SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

When I read Gotmann say in How To Make Love Last that all questions about sex need to be avoided I literally threw the book across the room. That is entirely his opinion, not his research based content, and it completely ignores the very valid reasons on the other side.

Our MC was great, after all, he eventually told us he was a BS.

However, he loved Gottmann, and a LOT of that stuff helped repair our communication.

When he suggested I not ask questions about the sex -- I told him he was dictating what I needed to understand and accept. I told him time, energy and a massive amount of effort was taken from our M. I deserved a full accounting of the time taken from me.

My wife hated what she did SO much she was NEVER going to tell me at all. She confessed 18-years after the fact, because she realized the secret was acting like an anchor on her and our relationship.

What I'm saying is, you get to decide what YOU need from her on this, and I agree Gottman's assertion about what will damage us is off base.

What damaged us already happened.

We're just trying to determine the extent.

Another HUGE part of having our questions answered, is that we KNOW is very hard for a WS to tell us. My wife being brave enough to answer my questions was a path to earning trust. My reaction to that information, earned me trust. Those were the FIRST steps back to building something we wanted. Honesty. Unvarnished truth.

It is HARD to hear, but way better than leaving to my imagination.

An LTA is a lot of (bleeping) damage. And yet, I needed as much of the truth I could get. It destroys the fantasy of it, it reveals the A for what it was, and again, we all need to know what we are being asked to live with.

Our MC took a hard stance of keeping hard conversations contained in session for now, even as I’m expressing my torment.

If you were verging on emotionally abusive or if you and your wife were constantly berating each other, your MC’s insistence on keeping these conversations in session would make sense. But that’s not the case here.

I think you should continue to advocate for what you need, both with the MC and with your wife. I would hate for you to be in a situation similar to FireAndWater, whose MC shut her down and criticized her for questioning the MC’s methods, even though they clearly weren’t working for her.

[This message edited by BluerThanBlue at 2:05 AM, Friday, March 17th]

Gottman supposed the knowledge causes trauma, which suggests lying, minimizing, and rugsweeping is justified. Without *knowing* you will have forever latent unresolved trauma.

Edit: the MC is your employee, not your boss.

[This message edited by This0is0Fine at 3:00 AM, Friday, March 17th]

Another HUGE part of having our questions answered, is that we KNOW is very hard for a WS to tell us. My wife being brave enough to answer my questions was a path to earning trust. My reaction to that information, earned me trust. Those were the FIRST steps back to building something we wanted. Honesty. Unvarnished truth.

It is HARD to hear, but way better than leaving to my imagination.

An LTA is a lot of (bleeping) damage. And yet, I needed as much of the truth I could get. It destroys the fantasy of it, it reveals the A for what it was, and again, we all need to know what we are being asked to live with.

I totally and completely align with this. So why do the "experts" dismiss this? Just because it sounds unseemly to talk about sexual details, that it wouldn’t sound professional to encourage disclosure of salacious details? It seems like their job should be to point out the risks on both sides, mind movies and triggers in knowing the truth vs lifelong doubt, mind movies and triggers of how you imagine it, and forever losing agency. It seems like malpractice to just cut this off with two opinion based sentences.

I think you should continue to advocate for what you need, both with the MC and with your wife. I would hate for you to be in a situation similar to FireAndWater, whose MC shut her down and criticized her for questioning the MC’s methods, even though they clearly weren’t working for her.

the MC is your employee, not your boss.

I read FireAndWater’s story and that sounded like the MC was completely out of line. I hear the warning, I am not in that place right now. And I also know that the MC is not the boss of me, but if I was going to just disregard her judgment then why would I go in the first place? That is a tricky balance to walk. We’re going to MC for at least two reasons that immediately come to mind.

1) have a guide present in very difficult content to help us communicate. The four horsemen have run us ragged for decades, we need to figure out how to cut them out. For me that is going to mean making a clear distinction between criticism and complaint. For her, a huge thing with her inner critic will be accepting even a well stated complaint as something other than criticism and contempt. We 1,000% need this, we’re hosed without it.

2) someone to give us tools to communicate even more generally. I view my communication characteristics as respectful but not afraid to challenge, and I enjoy a good debate. That makes my wife so uncomfortable, and I see much of that now being rooted in trauma. She has this internal need to keep other people calm and happy and sees any kind of challenge like that to be completely antithetical to that objective. And that manifests in her treating me like I’ve done something wrong just by having an idea.

I’m rambling this morning, sorry. The summary is, yes, I will not take every word coming out of MC’s mouth as gospel, nor even the great Gottman. But it would also be counterproductive for either me or my wife to "shop" for an MC that suits our individual needs. I’ve already walked out on one when they told me I needed to accept "my share" of the blame for her A. I can’t just go storming out everytime I hear something I don’t like. I feel that I owe this process the due diligence of considering many perspectives and doing my best to follow a course that seems best to me.

