Surviving Family Gatherings after the Affair

Did you or a partner/s recently reveal a secret affair/s or betrayal?

Everyone responds differently to the news that a partner violated a norm/expectation in a relationship, or as we might hear more commonly: "cheated," "had an affair," "infidelity." 

Usually it's not pretty, but depending on a variety of factors from culture to relational style and Trauma history, responses in the wake of an "affair-reveal" spread across a pretty wide spectrum. 

As Esther Perel describes in her most recent, The State of Affairs, when she was chatting with women in Senegal about infidelity, she heard how little their identities felt rocked when they learned about a betrayal. The women reported that they did cry and feel intense sadness, but most explained their partner's behavior by seeing it as a normal male struggle, a norm expected in culture. Perel contrasts this with women in the West who can tend to fall more into existential meltdown, wondering what in us is deficient or lacking.

Given this wide presentation of responses to infidelity, I'm going to organize these recommendations by the 4 most common responses I clinically and anecdotally observe.

First, I want to invite anyone trudging through this painful relational territory to give yourself permission to treat this time super gently and with great tenderness, like you would if someone in the family died or got a very serious diagnosis.

Go slow. With reverence. Move softly. 

But there can be lots of family performance pressure around holidays, celebrations, and family gatherings for broken-hearted clients. It hurts my heart to hear so many stories of people post-affair-reveal crying alone in cars and guest bathrooms after stuffing feelings and faking happy to keep up appearances for family.

It can take a lot of work to repair the kind of emotional wounds we experience when we end up feeling alone and overwhelmed. So, above all: if you're not feeling something in the first weeks/months after finding out about an affair/s, don't force it where possible.

Try to let people support you, even if you feel gross and snotty and can't stop crying. Sometimes people just don't know what to do but they do want to help, so you can make it easy and just say something specific like, "Hey, I really need you to come pick me up and take me for coffee and not ask a lot of questions."

Please, please also do give yourself permission to cry. Your relationship wasn't what you thought. Your partner wasn't behaving like you thought. It's normal to feel a sense of loss. Allow yourself to feel and be whatever comes up as long as you and those around you keep safe.

So, on to the tips! It's helpful to think of this process a bit like bereavement; you'll likely experience evolving cycles of feelings and physiological responses as you heal and grow. 

In general we're looking at combinations of 4 experiences: collapse/shutdown, rage, disgust, and grief.

COLLAPSE
If this is you, it's possible you lost your knees and fell to the floor when you found out your partner 'cheated.' I've heard of people actually fainting! It's not weird. It's actually tragically sweet because technically that's the person's neurophysiology saying, "Whoa we are losing this bond? Estimating a high likelihood we won't survive," "Without you I'm dead." Maybe you felt light-headed and had to sit down. Maybe it became hard to get up and get moving for a while after. Allow yourself to go slow. 

If you start to feel flooded, find some rituals for finding the ground, breathing, and reminding yourself that you are safe and whole. Do you have some music that reliably chills you out? Maybe it's taking a walk that brings you back down to Earth. I will say if you're in the wake of an infidelity, maybe don't listen to any of your favorite, favorite music because it can kind of emotionally stain the tracks. 

Remember "name it to tame it." If you're an involved partner who cheated, this can be difficult to see, but try to allow your partner to just feel whatever they are feeling. Lots of partners want to rescue hurt partners from being in pain and kind of pull them or convince them out of their emotions, but this can feel disregarding to the hurt partner and increases the chances they'll feel unseen and unimportant. "I see your pain and your tears. I'm here with you," may be all you can offer, but that's an incredible gift. Same with reflecting pain: "You are feeling so devastated. I lied and you feel betrayed. You're hurting. I'm here." 

Once it's been long enough for you and you feel ready to rise back up, I highly recommend learning and practicing power poses when you feel so collapsed or ashamed that it feels uncomfortable or intolerable. Brené Brown has great resources to read, as well as Kristin Neff! 

