Ep 12: Should I Stay Or Go? What To Do When You're Not Sure You Want To Save The Relationship. The One Thing Holding You Back From Progress.

Brad:

How will the children suffer from a breakup of your marriage?

Morgan:

Yeah, those

Brad:

Are good because it would be a disaster scenario. And I'm a product of a broken home. My father cheated on my mother and they were divorced. It was a disaster after that. And so you need to think about the kids as well.

Morgan:

You are listening to Healing Broken Trust podcast with Brad and Morgan Robinson, where we talk about healing from affairs and fidelity trust and cheating in your relationship from the perspective of a professional marriage therapist and a fair recovery expert. If you're wanting to heal your marriage, this podcast is for you. And we're officially on episode number 12 and we're talking about should I stay or should I go? And that's a really important question because people really struggle with that. Should I stay? Should I go, should I work on this? Should I not? Is it going to work? Can we fix this? So we're going to talk about this in episode 12, and I want to encourage you to go over to healing broken trust.com/episode 12. That's Healing broken trust.com/episode and the number 12, and download those free resources so that you can get some help. Really, we want to help you through this process and it's a great way to expedite healing and to help you through this process. So go to healing broken trust.com/episode 12. And let's get started.

Brad:

You're listening to How to Recover From An Affair with Brad and Morgan Robinson. I'm Brad Robinson.

Morgan:

And I'm Morgan Robinson. And today we're talking about handling the ambiguous feelings and questions about staying or leaving after infidelity in the relationship. This is a very important topic and basically the emotional storm that occurs after betrayed spouses find out about the affair causes a very intense emotional disorientation. And we strongly recommend that couples wait six to 12 weeks after discovering the affair before they decide that they're completely done with their mate. One of the common feelings after learning about an affair is shock. After that period, reality begins to set in allowing plenty of time to make the decision, ensures that the decision will be easier to live with. Right, Brad?

Brad:

Yeah, and Morgan, that's why we asked for couples and individuals who've been affected by this to really give themselves six to 12 weeks before they decide they're done. And Morgan, there's a couple that I've worked with where then they've been married for 20 years. The wife had an emotional affair with a boyfriend that she met from high school. This was somebody that she met on Facebook. And for this couple and almost all couples after an affair, there is this period of questioning if they want to stay married or divorced. And that period can take several days or several months.

Morgan:

Interesting.

Brad:

And it can make it harder to heal when you're stuck in this place of uncertainty. Do I want to be here or not? And that's really important because the longer somebody's uncertain about wanting to stay or heal, it's harder for them to be a supporter and a nurturer for their spouse because they're still stuck on themselves. They haven't made the full commitment recommitment back into the marriage. And so the spouse who's been betrayed is really wavering

Morgan:

Right back and forth. And during this time, emotions are all over the map. They're emotions like anger, guilt, disgust, shame, humiliation and fear because emotions are heightened and will eventually subside. Our advice is to not make any major life decisions right now while the ability to think clearly and rationalize as compromised, including the decision to leave. Most people who decide to leave after an affair without trying to work things out first will later, usually later regret not trying to sort through the mess.

Brad:

Yeah.

Morgan:

So both Go ahead.

Brad:

Yeah, you're right, Morgan. Because they regret not trying the effort. It's the what if we could have made it

Morgan:

Right?

Brad:

I'll never know. So I'm in favor of trying to make it work.

Morgan:

Yeah, absolutely. And you have to consider too, if you're not willing to at least heal from what happened, a lot of times you bring that baggage into the next relationship. If you do decide to get remarried again.

Morgan:

Yeah, you

Morgan:

Can. You really don't. If you haven't worked through those problems, you can really cause more problems in the next relationship. But those who do try to work on the marriage and if they later divorce, rarely regret trying to work on the marriage, they don't regret it. A lot of times because of what I just said, you are healing as a person, as an individual, as well as the relationship

Brad:

They find sane and trying to work on the marriage, brought them closure

Morgan:

And

Brad:

Help them have peace of mind about leaving.

Morgan:

Exactly.

Brad:

And so Morgan, my advice to couples is to make the effort to work this out while they have the opportunity instead of facing regret in the future. And several months ago, I had a worked with a couple who'd been married for 10 years. The husband was a high level executive in his company who did a lot of traveling.

Morgan:

His

Brad:

Wife was suspicious, discovered the affair. He initially lied about the affair, blowing it off as just a friend. When they came to see me, they both were debating about whether to continue the marriage or end it. My advice to them is the same advice I'm giving to our listeners. He wanted to try to make it work, and he followed my advice very well, but she felt like she would be better off without him and let him know she didn't want to continue the marriage. That was the last I saw of them. And this is a woman who felt like God was telling her who need to leave him because I'm going to give you a ministry to help other women who've experienced this. Well, how come she couldn't have a ministry? That was one where they reconciled

Morgan:

And there was healing involved

Brad:

And healing and not just, well, I'm going to be done

Morgan:

Because

Brad:

I don't financially need you. So the wife later called her office and said that her husband had left her for the other woman.

Morgan:

Right? I spoke with her that day, I remember,

Brad:

But isn't what happened at all. He wanted to try to fix the marriage and repair it because of the strong emotions associated with this. She decided she was done without really trying to salvage what was left of their marriage. When she called, she was filled with regret because she didn't take the time to make a well-thought out decision that she could live with.

Morgan:

That was a really sad day. I remember that. So like this client, the initial reaction of many people is to say the marriage is over after affair is discovered, but calling it quits, that's a bit premature and shortsighted in a lot of ways, and most people do work it out. But putting effort into saving the marriage and being a loving, supportive partner can really help spouses feel like they gave their marriage the best chance they could. And once they start seeing improvement and feeling like their marriage is moving ahead in a positive way, their commitment will likely increase. So a lot of people just can't see the forest from the trees in the beginning.

Brad:

And Morgan something, and this is really important for those of you listening, when you are discussing the future of the marriage, if you're spending time talking with friends, you want to talk to friends and family who are friends of the marriage. And by that term, I mean people who are pro-marriage are objective, who realize there's two sides to every

Brad:

Story.

Brad:

It's really funny if you listen to somebody, we had this happen recently with us where somebody was talking to, and it's not even about a relationship issue as a couple. It was just somebody, we knew both of them, and they were talking to us about a work situation they were in, and one person was talking to us about it and made the other person sound horrible. And then you hear the other person talk about it, you get more of a well-rounded picture of the whole thing. There's two sides to every story. And you need to talk. If you're going to talk to anybody, you want to talk to people who know that there's two sides to every story who have a well-rounded perspective on things,

Morgan:

And they're pro your relationship and pro-marriage.

Brad:

Yeah. And they want to see you guys work out. And so unfortunately though a few people understand how affairs work and how they occur and how to heal from

Morgan:

One.

Brad:

And so friends and family members can express strong reactions and opinions about what the couple should do with the affair. So they're going to really let you know.

Morgan:

And

Brad:

So those reactions can affect your decision making. But we encourage you to remember that you are the only one who's going to live with the outcome of this decision, and therefore the decision is yours alone.

Morgan:

Exactly. Exactly. And during this six to 12 week period of ambiguity where you're not sure should you stay, should you go, what should you do? Another helpful step is to read as much as you can about affairs and the process. Listen to our recordings and read and learn about how to heal from an affair. You never know what one idea or key piece of information will impact your perspective. So keep that in

Brad:

Mind. That's good advice,

Morgan:

Morgan.

Brad:

Now I want to give our listeners some different questions that they need to work through and ask themselves. And so as you're listening to this, you may want to pull out a pad of paper and a pen. Write these down, think on paper and

Morgan:

Try not to be driving at the moment.

Brad:

And you can re-listen to this over and over again and just try to sort this out. The clearer this is, the better this decision you'll be able to work with and live with. And so here's something that you need to consider and questions you need to ask yourself. You really want to see the future. You want to speculate what the future will be like for you without your spouse. So what will life be like without this person? What's going to happen in the immediate future, five years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now without this person in my life? So look down the road as far as you can and speculate what it would be like without your spouse.

Morgan:

How would your life be different?

Brad:

How would your children's lives be different?

Morgan:

How would your current friendships be different?

Brad:

How would you manage family events separately?

Morgan:

How would the following be different for you in the future? How would having fun be different? How would religion or spiritual connections be different? How would activities, interests, or hobbies you share, how would that be different personal goals and dreams? What would change about those? How would those be different?

Brad:

And you also want to look at the past. You don't want to let current emotions keep you from seeing your past objectively. And what can happen is when things are a little bit more negative, 51% negative, people will rewrite their relationship history and see it more negative

Morgan:

Kind of through these negative sunglasses.

Brad:

Yeah, these negative glasses. And so you need to ask yourself, what do you remember about the good times you shared with your partner?

Morgan:

What would you miss about your marriage?

Brad:

What do you value about you and your partner as a couple?

Morgan:

What is your marriage like at its best? And at its worst,

Brad:

What particular qualities of your partner do you value?

Morgan:

What positive qualities does your partner bring out in you?

Brad:

Have you and your spouse struggled together to get to this place in your life?

Morgan:

What are the qualities you don't care for in your partner? And about the marriage? What did you contribute? And what ways did you two work as a team or not work as a team?

Brad:

What negative impact does divorcing have on your spouse? What negative impact does the divorce have on you? What negative impact does divorce have on your family, on your work, on your friends, et cetera,

Morgan:

Right? And putting your hurt aside, trying to set that aside for a moment. What are the reasons for staying with your spouse?

Brad:

Look past the affair. Do you love your spouse? And again, it's normal to not like or even despise the person after they've had an affair,

Morgan:

Right?

Brad:

But do you love your spouse?

Morgan:

Right? At a fundamental level, do you like your spouse as a person, even before the affair? Did you like your spouse? When did you like your spouse the most? Try to reimagine your wedding day. Try to go back to that place when you were really the closest.

Brad:

Are you and your spouse somewhat compatible?

Morgan:

Exactly. And the fourth one, are you willing to work on the marriage? Are you willing to work on it?

Brad:

And are you willing to work towards forgiveness for what may have been done to injure your spouse?

Morgan:

Are you willing to understand what vulnerabilities may have been present for an affair to even happen? Right?

Brad:

Yeah. And Morgan, something that's really important with this is we're talking about compatibility. Do you love them? Many people will say, I love them, but I'm not in love with them. And what you need to understand if that's how you feel is an affair, is a tremendous opportunity for growth. Sure, there's a lot of remorse, pain, shame, chaos, but it's tremendous opportunity for growth. It's that you are working on marriage number two, you are in round two of your marriage.

Morgan:

You're

Brad:

Working on this and you can rebuild it. Marriage number one is dead.

Morgan:

And

Brad:

So you guys have a say in both of you, rebuilding this from the ground up, changing things. And that's important. So it's not like, okay, I don't love this person. Now I got to go back to 'em. Right? You can change how you feel towards this person,

Morgan:

Right? By the choices that you make.

Brad:

You can regain your feelings for them if you are the one who had the affair or if you're the one who's been betrayed. And so that's really important to understand that.

Morgan:

Yeah, don't let temporary and present emotion keep you from working on this because romance can be rebuilt. Questions for the injured spouse to ask. Here's some questions for the injured spouse. The first one is ask yourself whether this affair is part of something larger such as a pattern of lying and cheating in your spouse, right?

Brad:

That's important to look at the larger pattern. What kind of pattern is here

Morgan:

Exactly?

Brad:

Have they cheated before?

Morgan:

Right? Can you trust your spouse to tell you the truth about other things?

Brad:

Can you depend on and trust your spouse for other things?

Morgan:

Exactly.

Brad:

Does your spouse understand your pain from this?

Morgan:

Right? They may not initially be understanding, but feel like you are overreacting possibly. But if they are listening to this and they're listening to what we have to say and they're reading about it, they'll start to understand better the trauma and the emotions surrounding an affair. But is your spouse willing to help you heal and move forward?

Brad:

Is your spouse willing to be part of the solution and moving the marriage forward?

Morgan:

Is your spouse genuinely remorseful for the affair?

Brad:

Is your spouse willing to learn from this and implement what he or she is learning?

Morgan:

And the next one is your spouse willing to acknowledge attractions to the opposite sex as normal and willing to discuss these temptations in the future.

Brad:

That's important.

Morgan:

That's very important. Being honest and open.

Brad:

Is your spouse willing to make a commitment to honesty about everything pertaining to your relationship? Does that even seem reasonable to you, them being completely honest about everything pertaining to the relationship?

Morgan:

And something to think about is that changes like these don't happen overnight, but is there a general movement in this direction? For the previous questions two through eight, are they moving in that direction?

Brad:

If you were to split for good,

Morgan:

Describe

Brad:

The disaster scenario that could follow. How will the children suffer from a breakup of your marriage? Yeah,

Morgan:

Those are pretty

Brad:

Good. It would be a disaster scenario. And I'm a product of a broken home. My father cheated on my mother and they were divorced. It was a disaster after that. And so you'd need to think about the kids as well.

Morgan:

So if you ever wondered why Brad got into this field now, anyways, so we were talking about questions for the injured spouse to ask, and now we've got questions for the involved spouse

Brad:

To ask the spouse who had the affair. These are questions that you need to ask yourself. And when you're deciding if you should stay or go, it's important to understand that you do not want to make a decision because you are comparing an exciting, illicit passionate affair with a stable relationship.

Morgan:

One thing we talk about too is that you can bring that passion and excitement into your marriage. Once it's healed,

Brad:

You can, well, you can create intimacy.

Morgan:

True.

Brad:

It's kind of like comparing, well, do I want, you can't live in Disney World. You just can't. You can go visit it, but you can't live in it. And sometimes that's what people want do is they want to bring Disney World home with them and have their whole world be Disney World. Your whole life be Disney World. And that's what you're doing when you're saying, when you're comparing a normal relationship, your normal marriage, this

Morgan:

To a fantasy

Brad:

To reality to fantasy.