[This message edited by InkHulk at 3:05 PM, Friday, March 17th]

Kind of an aside, but it has been helpful to me in calming down this episode. My wife compared what has happened as being on par with the death of a child. Sounds about right to me. A small moment, but it spoke to me that she understands the gravity.

So why do the "experts" dismiss this?

I think a lot of MC are just trying to put out the fire and they can only see sexual details as fuel.

For me, my MC adjusted and understood my request. He was aghast at some of the details, but I told him it was better than protecting the fantasy bubble, it was better than the A feeling protected, and again, it was a massive part of appreciating my wife’s new honesty about her thought process during and after it all.

I also think too many MC don’t understand they are coaching people to rugsweep, instead of attacking the issues and allowing people to process their pain.

My wife compared what has happened as being on par with the death of a child.

That’s an important observation.

In that situation of mourning the loss, is it better to talk and support each other and process the pain or pretend it didn’t happen?

You are mourning loss and experiencing trauma, you need to be heard and you need wrap your head around what happened.

I mostly went into 2 ego states after d-day - in one, I was all feelings and thoughts about the A, how to heal myself, D vs. R, etc. In the other I was an observer, observing both myself and my W.

My observer concluded that I'll never understand my W's A in the way I wanted to understand it, no matter how many questions I asked, no matter how many times or ways I asked my questions. As observer, I also came to think that answering the questions - and I interrogated for hours almost every day for weeks, maybe months - benefitted my W as well as - maybe more than - me.

A WS can't heal unless they acknowledge and take full responsibility for their A and its outcomes. Like Ow, every honest answer - and I believe every answer was honest - made a small contribution to rebuilding trust. And every answer took my W a step closer to comprehending what she did. My W says it took her at least 5 months to find remorse and to recognize her A as just a garden variety A. But she knew immediately that she had fucked up badly and needed to change in order to prevent further major fuck-ups. She immediately took responsibility, and I think my Qs helped.

At first, I didn't feel a need for details about the sex. Then I did. Our MC told my W to answer all my questions (unless an answer violated he legal duty to maintain confidentiality), and she told me to ask any question I wanted to ask. I decided to ask any question at any time. So I did. For 18-24 months.

I recommend looking for a free download of Peggy Vaughan's Help for Therapists (and Their Clients). It's an analysis of surveys she did on infidelity and covers answers of over 1,000 people. Among her conclusions is that the more people talked about the A(s) with their WSes, the better they did.

*****

IDK ... I guess the sexual details can be a barrier to R. But the resolution of infidelity is way less important to me than the BS's healing, and the BS can't heal unless they know what they need to heal from. If certain sex acts are deal breakers, so be it, and the sooner the BS knows they happened, the better for the BS.

I recommend asking especially the questions the answers to which a BS is afraid to know. I asked those questions myself. If there was a deal breaker lurking in my M, I wanted to know ASAP. I did not want to surface a deal breaker 6 months, a year, 2 years into an R that was bound to fail. I'm grateful there weren't any deal breakers, and I can't guarantee what I'd have done if there had been one, but I think asking the scary questions is essential to healing.

It takes courage to heal, courage to R, courage to D. You might as well exercise that courage from the beginning. IMO, the sooner you use it, the better off you'll be mid- and long-term and probably in the short-term, too.

*****

Are you OK keeping hard convos to MC sessions? I could not have done that. My W was traumatized by what she had done, but she did it, and answering my questions when I asked them was one of my requirements for R, although I was OK with her putting some answers off until the next MC session. But I was really impatient to make a decision to R. You seem to have more patience than I do.

If you feel as if you're stifling yourself, your quickest way to healing is to get your IC & MC to help you stop. As you've noted, however, you've got to find the right balance for you balance between forgoing immediate gratification vs achieving your long term goals.

So much easier said than done....

I also think too many MC don’t understand they are coaching people to rugsweep, instead of attacking the issues and allowing people to process their pain.

In the moment when MC asked what good it would do, I brought up the analogy of viewing the body at a funeral. The same question can be asked, what good does it do? I believe it allows the mind to accept the finality and truth of the death. MC actually immediately came back with "but it could retraumatized you". I guess, but culturally we’ve decided that the one is generally better than the other. I don’t want to be the kid that gets forgotten at the funeral home and spends the night with grandma’s body. But to see it, know it, allow that to help the mind accept the loss, it’s part of the grieving process. I imagine the analog to being denied the opportunity to ask is like people whose loved ones disappear and you never get to see the body, you are only 90% sure they are dead. I can only imagine how that would swirl around in the soul forever, at some point even hoping they are dead because some alternatives would be worse.

[This message edited by InkHulk at 3:51 PM, Friday, March 17th]

"but it could retraumatized you"

Your trauma worsens every day you don’t have the support and answers you seek.

That’s an MC who hasn’t been betrayed and has ZERO idea what your pain is.

I know you said you can’t keep walking away every time you disagree with an MC, but if you’re not getting help — maybe at least call around and talk to MC who specialize in trauma or infidelity to see if there is a better choice. You’re only human, your extraordinary patience shown thus far isn’t sustainable.