RAGE
If this is you, it's possible you lost your temper and inflicted damage on something or someone when you found out your partner cheated. There might have been suitcases packed, cars destroyed, or divorce papers threatened/served. If it's soon after the infidelity-reveal, give yourself permission to just do what you need to do to keep from being consumed in the fires of your indignation and anger. If this means skipping out on your or partner's family's special occasions or holiday activities and traditions, or making some temporary changes in your own relational routine, that's okay. Just keep retaliation out of the picture.

Try to avoid visual images of your partner's' affair partner/s. If you need to do some temporary social media unfollows/blocks, do it. Please don't seek out affair partner; seek to leave them out of the relationship until you have the capacity to think calmly and rationally enough to get the information and details you need to make informed, health-promoting decisions.

Take breaks! Lots and lots of breaks. At least 15-20mins at a time if possible. Remember that rage is a way we cope with deep sadness, loss, fear, and feeling out of control. Pop culture says go and scream and punch a pillow, but research shows this just mostly ramps up anger. So instead of ruminating on upsetting mental imagery, try "naming it to tame it," Loving Kindness Meditation, self-compassion practices, yoga, etc., *not* tire slashing or 'Facebook stalking.' I also recommend Harriet Lerner's The Dance of Anger. 

Involved partners can really help take some heat out by doing things like taking accountability, acknowledging and validating the anger, and being vulnerable and holding off on defensiveness. If you cheated, don't avoid questions, but do find a couples counselor to help guide pacing and navigate why certain questions are asked, which really need full answers, and how to answer most compassionately and honestly. 

DISGUST
If this is you, it's possible you might have actually vomited when you found out your partner cheated. Disgust frequently hangs out with shame too, so you might have experienced both together. If it's soon after the infidelity-reveal, make sure to drink lots of water and try to at least squeeze in 30min-1hr walks a few times a week if not daily. Try to avoid junky, greasy food even if you crave it, especially if you keep throwing up when you think hard about the infidelity. Cool it a little on caffeine, citric acid, dairy, and spicy/greasy foods for a hot minute as much as you can. Your body will right itself.

Don't try to force eating with your partner or eating foods that make you uneasy to please relatives, friends, or even the partner. This can be awful tough for an involved partner who cheated to have to watch, so just know if this is happening, it's just what the body needs to do right now to keep from capsizing. If it's really bad, get involved partner to hang back and bring a caretaking friend in for a few days to mitigate exposure of hurt partner to involved partner.

It's easy to accidentally create lasting wounds in this terrain with words. Hurt partner, "You disgust me" can feel too painful because it's rejecting inherently; stick with "I feel sick" if you can, especially if you want to stay in the relationship in the long run. Focus on partner's behaviors and your own feelings, not character attacks; you can trust that involved partners also feel disgust and shame, and often bear this burden solo for a long time. If "I disgust myself" is coming up a lot for anyone, bop in for some individual counseling to check-in because it can be a sign of older wounds and shame. 

Also, I invite you to avoid discussing the explicit sex acts involved in the affair/s, especially at first when you're most off kilter and least capable of dealing. Focus on finding balance and building safety first and trust that understanding and insight will come. Usually, these sexual details never become necessary to disclose for healing, and typically only only provide fuel for further mental masochism and rumination spirals. 

GRIEF
If this is you, it's possible you cried and sobbed your eyes out and cried some more when you found out your partner cheated. In Trust First Aid, I find that there's just a lot of sads and tears that need space to get voiced and released. It's so tempting to try to "snap out of it" and bulldoze past the sad part, but you'll regret it if you speed past heavy feels after affairs and don't take time to just be in them.