Morgan:

Exactly.

Brad:

You're often fantasy, world fantasy land,

Morgan:

And only 3% of people who do marry their fair partner are able to have a long-term marriage. That's a small percentage.

Brad:

3%. Yeah. It's a very small percentage of people who do marry their affair partner that's able to have a long-term marriage. And the reason for that is, is because they struggle to trust each other. The affair partner won't be able to trust them because you left your

Morgan:

Marriage, you left your marriage. Why not do the, you're

Brad:

Pledging to remain faithful when you showed that person you could not be faithful and you're not going to be able to trust them and you're leaving them because there's these illicit, passionate, romantic feelings that don't last. That's not normal. They

Morgan:

Subside right? In a cornerstone of a relationship, a solid marriage is trust.

Brad:

It's trust. It's dependability. But those feelings are fleeting. They're there to help you attach to a person. They're not there to build a relationship. In fact, most people who do marry never experience that kind of relationship. They experience more of a companionship type relationship. They don't experience this fantasy,

Morgan:

Fairytale, fantasy fairytale type thing. Barbie's dream house.

Brad:

Yeah, they don't experience that.

Morgan:

Exactly.

Brad:

And so basically questions you need to ask if you've had the affair, if you need to stay or go, here's the first question you need to ask. You need to see yourself married or in a long-term relationship with the affair partner, picture yourself, married or in a long-term relationship with this person. And ask yourself, what would the future look like for you as a couple, 5, 10, 15, 20 years from now

Brad:

Without,

Brad:

And you need to look at this Morgan, without the feelings being there, the passionate feelings, they're not going to be there. What other characteristics does this person have? What negative characteristics do they have?

Morgan:

Right? You're going to have bills, you're going to have mortgage, you're going to have children, possibly. You're going to have all of those stressors. What would that be like?

Brad:

Morgan, and I want to emphasize this because typically people do not look at the negative in a person when they're having an exciting, illicit passionate affair.

Brad:

Secret right

Brad:

Affair. When they're obsessed with a person, they're not looking at their negative qualities.

Morgan:

Exactly.

Brad:

They're not even conscious of them.

Morgan:

So the next question would be, does he or she want to have children if he or she already has children, does he or she want to start a new family in the future? Do your life dreams add up? Do they match up what you want? Do they want,

Brad:

Yeah. Do they want children?

Morgan:

That's one.

Brad:

How difficult would it be for you and your fair partner to raise each other's kids together?

Morgan:

Right. Blended families. They have their own challenges. They do. How would your children handle and incorporate into their family the person who broke up their family? That's interesting.

Brad:

Yeah. You need to consider how that's going to impact. So how would your children handle and incorporate?

Morgan:

Could they respect that person, that

Brad:

Person as a stepparent?

Morgan:

Exactly.

Brad:

That's going to be, yeah. And we've known people like that personally outside of counseling who've experienced that. So what were the things that you found attractive about the affair partner? If these traits were to become magnified, would you still find them desirable? For example, if how your fair partner is always social butterfly, imagine what it would be like to be with someone who was always flirting.

Morgan:

Exactly. Exactly. So

Brad:

You need to ask yourself, would these qualities be magnified that you like? And you need to also look at their negative qualities and ask yourself, what if these became magnified?

Morgan:

Right. Considering living with that.

Brad:

Yeah, because it will, like we mentioned earlier, Morgan, like you said earlier, you wear these glasses of romantic love, of obsessive love where you feel addicted to this person, infatuated with this person. You don't see their negative qualities, their average qualities are even heightened, and all you see is this good stuff. So

Morgan:

Right. And the second one that we want to talk about is what will it be like when the fantasy or infatuation of an illicit affair week wears off 10 years from now? What would it be like after that? Like you're saying, magnifying these common traits that you are seeing as positive Now, how could they be switched or flipped?

Brad:

Would you divorce your spouse even if the relationship with the affair partner doesn't work out?

Morgan:

Think about the future 10 to 20 years from now. Where do you want to be living? How do you want to spend your time? What activities give you pleasure? What makes you happy right now in the past? And how would that affect your future?

Brad:

What happens to the dreams of growing old together with your spouse? What did you plan on you two doing during that time?

Morgan:

What

Brad:

Did you plan on this retirement period? What happened to those dreams that you had with your spouse?

Morgan:

If you were to end your marriage for good, describe the disaster scenario that could follow. What would it look like with your kids, with your feelings, with your finances? What would happen? What would it look like?

Brad:

And you also need to give yourself an honest assessment of how the children would suffer from the disillusion of your marriage. And Morgan, I just want to state in my opinion about this, I would never leave my spouse to be with a fair partner.

Morgan:

Thank you. I really appreciate that.

Brad:

Well, not just you, but I'm saying for our listeners, knowing what I know, if I were in that situation, I would never leave to go be with that other person because it doesn't work. The people I've worked with who've met because of an affair, they're the hardest couples to work with. They don't trust each other. It's like constant fighting and bickering. It's very difficult. They don't have the fundamental foundation of security and trust that you need to have to make a relationship grow.

Brad:

Exactly.

Brad:

They're lacking it, and they don't last long. They just don't. And they're a pain in the butt to work with.

Morgan:

They built their house on sand.

Brad:

And so what you need to know is, and this is something else people need to realize, Morgan, is that being securely connected with your mate, it's the best protection and form of healing after an affair.

Morgan:

Absolutely. Research shows that,

Brad:

Yeah, that's from research, but so being connected emotionally, it helps you heal from an affair and it can help you being connected and emotionally even during this UNC times of uncertainty can help you heal. And if your spouse is leaning out of the marriage, you may want to listen to what we did on the show that we did on how to manage that time. If your spouse is wanting to leave, things that you need to be aware of and things that you can do to help that help stop

Brad:

Your divorce.

Brad:

Yeah, and let me say this though too. People who get caught up in the liran affair, which we've talked about as well, they can complicate how the betrayer feels about ending the affair. Obviously this can make it a difficult period of uncertainty about the future of the marriage. So go look at our information on RIN and RIN Affairs because that can also affect your ability to recover from an affair

Morgan:

And to look at things objectively,

Brad:

Look at things objectively and know if you want to stay or go. And many times, the betrayer, if they're caught up in Limerence, they're very stuck in determining if they want to stay or go

Morgan:

More so than any other type of affair.

Brad:

Yeah, they're very wishy-washy. I don't know if I want to be here. I don't know if I want to stay or go. Sometimes they'll leave. They'll come back. And so you need to look at our information that we've developed on Lime limerence and Limerent Affairs.

Morgan:

Yep. Absolutely.

Brad:

Thank you for listening to How to Recover from an Affair. I'm Brad Robinson.

Morgan:

And I'm Morgan Robinson. You have a wonderful week.

Brad:

Thank you. Take care. Thank you. Thanks for listening to Healing Broken Trust. If you like this episode, you can always get our show notes and more details and links to the resources we discussed at healingbrokentrust.com. Also, as long as you're online, head on over to healing broken trust.com/retreat for details on an upcoming one-on-one retreat with me. If you like us, please subscribe and leave a review for us on iTunes. As always, everything discussed on this podcast is either my opinion or Morgan's opinion and is not to be taken as relationship advice because I'm not your therapist, nor have I considered your personal situation as your therapist. This podcast is for your entertainment and education only, and I really do hope you've enjoyed it. See you Until next time.

Ep 18: Stages of Trauma Recovery - How To Get Through It Once And For All

Brad:

Working through the trauma. To be honest with you, it really depends on how well a person who had the affair is being a healer, if they're going to work, how successfully they work through the trauma, because that person who's been betrayed needs honesty, they need answers, they need closure on this and they want it resolved. But these things that we're talking about with the trauma, it keeps people stuck in a way where you can't think about anything, but that

Morgan:

You are listening to Healing Broken Trust podcast with Brad Morgan Robinson, where we talk about healing from affairs, infidelity, trust, and cheating in your relationship from the perspective of a professional marriage therapist and a fair recovery expert if you're wanting to heal your relationship after infidelity. This is the podcast for you and we're officially on episode number 18 and we're talking about the steps that you can take to recover from trauma. Alright, so we've had this little mini four-part series of trauma. We're at the fourth part, and we're talking about how to recover from this trauma. And if you haven't already, make sure to download episodes 15, 16, and 17, which are the first three parts to this trauma series. And also episode one is really useful as well to kind of understand this in context of the seven stages of the recovery process. So make sure to do that, it'll really help you a lot.

And in addition to that, make sure you go to our website, healing broken trust.com/episode 18. That's the number 18. Download the free resources. They'll really help you to follow along and to really make the most out of this podcast so that you can really, really have the healing you deserve. So that's again, healing Broken trust.com/episode 18. Get those resources, make the most of them. Also, you can leave a message on our website as well. You can actually record an audio message. It can be totally anonymous if you want. And we do have weekly calls that you can join us on when you go and download those free resources. We offer that as an option for you to take advantage of as well. You can ask those questions live, and if you leave a message, we do make sure to answer those questions on our weekly call, and you're welcome to join us. There's a promotion that we're running on there as well that you can take advantage of. I think it's a dollar for the first month. So go to healing broken trust.com/episode 18. And let's get started. We'll start today's show with a listener question.

Okay, this question comes from a gentleman in Broken Arrow and he says, it was really helpful to learn that I'm not crazy, like I truly believed I was since I've been acting so jumpy and suspicious all the time. Instead, learning about the symptoms and triggers in the last show helped me to realize situations that I need to avoid in order to get through this. But I would really like to know how do you know you're recovering and what is the process? We've been talking about the affair recovery process as discovery, ambiguity, trauma meaning forgiveness.

Brad:

We've been talking about those

Morgan:

Stages,

Brad:

Those individual steps, but even with trauma, there's steps within trauma.

And so that's what that person's wanting to know. So let's talk about that. We've talked about trauma in terms of symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. For many people, it's the most difficult thing they've ever experienced feeling like discovering their spouses betrayed. And so dealing with that injured spouse's sense of trauma, it does follow an outline. And part of that, the first part is outcry. In this period of outcry, there are strong bewildering emotions. And the injured spouse, they feel stunned, overwhelmed, and probably have a strong sense of anger that their spouse cheated and the affair partner.

And sometimes that anger is really more rage. And so there's a strong sense of anger and they feel stunned. They're overwhelmed. A lot of bewildering emotions, just people start feeling crazy. And it's just kind of this emotional rollercoaster that starts the next stage after outcry is avoidance and denial. An injured husband probably this guy probably feels numb. He has no desire, so he withdraws some people, avoids other people. During that time, the guy that emailed us, it's not uncommon for him to feel constricted emotionally. And usually you'll see people like this just stare blankly into space. Has anyone in his shoes would he probably, well, he really needs to be getting back to life as usual and engage in things that he did before he found out about the affair, things that were important to him, like work, sports, kids, household responsibilities. But after the affair I've noticed is many people report feeling like the world is gray at this time. Many people feel physically and emotionally numb. They may even find they have no desire to talk about it. There's an outcry, then there's avoidance and denial, and people just want to really avoid it. They want to withdraw and avoid other people. And part of that is because they feel so much shame about it. They feel so humiliated, they feel so really stupid, just they feel like, gosh, I've been betrayed. This has happened to me, and here you are treating me like this.

Morgan:

I'm crazy.

Brad:

Yeah, well, I'm crazy, but just the way trauma works, it's almost like one of those things you don't know until you've lived through it, until you've gone, I mean, you can read about it, you can hear me talk about it. And this is one of the things with betrayers is commonly they haven't been betrayed. And so when they're trying to help their spouse heal and be a healer and nurture or supportive, they really become dismissive. And so they get stuck and they can get stuck in this avoidance and denial stage. And so a lot of people don't want to talk about it. They'll go numb. And when you go numb, you're blacking out even the positive emotions. And we've talked about that before,

Morgan:

And we're talking about trauma recovery, and we had a question about how do you know you're recovering and what is the process?

Brad:

Well, as I was saying, the first part of this is there's an outcry. There's avoidance and denial, and then you have intrusive thoughts. Once the denial wears off, people start who've been betrayed, start experiencing intense emotions and thoughts related to the affair, and they begin to break into your awareness in your mind. Once that avoidance and denial wears off, you start thinking about the affair much, much more become like an obsession at times. And so these thoughts are accompanied by physical arousal, the strong ways of thoughts and emotions. Typically, they can wane for a time giving people a feeling of normalcy. Okay, I'm not thinking about it. I'm not obsessing about it, but I also don't have these thoughts just popping into my head.

Morgan:

Maybe elaborate a little bit on the outcry part. What does that look like? Is it yelling? I mean, you talked about rage, but are they looking for help? Are they looking to their

Brad:

Spouse? What is it? Well, I think in some ways they're stunned, they're shocked, just overwhelmed, oh my gosh, this, what are we going to do? It's almost like finding out somebody you love has cancer.

Morgan:

They're so confused and

Brad:

So yeah, you're just shocked and maybe you're upset and you cry. It's kind of a stunned feeling,

Morgan:

Kind of like the discovery process.

Brad:

But then also people just, sometimes that stun ness wears off too and they just get really angry sometimes when people feel obsessed and have intrusive thoughts, those are two different things. Obsessive is you have a hard time, just stop thinking about it yourself. You can't put it down. And then intrusive thoughts are those times you're not thinking about it. There's all these little reminders and we've talked about that. And so these intrusive thoughts will also make that person physically aroused. So our person that emailed us is probably experiencing some physical arousal in a sense. These strong waves of thoughts and emotions, they can wane for a time, give you a feeling of normalcy, but they do return. And feeling aroused is common during the very early days and weeks of affair recovery, A lot of factors that go into how long it really takes to overcome an affair. But it lingers when betrayed spouses feel uncared for by their partner, by their spouse who had the affair or when they feel like they don't understand what drove their spouse to have the affair. So it's two different things. If you don't feel like you're really cared for,

Then it can wane, or excuse me, it doesn't wane. It will continue. The intensity will continue. The intrusive thoughts will continue. And so if they don't feel cared for, they're going to continue to have intrusive and obsessive thoughts. Or if they feel like, gosh, I don't understand what drove you to have an affair. I don't understand your thought process, I don't understand why, then it's going to continue to wane.

