May/June 2006

Infidelity — Dos and Don’ts for Working With Couples
By Emily M. Brown, LCSW
Social Work Today
Vol. 6 No. 3 P. 12

Infidelity is one of the most tangled issues presented to social workers. The emotional chaos and intensity is enormous and there are numerous traps waiting for the unwary. Affairs occur for various reasons—reasons that are not typically obvious to the participants. Reactions to the discovery of an affair tend to be black and white: The betrayer is an uncaring, horrible person, the betrayed is an innocent victim, and the third party is a predator. You will be invited to judge and take sides. Resist all attempts.

Don’t assume the affair is the problem. Do assume it is a symptom of underlying individual and relationship problems. The affair adds one more layer, betrayal, to the stack of problems. The betrayal reveals the problems in the relationship. It also knocks the props out from under the partnership. It is an event that can be used as a catalyst for positive change or an escape from facing problems.

Social workers who are knowledgeable about dealing with affairs can help the couple decide whether they are willing to work on their relationship, and if so, guide them through the rebuilding process. Know that it will take from one to two years (or more, depending on the depth of the underlying issues) before the relationship and/or the individuals are on new and stable ground. How the social worker addresses the affair will significantly affect whether the affair is used as a catalyst for positive change or becomes a stumbling block that leads downhill.

Types of Affairs
Affairs present themselves in every area of social work. The therapist, the school social worker, and the parenting coordinator have different roles, different sources of information, and different goals. When an affair is part of the picture, each needs specific strategies to address the situation. These dos and don’ts, while more useful in some settings than others, are a guide to calming the chaos of an affair and promoting positive change.

Don’t assume that all affairs are alike. They vary in terms of motivations and behavior patterns. Generally, affairs fall into one of the following types:

• Conflict avoidance — The partners are afraid to address differences and lack the skills to do so. Their differences remain unresolved and they drift apart.

• Intimacy avoidance — The partners avoid getting too close for fear of being swallowed up. They relate emotionally through conflict. If both partners are having affairs, they are probably this type.

• Split self — Characterized by an internal split between the rational self that values family and attempts to do what is “right,” and the emotional self which has been suppressed since early childhood. These are the serious, long-term affairs.

• Sexual addiction — The betraying partner uses sex to numb internal pain and fill up the inner emptiness. The betrayed partner enables.

• Exit — A decision has already been made to end the relationship, and the affair is used as an exit strategy.

Conflict and intimacy avoiders benefit most from couples therapy, and if needed, individual therapy. Split selves need individual therapy to heal the internal split that is being played out through the affair. Sexual addicts who are willing to seek help need to be in a program for treatment of sexual addiction. They can also benefit from self-help groups such as Sex Addicts Anonymous (www.saa-recovery.org) or Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (www.slaafws.org).

With exit affairs, the decision to leave the relationship, if still hidden, must be disclosed. A combination of individual and couples therapy is necessary and can be followed by couples work focused on planning for separation: what will be said to the children, whether they will use mediation to decide on details of their separation, and referrals to appropriate professionals including individual or group counseling for the betrayed partner. The betraying partner who is leaving for the third party rarely sees the need for help at this point.

The Process of Working With Affairs
Our role as social workers is to function as a guide, a teacher, and a compassionate and perceptive listener with clients who are dealing with the aftermath of an affair. We need to help clients understand how they made enough room in their marriage for an affair and lead them through unexplored territory as they contemplate what to do with themselves and their relationship. The process involves the following steps:

• disclosure (Often, it is disclosure of an affair that has brought them to the social worker.);

• calming the emotional shock and chaos;

• framing the affair as a relationship problem;

• stopping obsessive rumination and cross-examination about the affair;

• teaching how to access the emotional self;

• teaching communication skills;

• supporting the establishment of appropriate boundaries;

• reaching decisions about the relationship;

• encouraging self-validation; and

• reaching forgiveness.

In the early stages, you must be somewhat of a traffic cop, stopping unproductive or destructive dialogue and redirecting the conversation. As clients begin to see their own contribution to the relationship problems and as they learn new skills, you can become more of a guide and a teacher.

