably the only one at this point who is committed to staying in the triangle is the affair partner.) Early decision making revolves around whether to stick with efforts to work through the situation, whereas later decision making involves whether to leave the marriage once and for all. The first decision you need to make is whether you can commit to working on the marriage.

People have different ways of making life decisions. Some have faith that the unseen forces of the universe will guide them and give them signs. One man felt pressured to choose between his wife and his lover because he was going out of the country on an important business trip and needed to decide which woman he wanted to take. He had just come to a sense of peace about choosing his lover when he picked up the newspaper. In the headline on the front page he saw his wife's maiden name. Even though the story had nothing to do with his wife's family, he felt in his heart that it was a sign that he should be with his wife. And that was the final choice he made.

It is important that you make an active rather than a pa.s.sive decision to stay and work on the marriage. Brian moved out of the bedroom onto the sofa bed in the den shortly after the revelation of his five-year love affair. When he got the flu and ran a high fever, Bonnie invited him back to sleep in the bedroom because it was more comfortable. When he felt better he didn't move back into the den, but they never discussed what this meant. In fact, they never really processed what had gone wrong in their marriage or what he was going to do about ending the affair. They just drifted back together without any declaration of intent or exploration of vulnerabilities. Two years later, he moved out permanently to live with his affair partner.

Other people are not so comfortable trusting their fate to the vagaries of chance but require a more rational process. Engaging in some head work as well as some heart work is likely to be most helpful for those who are mired in ambivalence. It is helpful to use the head-heart-gut-groin test to figure out where you are. The head is the rational part that tells whether you like your partner and does an intellectual balance sheet of pros and cons. The heart tells you how much fondness and emotional attachment you have. The gut is your instincitive sense of what feels right or wrong. The groin is an erogenous zone that is influenced by pa.s.sion and irrational desire. Today, your heart, brain, and gut may be leaning toward staying, while your split heart and groin pull you in another direction. The strongest pull will end up being whichever force you hold most dear.

The worst resolution is a stable triangle. When involved partners stay on an eternal fence, ultimatums given by the spouse or lover move them from one side to the other. They cajole, seduce, and deceive both partners in order to have their cake and eat it too. The spouse and the lover help to maintain the stable triangle by making compromises and accepting whatever crumbs are thrown their way. Children are inevitably harmed by this unhealthy collusion, because it results in underlying tension and open conflict in the home.

Think Things Through Before You Act If you are tortured by moment-to-moment misgivings about whether to go or stay, declare a moratorium on immediate decision making. For a period of six to twelve weeks, defer making any decisions about leaving. This will provide both of you with a period of safety in which to fully explore your thoughts and feelings. Here are some thought-provoking questions for unfaithful or betrayed partners who are undecided about whether to pick up the pieces or throw in the towel. There are seldom any easy answers. You can explore your thoughts privately, share them with your spouse, or discuss them with a therapist: 1. Visualize the future. Go down the road as far as you can and speculate what it would be like without your spouse. Think about the immediate future, five years from now, and twenty years from now. Picture yourself attending family events separately.

- How would your life be different?

- How would your children's lives be different?

- What difference would it make in your current friends.h.i.+ps?

2. Recall the past. Be careful not to rewrite marital history with a jaded view because of the current crisis.

- What do you remember about the good times you've shared with your partner?

- What would you miss about your marriage?

- Have you and your partner struggled hard together to get to this place in your life cycle?

3. See if you can put your disillusionment aside for the moment and figure out your reasons for staying with your spouse.

- Do you love your partner, down deep? (Not liking him or her is different from not loving.) - Do you like the fundamental type of person your partner is? (Not liking him or her is not the same as the disappointment you may be feeling.) - Are you and your partner basically compatible?

4. a.s.sess your own willingness and ability to meet the challenge of working on your relations.h.i.+p.

- Are you willing to understand what vulnerabilities set the stage for an affair?

- Are you willing to work toward forgiving and being forgiven for the ways you could have hurt each other?

Questions Betrayed Partners Can Ask Themselves If you have just heard that your partner has lied to you and been intimate with someone else, you might not be sure whether your marriage is worth the time and effort to sustain it. Because you are probably not in any shape right now to make a permanent decision, take your time thinking through how you feel and what you want to do. How you answer on Day One may be different from how you answer three months later.

Of the partners of s.e.x addicts, 60 percent threatened to leave after the initial disclosure, but only 24 percent who threatened to leave actually left.3 1. Ask yourself whether this infidelity is part of a larger picture of cheating and lying.

- Has this kind of thing happened before?