Morgan:

And that goes into the meaning process. We'll talk about.

Brad:

Yeah, and I said to continue to wane. I mean, it'ss not going to wane and it's not going to relax. It's going to continue to stay at that pattern of intensity and obsessiveness, and it's going to make you feel like you're crazy, but you're really not. This is a normal predictable pattern that people experience after an affair, but they do feel crazy. But like I said, you're not crazy if you're experiencing this. And so many betrayed spouses, they'll experience hypervigilance during this time, and that's the feeling that causes them to snoop around and to investigate whether or not what their spouse is saying is true or not.

Morgan:

That's where he's talking about suspicion. He's very suspicious.

Brad:

And so there's outcry, avoidance and denial, intrusive thoughts. And then there is the next part of this working through the trauma. And I would say this is probably the longest period, obviously a lot of people I work with, outcry, very short avoidance and denials, very short, intrusive thoughts can be a very long period for people, especially if they're struggling with understanding why. And if they're struggling with their spouse isn't really being there as a nurturer, as a healer, as being supportive. And if they feel like their spouse is continuing to lie to 'em,

They're going to stay in that place. But working through the trauma, to be honest with you, it really depends on how well a person who had the affair is being a healer, if they're going to work, how successfully they work through the trauma. Because that person who's been betrayed needs honesty, they need answers, they need closure on this and they want it resolved. But these things that we're talking about with the trauma, it keeps people stuck in a way where you can't think about anything but that. So let's talk about working through the trauma. When people start working through the trauma, they start feeling like, okay, the time has come where I need to work on this. And they're ready to face the reality of the affair. They've experienced all these thoughts, all these feelings, they talked it through with their spouse and hopefully properly trained counselor who can help them through infidelity,

Morgan:

Which is very much different than just marriage counseling, standard marriage counseling.

Brad:

Yeah, I would say infidelity. It's absolutely different.

Morgan:

In what ways do you want to talk a little bit about,

Brad:

Yeah, I'll say this. How infidelity recovery or a fair recovery is different than marriage counseling. It falls under the banner of marriage counseling because you go to a marriage counselor for it, but it doesn't fit the mold of, I would say just

Morgan:

Communication.

Brad:

Communication, improving our sex life. And sometimes people will come to marriage counseling, oh, we had an affair, we've got to improve the marriage. And they think that's what they have to do. But really what needs to be done is the injured spouse needs to understand this. The couple needs to understand this. The person who's had the affair needs to work through issues that drove them to this.

Morgan:

But it's really important to know that you still, even with a fair recovery, you don't want to go to individual counseling to work on the marriage.

Brad:

No, that's a bad idea.

Morgan:

Even though you need to work out individual issues, the best way to do that is in marriage counseling. Correct?

Brad:

Yeah. And of course, if you go to somebody individually, they may be somebody that works with a marriage counselor, but sometimes that's a bad idea to go to somebody individually just because a lot of people don't understand infidelity. So basically you're working through the trauma, how you're working through it is you're ready to face it. There's false beliefs about yourself that you're correcting. You've grieved for the loss of the affair, you're starting to feel healthy again. A new commitment is made to the marriage with both spouses pledging to give a hundred percent to the marriage. And you're at a place where you feel like the marriage is stronger than it was before. You feel like you can finally move on. And one of the things I like to emphasize is that if couples get stuck at a stage before it's completed, then these feelings and symptoms of PTSD will continue and you just get stuck and you keep going back. But most couples who outlined what we're talking about, and this is good news, I want to emphasize this. One of the things, if couples follow what we're talking about, they're going to feel like the first three months is going to be the hardest period of time.

But that's only if they're a hundred percent honest. They're disclosing things. They're in regular therapy every week, they're getting the help they need. They're really jumping in, and both of 'em are tackling this and really trying to conquer this after three months. Not that I'm saying you're a hundred percent recovered, but the trauma aspect, you feel like it's significantly diminished. Sometimes people get stuck after a year of time. They still feel like they did when they first discovered or like they did when in the early stages.

Morgan:

And that's because both people are not both feet in being completely out there and honest.

Brad:

And there may be other factors at play, but we'll get to that in a second.

Morgan:

But you're talking about the first three months.

Brad:

So the first three months for a lot of couples is generally the crisis period

Morgan:

Where the shock is the biggest

Brad:

Shock. It's the shock, it's the outcry, it's the intrusive thoughts, and they only get to that place where they feel like not that the affair is behind them, not that it doesn't hurt, all I'm saying is that their first three months is generally the crisis period for a lot of couples. If after about six months you're still feeling how you do after maybe the first month of working on things, there may be more at play. And part of that may be the betrayer is not really being there as a healer, not really being honest, not really being who they need to be, so they're not being honest. So you can't heal. And every time there's a lie or something like that that has to be corrected or you're not being transparent, it's going to really hold back the injured spouse. But this is really important though too. Sometimes with being betrayed, what will happen is we get stuck because this is traumatic. It can activate old wounds as well. And so sometimes people who've been betrayed, you'll only know this if you are about six months in, you're not really getting anywhere and you're still feeling the same way and your spouse is being, there is a healer. They're trying to do everything right at that time. It may be a good idea to look into individual therapy. And there's some really neat breakthroughs that have occurred in helping people overcome trauma. And so do you want to find a good trauma therapist who can help you individually work through this? But I would only do that after trying to work through things as a couple first.

And that would be something that your marriage counselor could give you advice on how to find somebody who to go to. They may be working with somebody that they can refer you to.

Morgan:

What you're saying is that's after six months of both people being completely out there and completely honest and completely

Brad:

Transparent. And I want to say that's a good question because one of the things we get, a lot of times we will get people into our office who have done no work on the affair after a year, maybe two years, sometimes even five years. Then that person feels like, okay, I'm past this trauma aspect. But after having worked on it for six months, you still feel like you do it day one, you don't need to drop marriage counseling, something's probably going on. Your marriage still needs help. But what you need to do is you need to seek individual help as well for trauma. For trauma, for maybe past hurts, past abuse, past deep wounds, past hurts that you experienced from people. You need to get help for that

Morgan:

Completely unrelated even sometimes to what happened with you and your spouse, right?

Brad:

Yeah,

Morgan:

Parents or whatever.

Brad:

And let me say this, I want to get onto how people know they're recovering, and I want to get to that in a second. But so the first three months is really the crisis period. A lot of people feel like the trauma, they're not past it, but they really feel like, okay, I'm a lot better than I was

Morgan:

Progress.

Brad:

I still have some bad days. I still some dark days, but I feel like I'm a lot better. After six months, you feel like you're not getting better. You probably need to see an individual therapist, but do that only after talking with your marriage counselor about that, who's helping you work through infidelity. The first year anniversary, you should be feeling a lot better than you do, but that's going to be a rough time

For people. And also holidays are going to be rough for people. Valentine's Day, Christmas holidays, family get togethers these times that should be really important. Those are going to be rough, and it's going to take about a full two years if everything goes right for you to feel like you're past it. If there's a lot of lying in the beginning and a lot of deception going on, it's going to push you back at least six months in the affair recovery process. And so I want to get into that next question that you had Morgan on how to recover from the

Morgan:

Affair. How do you know that you're recovering? What is that process? Yeah,

Brad:

Okay. Basically how you're recovering from the affair. Number one is you can recall or dismiss the affair at will.

Brad:

And

Brad:

What I mean by that is you're no longer experiencing intrusive memories of the affair. You're no longer experiencing nightmares, flashbacks, or these triggers. So it's something you choose to think about. It's not just this random haphazard flood, flood of thoughts, an onslaught of thoughts. It's something that you choose to pick up and look at in your mind, and it's something that you choose to put down in your mind.

Morgan:

You have

Brad:

Control. You have control over it. The second is you can remember the affair with appropriately intense feelings. What I mean by that is you can look at it without getting really angry, but you can also look at it, and this is what people need to understand. You can also look at it where you're no longer detached or emotionally numb.

Morgan:

Interesting.

Brad:

And what I mean by that is that's part of that avoidance and denial. And people can live there and feel like, oh, everything's okay, because they're an avoidance in the dial.

Morgan:

They're grinning and bearing it.

Brad:

Yeah. And one of the things that happens with trauma is people feel and they feel like they're watching somebody else's life. And so the third thing that how you're recovering as an individual from the trauma aspect is you can identify feelings about the affair that you are experiencing without becoming overwhelmed. You can identify your feelings about the affair without going numb or disassociating,

Morgan:

Which is something we talked about.

Brad:

And what I mean by disassociating is tuning others out, by immersing yourself in solitary activities instead of withdrawing. So you can identify what you're feeling about the affair without becoming overwhelmed, going numb or just withdrawing

Morgan:

From going into your hide hole and not coming out.

Brad:

Yeah. And then a couple other things. You can predict feelings of depression and anxiety. That's how you know you're recovering. You can start predicting feelings of depression, anxiety coming. They may not be gone completely, but it's at least tolerable. Wow.

Morgan:

Yeah,

Brad:

And here's the other thing. You're recovering from an affair as the injured spouse when you can allow yourself to be around other people and have the emotional capacity for empathy.

Morgan:

Oh, interesting. Yeah.

Brad:

So that's really important. And you're recovering when you have uncovered the meaning from the affair. And that's what our next show is going to be about. You're no longer obsessed and replay the information you have in your head. You're no longer just obsessed replaying things. It's not like a movie reel going on in your head and you've been able to accept yourself and no longer practice self blame. Many times people when they've been betrayed is they blame themselves for what's happened. And let me say this, it's important to understand that the affair recovery process for the injured spouse is different with every injured spouse. Sometimes there's other factors that go into this that make the trauma recovery portion longer. Past wounds are a factor that goes into this sexual abuse being cheated on before other relationship issues that you've had from within the marriage can make it more difficult. And are they being honest? That's something that you need to know. Are they helping you? And so those are factors that go into it. That's about it.

Morgan:

Well, that's fantastic. So much more self-aware, much more able to connect, and less hurt.

Brad:

Thanks for listening to Healing Broken Trust. If you like this episode, you can always get our show notes and more details and links to the resources we discussed at healingbrokentrust.com. Also, as long as you're online, head on over to healing broken trust.com/retreat for details on an upcoming one-on-one retreat with me. If you like us, please subscribe and leave a review for us on iTunes. As always, everything discussed on this podcast is either my opinion or Morgan's opinion and is not to be taken as relationship advice because I'm not your therapist, nor have I considered your personal situation as your therapist. This podcast is for your entertainment and education only, and I really do hope you've enjoyed it. See you Until next time

Ep 19: Myths That Are Holding You Back, Keeping You Stuck, & Preventing You From Total Happiness

Brad:

So how do we heal from an affair when we have thoughts like this that constantly intrude into our minds, renewing our mind enables us to stop, identify unproductive thoughts and replace them with more functional thoughts.

Morgan:

You are listening to Healing Broken Trust podcast with Brad and Morgan Robinson, where we talk about healing from affairs, infidelity, trust, and cheating in your relationship from the perspective of a professional marriage therapist and a fair recovery expert. If you're wanting to heal your relationship after infidelity, this podcast is for you, and we are officially on episode number 19. We're addressing challenging false beliefs, which this episode specifically is talking about the myths that are holding you back. So definitely, definitely, definitely. Go to our website, healing broken trust.com/episode 19. Download your resources there. They're free to you free resources, so download those. They're really going to help you to follow along with these episodes and make the most of your time and your energy in the healing process. So definitely go to healing broken trust.com/episode 19. That's the number 19. Download those resources. If you have questions, feel free to leave a voicemail on our website. That's really helpful. We do answer those questions, we answer those questions on our weekly call, so definitely sign up for that as well if you would like to ask questions and get more help. Without further ado, let's get started.

Today we're talking about challenging false beliefs surrounding the affair. This is meant for both people in the relationship. However, a lot will be directed toward the betrayed partner. And forgive us, we're overcoming two lovely sinus infections and bronchitis, so we'll try not to cough your ear off. But Brad, do you want to get us started?

Brad:

Yeah, this is Morgan. What we're talking about today is challenging false beliefs surrounding an affair, and this is for both people caught in an affair. This is for the one who's been betrayed by their spouse, and this is also for the one who had the affair, and a lot of the information is directed that we're presenting towards the one who has been betrayed. But this will also be very beneficial for individuals who've had an affair as well, because we're talking about different types of thought distortions, and some of those could be things like personalizing, assuming, catastrophizing, different things like that that we're going to get into. Morgan. Why this is really important is sometimes there's such hurt and trauma for both people who've been affected by the affair. They don't really know how to escape it. They don't realize that maybe some of what they're doing is punishing themselves with their negative thinking or with their false thinking. Recently, I had an individual who had an affair who's been suicidal since then because they haven't known how to deal with their own guilt and shame in a more productive way since they cheated on their spouse. So let me just go ahead and get started with this Morgan.

Morgan:

Okay.

Brad:

Being betrayed is very damaging to our self-confidence. Many times we often come to conclusions about ourselves based on misinterpretations and inaccurate information about ourselves that was formed under great duress. When individuals are feeling strong emotions and arousal because of how upsetting an affair is, it interferes with their ability to challenge these thoughts. So part of the healing process is facilitated by restructuring unproductive ideas that maintain emotional arousal and consequently interfere with our ability to process the event. These unproductive ideas can be about a normal assumptions about life, people and ourselves. Then there are thoughts about triggers, symptoms, or everyday stressors. And when injured spouses think about the past, they often have misinterpretations about the traumatic event or misinterpretations about the future. Imagining how bad the future will be, each thought can keep arousal. Dysfunctionally high reworking these ideas is the goal of renewing the mind, which is a very important step in healing from an affair or other trust issues. Psychologists have long believed that thoughts significantly influence individuals reactions to events, and so let me say that again. That's really important.