Whatever the type of affair, stay nonjudgmental. Affairs, as painful and misguided as they may seem, are an attempt, often at the unconscious level, to solve a problem. The effective therapeutic approach is framing the affair as a relationship problem, rather than as a good-partner-gone-bad/innocent-victim situation. Know that both spouses contributed to setting the stage for the affair. Keep in mind that the affair is a symptom. Our job as social workers is to help the couple identify when and why they got off track with each other. That information will shed light on the underlying issues, which usually involve a low or diminished emotional connection between the partners. Some couples never had a strong emotional connection, others lack the skills they need to address problems, and others have losses or traumas that haven’t been sufficiently addressed.

Don’t try to end the affair. Insistence by the social worker that the affair end relieves the betraying partner of the responsibility for coming to his/her own decision about the affair. Until the betraying partner is ready to end the affair, it probably won’t end anyway, no matter what the social worker says. It will just go underground. Instead, help your client explore the emotions that set the stage for the affair and the present emotions.

With new clients, I often hear that they have been told by a prior therapist to “get over it” and to “move on.” This is most likely to happen if the affair occurred some time ago but was disclosed only recently. Keep in mind that when an affair has been recently disclosed, it is brand new to the betrayed partner, whether it just occurred or happened years ago. A betrayal of this immensity is not going to be put aside quickly, no matter how long ago it occurred. If you are uncomfortable working with affairs, or don’t know how to address a client’s affair, consider referring the client to another social worker with expertise in this area.

The Hidden Affair
Social workers are often handed secrets they don’t want. A hidden affair is such a secret. Whatever your role, the affair may be an important piece of information, but it can be a very hot potato. What is our responsibility for surfacing the hidden affair? In couples’ therapy, since our allegiance is to both partners, holding the secret of the affair would be another betrayal. Keep in mind that information gives power and that protection from the truth is limiting. See the partners individually for a few sessions to help the betraying partner reach a decision about whether to tell the other partner about the affair. If the decision is not to tell, it’s time to refer each partner for individual therapy. In individual therapy, the contract is a bit different and the therapist can take time to help the individual work through the implications of telling. In both situations, let the betraying partner take responsibility for telling the other partner about an affair—in other words, don't do the betraying partner's work.

When an affair is hidden, there are a few situations when disclosure is ill-advised:

• when physical violence is a potential result;

• when you will not be able to continue working with them (ie, your practice setting limits you to six sessions), refer them out instead; and

• when a couple is separating or divorcing, there is a potential for legal violence. Adultery can still be used by our legal system to punish. Parenting and financial decisions must be based on factors other than adultery.

Effectively Addressing Obsession Is the Gateway to Rebuilding
After disclosure, the betrayed partner’s shock quickly turns to an obsessive focus on the affair. Talk of divorce or ending the relationship is frequent and often encouraged by friends and family. Working on the partnership means pain and hard work without a guarantee of success. It’s crucial that the social worker curb the obsessive thought and talk and help the betrayed partner access the emotional self.

Usually the betrayed partner believes that asking “How could you...?” repeatedly in an angry tone is voicing emotions. It is actually an obsessive rumination (a thinking process) and not an expression of emotion. Expressing anger toward the betraying partner will not help, either. The client needs help accessing and voicing the emotions underneath the anger: pain, fear, helplessness, or whatever other basic emotions are present. Ideally, this is done during a couple’s session so the betraying partner hears the other partner’s unadorned pain while the social worker stops any attempts to apologize, explain, or fix.

Do listen, be emotionally present, and connect with the betrayed partner’s pain and fear (not the obsession). Provide emotional support for each partner. Be understanding and compassionate without reinforcing a victim stance. Suggest that they make no decisions about their relationship until they understand how they got to this point. Frame revelation of the affair as a positive step, allowing them to begin examining issues beneath the surface. Do offer hope for change and resolution of the underlying problems. Discourage premature forgiveness—it comes at the end of the rebuilding process, not at the beginning as many clients would prefer.

As you move the obsession off center stage, move toward identifying the underlying problems that have not been addressed sufficiently or at all. Assume that each partner has a part in the problems. To find out what their pattern is, start by asking what initially attracted them to each other. Go step by step in identifying when things began to change, and the events occurring at the time that made enough space in their relationship for an affair. (This does not mean focusing on the affair.) Pull together the threads you hear and voice what you hear as the underlying problem.