Grief is like a jacuzzi: the person soaking in it just needs be still, and it's nice when someone else eases down in beside you to join you, as opposed to just dipping a toe in and saying, "Yow! Get out of there! You've been in too long... You're going to cook yourself!" You don't get to have the same relationship after an affair. The relationship can transform, but something is inherently lost, even if it's just an idea. It's natural and health-promoting to allow yourself to mourn for the loss of something precious, even if it is as simple as "I thought you were happy." Take all the time you need. No one gets to tell anyone who and when to forgive.

Mindfully and collaboratively co-decide who you and your partner disclose the affair to, but do reach out for support from trusted, discreet friends/family. Again, it's okay to skip holiday traditions if you are worried about emotionally staining memories, or crumbling under the pressure of "keeping it together" in front of other people. Also, 2 words: take baths. 

Involved partners, try to remind yourself that the intensity of grief often goes with the size and importance of the love; big sads = big love for you. It can feel awful because your usual superpower to calm and reassure your partner may not work like used to for a while. It will again. Try to be patient and tender with yourself.

Patience and tenderness all around, inside and out. There's hope. 

Love, 
MJ

Come As You Are

Why do humans tend to focus on negatives? Hint: *not* because we’re bad or unenlightened. 

Why do people cry? Hint: *not* because we're weak or failing. Let's take a look at both of these questions. 

When we were still early in our evolution, it was essential that a negative/dangerous experience be remembered so that it wasn’t repeated. Act, or don’t; life, or death. 

It was imperative that our ancestors felt anxious when they were in places that seemed similar to where that poisonous snake attacked, for instance. Our bodies had to privilege scary memories for our safety and survival. 

The emerging cult of positivity clamoring “no bad vibes” and "good vibes only" is really starting to wear on me because it implies that ‘negative feelings’ (pain, fear, distress, anxiety, etc.) are bad and to be overcome/avoided—like it’s wrong, weak, out of control, or irrational to experience these emotions. 

Fear is wisdom in our bodies that we’ve inherited over centuries. 

It makes sense that we sort of adopted this "positive/negative" language because emotions have valences, or charges, which are (+) or (-). Doesn't mean we can't work toward a shared language that reflects more nuance with less judgment. 

When we don’t work to train our minds, which wander by nature, we can tend to focus on negatives because that really helped us to, you know, *not* die and keep reproducing! 

You aren’t ‘negative’ because you’re bad, but because you’re human. 

When we remember our evolutionary heritage, it helps us be gentler with ourselves and others when we’re experiencing emotional movements. And with less moralizing and a deeper appreciation for our psychobiological wiring, we can be more mindful and intentional about tuning into ‘positives' and expressing appreciation and gratitude.

If we can see our bodies as wise and on our side, everything else changes. If we see our bodies as in our way and set on being inconveniences, we actually become threatening to our own bodies and nervous systems. 

But "good vibes only" tells us to police our emotions. We already live in a society where we're taught to disconnect from our natural body rhythms. If you have a pain, you're encouraged to pop an Advil to stop the pain

Think about something as simple as a pain response. 

The language of our bodies and subcortical (lower, unconscious/automatic) brains is not English, it's action and sensation and feely feels; it's experiential. The body can't say, "Pardon me, could you please warm up by stretching before you do push-ups to impress people?" It just says "OW!" after and has to trust that you'll catch the memo. 

You can tear muscles if you ignore physical pain. It's one of our body's intelligent ways of talking to us and making us pay attention and remember to make sure to not to do stupid or careless things again.

Memories encoded with pain stick. Like novelty. And threat. Or deep pleasure. 

It makes sense we evolved systems that organize information and energy flow based on experiences like pain, new things, and danger/threats. 

We needed bodies that could automatically scan for, tag, and encode repeated or crucial, life-threat things with certain codes like "danger," "pain," "pleasure," so we didn't have to waste precious upper brain energy on consciously thinking through every scenario which calls for various sets of approach and withdraw behaviors. Takes too much time, energy, and resources. We depended on having the fast, easy, automatic way as a default. 

