Affair Recovery Counseling Process
Affair Recovery Counseling…
Nothing can turn your world upside down like discovering your spouse has been having an affair. The hurt, anger, and fear are overwhelming. It’s hard to concentrate, sleep, or even sit still. Your mind keeps going over and over the details wanting more truth and information, yet fearing the answers. Recovering from an affair is probably the most difficult marital issue there is. Trust has been broken, respect has been lost, and hope is at an all-time low in the marriage. It’s hard to know what you should believe anymore. You probably have questions like, “Can I ever trust her again?” or “How can he say he loves me and have an affair at the same time?” “And what about the kids? How will they make it through a divorce?” It seems that nothing makes sense anymore, but there is hope!
Affair Recovery is not typical couple counseling and should not be treated typically! Taking the time and making the effort to do the work needed to stabilize a relationship that is suffering from an affair is critical. It is imperative for the couple to work through a very specific process to stabilize and rebuild their marriage.
I take couples through an affair recovery process called, “Torn Asunder” created by Dave Carder. This is the most complete process I’ve ever seen. The first four sessions are designed to understand what caused the marriage to deteriorate. The remaining sessions are devoted to building a healthy and meaningful marriage. Couples that go through this process usually understand the “why” of the affair, realize how their marriage was vulnerable to the affair, and learn how to build a healthy, faithful marriage. There is hope for marriages that have suffered from an affair. I get to see marriages survive and thrive that were once crippled by one or multiple affairs.
According to Dave Carder, there are four classes of affairs: Class I, the One Night Stand, Class II, an Entangled Affair, Class III, the Sexual Addiction Affair, and Class IV the Add-on Affair. The recovery from an affair will differ depending on the class of the affair. All affairs are horrible and painful, but different types of affairs are treated differently and typically recover in differing lengths of time. There are many parts of the Torn Asunder program that make it such a complete program for marriages that are suffering from an affair.
Some of the key components of the program are:
- The Marital Satisfaction Time Line
- The Contributions section
- The Forgiveness process, and
- Exercises for rebuilding communication, respect, trust, and love in the marriage
Interwoven throughout the program are marriage relationship building exercises in which almost all of the homework assignments involve both partners working together on the homework. This is a key component to getting both spouses involved in rebuilding the relationship. After going through this program, the partners will know each other like they’ve never known each other before, they will have had meaningful conversations they’ve never had before, and they will have created a much healthier marriage than they’ve ever dreamed possible.
As devastating as affairs are, there is hope for those who take the time and make the effort to do the work necessary for healing to begin. It is my hope and prayer that you will have the courage to lean into this process and repair your marriage for your sake and for the sake of your children!