- Do you trust your partner to tell you the truth about other things?

- Is your partner generally dependable and trustworthy?

2. Is your partner understanding about your pain?

3. Is your partner willing to allay your anxiety by being accountable?

Questions Involved Partners Can Ask Themselves I will never ask you to consider which person you prefer. As I've said before, it's important that you do not make the mistake of deciding on the basis of comparing an exciting, illicit romance with a stable, long-term marriage.

1. Picture yourself with the affair partner in a long-term committed relations.h.i.+p - What would life be like five years from now; twenty years from now?

- Ask yourself whether the affair partner wants to have children. If you already have a family, do you want to be raising another family in the future?

- What would it be like for you and your affair partner to raise stepchildren together?

- How would your children handle your marriage to the person who broke up their intact family?

- What were the things that attracted you to your affair partner? If these traits were to become exaggerated, would you still be attracted? For example, if you like the fact that your affair partner is always frank and direct, imagine what it would be like to be with someone who's brutally honest.

2. What will it be like when the pa.s.sion of a forbidden love wears off ten years from now? Imagine how forlorn you might have been if something had prevented you from marrying your spouse. You probably would have believed forever that you had lost the one true love of your life.

3. Would you still want to divorce your spouse even if the relations.h.i.+p with the affair partner doesn't work out? This is the central question Lara had to ask herself after Ralph ended their affair. Although Lara was the affair partner in Ralph's extramarital triangle, in her own marriage, she was the unfaithful wife. She ended her marriage to Lenny because of irresolvable problems even though Ralph had made it clear to her that the affair was over.

4. Visualize where you want to be ten or twenty years from now-where you want to be living, how you want to spend your time, and what gives you pleasure. What happened to the dreams you once had about what it would be like to grow old together with your spouse?

Other Considerations - Guilt or duty: Would you be staying out of a sense of guilt or duty? If the only thing that holds you now is a sense of obligation or duty, that's an okay place to start but not an okay place to end. If you feel stuck in the marriage because of financial pressures or religious barriers to divorce, you are signing up for an empty-sh.e.l.l marriage. Your obligation should be to enhance your marital relations.h.i.+p so that good comes out of suffering.

- For the children: Would you be staying only for the sake of the children rather than for the relations.h.i.+p itself? Judith Wallerstein's research indicates that many children of divorced parents experience negative effects throughout their adult lives.4 Nonetheless, marriage as martyrdom is a poor role model for your children's future relations.h.i.+ps. Don't dedicate yourself to a life of misery. If you're staying only because of the children, then start connecting with your spouse through family activities but don't let that be the end point. Ultimately, your children will benefit from parents who show them how to be a loving couple. Nonetheless, marriage as martyrdom is a poor role model for your children's future relations.h.i.+ps. Don't dedicate yourself to a life of misery. If you're staying only because of the children, then start connecting with your spouse through family activities but don't let that be the end point. Ultimately, your children will benefit from parents who show them how to be a loving couple.

- A new perspective: You might be noticing certain traits in your spouse now that attract you or repel you that you weren't aware of before the affair. You may make your decision according to how he or she behaved in the aftermath of disclosure, rather than basing it solely on the infidelity itself. Couples tend to cope with crises using the same patterns of interaction that have characterized the marriage. Individuals who have been mostly self-serving may appear more ent.i.tled than ever before; their narcissism becomes so unmistakable that it's hard to continue to like them enough to stay. On the other hand, compa.s.sion and sensitivity that may have been taken for granted before can now be seen as a strong reason not to leave.

- Repair work: Leaving a bad marriage without trying to repair it first is like trying to sell your house right after a rainstorm flooded your family room. Once you have finished cleaning and redecorating, you might decide not to put it up for sale. If you leave your marriage when you are feeling devastated, depleted, and demoralized, you'll always wonder whether you made the right choice. Fix it up first and you'll have a better idea of how the finished product suits you.

- Strength or weakness: Don't stay because you are too weak to end it and too afraid to be on your own. Stay because you are strong enough to handle the emotional roller coaster. Stay because you are independent enough to take care of yourself while your partner isn't able to be there for you. Don't leave because you're running away from conflict. Leave because you've done everything possible for many months and there's absolutely no sign of progress.