So you remember for instance, red color on animals can mean bad bad death no AVOID. Your body acts to avoid danger creeeepily long before you consciously "decide" to move. Your brainstem and parts of the limbic system like your amygdala are super tuned into keeping on top of keeping you safe. 

Brainstem is always on repeat, multiples times per second, asking, "Am I safe?" It's got your back. But like, a grandma who gets up two hours early to check what the weather will be in your town so she can call and warn you if there's any risky-sounding weather that might come your way so you can bring an umbrella. 

Amygdala is also kinda like that sweet, worrying grandparent. It also notices sparkly and beauty; you can take it to the art museum. But it spends a lot of energy fretting about safety. 

Pain can be uncomfortable (emotional, physical, spiritual, sexual, existential) but it's crucial that we *turn toward* it with as much concern as a friend saying to us, "Help! I need you!" Pain is not to be ignored. And there are consequences for those who won't cultivate some tolerance for it; unless they end up lucky enough to lead a charmed, problem-free life. 

Pain isn't an "annoyance" or "weakness leaving the body" or "failure," it's an attempt at communication. 

If your body gets the vibe that you bulldoze pain, stuff/squash it, pretend it's not there, or will just ignore it, well, imagine what happens when you ignore a baby. You see a fit! Stress response. Protest. SOMETHING to make you pay attention!

You know what your body and a baby have in common? If you guessed language, you're right! The language is action, movement, behavior. 

Babies also cry and sob it out more, right? You know what sobbing really is? 

This is sad but also kind of awesome. So, sobbing basically helps enervate (give energy to) our muscles. Think about how it makes certain muscles clench and striated muscles tighten with crying heaves. 

Yeah sobbing can seem like a bummer, but it's one of the ways our body balances discharging energy trapped in our nervous system and lifting our bodies up out of a collapse response in an effort to maintain baseline. At times you've sobbed, your body physically worried that you might collapse, not have the energy to get up, and die.

Ever notice someone sounding like they're repeatedly gasping in-breaths as they sob and cry? Remember: in-breaths = sympathetic nervous system = fight/flight preparation. Your body is helping you mobilize energy to facilitate a change in internal state. Sobs get your core moving again. 

Many cultures around the world embrace this as a natural, healthy thing to do. In some cultures, people even hire others to come wail and weep at funerals to normalize it and encourage the funerary attendees to let loose. 

In some pretty heartbreaking animal experiments where they put lab animals through stress and then don't let some "shake" or "shake it off after," keeping them restrained and still, these animals suffer more distress, anxiety, and symptoms that go with trauma. The animals allowed to do their thing end up just fine; they literally shake it off. 

Language is where shame can be born. 

With language comes guilt. With language comes "stand up and brush it off you're fine" and "shut up, crybaby" and "you're being hysterical" and "you're acting like a child" and "pull yourself together" and "lock it up" and a zillion regional variations on this. 

But with language can also come, "it's okay to cry" and "you're safe here" "stay here with me, I've got you" and "there's no shame in crying" and "it's okay to express and feel your feels" and "just let it all out." 

If a friend is crying and I feel their pain, I sometimes cry too. It shows that we're human together and especially if they aren't used to feeling feelings in front of others, my face shows that it's acceptable to me to cry, that I will join and not judge. And I'll frequently join unconsciously, because we're connected. 

Oh and parents: crying in front of your kids is a gift for them; it's permission. 

Please note that although crying, even intense sobbing for short durations, can be health-promoting in response to stress and threat, you caaan get too revved up or spiral out of balance, especially if you also use particular substances or have certain genetic/psychological vulnerabilities. Call 911 if things feel out of control or get to the point of being unsafe. 

Never forget: crying is cool. Come as you are, and bring your whole self! All parts are welcome. 

Love, 
MJ

'The Grass is Greener Where You Water It'

Can we predict which relationships are likely to experience "infidelity?"