Morgan:

Yeah, very important.

Brad:

So psychologists have long believed that thoughts significantly influence individual's reactions to events.

Morgan:

So sometimes it's just how we think about it that really makes the difference and how we feel.

Brad:

Exactly, Morgan. Exactly. So let me give an example of how this works. Luke met Anna while in the process of divorcing his wife. They had a whirlwind romance and he was ready to commit. After a few months of dating, Anna had recently gotten out of a bad marriage and was reluctant to commit to someone. So soon Luke introduced her to his family as his woman. She affirmed that indeed she was his woman and she was committed to him. Luke felt safe, confident he was going to marry her, but Anna still had some reservations and wasn't ready to commit so soon, even though she indicated that she was ready. In fact, she had an old friend that she was still seen on the side for sex. This continued a few more times without Luke's knowledge.

Morgan:

Wow, that's tough.

Brad:

It's very tough. When Luke found out after seven years of marriage, it was almost unbearable for him. After some of the rage began to subside, he began to develop negative thoughts about himself. He says he had an audio tap in his mind that kept replaying these words over and over again. You are not lovable. You are not good enough. I knew if you really let someone in close, she wouldn't like what she saw and would reject you.

Morgan:

And so this is what was going on in his mind.

Brad:

Yeah, this is what he was telling himself. You are somehow responsible for this. You can't trust women. Why would anyone want to be with me? Am I really that attractive? How do I measure up to this person? What did she see in him that she didn't see in me? Why do bad things always happen to me? Will I ever start to feel normal again? Am I crazy? Why can't I stop thinking about this? Why won't these thoughts and feelings go away? My life is over. I don't know how to rebound from this. God has left me. I am alone.

Morgan:

Wow. So these are some of those unproductive thoughts.

Brad:

Yeah,

Morgan:

Gotcha.

Brad:

That need to be challenged, because when you think that way, you get stuck in feeling horrible. You get stuck in feeling basically like crap, because thoughts determine how we feel.

And so we're going to get into a little bit more of that. So how do we heal from an affair? When we have thoughts like this that constantly intrude into our minds, renewing our mind enables us to stop, identify unproductive thoughts and replace them with more functional thoughts. We stop running from thoughts that cause us to feel aroused even partially confronting them, and we can begin to persistently confront and challenge them and begin to feel better. When we do this, we shift from helpless victim mode into I'm in control mode and where we're gaining mastery over the one thing, we can consistently control our thoughts.

Brad:

This

Brad:

Process usually lessens our arousal should emotional and physical arousal occur. Knowing how to replace unproductive thoughts helps keep it reasonable and allows it to subside more quickly. And so Morgan, this idea is fairly simple. A causes B, and B causes C. And so here's what I mean by that. A stands for the upsetting event.

Morgan:

Fair.

Brad:

Yeah. Well, and our listeners can use this for the affair that they're working through, and they can also use it for other events in life. And that's what I like about what we're talking about. So A stands for the upsetting event, which in this case would be the affair. B is the belief or the automatic uncontrollable thoughts the individual tell themselves about A. So it's that belief or automatic uncontrollable thought that individuals tell themselves about the affair or about that event. And C is the emotional and the physical consequences or arousal. It's how you feel, CS, what you feel. So most people think that the event causes the feeling.

Morgan:

C,

Brad:

C. So most people think that A causes C, the event causes the feelings, but in reality it is B, it's the self-talk that has greater influence. Productive self-talk would likely lead to appropriate emotional upset that allows people to focus and concentrate on functioning and begin to move forward with their life and not get stuck on this. On the other hand, unproductive thoughts lead to emotional disturbance that prevents rational level thinking and functioning.

Morgan:

Okay, so just to recap one more time, A stands for the upsetting event, which in this case is the affair. B is the belief or automatic uncontrollable thoughts that individuals tell themselves about A C is the emotional and physical consequences or the arousal, the upset. Most people think that A causes C, the affair caused the feelings, but in reality, it's the self-talk B that has greater influence on the arousal or the consequences after the event. So productive self-talk would likely lead to appropriate emotional upset that allows people to focus and concentrate on functioning. So on the other hand, unproductive thoughts lead to emotional disturbances that prevents rational level thinking and functioning.

Brad:

Okay. That's exactly right,

Morgan:

Morgan. Okay.

Brad:

That's exactly right. I want to say a little bit about automatic uncontrollable thoughts and distortions because this is really important.

Morgan:

Okay.

Brad:

After discovering a partner's affair, automatic uncontrollable thoughts run through betrayed spouse's minds. These thoughts can keep them enraged for days or longer after learning about the affair. Although they're capable of thinking reasonably about the affair, sometimes they're automatic, uncontrollable thoughts are distorted or just unreasonably negative. They're catastrophic. And let me say this so I can kind of sound a little bit more balanced. Obviously it's going to be negative and probably unreasonably negative after an affair is discovered. But as time goes on and healing takes place, and I'm talking about months into this, you're beginning to not be so negative. You're beginning to get your life back. You're beginning to not be as depressed. And so if you're staying where you're at in month six, where you're at in month one or the first 45 days, there may be some negative thinking, negative automatic thoughts that have some serious distortions there that need to be looked at.

Morgan:

And a lot of those negative distortions are products of the trauma surrounding the affair. Wouldn't you say,

Brad:

Brad? Yeah, I would say that's true. So these distorted automatic thoughts occur so rapidly. They happen so fast, Morgan, that betrayed spouses hardly notice them. They hardly stop to question them. And yet these automatic thoughts profoundly affect their mood, their bodies arousal, and their ability to think clearly. These thought distortions are learned, which is good for us. We can unlearn them.

Morgan:

Great. Yeah.

Brad:

Sometimes people learn these in childhood. Sometimes they were taught by others or from previous traumatic experiences such as being cheated on previously or being abandoned as a child. Thought distortions are not a reflection of intelligence or strength. They're simply learned habits.

Morgan:

Oh, that's important. So it's not a reflection of intelligence or strength, it's just a learned habit that you've maybe picked up over your lifespan,

Brad:

A habit. It's a way you've learned to see the world.

When we submit them to new evidence and logic, we can learn new, more productive thought patterns. And what we're trying to do is help you improve our listeners, improve their ability to catch troublesome distortions, challenge their logic and replace them with thoughts that are less arousing. And this is usually done in the form of rebuttals. And so ask yourself, after you've caught an unhealthy thought, and this is important, Morgan, what's the evidence to say this is correct? Ask yourself this question. After catching a distorted thought, what's another way to look at this situation? And then ask. So what if it happens? What's the worst case scenario?

Brad:

And

Brad:

These are important. So ask yourself, what's the evidence to say this is correct? Where's the evidence to say that my perception is accurate or is actually correct? That's important to challenge our thoughts. And then to ask yourself the question, is there another way to look at the situation? And if this does happen, what's the worst case scenario?

Morgan:

Right? So the goal of renewing your mind is ultimately to rebut and replace distorted thoughts.

Brad:

Yeah. And that'll help you feel better emotionally, can help you better with your confidence, can help you feel like you're moving on.

Morgan:

Yes. Yes. So there are 13 different thought distortions that we'll talk about in this show, and probably in the next show as well. Flawed fixation, dismissing the positive, assuming catastrophizing, all or none, thinking shoulds, musts, oughts, making feelings, facts, overgeneralizing, abusive labeling, personalizing, blaming, unfavorable comparisons and regrets. Right, Brad? Okay. And we're going to go into those in greater detail.

Brad:

Yeah, we're going to get into that. Morgan, do you want to do the first one? The flaw fixation.

Morgan:

With flaw fixation, individuals tend to place their focus on what is wrong or what went wrong. This has also been called fear focus because their mental camera aimed at the fearful. When this happens, people are only seeing one aspect of a picture. The constant focus on what went wrong keeps them from seeing the bigger picture. So it's seeing the forest from the trees. Here's some examples. After being cheated on, Marge can't focus on anything other than the other woman's attractiveness. She can't stop comparing herself to the other woman and feeling like she's coming up short. Marge is forgetting that she still looks great and hasn't realized that most affairs have very little to do with sex, and most of the time start for emotional reasons after his wife's affair. Paul can't stop thinking about how dumb he is for letting this happen. Paul hates feeling so guilty for not giving his wife more time and attention in their marriage. Paul is forgetting that it wasn't just his inattention that led to the affair, but some of his wife's girlfriends didn't challenge her on what she was doing and that it was wrong, even though they knew about it.

Another person, Tiffany, is consumed with protecting herself. So nothing like her husband's affair happens again. So she doesn't want it to happen again. So she's protecting herself. She's consumed with it. She's so consumed with feeling abandoned by the affair that she ignores the fact that he has stayed with her and chosen her over his affair partner. So she doesn't see that he's chosen her. She's so wanting to protect herself. Another person, John, John, feels like he can't go back to his favorite restaurant with his wife because that's the place his wife went to lunch with her affair partner. John is not considering that he and his wife can find a new restaurant they enjoyed just as much as the last one. And then Randy, the last one, finds it impossible to get the image of his wife having sex with another man out of his mind. The movie reel of sexual images keeps him from having a sexual relationship with his wife. Randy could zoom out and see that she's interested in him sexually and wants to have a sexual relationship with him now. But it's very hard because they stick with that flawed fixation, right?

Brad:

Yeah. And Morgan, the problem with this worm's eye view is that it ignores the very aspects that make life satisfying and enjoyable. And through conditioning related negatives, they snowball. So that many places and events now remind betrayed spouses to feel guilt, anger, fear, sadness, or insecurity.

Morgan:

And the antidote is to expand our focus, to use a wider lens, to see the whole picture ask, what else could I notice? What isn't wrong? What's gone well? What is right? What percentage of the time did I perform well, what's here to enjoy? You don't want to ignore the negative aspects, but to see more of the aspects.

Brad:

Morgan, that's very, I think that's a fantastic advice, and that's worth repeating

Brad:

The

Brad:

Antidote with flaw fixation to get out of this fear focus, this worm's eye view is to really ask yourself, what else could I notice? What isn't wrong? What's gone well? What is right? What percentage of the time did I perform well, what's here to enjoy? And you're also right to say you don't want to ignore the negative aspects, but there's more aspects you want to see the other aspects. You want to take everything in the

Morgan:

Good and the bad,

Brad:

The good and the bad. And so I think that's really important.

Morgan:

That goes back to challenging those false

Brad:

Beliefs.

Morgan:

Yeah.

Brad:

And many times, and these are, and honestly Morgan, we're talking about thought distortions or negative thinking, things along those lines with an affair. But these are thought distortions that people had before the affair began.

Morgan:

I'm not good enough. I'm not worthy, I'm not lovable

Brad:

That maybe they had that. But more importantly, these are thought ways of thinking that were distorted before the affair that may it hard to recover now that you've really experienced something very traumatic. And so this is something that can help not just move through the affair, but also just help rebuild your life altogether in other areas as well. Another type of thought distortion is dismissing the positive while flaw, fixation ignores the good, dismissing the positive actually discounts it as if it didn't matter.

Morgan:

The good discounting the good.

Brad:

Yeah. Well,

Morgan:

It doesn't matter.

Brad:

Yeah, it's flaw fixation, ignores the good. It doesn't take into account what was good that happened, but dismissing the positive actually discounts the good

Morgan:

As

Brad:

If it didn't matter. So may be aware of it, but it just says that's not important.

And so for example, Amanda doesn't give herself a break for feeling blue and hurt about her partner's affair. She discounts how strong she has been and how far she has come since she first discovered the affair. When complimented on how far she has come by her therapist, she tells herself, it's not worth talking about. It's not worth thinking about either. I felt like I had no one else to depend on. Instead, she could have thought to herself, I'm glad that I have come this far this quickly. I never dreamed I'd be here by now. And so instead of dismissing that positive, she could actually say, you know what? Yeah, this is good.

Morgan:

Give herself some credit.

Brad:

Yeah, give herself some credit and think about the positive. It's okay to dwell on it. It's okay to realize how far you've come.

Morgan:

Right?

Brad:

And so that's one thought distortion. And another one, Morgan is assuming,

Morgan:

And

Brad:

There's three kinds of assumptions that we have, and each kind results in distress when we don't test the evidence. And so here's the first type of assuming it's mind reading. The second is jumping to conclusions. And the third is fortune telling. With mind reading, individuals assume that they know what others are thinking. And here's examples. My family and friends think I'm a wimp for being so stressed about being betrayed. They think I should be over this already. Or maybe the one who cheated on me thinks I should be over it already. They just assume that my husband hates me for not being there for him. That's an assumption. My husband hates me. I cheated on him. You don't know that. Maybe they say it out of anger, but they're with you right now. Do they really hate you? My husband doesn't love me and couldn't possibly let something like this happen, or even God doesn't love me and he couldn't possibly let something like this happen because something bad happened to me, therefore God does not love me. That's a big assumption people are making. And even to say, the affair is my fault, that's an assumption. Or it's even an assumption to say, the affair isn't my fault

Without looking at the marriage. And so these distortions, they can be challenged by asking, what's the evidence? Is there another possibility? Let's not just assume and believe our assumption only, but we need to challenge these assumptions by asking what's the evidence? Is there another possibility? Some people will have empathy and understanding for an injured spouse suffering. Others might be indifferent or curious, but probably not. Mocking. People may or may not be disappointed in how he or she has felt since discovery in the affair. On the other hand, some, most or all of them may find it understandable under the circumstances. So most people are going to be gracious, understanding you've been betrayed. It's going to take a little bit,

Morgan:

And it can be hard to assume the best of people in this certain situation because you've been hurt and you're traumatized. So it makes sense that you would automatically have an assumption that people are bad and hurtful.

