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Thank you for coming to our blog about the emotional affair that I (Doug) had with a co-worker over two years ago.  It’s been a long hard road to recovery from that affair for me and my wife, Linda, but we’re happy to say that things are going very well, and we have re-established our love for each other. That’s not to say that there haven’t been many bumps in the road along the way – and there continue to be bumps regularly – but our relationship is on the mend and gets better with each passing day.

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Over the past 3 years, I’ve tried my hardest to make amends for my actions that occurred while in my emotional affair.  Though I’ve made my share of mistakes, this whole process has opened my eyes to my own faults as a person and has been the most painful learning experience of my life.

As a result of the affair our lives are forever changed.  Some of those changes are good and others are required.  For instance, I now live a totally transparent existence, sharing any and all information that passes before me each day.  I stay in contact with Linda throughout the day and am open to communication about the affair whenever Linda desires.  When she has questions or fears about things, I accept them openly without anger or defensiveness.  I have no problems with her checking voice mail, texts, emails, or whatever.

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Happy Wednesday!

Recently we have been focusing many of our blog topics on things like breaking the affair addiction, getting the cheater to do what’s necessary to gain forgiveness, empowering yourself, etc.  But what if your cheating spouse refuses to help in any way, or perhaps is only putting forth half-assed effort?  Or worse yet, what if he/she is continuing the affair?

If you feel that you are spinning your wheels when it comes to your affair recovery and healing, you may have considered giving the cheater an ultimatum or two.  It seems though that many times the betrayed is afraid of giving ultimatums for many different reasons.  Some legitimate.  Some not so legitimate.

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Last week we wrote a post about David Lieberman’s 10 phases of forgiveness and making peace with another.  I was particularly interested in phase 7, which is restoring the sense of balance to the relationship after an emotional affair.  In this phase, Lieberman states that it’s important for the cheater to let the betrayed know that their actions produced no enjoyment or any type of beneficial results whatsoever.  The person needs to explain that their transgression was a mistake and if the cheater benefitted in some way, then he/she will have to give back more in order to make things right.

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As usual, I have about four books that I’m simultaneously reading.  One of them, “Make Peace With Anyone” by David J. Lieberman, Ph.D., offers some suggestions regarding forgiveness for infidelity that I wanted to share with you.

Dr. Lieberman offers a ten phase approach to gain forgiveness after someone has clearly violated the trust, respect and rights of another. In other words, this is a process for the cheater to gain forgiveness from the betrayed for their infidelity.

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As our discussion this week we wanted to report back to you the result of our healing from infidelity survey that we conducted the other day.

I can’t  really say that the results were surprising as it seems that rebuilding trust is always the number one issue that folks have.   What was a bit surprising to me is that only 24.9% of you thought that negotiating and redesigning your relationship was the most important element. Perhaps that indicates that most of you are not quite to that point yet in your affair recovery and healing process. Thoughts??

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If you’ve been trying to heal after the affair for any length of time, you have probably said to yourself something along the lines of: “Boy, if I would have known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have made so many mistakes in the past.”  I look back at all the things I did after being blindsided by Doug’s emotional affair and wish that I would have had some source or knowledge for what I should have been focusing on at the time.

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I wanted to continue just a bit from my post from last Thursday.  The main theme of that post dealt with the affair addiction and today I’m going to touch on a process for getting the cheater to stay off of their “drug” of choice – their emotional affair.

I’m going to refer once again to one of our favorite authors, Dave Carder in his book, “Torn Asunder.”

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Hello everyone! We hope that your week is going well.

Instead of our normal discussion today, we wanted to conduct another quick, 1 question survey.

Regardless of how far out you are from discovering your partner’s affair, the ultimate goal is healing and recovery. Basically, getting over the affair and allowing yourself to move on.

Moving on can mean different things to different people. For instance, it could mean saving your marriage and creating a new and better one or it could mean divorce and starting over. We’ll let you determine your own definition.

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Throughout the last two years we have preached the importance of working on yourself to become as strong as possible while you are faced with dealing with infidelity – to empower yourself is extremely important.

The term empowerment has different meanings in different socio-cultural and political contexts and does not translate easily into all languages. There are a number of terms that are thrown about when discussing the term.  These terms include self-strength, control, self-power, self-reliance, own choice, life of dignity in accordance with one’s values, capable of fighting for one’s rights, independence, own decision making, being free, awakening, and capability – to mention only a few.   For us the best everyday definition of empowerment is very simple – “Helping people to help themselves” or “Leading people to learn to lead themselves”.

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Recently, we’ve been mentoring and communicating with several betrayed spouses who are going through some difficult times to say the least.  Two primary issues are common with almost every case.  Either their spouses do not want to let go of their affair partners and are leaving to be with them to see if it was meant to be.  Or, the cheater has stopped contact but is having a very difficult time letting go of their affair partners – not so much from the standpoint of continuing their affair, but more so from the standpoint that they cannot control or stop their thoughts and feelings towards their affair partners.

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