“Comparison Level for Alternatives,” aka: CL-alt, is a concept from Social Exchange Theory that refers to the lowest level of “relational rewards” a person will accept before they opt to be alone or accept rewards from other relationship sources. 

If you’re familiar with research from The Gottman Institute, you may already—knowingly or not!—be familiar with the beyond brilliant work of the late Caryl Rusbult. Honestly bless the Gottmans and Gottman Institute for honing in on her studies and measures related to trust and commitment. This lady was seriously one of the only people to ever get to serious statistical significance in predicting ‘betrayal,’ or to use Rusbult’s language, "relational norm violations."

Caryl Rusbult is probably best known for her “Investment Model” of relationships, which suggests our relationship stability is a function of three things: 1) degree of satisfaction, 2) quality of alternatives, and 3) magnitude of investments (e.g., time, energy, mutual friends). She also argued: “Dependence is greater to the extent that the most important needs in the relationship are better satisfied in that relationship than elsewhere."

You know that saying, “the grass is greener on the other side?” That speaks to comparisons for alternatives. Here, ‘alternative’ refers to someone/relationship other than your primary partner. 

Relational norm violations like “affairs” don’t usually just happen spontaneously. It starts with an openness and curiosity—a gradual turning away from the grass on your side of the fence, which is perfectly lush by the way when you’re watering it enough. 

Neil Barringham: "The grass is greener where you water it." 

Gottman observes that resentment is a relationship killer. If you begin to shift from “my partner did this thing and it kind of sucked but we worked through it” to “my partner always/never does this thing—I don’t deserve this shit and I shouldn’t have to put up with it,” the chances of a relational norm violation increase.

Sue Johnson would probably add that the degree to which partners feel that the other/s (well, she might actually say "other" and potentially sass me for adding the "/s") are 1) accessible, 2) respond when called, and 3) emotionally engaged, impacts the security of the bond, and so trust.

I would argue that the 'degree of satisfaction' in Rustbult's thinking likely associates with what Dr. Sue calls, the "A.R.E. you there for me?" question: are you Accessible, Responsive, and Emotionally Engaged when I need you? It definitely plays into how people consider 'quality of alternatives.' 

Lots of clients use language to describe their affair partner/s like: "He really listens to me and cares how I feel." "She always texts me back immediately when I'm feeling upset and knows just what to say." "We have this emotional connection that I just don't feel at home." 

It makes sense that if you (un)consciously estimate that another partner/s would be more accessible/responsive/engaged, we could predict that playing into a higher likelihood of relational norm violation/s occurring. 

I invite you to explore carylrusbult.com if you want to check out some of her instruments and papers! If you'd like to know more about the science around the relational processes that we tend to see unfurl when trust gets smashed, check out Gottman's Betrayal Cascade.

Some folks giggle when I talk about prevention in the domain of 'betrayal/infidelity' but there's actually a lot we can do when armed with wisdom and solid science! 

Love, 
MJ

Embody Apologies

Have you ever had an apology yelled or forcefully exclaimed at you? Have you ever barked an apology at an upset partner? 

It can be a major shortcut to feeling like a monster... You know, snapping at someone who is already vulnerable and/or crying. But you want so desperately to take the pain away! To make things right.

We can end up getting in a hurry about "getting our apology accepted," and that ends up getting us in hot water thinking that we have atoned, when really we just pressured someone into verbalizing relief for us. 

Fact which we don't learn soon enough here in the West: apologies aren't about us, they're about the person who feels hurt as a result of our behavior. 

I tell clients that no one has the right to tell anyone else if they should forgive, or whom, or when.

It makes sense that so many orient this way around apologies because they were presented, at least in the region where I grew up, as something you GIVE to another person. 

So next time you’re yelling, “I’m sorry OK?!?” at your partner, I want you to remember Harriet Lerner: “Perhaps the best motive behind an apology is the wish to restore one’s integrity, to heal the relationship with one’s own self.”