Brad:

Yeah, exactly. But it's important though to ask Morgan, where's the evidence? Is there another possibility here? And most of the time, people don't question their perception. They don't question their thoughts, and it leads them to great error. It leads 'em down a wrong, wrong road. And it's very helpful to follow our advice and challenge some of these false beliefs. This flaw fixation more than just flaw fixation, but the assumptions and dismissing the positive. It's important to look at those thought distortions and challenge them. And

Morgan:

The second one here is jumping to conclusions. When someone jumps to conclusions, something like this happens. Say your spouse is running late from work and doesn't call but comes home 10 minutes late. You feel like they have forsaken you for the other person. You literally jump at the conclusion, which is called the startled response. This is tested by asking what is the evidence? Is it possible that this is not a repeat of my trauma? Maybe the person,

Brad:

Is it possible that they're not shooting on me? Again, kind of what's the evidence here,

Morgan:

Right

Brad:

There? Another possibility.

Morgan:

Could they really have been stuck in traffic? What is it really?

Brad:

Yeah, you don't want to let your assumptions get the best of you because you're just not as happy when you let your mind run wild.

Brad:

You

Brad:

Need to control your thoughts and control your mind, and you're just not as happy. Morgan, the other type of assuming is fortune telling. When partners have been betrayed by an affair, they pessimistically predict a negative outcome without testing the evidence. Fortune telling often starts with a fear focus, and this is what somebody could say. It might happen after all it's happened before, or it could happen for the first time, and it subtly shifts to it will undoubtedly happen, which arouses the betrayed partner further. So when you start thinking that way, it gets you more aroused, more upset,

Brad:

More upset.

Brad:

To challenge this distortion, we must think somewhat tentatively and openly like a scientist, and this is what you could say. Certainly bad things might happen, but what's the probability or odds of this happening?

Morgan:

So

Brad:

This could happen, but what's the chances of this happening? What's the probability? What's the odds of this happening? Other antidotes include asking, why might this negative not happen? Why might something good happen?

So looking at those assumptions like that, and those are really important, we're going to keep talking about challenging false beliefs. Thanks for listening to Healing Broken Trust. If you like this episode, you can always get our show notes and more details and links to the resources we discussed, healing broken trust.com. Also, as long as you're online, head on over to healing broken trust.com/retreat for details on an upcoming one-on-one retreat with me. If you like us, please subscribe and leave a review for us on iTunes. As always, everything discussed on this podcast is either my opinion or Morgan's opinion and is not to be taken as relationship advice because I'm not your therapist, nor have I considered your personal situation as your therapist. This podcast is for your entertainment and education only, and I really do hope you've enjoyed it. See you Until next time.

Ep 20: Your Mind Plays Tricks On You and Replacing Destructive Thoughts

Brad:

You have to really sort this out. It's not fair to say all affairs are this way

Morgan:

And we're not diagnosing anyone as

Brad:

Well. No, we're not. But you need to have a well-rounded picture of this. It's not fair to completely take responsibility for it, the climate of the marriage, and it's not fair to blame somebody else for all that either

Morgan:

For the a hundred percent of it, right?

Brad:

Yeah.

Morgan:

You are listening to Healing Broken Trust podcast with Brad and Morgan Robinson, where we talk about healing from affairs, infidelity, trust, and cheating in your relationship from the perspective of a professional marriage therapist and a fair recovery expert. If you're wanting to heal your relationship, this podcast is for you. We are officially on podcast episode number 20, and we're addressing challenging false beliefs by talking about the myths that are holding you back from recovering from the affair and keeping you from being able to heal and really reach that post-traumatic growth that you really deserve. And if you haven't yet, go to healing broken trust.com/episode 20. That's the number 20, healing broken trust.com/episode 20. Download those free resources that are the supplement to this episode. And let's get started. You are listening to Brad and Morgan Robinson and we're talking about how to recover from an affair. Now, Brad, remind our listeners what we're talking

Brad:

About. We are talking about destructive thought patterns that individuals have after they've been betrayed or after they've had an affair. The reason we're talking about these destructive thought patterns is because it can really hold up an individual or a couple's ability to recover, to heal from an affair. And so what we're doing and what we've done the last few shows is talking about identifying these negative thought patterns and providing replacement alternatives or antidotes to these types of thought patterns.

Morgan:

And

Brad:

That's what we're working on. This next one here is abusive labeling. With abusive labeling. Individuals give themselves a label or name as though a single word could describe a person completely. For example, to say I'm a loser means that I'm always and in every way a loser. Obviously this isn't fair or true. Children often internalized spoken or unspoken messages. For example, a child who is repeatedly molested comes to think of himself just as a sex object, a whore, even in adulthood. So the antidote to thinking about this abusive labeling is to rate behavior, experience but not people. So you want to think that was a really difficult experience for me instead of I'm bad.

Morgan:

And so the antidote is a replacement thought.

Brad:

And oftentimes that's what people do is they've been sexually abused. Sometimes they start to feel like, I'm bad. If people really got to know me, they wouldn't like me. And that's really destructive. And here's another example of thought distortions and rebuttals related to the trauma of infidelity. Notice that labels can be levied at other people as well, which is common in anger reactions to reduce another human being to an always and in every way label is just as inaccurate and unfair as doing it to yourself even if it feels justified. And so sometimes what we do when we've been betrayed is we label the other person as always and in every way a bad person or a cheater, and that's not true. And that can hinder our ability to recover. And so here's some core beliefs that people have when they adopt this abusive labeling mindset. One of these core beliefs is I'm damaged goods, I'm worthless.

Morgan:

And what they want to do is replace that thought with I was cheated on. I am more than this. So it's putting that label onto the event and not the person.

Brad:

Exactly. Another core belief is I'm a workaholic. I know why she cheated on me.

Morgan:

And a replacement thought for that is I was doing the best with what I knew at the time. I made some bad choices.

Brad:

Another core belief is I am bad for cheating on my partner.

Morgan:

And an antidote or a replacement thought would be I reached a low point of depression and didn't have anyone to talk to. So those are basically some replacement thoughts for the core beliefs that are directed towards the individual instead of the situation. And the next one is personalizing. This is seeing oneself as more responsible or involved with a given situation than he or she really is. The antidote to this is to see things accurately. So separate influences from causes, figure out how much responsibility is truly yours and keep what is beyond your control outside of your boundaries.

Brad:

Basically. When people personalize, when they take too much responsibility for a situation, what they oftentimes can believe, especially with an affair, is it's all my fault that I was cheated on. I must have asked for it because of the way I treated my spouse. I deserve this.

Morgan:

And the way to kind of combat that core belief is a replacement thought that goes kind of like this is a faulty way to try to make sense of an affair. No one deserves to be cheated on. Not treating your spouse as well as you should is not the same as asking to be cheated on the cause was the partner, not me. I'm not responsible for the affair, only my recovery. I'm responsible for my actions, which in part created the climate of our marriage, but my partner's responsible for their own actions as I am with mine and I didn't have an affair. So it's a new way to think about that core belief

Brad:

That's a good healthy, I believe, a replacement thought for that core belief. Morgan, another core belief is there must be something about me that invited the cheating or caused my wife to do it.

Morgan:

And the better way to think about the situation is perhaps I could learn to be a better listener and be more affectionate, but a lack of these skills does not justify being cheated on affairs happen for reasons outside of my influence.

Brad:

I think that's a good way of looking at it. Another core belief that people have when personalizing an affair is, why did this happen to me? Why was I singled

Morgan:

Out? And so the world is not for or against us, both bad and good things happen to people

Brad:

And like Jesus said, it rains on the good and the bad. It rains on the just and the unjust. So life kind of happens for everybody. Another core belief is in an argument, a boyfriend tells his girlfriend, you are either for me or against me.

Morgan:

And a replacement thought that combats that is partners will inevitably disagree about issues. That doesn't mean she's against me. Just my idea.

Brad:

Yeah, exactly. And sometimes people have a hard time differentiating that we can disagree with your ideas. That doesn't mean we're disagreeing and we don't love you or you. And that's really important. Another core belief that goes along with personalizing is if I worry enough about the affair, I can keep it from happening again.

Morgan:

And a replacement thought is this is trying to be responsible for too much. I accept that I cannot have total control. All I can have is responsibility for what I can control instead of worrying and staying aroused, I will make a good action plan. I'll do my best and then I'll release the worry.

Brad:

Yeah, that's good.

Morgan:

Let it go.

Brad:

Morgan. Another type of thought process that's very negative and very destructive that keeps couples from healing, whether as an individual or as the couple themselves is really blaming. And blaming is the opposite of personalizing.

Morgan:

Interesting.

Brad:

And this is really common, and you see this a lot on fair recovery websites where the people who've been betrayed completely don't own up to any sort of responsibility on what the climate of the marriage was like. There's therapists that condone that say, yeah, you had no responsibility for what the marriage was like. And so this person acted on their own and they have no reason to cheat. And if they say they were unhappy in the marriage, they're just saying that because they got caught in the marriage with an affair

Morgan:

And they just want to blame you. And that's not completely accurate at

Brad:

All. And so really it's personalizing it and then blaming, taking no responsibility for where their marriage was at. Sure you didn't put a gun to their head and say, betray me. But at the same time, the marriage may not have been in a good place. And so that's a really tricky area because sometimes the people are really unhappy in the marriage and they're burned out. They may not be looking for a way out, but they're unhappy with it. They're not feeling satisfied, certainly not emotionally close to their spouse. So there's vulnerabilities there that create this kind of opportunity that allow this kind of opportunity to happen.

Morgan:

And we're not saying that you are the reason that they cheated because they still made the decision for themselves, but the climate of the marriage could have been poor. And it opens the door to these.

Brad:

They were beat up by the negative cycle. And the other thing is there's times where people are really, I would say, in what appears to be a great marriage and affairs still happen and that individual may be a sex addict. That individual may be somebody who is a flander who just believes it's morally okay, this is just what guys do. This is just what girls do. Okay. So that's when this kind of stuff can happen. You have to really sort this out. It's not fair to say all affairs are this way

Morgan:

And we're not diagnosing anyone as

Brad:

Well. No, we're not. But you need to have a well-rounded picture of this. It's not fair to completely take responsibility for it, the climate of the marriage. And it's not fair to blame somebody else for all that either

Morgan:

For the a hundred percent of it, right?

Brad:

Yeah. And so I'm going to get back to this. So blaming is another type of thought distortion that people get into that either as the betrayer or as the one who's been betrayed really keeps them from moving forward. And betrayers can get in the blaming. I've seen that happen. And that's not a pretty picture because good luck trying to recover. You got somebody suffering from symptoms similar to post-traumatic stress disorder and major pain, and then you're going to go around and start blaming them for why you had an affair. That's destructive. That's very destructive. And that happens. So blaming, that's the opposite of personalizing. And while personalizing individuals, they will place all the responsibility on themselves for their difficulties. Blaming puts it all on an outside person or factor.

Morgan:

So some examples, he treats me so miserably, he's ruined my life and my self-esteem. Another one, I'm stressed out today because talking to my parents makes me cringe. He doesn't know how much he has hurt me.

Brad:

Yeah. Now Morgan, the problem with blaming like catastrophizing, which we talked about earlier, is that it tends to make people think of themselves as helpless victims who are too feeble to cope. Blaming keeps us stuck in the past and we are powerless because the past is unchangeable,

Morgan:

Right? And the antidote to blaming is to acknowledge outside influences, but to take responsibility for your own welfare. I see how these things have influenced me and challenge me. Now I commit to get back on track and move on for present stressors. We might think nothing makes me do anything. Nothing makes me do anything, right? I choose how I respond.

Brad:

And Morgan, I'm glad you said that. I think that's a really powerful thought replacement or an antidote to the blaming is nothing makes me do anything. I choose my responses. Even when I get really angry when somebody says something hurtful, I still chose that response. And I think that's really important. Even when you stub your toe and curse words come out or if you burn yourself or there's other options that are there, you're choosing that kind of response. And I'm glad you said that. That's really powerful.

Morgan:

Thank you. The next one we were talking about here is unfavorable comparisons. In the case of unfavorable comparisons, a person magnifies another's strengths and their own weaknesses while minimizing the other's faults and their own strengths. So by comparison, he or she feels inadequate or inferior. For example, a betrayed husband may think his wife's affair partner is a talented person. He makes so much money. He was even on the news the other night, me, I'm just a carpenter, I could never make the money he does. Ever since my wife compared sex with me, I can't help but feel like he's a better lover. Sure, I have wonderful friends and I'm active in the homeless shelter. And it's true that her affair partner has a drinking problem, but his kids are really struggling. But I feel like my wife would rather be with him. So minimizing his own strengths and looking at the other guy's strengths.

Brad:

Morgan, that's a really very common one as well. And this is really important. A way to challenge this kind of distortion is to ask this question, why must I compare? Why can't I just appreciate that each person has unique strengths and weaknesses. So ask yourself that. Why must I compare? Why can't I just appreciate that each person has unique strengths and weaknesses. Another person's strengths are not necessarily better or just different. And someone humorously noted that doctors have more status than garbage collectors, but one wonders who does more for public health. So most of the time we function better and with less stress when we focus on doing our personal best and not drawing on comparisons.

Morgan:

And that is very difficult. I could imagine.

Brad:

Yeah, it

Morgan:

Is for a betrayed partner.

Brad:

And Morgan, another type of thought distortion that individuals and couples can have is really regrets. There is obviously going to be a period after an affair where you regret how you were in the marriage that created this climate, whether as the individual who's been betrayed or the betrayer, you're going to have going to regret that. But if you're there a year later,

Brad:

Two

Brad:

Years later, there's some significant issues there. And so with regrets, someone is looking back and they're thinking, if only I hadn't or if I would've tried harder beyond a period of introspection where mistakes are acknowledged and courses are corrected, regrets are unproductive because people can't go back and change the past,

Morgan:

Right? You can't.

