– What Does the Hurt Partner Feel After an Affair: A Nashville Marriage Therapy Perspective

WHAT DOES THE HURT PARTNER FEEL AFTER AN AFFAIR: A NASHVILLE MARRIAGE THERAPY PERSPECTIVE

Reference: “After the Affair: Healing the Pain and Rebuilding Trust when a Partner has been Unfaithful.” 2012. Janis Abrahms Spring, Ph.D.

There is no two ways about it: affairs are painful. Whether you have been married for 6 months or 60 years, an affair rocks your marital world, and there seems little left in the world that is right. So many questions run through your head as the partner that has been hurt by the affair and so many emotions go flowing through your body. Nashville marriage therapy can be an extremely helpful place for couples to sit down and work through all the bevy of emotions, thoughts, and feelings.

In an amazing book by Dr. Janis Abrahms Spring entitled, “After the Affair,” she uses her extensive experience as a marital psychotherapist to sum up some of the reactions that the hurt partner feels after learning about an affair. She writes, “When I was fifteen, I was raped. That was nothing compared to your affair. The rapist was a stranger; you, I thought, were my best friend.”(p. 9) She also writes, “When I first uncovered your secret, I stopped feeling special to you. But on a deeper level, I lost trust in the world and in myself.”(p. 9) Although these are specific quotes from individual clients of hers, they marvelously sum up the majority of feelings that hurt partners experience when discovering the affair by their partner.

USING NASHVILLE MARRIAGE THERAPY TO ARTICULATE THE EFFECTS OF THE AFFAIR

Nashville marriage therapy can help both couples be more expressive of their experience of the affair and articulate of the pain in the aftermath. The marriage will not last if there is not a new formed commitment to honesty and vulnerability. Honesty does not mean every gory detail. Honesty means a way of relating to each other where secrets no longer hold the same power and weight as they once did. Each partner needs to believe there is a new sense of connectedness that can occur through communication, rather than silence.

The hurt partner needs to be to explain, as the client did in the first example, how painful and destructive the affair felt to them. Any minimizing of the pain on the hurt partner’s behalf will not lead to the possibility of a better marriage on the other side. It may be hard for people to imagine that an affair could cause more damage than being raped, but that was not this person’s experience. And put in light of the difference between a stranger and a “known partner,” it becomes impossible to dissuade them of their feelings. The partner who committed the affair needs to know how painful the experience has been for the hurt partner.

In the second example, the client does a masterful job of explaining how everything they thought they knew about the world has now been thrown into chaos. Marriages aren’t built on guarantees, as much as we would like them to be. But, marriages are supposed to be built on honesty, growth, vulnerability, and conversation. When a person goes outside the marriage, they are effectively communicating that the hurt spouse was “not enough.” The “not enough” part means they weren’t even “human enough” to be afforded the decency of honesty for the affair partner to tell them they were moving on. The hurt partner is left in a wilderness of questions, doubts, and wonderings.

If you or your spouse has had an affair, there is help and there is possibility, but it will take a lot of committed work. Nashville marriage therapy can help couples work through these difficult challenges if they are up to the task. Chris Roberts is a Nashville marriage therapist who works with couples going through crisis and would love the opportunity to help you during the difficult time.