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Counseling for Infidelity & Affairs
If your partner had an affair...
You are hurting, angry, confused, sad, or worse. Things don't make sense. Your world has been turned upside down by infidelity and you don't know what the truth is.
You may be wondering if your whole relationship has been a lie, whether you were foolish to ever trust your partner's love, how you could have missed the signs.
You may be obsessing over every detail, triggered by awful thoughts and images in your head, erupting into angry fits of yelling or crying, despair, longing or anguish.
The feelings of betrayal are so painful and so deep. It's hard to concentrate. You're worried about your family, your children. It's so complicated. It feels like there is no answer.
You just don't know what to do.
If you had an affair...
You may be feeling confused, guilty, sad, or angry. You may not have intended for this affair to happen, wondering how it did happen, feeling terrible and ashamed for having hurt your partner.
You want to put the infidelity behind you, stop talking about it, stop the hurt and the pain and all the fighting. Somehow, you want your marriage to survive this.
You're not sure how to answer your partner's questions, how to cope with the anger and the emotional upheaval. You're concerned about the future of your family, about your children, if there's any hope of reconciliation.
Or maybe you're having trouble ending the affair, saying goodbye, feeling pulled in two different directions.
There is hope...
Although it may seem unrealistic right now, research shows that the majority of relationships can survive infidelity, provided the affair is ended and both partners are willing to commit to a process of couples therapy or marriage counseling and do the work of healing.
I specialize in helping couples get on the right path and will guide you through specific steps toward healing, understanding what went wrong, and rebuilding trust, safety and security.
You'll learn what triggers the hurt partner's flashbacks and anger, and discover the tools to manage those moments as a couple, restoring peace and developing healthy, effective communication.
You'll learn how to deal with the pain, how to connect with each other in a way that builds closeness and connection and hope for the future.
You'll learn how and why the affair happened, and how to create the kind of emotional bond and connection that can fulfill you, protect you from infidelity in the future, and keep your relationship safe as you move forward together.
In fact, many of the couples I see discover that, after couples therapy or marriage counseling has been completed, their relationship is stronger, more intimate, and more rewarding and secure than it ever was before.
And the tools you learn in couples therapy can help you maintain a close, loving and fulfilling relationship for the rest of your lives.
Steps to Heal from Infidelity & Affairs
- Managing the immediate crisis. Facing the emotional storms of relationship betrayal. Coping with shifts between intense anger, longing and detachment. Coping with guilt and shame. Making thoughtful short-term decisions about boundaries to create safety. Should you separate? Tell family and friends? Confront the affair partner? How to manage stress?
- Working through the emotional injury. Helping the injured partner to identify, process and express your emotional pain and the impact of the affair in a way that your partner is able to hear and validate. Helping the offending partner to put aside defensiveness and be able understand the depth of your partner's pain and empathize with the emotional damage caused by the affair.
- Making sense of the affair. Clarifying why, what, and how it happened. Helping the offending partner take responsibility for the affair and the violation of trust. Exploring the reasons behind the affair and related issues.
- Repairing the emotional bond and moving forward. Rebuilding trust through communication, transparency and honesty. Creating safety to invite emotional vulnerability and expression. Fostering reconnection and reconciliation through empathy and forgiveness.
Emotional and Online Affairs
When one partner in a committed relationship turns to someone else as their primary source of emotional support and personal sharing, whether in-person or on-line, that is called an emotional affair. Many partners find that the pain and betrayal of an emotional affair is equal to or even greater than a sexual affair. An emotional or online affair is a signal that it is time to get help, that the relationship is in trouble. Whatever is causing one partner to turn away and seek comfort elsewhere must be addressed before the damage to the relationship worsens.
Emotionally Focused Therapy
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) is commonly regarded as the most effective approach to couples therapy and marriage counseling available today. Evidence based, it has been shown to be successful in helping couples recover from affairs and infidelity using a specific model that gets to the core of the healing process. As the first fully certified EFT therapist in Monmouth County, I can help you find your way from anger, confusion and despair to sanity, security and forgiveness.
The Benefits of Counseling for Infidelity & Affairs
- You can heal from the hurt and pain together, and move forward.
- You can rebuild trust, and feel safer and more secure now and in the future.
- You can rekindle emotional and physical closeness, connection and intimacy.
- You can learn to listen from the heart and really understand each other.
- You can appreciate each other's deepest needs and be able to fulfill them.
- You can establish a true emotional bond and take your relationship to a new level.
- You can develop healthy boundaries and protect your relationship from further injury.
- You can put an end to old destructive patterns of behavior that kept you apart.
- You can feel sure that you are there for each other, and be able to count on each other.
- You can rekindle feelings of being "in love" and rediscover fun, affection and romance.