Brad:

And let me say this though, I want to be a little balanced here. If you're the betrayer, you need to show you that you're regretful. There is a period of introspection. There is a period where you are owning up to hurtful actions. You're caring for the pain and you're deeply ashamed of this. Your spouse, your partner that you cheated on needs to see that to begin to heal and needs to know that you're really sorry about that. I'm not talking about that kind of regret. I'm talking about the kind of regret that keeps you thinking and feeling like I mentioned a moment ago, a year into this, two years into this, three years into this, five years into this where you're thinking, I am a horrible person.

Morgan:

And that keeps you from moving forward and helping your spouse to move forward and heal.

Brad:

Yeah, I'm talking about the kind of regret that keeps a person very depressed, that I have seen make people become suicidal. That's the kind of regret I'm talking about.

Brad:

That's

Brad:

Very unproductive regret. That is regret to an extreme. That is very unhealthy. Now, there is a type of regret that's very helpful in helping your partner heal, helping your spouse heal. So yeah,

Morgan:

And regrets are another way to reject our imperfections.

Brad:

We

Morgan:

Might beat ourselves up thinking, I deserve to be punished for that. What we actually deserve is the opportunity to try again, improve and learn from the mistakes we can think. I've learned from mistakes in the past, and I can do that again. That was then, and this is now.

Brad:

And that's a good way to look at it is I've learned from mistakes in the past, and I can do so again. I can learn from this. I learn from other things and even tell yourself, that was then. This is now. And that may not be very reassuring. If you've cheated on your spouse and you're telling them that is, look, I've learned from a mistakes that was then this is now. I'm not doing it anymore. Want to, your spouse is going to need, that's minimizing.

Morgan:

You don't want to dismiss their feelings. There needs to be some level of regret shown,

Brad:

But

Morgan:

Not a regret that keeps you introspective and forgets about your spouse.

Brad:

And really, Morgan, I'm trying to share this with individuals because I don't want them getting to that place of deep depression

Brad:

Because

Brad:

That can hinder emotional connection. And obviously I don't want 'em to be suicidal. And now you're going to have regret, and you may have that for a while and some of that can be healthy. But when you get into more of that extreme regret, you're beating yourself up and it's turning into self hatred.

Morgan:

And

Brad:

It's with you not just immediately after the affair is discovered, but it's with you much longer. It's really destructive. It's very unhealthy. And so Morgan, there's different ways of dealing with regret regarding difficult experiences from our past. And one of those is to really tell yourself. And mistake isn't usually a deliberate act. What did I want or intend to happen? What was I wanting or intending to happen here? Was I just wanting someone to talk to and it crossed boundaries? That kind of thing.

Morgan:

Was I just trying to be a friendly, nice person? And they mistook where an affair with a

Brad:

Coworker who misread how I was coming across a mistake isn't usually a deliberate act. What did I intend or want to happen if it was an honest mistake? You need to think to yourself, this could have happened to many people,

Morgan:

To anyone.

Brad:

And you also need to ask yourself, what did I learn that could prevent this from happening again? So you want to focus on remedial action. What did I learn that could prevent this from happening again, focus on being proactive as a way to repair. And another follow up thought is, how much was I actually responsible for that were factors beyond my control

Morgan:

Or were there, yeah,

Brad:

Yeah, were there factors beyond my control? And so that's important. What good things are result of this outcome? What is the possible silver lining here? And most marriages do rebuild after an affair. They do get stronger. And what's the possible silver lining here? So that's important to ask yourself that. And you also want to ask yourself, will there be more chances to learn better approaches, new skills, ways to grow?

Brad:

And

Brad:

That's something you need to ask yourself, Morgan, those thoughts, those comments they came from, they were developed by the founders of the International Critical Incident Stress Foundation. Those are some questions that they use to help people deal with this regret that they have after stressful situations. Honestly, it's really important to turn questions into statements when analyzing self-talk. So for example, asking, why can't I get over this that keeps injured spouses aroused and provides no resolution when change to the statement, I can't get over this. The fortune telling error becomes obvious. We can then change this to, I'll probably learn how to come to terms with this. And so if you just take it from a question to a statement, it's easier to challenge that sometimes when we just keep these questions in our mind and they're not really challenged, we keep carrying it around and it becomes very destructive. And Morgan, this next part I want to go over, we've covered several different types of thought distortions that individuals have. Now, these are common beliefs, core beliefs that individuals have after an affair. And I want to go over these and give our listeners thought replacements that they can take if they've been betrayed or if they've betrayed their spouse. And so the core belief that people have after an affair sometimes is, I am weak.

Morgan:

So they want to consider a replacement thought to that thought of I'm weak. Instead say I'm a combination of weaknesses and strengths. I'm strengthening the weaker areas. I'm doing my best.

Brad:

I like that. I like that because it's positive. It's focused on what you have control over. It's focused on remedial actions. It's proactive. I'm strengthening the weaker areas. Another core belief that people have that keeps 'em stuck in healing is my weaknesses and flaws will be exposed. How horrible is this?

Morgan:

Right? And a way to think about that differently. Everyone is fallible. Each person has flaws. To have them exposed makes me human. That's not awful. It's just life. Actually, some flaws are endearing.

Brad:

And another core belief that people can have that's very destructive is my worth equals my behavior during the time I found out and dealt with the affair. And what I mean by that is sometimes people equate to how stressful this time was in the affair, whether they're being dishonest about it or if they overreacted and got angry and felt humiliated. If they went over, they crossed some lines there. They begin to think, I really lost my cool. They begin to question their ability and their self-worth.

Morgan:

I must be angry all the time.

Brad:

Well, they begin to think I must be crazy.

Morgan:

Oh, yes,

Brad:

Yes. That kind of thing.

Morgan:

So a replacement thought to that, my worth as a unique individual is far too complex to reduce to isolated times in my life. Mistakes reflect our development at that time. A mistake does not totally in irrevocably define me as a person.

Brad:

That's true. Another thought distortion that people have that holds 'em up is, I am no good since the

Morgan:

Affair and a replacement, my life does not equal how someone treats me. Let that marinate with you for a little bit.

Brad:

Another core belief that people can have that's very destructive is if I am not respected by others and others do not respect me, I have no value. I cease to exist.

Morgan:

Oh, wow, that's strong. So you want to replace that with nobody's opinion determines my worth. Nobody's opinion determines my worth.

Brad:

Another core belief that people can have is to lose control is awful. After I find out about this affair and I get upset and I get angry and I'm emotional wreck and I'm crying all the time and I can't control my sadness and I can't sleep to lose control is awful, is what people think.

Morgan:

But loss of control is inevitable. Many things in life are beyond my control Sometimes all I can control is the way I look at the loss of control. Paradoxically, to accept loss of control helps me control my stress. I can endure loss of control. I can endure this. And to have emotion to feel, to cry, that's not a bad thing. That shows that you're human, right.

Brad:

Morgan, another core belief that people have that's really a distortion is I shouldn't need to work at recovery. I shouldn't need help. I should be able to cope like normal people. And that's what I believed after I got betrayed was I can handle this on my own. I should be strong enough to handle this on my own. I don't need to go talk to somebody about this. And it was very damaging.

Morgan:

Yeah, it is

Brad:

Put on a lot of weight after that.

Morgan:

Right? And the way to think about that that's more healthy is I really should be just as I am. No one is entirely okay to seek skilled help. It's okay to be human. It's okay to cry. It's okay to worry. It's very human and very normal, and we all do it. And if anybody says they don't, they're not telling you the truth.

Brad:

And Morgan, another core belief that people can have after they've been betrayed is if I don't worry, it will more than likely happen. So I got to be on guard and I have to keep us

Morgan:

At a distance.

Brad:

Yeah, I got to be vigilant about this and I got to keep us because the person who cheated on me sure isn't thinking about my feelings and my thoughts. So I got to be vigilant,

Morgan:

Vigilant,

Brad:

Vigilant, thank you. Because the person who cheated on me isn't thinking about me. And so if I'm not worrying about us, it's more likely going to happen again.

Morgan:

Right? Definitely being vigilant definitely keeps your spouse at arm's length, but you want to think, since most bad things don't happen, I'm just reinforcing this belief instead of worrying, I'll make a good plan, take responsible precautions like investing in myself and our relationship and remain cautious, but relaxed, and we're almost to the end of time.

Brad:

Yeah. Another core belief is if I obtain perfection, nothing fearful will happen. If I'm perfect, nothing bad will happen,

Morgan:

Right? And perfection is not possible. So replace that thought with perfection is not possible. Trying to attain it will just keep me frustrated and aroused. I can commit to doing a very good, steady job, but I'm not perfect. And that's okay.

Brad:

Another core belief that people have is bad things won't happen if I'm good enough and careful enough.

Morgan:

Aha. And the way to think of that is rainfalls, the good, the bad, and the InBetween. Some things happen randomly and are not indicative of God's disfavor. The best we can do is to be prepared.

Brad:

And then another core belief distortion is I must always prepare for the worst.

Morgan:

Certain precautionary measures might lessen the likelihood of some negative outcomes. Constant worry doesn't help. I'd rather take responsible or reasonable, intelligent, thorough precautions and then release the worries. We can only do what we can do. It's the best that we can do, and that's all we can really ask for.

Brad:

Exactly. Morgan, you're listening to Brad and Morgan Robinson and we're talking about how to recover from an affair. Thank you for listening. Have a great week. Thanks for listening to Healing Broken Trust. If you like this episode, you can always get our show notes and more details and links to the resources we discussed at healingbrokentrust.com. Also, as long as you're online, head on over to healing broken trust.com/retreat for details on an upcoming one-on-one retreat with me. If you like us, please subscribe and leave a review for us on iTunes. As always, everything discussed on this podcast is either my opinion or Morgan's opinion and is not to be taken as relationship advice because I'm not your therapist, nor have I considered your personal situation as your therapist. This podcast is for your entertainment and education only, and I really do hope you've enjoyed it. See you Until next time.

Ep 26: Why Do They Lie?

Ep 29: Childhood of the Betrayer

Transcript

Brad:

They get these message that they have to be self-reliant, it's either outright told to them or it's implied that they got to be self-reliant and they also get messages that are either told to him or hinted at that they can't ask for needs to be met. They got to bottle things up, it's almost like sometimes they got to take care of their parent instead of being able to just be open and honest about how they feel.

Morgan:

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Morgan:

Wherever you are welcome to Healing Broken Trust podcast, we're joining you from our lovely home in the suburbs of Tulsa, Oklahoma. It's a Saturday afternoon during nap time and so it's just you and us for the next half hour or so. We have an interesting topic that we're about today, right Brad?

Brad:

Yeah, this is a really fascinating subject. We're talking about what does the childhood look like, the typical childhood look like of your average person who's unfaithful. So I think this is really fascinating. Of course, I'm a therapist so I'm fascinated by things like this, but I think our listeners will be fascinated by this too.

Morgan:

Yeah, I think so too. So...

Brad:

Because sometimes people get stuck on the why, they don't understand why they did it, and none of this is excuse making, but if you want to understand the psychology of the one who's unfaithful, the psychology of the betrayer this is often a good place to start.

Morgan:

Okay.

Brad:

But it doesn't explain everything so here's what you cannot do, you cannot say you had a crappy childhood, that's why you cheated on me. Because the one who had the affair often doesn't' feel that way. These are things that may influence them, have affected them, but they often won't say it's because of blah, blah, blah from my past is why I cheated on you. They're going to be unhappy about their relationship. But as we'll talk about this we'll see how this influenced them, whereas someone else who was unhappy, or equally unhappy who didn't experience some of these things didn't make the same choices.

Morgan:

Okay.

Brad:

So this is the thing that kind of influences us in some ways subconsciously it impacts us. So this isn't excuse making justifications, anything like that, but it is a way to understand where did they come from, what kind of past did they have, what's the average past look like? And I'm in a unique situation where I get meet people every day who've experienced infidelity, who've betrayed their spouse, so I'm one of the few people on the planet who kind of knows what kind of past they have, what kind of background they have. And so...

Morgan:

Yeah, you've seen so much.

Brad:

Yeah, and it's a lot of fun because you're past isn't your destiny, but if we don't really work on it, and heal wounds we may end up hurting other people.

Morgan:

Gotcha.

Brad:

So that's kind of what we're talking about.

Morgan:

That's really interesting. So speaking of one of the things that you had actually brought up, why do some people cheat or why are some people unfaithful and others are not when they have similar pasts that are bad?

Brad:

Yeah, I think part of that really depends on the type of emotional or relational resiliency they develop. A lot of folks will, at least, I don't know if this is accurate, but I think a lot of people have a very unhappy childhood, but they don't always make terrible life choices. Some people have a good childhood and they make terrible life choices, so it's not always predictive. But what really helps people is the amount of emotional support they had. It doesn't matter that you went through terrible things as a child, you immigrated from a different country, you're a refugee, or you were a victim of violence as a child, or a parent died as a child. Those things don't have to predict later behavior but oftentimes they can. But the real factor is did you have somebody there for you emotionally. So those things aren't always causes

Morgan:

Okay.

Brad:

To being unfaithful. What the real factor is is did they have emotional support, did they have people that they could learn on emotionally, did they have warm parents, did they have both parents who were warm. It's not just enough to really have one not with the way parenting works. You need to have both warm parents, and both parents be involved, and both parents be attentive. You may have been able to get away with dad being out of the home a lot 50 years ago because you had grandparents who were more involved throughout the whole upbringing of the children. Today parents are usually relying on themselves, you don't always have close family units. So...

Morgan:

Absolutely.

Brad:

So anyway, the big thing is really resiliency. If you've got emotional support and you've got people there for you in tough times as a child you're going to probably do better...

Morgan:

Do better.