Thing is one will get used to the truth. Trigger will become less frequent and less painful as time goes on. But one cannot get used to not knowing the truth. Truth is one possibility. So, getting used to one possibility in one life time is very much possible. But no-truth means infinite possibilities. How can one get used to that many possibilities.

MC actually immediately came back with "but it could retraumatized you".

The answer to that is, "I'm already traumatized. Why aren't you willing to listen when I tell you what I need?"

If you do end up shopping around for another MC, you should specifically raise this issue and ask how they would handle it.

[This message edited by BluerThanBlue at 6:33 PM, Friday, March 17th]

If you do end up shopping around for another MC, you should specifically raise this issue and ask how they would handle it.

As I mentioned, my wife and I have agreed to tackle this on our own. I’m pretty done MC shopping. Overall this one has been good. I can’t expect 100% agreement on every belief I have. I can accept that she is taking Gotmann’s recommendation, I think it makes sense that she would given her training. But it doesn’t mean she is now in complete control of my life.

MC actually immediately came back with "but it could retraumatized you".

Nobody would say this to a person whose loved one went missing. The anguish of *not* knowing or having some sort of finality to the whole thing is in my opinion another injury on top of the one already present. In the case of infidelity this not knowing is a choice that the WS is making (and in this case supported by a MC).

The answer to that is, "I'm already traumatized. Why aren't you willing to listen when I tell you what I need?"

If there was research based recommendations ala the 4 horsemen predicting divorce rates at 95% accuracy that said that outcomes for the betrayed are worse when sexual details are revealed, I would be willing to strongly weigh that against my internal felt need. I’d be willing to take counter-intuitive advice if it was well backed up. But this isn’t, it’s just thrown out there, and that I am not willing to weigh strongly at all versus my patiently considered desire informed by the factors discussed here.

In hindsight, I actually agree with the experts that the sexual details do more harm than good. That said, I do understand how other people might feel differently.

Care to share your experience with it, CT?

People need what they need and I wouldn't presume to tell anyone what is exactly right for them. However, the general advice from the therapeutic world is to avoid sexual nitty gritty (I think SA programs take a different approach).

Why? Because it does cause more trauma. There is just no denying that. So if it will add trauma, I'd think most professionals are going to try and avoid that in an effort to promote healing and possibly save the marriage. I really don't see this as irresponsible on the therapists part, it just makes logical sense.

However, you are in control of what you want and need to heal. So if details are required for you then they just are. But there is no getting around how extremely painful that will be for you and how much it will set you back. If you're prepared to deal with that and continue on your healing journey, it's up to you.

ETA: I've read good advice on this topic that says to think, really think, about what you want to know. Ask yourself, for each question, how will this help me heal? If you can come up with a solid answer that works for you proceed. Please try to bear in mind that you are still reeling from the trauma of this affair. Your first insticts come from pain and stress. Decisions made in that state might not serve you well later on.

[This message edited by TheEnd at 8:35 PM, Friday, March 17th]

Why? Because it does cause more trauma. There is just no denying that.

It didn’t add more trauma for me.

As I explained to my wife, my imagination is far more powerful and filling in the blanks — that was trauma.

My wife having an A — that was trauma.

Killing the fantasy with the hard truth was healing for me.

Understanding what I was being ASKED to ACCEPT with as much truth as possible was empowering for me.

Making an informed choice about my life, to stay or go, was far better than guessing what happened.

Again, because my wife was finally being honest by revealing the truth was healing for me.

Let me add, my advice is ALWAYS for people to get what they need, whether they choose little or no information or require ALL the information.

The key is Gottman’s one size fits all approach, does NOT fit all of us.

If my wife chose to hold on the truth, there would have been zero chance to rebuild the stronger M we have today. I would have moved on.

Did your WW give you a written timeline as is often suggested here?

I have read different iterations of that suggestion.

One is for her to give you two, one with all the sexual detail, the other less R rated.

Both need to fully chart the dates and meetups and the thinking going on at the time - a timeline with running truthful introspection.

I think the act of writing it and the vulnerability of handing it over can be powerful.

Sometimes there is the suggestion of an ordeal of sorts, where you sit face to face and she reads it over a couple of nights, watching your face as she does so. That might be the less confronting one.

Where there are two timelines, it does seem likely likely the BS will read both, but the choice is theirs.

Sometimes there might be a cathartic moment when you lock the timelines in a drawer. Then maybe in 5 years you do a burning of the timeline.

Symbolism can be important in moving on. It is for me, but you need to find a way to join that firmly to truth or you feel you are handing over the tools for further abuse and deception of you.

In my job I used to look a bad exhibits sometimes, like car accidents causing deaths. I would sit down, look at them once, seal them in an envelope, and in a usual case never look at them again. I knew enough even in my 20!s not to just leave them lying around for secretaries to see or for me to look at every tine I opened the file.

My approach was to get the truth of the affair but try not to rehash it.