For example, I may say, “It sounds like both your families expressed their feelings through food. John, your family seems to have believed that food means love, and you’ve followed your families pattern of eating a lot, and especially when there’s any tension. Susan, your family also focused on food, thinking that staying slim was necessary for success, and thus your eating problems developed. It seems that when the two of you have an issue, you play it out through discussions about eating or dieting, rather than by addressing the power struggle between you and what it means.”

Developing the shared definition of the problem moves the process from a good-partner-gone-bad/innocent-victim situation to a couples framework. In essence, this is the contracting for couples work.

Rebuilding
Couples are often eager to make an early decision about their marriage before they have rebuilt their relationship, but it’s important that we keep them focused on the work ahead so they don’t avoid addressing difficult emotional issues. Rebuilding trust is done slowly. In the early stages of rebuilding, the betrayed partner often complains: “I can’t trust her.” My response is: “Of course you can’t. The two of you haven’t done the hard work of rebuilding your relationship yet.”

The rebuilding process focuses on establishing a new track record of absolute honesty, learning new ways to communicate, developing negotiation skills, voluntarily sharing thoughts and feelings, and resolving dysfunctional behavior patterns established early in life. Another essential task is learning to self-validate so each partner can trust himself or herself to handle any situation in the future. During this phase, a deeper understanding of the affair develops.

Forgiveness is the last phase in dealing with an affair. Since the affair has been addressed as a relationship problem, forgiveness must come from both directions. Each partner needs to ask forgiveness for his or her own role in setting the stage for the affair, as well as grant forgiveness to the other. Couples who are ready to forgive usually do so with great generosity. We also need to ensure that our clients forgive themselves for their part of this painful experience. With forgiveness comes closure on the affair: The affair is not forgotten but moves from the front burner to the back burner.

In working with affairs, our role is active, emphasizes the emotional, and contains the dysfunctional. Working with affairs is complex and emotionally intense. The pressures on us are many—they come from each partner, from concerns about children in the family, from managed care, and from issues that resonate with us personally. Occasionally, the third parties become directly involved by contacting us in an attempt to prevent the affair from ending. We need to make sure we take care of ourselves emotionally, whether that means setting better boundaries, arranging for consultation on difficult cases, addressing those issues that have resonance for us, or taking a break.

When the affair serves as a catalyst for developing the emotional self, clients will be able to arrive at decisions about their relationship and their life that are right for them. We are rewarded by the excitement of seeing the growth and integrity brought to our clients’ lives.

— Emily M. Brown, LCSW, is director of the Key Bridge Therapy and Mediation Center in Arlington, VA. She is the author of Patterns of Infidelity and Their Treatment and Affairs: A Guide to Working Through the Repercussions of Infidelity.

Resources for Clients
• Books:
Brown, E. M. (1999). Affairs: A Guide to Working Through the Repercussions of Infidelity. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Wiley.

Glass, S. (2003). Not “Just Friends”: Protect Your Relationship from Infidelity and Heal the Trauma of Betrayal. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Spring, J. (1996). After the Affair: Healing the Pain and Rebuilding Trust When a Partner Has Been Unfaithful. New York: HarperCollins.

• Web sites:
- DearPeggy.com, www.DearPeggy.com

- Extramarital Affairs Help, www.affairs-help.com

- Marriages Restored, www.marriagesrestored.com

- Sex Addicts Anonymous, www.saa-recovery.org

- Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, www.slaafws.org

The Social Worker’s Role in Working With Affairs
• Be emotionally present.

• Teach clients how to access their emotions and be emotionally present.

• Distinguish between genuine emotions and verbal noise and clutter.

• Help clients explore the emotions under the issues, including forbidden territory.

• Help each partner understand the context in which the affair occurred.

• Reframe the affair as a relationship problem, rather than as the bad guy and the innocent victim.

• Be prepared to work in depth with difficult and painful emotions.

• Address issues of honesty in a forthright way.

• Keep focused on the clients’ emotions and needs without being judgmental or imposing decisions on them.

• Understand that there are opportunities for transformation at each choice point, and help clients identify and explore them.

• Plant seeds of hope.

• Recognize that what matters most after an affair is mending childhood wounds, reclaiming cut-off parts of self, and learning to nurture one’s inner self, whether or not the relationship ends. Our optimum role is helping the clients become whole.

— EMB