Brad:

Relationally, because here's the thing Morgan, you can even have siblings in the same family. Just as an example, the dad is abusive, or they experienced really deep, traumatizing things, but say the mom comforts the younger sibling because the child's the baby, mom gives it maybe more attention and consideration, and the baby could be like 10 years old and then the other child's like 13. A 13 year old maybe looks a little bit more independent and the child's going through the same stressful as the 10 year old's going through, but they're getting more attention, more warmth, they're learning that they're still valuable, that they're still loved. The 13 year old who wants to be independent on their own they're still going through hell because they're not getting the same...

Morgan:

Message.

Brad:

Message, and so they're not developing that same sense of resiliency. I would say that's really the hidden things that's there.

Morgan:

Okay. So can you paint a picture of the childhood of a typically betrayer or someone who...

Brad:

Is unfaithful.

Morgan:

Is unfaithful, yes. What does it look like?

Brad:

Well I would say the typical childhood boils down to really one thing, or maybe a couple things. The theme is a childhood with cold, emotionally detached parents, inattentive parents, parents who are not just inattentive, but maybe even rejecting, their distant themselves, they're preoccupied with their own issues and problems. They love their kids just as much as I love our son, I'd give anything in the world for our son. They would give anything in the world for their children but they don't really know how to connect emotionally themselves. So you can't give a child something that you don't have yourself. Sometimes there's just this void, lack of emotional connection, this distance. So what this creates, and this is really the important thing, is it creates somebody who is out of touch with their own emotions and feelings, and they feel uncomfortable feeling vulnerable, they feel weak being vulnerable, and so they don't ever want to share that part of themselves with anybody, and they don't share it with their spouse because they don't want to share it with anybody.

Brad:

They love their spouse more than anything and they really cherish their spouse, and I think this is true for almost everybody who cheats. I think there's very few people who really don't care for their spouse at all. I think I would bet money that almost everybody who has an affair really, genuinely cares about their spouse. But here's the thing I want to get to is is they feel uncomfortable being vulnerable, and expressing emotions, and vulnerability, and needs. So when they get unhappy in a relationship they don't go to their spouse and say, "I'm really unhappy, this is really unfair," because they hate conflict. So what they do, and this is all stuff they learned in childhood, so what they do is they just bury it, they keep it to themselves. What ends up happening is is they resent the heck out of their spouse and that's the justification for being unfaithful later.

Morgan:

And something I...

Brad:

They never speak up though, they never say, "Hey, this bother me."

Morgan:

Now their parents would be maybe cold, or distant, or inattentive but I imagine since their parents really do love them that can't be 100% of the time that they're inattentive or distant, it might be inattentiveness or distance surrounding certain things in life or moments in life when they need their mom or dad, but their parent wasn't able to respond and maybe ... I'd like to ask you, is that true, would that be something that you could say that maybe their parent wasn't 100% terrible or distant all the time, maybe their parent just wasn't able to respond when they needed something, or in a moment of crisis, or does it need to be all the time?

Brad:

I think that's great question. I think the biggest wounds people development are wounds of abandonment and betrayal by close loved ones. If I get betrayed by somebody that I'm not emotionally close to that hurts and I might hold resentment towards them. But if you get betrayed by somebody who's your emotional world that will keep you up at night, that will make you obsessed. It won't just put a chip on your shoulder, if it's a colleague who hurts you. That will bother you and it may even bother you for a while. But if it's your own safe haven, the person that's supposed to be there for you, if they betray you, and honestly, if you've never had anybody there before, a parent, a grandparent, mom, dad, any siblings, if you never had anybody there for you emotionally and then you get betrayed it's a lot harder thing to ever trust another person with again.

Brad:

So here's the thought process, and I want to answer your question. And help me make sure I'm answering it, but this is something I jotted down. This is how the person who has an affair thinks, and this is typical because usually the one who has an affair is the one in the relationship who's more the avoider, or the one who shares the least emotionally, they're the one who tends to be more independent, they're the fixer in the relationship. Women can fit that mold. You see a lot of guys with that. Usually a pursuer in the relationship will have an affair when they've been trying for a long time and they feel like they're not getting through to their spouse, and they'll have an affair when they start giving up on the relationship. Their affair is sometimes more about wanting to be attractive, and pretty, and somebody's interested in me.

Brad:

Sometimes it's more about that, and an avoider will have an affair for different reasons, they just don't really trust anybody, and they may not say that. An avoider can be somebody who's really happy, cheerful, outgoing, but what they're avoiding is their emotions because they're uncomfortable, it's a foreign territory for them, they don't know how to navigate it. So an avoider would say, "I am somewhat uncomfortable being close to others. I find it difficult to trust them completely. It's difficult to allow myself to depend on them. I am nervous when anyone gets too close, and often, others want me to be more intimate than I feel comfortable being." So I'll read that again. An avoider would say, "I am somewhat uncomfortable being close to others. I find it difficult to trust them completely. It's difficult to allow myself to depend on them. I am nervous when anyone gets too close, and often, others want me to be more intimate than I feel comfortable being." So I don't really trust you, but at the same time I'm nervous about you getting too close to me. So they're kind of an island, they really thrive on feeling independent, and not needing other people too much, but they do need other people.

Brad:

So what they do is they kind of start turning off emotions, and feelings, and withdrawing, and they shut down with there's an argument, they get quiet, they hold back, and they don't like conflict at all, and so they'll hold back these things. So what happens is over time they build a lot of resentment. Really what they're scared of is giving themselves completely over to the person and fully trusting another person, so they sometimes can have a really low commitment to a relationship. But the irony is is they're not really giving anything extra or special in the affair than what they've already given in their marriage. So even though sometimes spouses read text messages, or love letters, or whatever, they're read this and they're like, "Oh my gosh, he's given this woman all these things that he's never given me." Or he hasn't given that to me in a while. I would venture to say he's not giving her anything, he's not giving anything that he's never given before. He doesn't know how to be truly vulnerable and truly let someone in because of some of these things that we need to get into.

Morgan:

So he's not necessarily giving more to that relationship than he's given to yours because he doesn't know.

Brad:

Yep. Now he may be giving more...

Morgan:

Verbally.

Brad:

Well in this time period.

Morgan:

Okay.

Brad:

Like he's having an affair...

Morgan:

Right.

Brad:

Obviously he's giving more that relationship than the marriage.

Morgan:

Right because he's invested in that more than he's invested in the marriage, and so he might be having sex or something with his other person but he doesn't necessarily let them into his vulnerable dark places.

Brad:

No, no, no and it may feel that way because there's love letters, flowers, pictures, sexting, different things like that. But no, they're not giving anything emotionally of themselves more. They don't suddenly become a different person and now I'm going to be vulnerable with you. Typically that's not what happens.

Brad:

So what does the typical childhood look like of someone who has an affair? What you typically see Morgan is you see parents who are consistently cool, who are consistently inattentive...

Morgan:

Oh so there's consistency to the parents behavior. So it has to be something projected over time.

Brad:

I think it could be both. Like back to your question is it big events that do it, or I think it's a pattern, a behavior that's modeled that they see. But at the same time, if the event is big enough they can lose their trust and just decide I need to learn to lean on myself.

Morgan:

Especially if the event doesn't ever find resolve. If they don't find resolve after that, or healing, or they don't fix the relationship after the big event.

Brad:

Yeah, you got to mend it. You've got to be able to restore, you've got to work through it. I would say the thing that's probably the biggest is there's events but what really does it is I think sometimes it's a combination of both to be honest with you.

Morgan:

Consistency?

Brad:

Yeah, consistency, inattentive, consistency cool, consistently rejecting, even sometimes just being angry, having a parent who is angry with you snapping at you. You learn not to open up. You learn not to open up when they're rejecting, when they're inattentive, when they're just whatever, cool. So what happens is you see this pattern of behavior from the parent's side of just being detached and not really caring about their child emotionally. But you often see because of that these events that happen where they may be the ones hurting the child in abusive ways, or exposing them to risk and harm. So it's more this parenting style that produces these other things, that create...

Morgan:

This illusive cool person who's maybe detached emotionally that then turns into someone who betrays their partner because they don't know how to connect emotionally.

Brad:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Here's the other thing, I kind of go into a child having this, it later becomes like a potential future cheater. One of them is from the parent they will send messages to the child that they will be punished If they try to seek closeness from the child. So when of the things that can happen is Morgan and I ... I think we might have talked about this on a podcast, but this just ... And I hear about stuff all the time in my office, but this is one I saw firsthand. Our son, we had to take him to the doctor and while we were in the waiting room there was a little five year old girl, big waiting room, the parents were on different sides of the waiting room, little five year old girl looking at fish I the fish tank, and I didn't see it happen but she fell on the ground, tripped and fell. She's of course crying and both of her parents were immediately like...

Morgan:

They didn't do anything.

Brad:

Well they didn't do anything, number one, but do you remember they...

Morgan:

I do.

Brad:

Both of them were saying like, I think it was more the dad, the mom kind of agreed with the dad, unless your arm is cut off...

Morgan:

Or you're bleeding to death.

Brad:

Yeah, unless your arm's cut off or you're bleeding to death quit your crying.

Morgan:

Yeah, don't cry.

Brad:

What that signals to the child is ... But here's the thing, nobody thinks back to that and says, "You know when I was five I couldn't be open." But what they learn is subconsciously, over time, they develop a mental model that becomes their blueprint for future relationships that they can't go to somebody for support. So...

Morgan:

Yeah, they can't go to their parent, that attachment figure.

Brad:

Yeah, they can't go to their parent, I'm going to get punished. So what happens when they enter into a relationship is I can't go to my girlfriend or my boyfriend I'll get punished for it. So what they do is they...

Morgan:

They hide.

Brad:

They hold it in and then they resent their spouse, or their girlfriend, or boyfriend because they're not sharing what they're really feeling and needing, and they magically assume you should know, and they're resenting the crap out of them. Then they are really unhappy in the relationship because they don't ever give themselves to someone completely they kind of get into these affairs, they can either flirt with someone else or they're really susceptible to someone flirting with them. Or when the opportunity arises, because of travel or other things, they're kind of susceptible to it. Nobody's ever going to say when they cheated it was because of this in the doctor's office when I was five.

Morgan:

Right.

Brad:

The girl's not going to remember that because there's going to be a crap load of other examples that she'll have. But what it is it's the pattern that develops...

Morgan:

That consistent message.

Brad:

That consistent message, and what develops is this mental model this is how relationships work. At that young of an age when that model gets developed you have no idea if this is healthy, or unhealthy, or not, you just know this is how relationships work because that's what you see in your family. You're five years old, you may just be getting to start kindergarten, you may not even be in kindergarten yet. There's a whole lot of crap that's happened yet and you're not even able to logically say this is dysfunctional. You can't even say that. But what's crazy about that is the parents who are 20-25 years older than their daughter are sending those kind of messages to her. I think, and I know, they love their child just as much as we love our son, but that child doesn't get that impression.

Morgan:

Right.

Brad:

They don't feel lovable, and they can't show that vulnerability because there's a new model that gets developed so what they do is they turn off emotions because they feel weak and inadequate and what they're really getting away from when they withdraw, and shut down, and are quiet, and aren't vulnerable, is they're really getting away from those feelings of feeling inadequate, that's what's really going on. It's not about always getting away from their spouse. Sometimes they don't want to create conflict, but they're really trying to get away from "I feel inadequate and I don't want to express that kind of vulnerability because I'll weak, and if you think I'm weak and not strong you won't like me very much."

Morgan:

Yeah...

Brad:

And so that's...

Morgan:

I'm not going be ... Those feeling of...

Brad:

I'm not going to be good enough.

Morgan:

Yeah, and those feelings of weakness are going to be validated, those feelings of inadequacy are basically validated by the partner. So they don't want to go there.

Brad:

Well yeah and they value peace because they feel closest to their partner or spouse when there's not conflict. Obviously you have to deal with crap in a marriage to really have a good marriage, you can't just brush stuff under the rug, you got to be open and honest.

Morgan:

And that's also why it's important that if your partner does come to you with something that's vulnerable, or that gives you a glimpse of what's really happening inside their mind, in their heart, to not swipe at them and get upset with them because it validates that fear of they're not going to accept me, I'm not going to be okay. So I think being able to look out for those things as they come, if they are vulnerable with you, to be able to see it as it comes your way, I think is really valuable, and I think that's just a tremendous thing. I know you teach people how to do that in the retreats and stuff like that.

Brad:

Yeah, because this is not set in stone. You really need therapy help because this could change, and hopefully listening to this is helpful. But this isn't set in stone, people can change out of this.

Morgan:

Right, yeah, so that's a good question that you're leading into I think. If they've had this childhood, and they've responded the way they have, and it's led them down the path of infidelity, getting to this once a cheater always a cheater, is that really possible? Can they get out of that? Can they change? Can they be different? If they identify these patterns in their life can they change? Can they become no longer someone down that path I guess?

Brad:

Yeah, that's a good question. I think they can change, I think the best way to change though is couple's therapy. You have to have that because you have to feel like you can let them into your secrets, into your vulnerability, into the deepest, and darkest, scariest place emotionally. You have to be able to let them in and you have to feel like you can trust them for you not to cheat on them.

Morgan:

You know what I think is so interesting, some of these...

Brad:

Let me finish this thought here...

Morgan:

Okay.

Brad:

Because if you don't do that you're always going to be prone to having another affair. Now your spouse, if you cheat on them, you may eventually earn their trust, work your butt off, you do all these things, they finally trust you. But for you to never stray again you have got to know that you can trust them emotionally and lean on them emotionally, and you got to feel like there's nothing holding you back. You've got to feel like yes, I can give myself completely do you, there's nothing holding me back, and you've got to feel like you can share anything with them. If you feel like there's things that you cannot share people are going to get in trouble there.

Morgan:

Because then you're starting to keep those secrets. Those secrets kind of start seeping again and then that vulnerability or that resentment can seep in again.