- Reality check: For most people, leaving the marriage is not the best answer. People tend to carry their psychological problems with them to the next relations.h.i.+p. Old, destructive patterns are perpetuated unless you deal with them, and second marriages may have the added strain of blended families and stepchildren. Statistically, there is a 50 percent divorce rate in first marriages and a 60 percent divorce rate in second marriages.5 If you marry your affair partner, the probability that it will work out is even worse than the dismal divorce statistics in second marriages (unless you are marrying an old flame from your youth). If you marry your affair partner, the probability that it will work out is even worse than the dismal divorce statistics in second marriages (unless you are marrying an old flame from your youth).6 Relations.h.i.+ps that began through betrayal and broken trust often end up having their own problems with trust. Relations.h.i.+ps that began through betrayal and broken trust often end up having their own problems with trust.

Constructive Separation For some couples, a temporary separation can be helpful. I am not talking about a separation leading to divorce but a separation to cool things down. A constructive separation can create a period of stability and calm for thinking through the complex issues involved. It can strengthen individual boundaries, enhance self-respect, provide psychological as well as physical distance, and help people discover their degree of voluntary commitment to the marriage.

If a couple agrees on a constructive separation, then the involved partners promise to live alone and have no contact with either spouse or lover until they can figure out who they are and what they really want. For involved partners who are feeling beleaguered by competing demands and loyalties and see no way out, a period of abstinence from both relations.h.i.+ps can break the dependency bonds and help them to see things more clearly.

The problem with separating at this point is that trust issues tend to increase when the couple is apart and strain the marriage even further. If the involved partner is not ready to stop seeing the affair partner, then it's better to be honest about that. Involved partners sometimes move out under the pretext of "needing s.p.a.ce" but use their new "s.p.a.ce" to pursue the affair. The involved partner who can't promise to be faithful must promise to be honest. If the separation is really a subterfuge for being with the affair partner, then the couple will have to deal with this added dishonesty if they reconcile. The injured partner will be even more bitter and angry when he or she learns of additional deception.

Whenever violent behavior occurs or the threat of violence is made, a permanent separation should be considered. Be aware that violence often escalates when a victim of physical abuse tries to leave. Your plans to leave should include contingencies for a safe departure, including an escape plan, an extra set of car keys, and a readily available, protected shelter.

Ambivalence Therapy People who don't know which way to turn can benefit from competent professional guidance. If your discussions turn into escalating fights, the neutrality of a therapist's office can provide a safe context in which to resolve ambivalence. Don't decide to leave until you have explored all avenues, including therapy. If both of you are committed to working on the marriage, it is a good idea to discontinue individual therapy and focus on couple therapy.

The person who refuses to partic.i.p.ate in couple therapy but continues in individual therapy may be choosing to work on me instead of choosing to work on us. Individual therapists can unwittingly replicate the dysfunctional pattern of infidelity because the wall of confidentiality around the therapy excludes the spouse. If you're the injured spouse, you may get the message from the therapist that you'd be better off alone. If you're the unfaithful spouse, you may be creating another extramarital triangle if you use a therapist as your secret confidante.

If the involved partner is working on ambivalence in individual therapy, this should be made explicit to the betrayed partner and the couple's therapist. When the involved partner is not sure he or she wants to stay and work on the marriage, the privacy and neutrality of individual therapy is reasonable. However, the injured partner needs some a.s.surance that the involved partner isn't continuing a double life by saying one thing in couple therapy and something entirely different in individual therapy. If the injured partner believes that the involved spouse has committed to the marriage when in reality he or she is talking to the therapist about whether to go or stay, this is a perpetuation of deception.

Do You Have the Right Spouse but the Wrong Therapist?

Therapists can bring hidden biases about extramarital involvement to marital therapy. Because there is no standard approach for treating infidelity, therapists' att.i.tudes and methods vary widely. Therapists who are unfamiliar with the research literature may be more susceptible to a.s.sumptions based on personal experience and unproved theories. Your lack of progress could mean that rebuilding the marriage is a hopeless endeavor, or it could indicate that the therapy itself is ineffective or actually making things worse.

Here are some guidelines to a.s.sess whether you have the right therapist for your situation. Is your therapist ...

- Lacking in direction? Ask yourself whether things are improving or seem hopelessly stuck. If things are no better, are you gaining insight about the reasons for lack of progress? Some situations do get worse before they get better. If your therapist just sits back and watches your exchanges without providing any structure or direction, it may be time for a change.

- Judgmental? Evaluate whether your therapist's advice is based on personal values rather than on the unique characteristics of each situation. Does the therapist seem either adamantly against divorce under any circ.u.mstances or vigorously opposed to staying with an "adulterous" partner?

- Minimizing? Does your therapist dismiss the distress of the betrayed partner as a hysterical reaction to a meaningless s.e.xual fling? Is concern about secret friends.h.i.+ps and intense emotional attachments perceived by the therapist as irrational jealousy?