Well, you’ll be yelling so you probably won’t actually remember wise Harriet because your prefrontal cortex will be on vacation, so think about it now. To heal the relationship with one's own self. 

It makes sense that so many people across all kinds of relationships struggle here, because our culture gives us that vibe that we are supposed to “give” apologies. Like, POOF! Done. Hands clean. Almost like speaking some magic spell or something. And like there's only something external to us that is out of balance that needs to be "fixed." 

Anyone forced by parent/s to perform an apology through gritted teeth even if you were pissed? 

Harriet Lerner is a breath of fresh air in writing on atonement and the art of apology. If you need a really comprehensive guide to understanding the psychology of apology, try Why Won't You Apologize?

What I love the most is her focus on 1) delivering/"performing" the formal apology words AND following through with corrected behavior in the future, and 2) how internal and self-involved the best apologies actually are. 

I really don’t think there’s a more beautiful gift we can give someone we love than non-defensive listening and heartfelt apology. 

If you really hear and feel how you impacted someone, which takes courage and vulnerability—you can seriously grow yourself and your relationships. 

This seems so obvious to me now, but I’m not sure how I could get this notion through to younger versions of myself... That’s probably the point.

I think aging just makes it more likely we’ll be near someone whose happiness and safety matter as much as our own; when you experience that real, mature loving—I don’t know, it just makes it easier to be humble, shut up, listen, and take accountability with apology and through action. 

It's not smart to downplay how our sociocultural upbringings and contexts play into the ways we make rituals around healing wounds and re/building trust. 

In fights in love relationships, in the moment you want there to be a winner sometimes—a right and wrong. Especially if you've been going at it for a while and the parts of your brain/body/nervous system wired for war are activated. 

Only problem with that is, you’re connected. If only one person is right, everyone loses. 

I think it’s Stan Tatkin who calls it “throwing your partner under the bus;” you get the most temporary and hollow ‘victory,’ or what Sue Johnson calls “an awful boobie prize.” 

If you're looking for another model for apology, check out Magi Cooper's 3 Part Apology: 1) Here’s what I regret, 2) this is what I am doing to make sure it doesn’t happen again, and 3) is there anything else you need from me now?

What it really comes down to is that it's less about the words and "fixing" and more about embodying reparative behavior in a consistent way. 

The best apology is a behavior change that lasts. 

Now go drop some jaws with your fresh willingness to be sincere *and* sorry!

Love, 
MJ

How to Minimize Infidelity Fallout

It can be incredibly hard to find resources for relationships in the wake of a discovery of a relational norm violation, aka: "infidelity," or "affair." 

Especially if you're the one who went outside your relationship, or "cheated." And, you know, want to hear something helpful that's geared toward you and doesn't reduce you to a demonized cliché.

In the person-first, non-moralizing tradition of practitioners and researchers like Caryl Rustbult and Esther Perel, I use the following language and invite you to adopt the same: "involved partner" to replace words like, "cheater" and "adulterer;" "hurt partner" to replace words like, "victim" and "betrayed partner;" and "affair partner" to replace, well, use your imagination there. 

I want so share some tips for involved partners, because I observe that most resources online are geared toward hurt partners. 

First, I'd like to normalize an uncomfortable piece here. There's something you should know right from the get-go about Trust First Aid and psychotherapy geared toward repairing big hurts like "affairs." And I want to offer it from a seriously loving place. 

It's unfair. 

All the stuff that maybe you want to be able to do RIGHT AWAY, like get to insights and understand and apologize and take care of your lover and heal that enormous hurt—that doesn't tend to happen in Stage 1. 

If you'd like an amazing resource that can help you better understand the three broad stages of this work, check out Esther Perel's Infidelity Resource Guide. It has descriptions of each stage and questions you can use to guide safe, healing conversations that don't re-wound. I also find that it helps involved partners to print two copies and offer one to hurt partner, saying something along the lines of: "I know your mind has been racing with a million questions. Would you like to see if you'd like to ask any of these?" Just be sure not to jump to Stage 3 questions at first! 