Brad:

I want to finish this and then I'll fly it on to the parenting that they've experienced. So the first one is parents are consistently inattentive, consistently cool, rejecting or angry in their responses to the young children. Children are met with threats of punishment for trying to get close to their parents, like that little girl in the doctor's waiting room.

Morgan:

Or they say, "Grow up. You need to stop crying." But crying for a little kid is their language, they don't have English skills, they don't know how to speak...

Brad:

Well and Morgan...

Morgan:

Like an adult.

Brad:

You bring up a good point. You bring up a good point. When earlier when we were talking about resiliency, you develop resiliency because you feel like you got somebody who has your back. The people who are probably the weakest with the least amount of resiliency are the people who have this relationship style that we're talking about because they don't ever know how to trust anybody else or fall back on someone else. People like this can be maybe great soldiers, go to Antarctica, be the sole man who goes to Mars on a one person mission to Mars because they've turned off their relationship needs and ability to...

Morgan:

That part of their brain.

Brad:

Yeah, they turn that off. But when their spouse dies, or when somebody dies, or when they're really in a crisis they break down, they suffer the worst, they never really truly recover. And the real issue is they don't let anybody in. They think the real issue is I'm just depressed, or work sucks, or this, or this, or that...

Morgan:

Which could be true, but the real issue is...

Brad:

Yeah, those things are important. But the real issue is they don't know how to really let anybody in, their defenses, they turn off their emotions. So Morgan the third thing is, and this is something we hinted at, there's violent or abusive behavior on the part of an attachment figure. An attachment figure is somebody that you trust, that you feel like you can go to in times of difficulty like a parent, grandparent, older sibling, maybe even a younger sibling, close friend of the family, but you get abused by that person. So what that tells you as a kid is man I cannot be open. I can't even go to my own dad, he's an alcoholic and he's beating the crap out of mom, and he's threatened to beat me, gets in my face, he's hit me where I've had marks, I couldn't go to school. If I can't trust dad who can I trust? And so...

Morgan:

What does that say about me as a person.

Brad:

Yeah what does that say about me if my own dad doesn't like me and he's beating the crap out of me.

Morgan:

Yeah.

Brad:

That says a lot. So that creates somebody who's got this relationship style of being able to really be where they feel really uncomfortable being close to others. They find it difficult to trust them completely. It's difficult to allow themselves to depend on someone else, and they're nervous about someone getting too close, and they find that they're in relationships where the other partner always wants them to be more open, reveal more.

Brad:

Then the last thing you hinted at. They have parents who either outright says, or hint at, that they need to be more self-reliant, more independent...

Morgan:

That's right.

Brad:

You got to be tougher, you got to stand on your own feet. Don't get me wrong, you got to do that age appropriately, but if you're doing that at an inappropriate age level. Your high school student loses his girlfriend and he's sad about that you can't just tell him sorry bud, move one, you're going to meet a girl in college. You can do that later, but you can't do that...

Morgan:

In the moment when he's hurting.

Brad:

Well yeah, you got to just comfort him and try to be there, and listen. Eventually you can say, "I went through the same thing, and that's when I met your mother, and it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I know right now it doesn't feel that way but I'm always here and if I can talk with you about it I'm here."

Morgan:

Yeah, instead of the opposite where it's like, "Grow a pair, stop crying."

Brad:

Yeah.

Morgan:

"Suck it up. Be a man."

Brad:

Yeah.

Morgan:

That doesn't work, it doesn't draw them closer, it doesn't teach them how to manage their feelings, or their emotions, or their needs. They just shut down, and pull away from you, and that's how they respond to their spouse.

Brad:

Absolutely. The other thing is they get these messages that they got be self-reliant, it's either outright told to them or it's implied that they got to be self-reliant and they also get messages that are either told to them or hinted at that they can't ask for needs to be met. They got to bottle things up. It's almost like sometimes they got to take care of their parent instead of being able to just be open and honest about how they feel. One of the things that's dangerous about this Morgan, and this is not meant to make anybody feel terrible. But unless we think about these things and work on these things on ourselves, because we have that mental model we can do it to our own kids. So we have to be aware of this and think about this, and we have to really be able to provide for our own kids secure attachment.

Morgan:

Right.

Brad:

In relationships we always ask, "Are you there for me?" And if we feel like our caregiver is there for us we feel worth of love and will have a secure relationship style where we feel like we can be open, and honest, and totally give ourselves to somebody.

Morgan:

Yeah, and I think as I've listened to you say this it really brings to mind kids of parents who are alcoholics, who maybe were a sexual abuse survivor, incest survivor, and like I say, it's not always physical bruises, but there are emotional bruises, there's psychological bruising that happens and if you don't deal with it, if you don't handle it, if you don't heal from it, and you can't really do it alone, it's not anything you can do alone, and it's typically much better when you can heal with the one that's your spouse, the one that's your...

Brad:

Oh yeah, it's a heck of a lot better. Here's the thing Morgan, it's your spouse who's validating in confirming you, it's a deeper level of change...

Morgan:

Right.

Brad:

Than individual therapy.

Morgan:

Than just individual therapy, yeah.

Brad:

Let your spouse validate in you, not a stranger who's nice, it's your own spouse.

Morgan:

Right.

Brad:

And that...

Morgan:

That attachment figure...

Brad:

Yeah, that attachment figure.

Morgan:

That person in your life that's supposed to love you unconditionally like your parent was supposed to love you unconditionally. So I personally, I understand this at a personal level just how difficult it can be to have be the caregiver to the parent. So if that's you, I know I haven't been an unfaithful person, so you can totally not come away as an unfaithful person, and that sort of thing. But it does affect and impact your relationships with other people, and the most important relationship with your spouse, it does impact that. So it's really important to get the help, to heal this is really what I'm trying to say.

Brad:

Yes, of course. Because, Morgan, to answer your question once a cheater always a cheater, I think you're prone to do it again if you don't get the help. This is not something ... It's not even that you have to come to us, we're available, we have retreats, we work, it's what we do. We love it. But you've got to the help because if you don't, and you can't let somebody in, you're prone to repeat the past, and even when you had. People hate doing this crap but they still find themselves drug to it because they're not really working with somebody who knows how to help them.

Morgan:

Right.

Brad:

It's like trying to lose weight. It's like you see somebody who's obese, who's really overweight, they've done everything they can, they yo-yo diet, they're trying to break it but sometimes you got to go get outside help. Some things are just bigger than us and we got to go get help, there's no shame in that.

Morgan:

No.

Brad:

Nobody would say to somebody who's overweight, that's been yo-yo dieting for years there's any shame in going to get help with that.

Morgan:

No.

Brad:

You would encourage them to do it.

Morgan:

Right.

Brad:

So if you're listening to us and you are yo-yoing in your own version of a yo-yo diet in your relationship, and trying to be faithful, and trying to heal from an affair don't do it. Nobody thinks you're crazy if you go get help it's not a sign of weakness, you don't think that about anybody who's that way with their weight, why think that about yourself? Don't be naïve, don't be dumb about that.

Brad:

The other thing Morgan, I want to give a couple examples...

Morgan:

Oh yes, yeah please.

Brad:

Of childhoods. The big thing here is they are emotionally just like I said, those four things. That's the common thing. You just need one of those to really develop into an avoidant relationship style. Here's an example of some of these things that we're talking about. One of them is a parent teaching a child to lie, we don't tell mom about this, keep this a secret for me, I'm going to tell you what it is, but keep this a secret from mom. What does that child lean about relationships? That it's okay to have secrets. It's okay to not fully give yourself over to someone, so it's foolish to trust somebody. Hide things to keep the peace so that child learns that. People don't really question things that they learn from their parents, they just kind of automatically they hear it and then they act it out, they live it out...

Morgan:

Right.

Brad:

And they don't question it. You eat it, you don't contemplate it.

Morgan:

They're kids.

Brad:

Yeah they're kids and it's where you start learning these relationships. So anyway, the second thing is I had a client once, I had him what his happiest childhood memory was and he said, "Christmas because that's the time of year", he said holidays actually, "because that's the time of year that I knew my mom loved me, that's the only time she ever said she loved me." So this particular person never really had just one best friend, he had a bazillion friends but he never really let anybody in on his emotional world because first he couldn't do it with mom. Then it played out into his relationship where he could never really give himself to his wife.

Morgan:

So they were just very shallow relationships.

Brad:

Yeah, yeah. An abusive dad, one that's physically abusive, that hurts mom, that's abusive towards the child. That's an alcoholic, you just learn you can't trust. There's a common theme you're not there for me, I can't trust you. I can't get my needs met through you, I've got to shut down because this is scary. We develop that template and then we use that even though our spouse isn't that way. Maybe they are, but most likely they're probably not that way. We still act like they are, we still hide, and withdraw, and don't fully give ourselves because our first example were of never giving ourselves completely. So what happens is when our spouse wanting us to be more open with them it feels very foreign to us, it feels very uncomfortable, extremely uncomfortable. And most people can't do it on their own, so it's kinda ... What we talked about, therapy, going to therapy. Having a parent who's not an attachment figure but like a grandparent, you got to go to a grandparent to get your needs met, you can't even go to your own parent. Your parents are so messed up you can't even go to them but you go to go to a grandparent.

Morgan:

Or a teacher.

Brad:

Yeah or a teacher, or someone else, a coach, somebody who's been sexually abused. Just the general theme is cut off parents who aren't there. We're going to hear it from all the time people who say ... Because here's the golden question, I hear people all the time who say, "I had a great childhood." And I'll follow up with the golden question, "Well who did you go to when you were hurt, sad, or afraid? When you were lonely as a kid." "Well nobody." Or if they say they could, "Who did you go to? So you could go to somebody, who was it?" "It was probably mom that I could go to." "Well can you give me examples of when you did that." "Come to think of it I can't. Did I go to mom? I don't remember ever going to her actually. Or it never occurred to me that I could." Those are all things that are examples in this avoidant attachment style and many people who end up becoming unfaithful that's kind of the childhood that they had.

Brad:

So hopefully this has been beneficial for you guys. We don't want to lead you into any confusion or anything, so hopefully this has been beneficial. This is not destiny, this doesn't have to be this way, it doesn't have to because it's your childhood or your spouse's childhood doesn't mean it's predictive of future results in the future, but you do have to go do work on it because most likely it can be, maybe it will be. So you got to go to work on it.

Brad:

Here's just some other childhood's that ... Let me move my papers around so I can share this. Other examples of childhoods, the kind of childhood that we want is we want to be able to say, "We had a secure childhood that produces where we feel like our caregiver is there for us and we feel worthy of love because our caregiver was attentive, they were responsive to us, and they were engaged with us." So somebody that has a secure style would say, "I find it relatively easy to get close to others and I'm comfortable depending on them, and having them depend on me. I don't worry about being abandoned, or about someone getting too close. I'm very comfortable in this relationship." So people who are securely attached who are married to each other are going to be the ones who have the best relationships because they both feel comfortable being vulnerable and open.

Brad:

But, now earlier when I was talking about a pursuer who gets burned out and then they have an affair, this is typically what they're going to say. They're going to say, "I find that other," this is what an anxious partner would say, a pursuer, "They're going to say I find that others are reluctant to get close as I would like. I often worry that my partner doesn't really love me and won't want to stay with me. I want to get very close to my partner and this sometimes scares people away." So an anxious is going to say, "I find that others are reluctant to get as close as I would like. I often worry that my partner doesn't really love me or won't want to stay with me." So they're really anxious about the state of their relationship. "I want to get very close to my partner and this sometimes scares people away." So those folks will have an affair when they start feeling like I'm not going to get my needs met in this relationship, kind of like what we talked about last time in "Hell or High water, Despair and Detachment", that they will begin to grieve that they're not going to get their relationship needs met and then they're vulnerable to an affair happening.

Morgan:

Yeah, so definitely check out that episode. It's called "Hell or High Water, Despair and Detachment," because it's really helpful to understand what happens whenever you start to burn out of the relationship and where it goes from there.

Brad:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Morgan that's it for right now. Any questions, anything else we need to look over?

Morgan:

Well I think that you've really described avoidant attachment pretty well. Can you sum it up in more of a definitive way, what in a couple of words does avoidant attachment mean?

Brad:

Avoidant attachment in a few words means I don't trust you and I'm uncomfortable getting close to you.

Morgan:

Okay, so an avoidant attachment person if they don't feel like they can...

Brad:

I don't feel like I can give all of myself to you because I don't trust you. And you may be perfect, but if I'm afraid you'll me as weak then that causes me to hold back.

Morgan:

And that holding back causes the negative cycle to spiral and it can open up vulnerabilities for them to cheat, to have an affair.

Brad:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Morgan:

Okay, and ultimately what we're saying is that their children is a big indicator of...

Brad:

This is where avoidant ... Childhood is where the avoidant detachment's created.

Morgan:

Yeah.

Brad:

You don't go from a secure attachment style all throughout childhood and then you leave home, and you're an adult, and then develop an avoidant attachment style. That typically doesn't happen. You've got to develop a lot of ... A lot of crap's got to happen for that to develop. But an avoidant attachment style in just a few words is I don't really trust you with myself, giving you all of myself, and my emotions. I prefer my independence and that's because of the way they were raised. They couldn't really trust their parents.

Morgan:

Okay, and then ultimately it boils down to if you can get help and you work on these things you don't have to go down that path, it doesn't necessarily have to be the end for you. You don't have to experience infidelity in your relationship if you can identify what's really happening emotionally and take the necessary actions. I think that's great. Thank you very much Brad for explaining this to us and I think that's the show.

Brad:

Yeah, thank you guys for listening.

Morgan:

Thank you for listening to this episode of Healing Broken Trust podcast. Are you ready to take the next step? Go to healingbrokentrust.com and schedule your one on one coaching call today. That's healingbrokentrust.com.