A Prodigious Shift from Infidelity-Induced Infernos to Intimacy & Connection: Beyond the Victim/Perpetrator Trap
Nothing elicits inflamed rage than the moment betrayal gets exposed — when implicit long-held trust stands abruptly shattered.
Understandably, after an affair all we want to do is make the hurt go away so we can live again.
We know that, if we do nothing, the pain will go on forever.
But where do we start?
I’d like to take you into several transformative moments of my infidelity repair process where two people decided, and had the power to, “bridge” the gulf of loneliness unearthed by an affair.
Once all the preliminaries are over, I ask the couple to put the old relationship away and just be “here.” Then I teach a new mode of conversation. There is no pathology here, and the couple and I are liberated from the victim/perpetrator trap.
Labeling partners as “victims” and “perpetrators” implies a black and white morality tale which contradicts complicated interpersonal realities. This binary dangerously oversimplifies betrayal’s intricate web of contributors. It also risks locking couples into stagnant power dynamics where one partner remains the righteous judge punishing the immoral villain indefinitely without ever taking personal ownership themselves.
In an authentic repair process, each partner acknowledges the depth of their own complex humanity — desires for connection, susceptibility to temptation, capacity for self-protection at the other’s expense. Partners must shift from a narrow blame game to becoming co-investigators trying to comprehensively strengthen their foundation.
Okay … here we go.
Deprived of their intellectual artillery, we are channeling insight into energy and trying to make sense of the couple’s energy, that is, the push/pull dance, the up and down-surges, the tugging and towing.
And it’s usually the same: once we remove the subject matter … the content…compassion can flow easily.
I begin teaching.
I say to the couple, “When we have betrayed our partners with an affair, it’s easy to say, ‘I am, or he is the bad person.’ Or that s/he has contributed more pollution to the relationship. It’s easy to blame.
But that’s not true because, when there is toxicity and contamination in the relationship, we recognize that both partners contribute to it.”
Both contribute to the pain in the relationship. And I am saying this to you because we don’t want to compare pain.
Pain is pain.
Jake is an Executive VP, a warrior at refuting emotion. Vera is a Teacher, committed to her faith in his guilt, and she is not surprised by his refusal to begin because he is overwhelmed by guilt and self-criticism, which distances him from her.
I say, “Guilt is a burden for both partners.”
But what I sense is the fear.
Vera does not expose her anger, or her fear of letting go. She does not expose her fear of disarming her intellect.
I do not jump in and rescue couples. For me as a therapist, a fundamental concept of listening is waiting, contemplating and not reacting. I have no vested interest here. I’m just quietly tending to them, holding them in quiet acceptance. I also find it unproductive to let couples hide. I am deeply compassionate, but I am also firm. I make room within myself for their pain … so that they will be able to grow.
On this particular morning I intuited that it was time to help Vera receive the pain of her husband, the hidden pain that took him away from her all those years. The pain that made him secretive, the pain that made him not communicate, and the pain that made him not care how his action of betrayal would ultimately impact his wife. I helped Vera to receive the pain that kept him running, never staying … and always leaving.
In the session Jake is out on a limb, and Vera fears giving him the SAFE harbor that he needs to land emotionally. I notice that she declines to consider his fear. Jake’s fear is the kind of fear that comes from the boy-child within him; his existential cry for help, and the cry for all the “unheard” protests. And she doesn’t consider his fear because she can only see the struggling, kicking man who hurt and betrayed her.
So at this step our work is to coach Vera to listen and reflect Jake’s words, not as repetition, parroting or a memory test, but to allow the expression on her husband’s face to penetrate her; so she can see and flow with the emotion showing up on her Jake’s face. (Note: In my practice, couples sit face to face).
I do not rescue couples. I simply teach them not to be afraid. “Even though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death of the ego,” I teach them not to fear pain, not to fear the emotions and to just let things run their course.
I teach the couple to have patience and take — -it — -slow.
I trust deeply, and I give them the space to find their own way. Then … and only then, do I help the Vera make the shift. I do this by inviting her to, “Say to your husband that you are angry. And beneath that anger, you are sad.”
Here I am coaching Vera to “Make room … to make space inside of herself … for Jake.” But at first she is unable to do it, unable to act, frozen by the movie that’s been playing in her mind about the affair.
All Vera will see, until she opens, is what she is already listening to, on the inside.
But I know that reality is ultimately more creative than our own mental movies. Reality is rich and multifaceted.
I strongly encourage Vera, who is struggling. I say, “Listen to the history. Please, just listen. Open your heart and listen to his story.”
I’m holding back my own tears because I identify with the strong man who is deeply wounded from the inside. People see that Jake is strong on the outside, but his pain is inside.
I ask the Vera who now has to assuage me, and her husband, who is also crying and wrung-out by the agony.
I can SENSE it … then I KNOW that there is a place where the pain can be put to rest. But right now Vera is crushed by huge emotion.
Vera was always so good at taking Jake’s departures, taking his non-communicativeness, and now he’s facing the tsunami of his pain. It’s clear to me that Jake is ready to open up and to let go. He is ready to come to terms and live his pain. I also realize that the difficulty is with Vera, so I turn to her and teach her to be generous; to love her man. To have compassion.
By asking her to be generous, to love her man, I am simply teaching her to grow. Unconsciously, she chose him. She chose him so that she would never have to do this, and before today, he had never intimidated her with his untamed, undisciplined, bewildering ways. And even now, as he threatens her, he simultaneously needs her. Like most of us, we are never more intimidating than when our need is quickening and sudden.
I teach Vera to breathe, to reflect, to do nothing except say the words that she is hearing from Jake. I teach her to get out of her own way, and let the words come and go. I teach her not to react. As she reflects, I tell her to “Make space for him within yourself.” She is struggling.
Then she reflects his words. As she does so, I quietly whisper to her … “so very, very brave.”
She sees her man and he can sense the shift. The sudden appearance of a SAFE place brings out the very core of his agony, the tender underbelly of fear to share the most excruciating memories. I am with her. I am teaching her to take it in, to make space inside for the information. To roll with the punches and go with the flow. I am teaching her to listen and stand firm for her man.
Vera is learning.
What has her husband gone through?
When partners are recalling something horrific, I encourage them to maintain eye contact. I say, “feel your feelings but keep looking.” Keep looking so they realize that this time they have control over it, rather than it having control over them. Once the event can be put into words, it can be integrated and re-authored in their present history.
I sit back in my chair and bear witness and allow this man and woman to grow new hearts.
Through her tears, Vera tells him, “I wasn’t there for you. I knew something was off in our marriage and I didn’t say anything because I was angry and trying to stay in control … but I am here now.”
“Relationships become the healing balm for our loneliness, for our fear and our longing.”
The hard, external identities are melting and the process brings gifts. Jake lost this immobilized, frozen wife and his posturing Manly-man-self. Vera gets to reclaim the atrophied frozen part of herself that was dying to the movie in her mind.
And I know this couple from within and I love this couple!
I say, “YES to the couple …YES!”
I am with them and they are with me.
I am laughing.
We are laughing.
We laugh until our bellies ache.
We are laughing our sorrows and pain away.
We laugh our way into insight.
This process heals them both. Not just the one … the one and the other — together.
Thank you for listening.
In gratitude,
Dr. Paula
Website: www.paulasmith-imago.com