Speaking of, want to know what else just sucks big? 

During Stage 1, we have to stabilize and take care of hurt partner and help them merge your secret timeline with the timeline of their reality and narrative. That's a doozie for hurt partners. Talk about a wacky narrative editing process. You've known about things since, well, you began doing them with affair partner/s, so try not to forget that hurt partner has to have time to make sense of everything. 

What does that mean for you as involved partner if we're doing counseling work together? 

I can give you some support with our therapeutic alliance and I can catch some of the nasty verbal bullets shot your way, but our focus has to be stabilizing and helping hurt partner find the ground and stop spinning so that they will actually be able to hear you when they're ready to go deeper. 

Hurt partner's brain can literally take them on loop after loop after loop until they have made sense of reality. They're not doing it to be annoying, it's just how our brains are wired to account for discrepancies. 

Regardless, for involved partner it can kind of end up feeling like your pain has to be put on hold for a little bit. And you know what's completely tragic about that? A lot of times, the involved partner was actually carrying the brunt of the emotional burden in a relationship and the other partner just had more willpower or fewer opportunities to meet sexy strangers. 

But guess what? If you want to keep your relationship, your best shot is to 1) find an experienced therapist who knows how to work in stages, and 2) keep reminding yourself that a time will come when you can be deeply understood by your partner, forgiven even—that time is just not yet. 

This is where a lot of people ask, "How long does it take to get to Stage 2?"

It depends. Frustrating answer: anywhere between a few sessions to six months, and sometimes longer, especially if one or more partners experienced Trauma in their life and already struggled with trusting others. 

I can tell you something that helps immediately as you start to navigate Stage 1! Brushing up on your sincere apology skills. Therapist and speaker, Harriet Lerner, is officially your new best friend here. She can guide you! 

In general, approach the entire situation with funerary reverence and a deep respect for the fact that something precious has been lost, and it’ll go smoother for you.

Think of the trust recovery process like surviving a storm together on a ship. The first task is to survive the most intense, dangerous part of the squall without capsizing. Once the ship is righted and the storm has passed, everyone can go about cleaning up, re-navigating and re-charting, and pressing on. Wait until you’re no longer bailing water out and putting out fires to address things like power differentials and unfairness that probably contributed to an emotional landscape with perfect conditions for infidelity.

By Stage 2, partners have started to tune into each other's feelings and real intentions and can begin to understand the story from multiple perspectives. They start looking into each other's eyes and crying together. They start moving to deeper insights and say things like, "I just had no idea you felt like that." A sort of next level of apologies can unfurl. Partners feel more security and start taking positive emotional risks and reaching for each other more. 

Once we're in Stage 2, little panics might still crop up here and there, and definitely grief as partners awaken into the full reality of times they weren't there for each other, but the giant crisis feeling has mostly passed.

This, dear involved partner, is when I'll start supporting you to help your partner get a deeper understanding of what set you guys up for this experience. All of your patience and courage and beautiful apologies will start to pay off when you get there. 

So. Let's get really practical. 

Here are 20 of my top favorite tips for involved partners: 

1. Try to keep the time between your actual infidelity—i.e., sexual activity, online relationship, phone sex, etc.—and your disclosure to your partner/s as short as humanly possible. Waiting a long time to disclose a secret relationship increases the complexity/difficulty and length of treatment to build trust again. (Queue: The Strange Boys, “Be Brave.”) 
2. If you’re still in that phase where you're convincing yourself you don't need to tell your partner that you violated an important norm/expectation in your relationship, I would invite you to remind yourself: 1) that secret isn't possible to keep, 2) that that kind of thinking is pretty grandiose and your partner is strong enough to handle the news, and 3) it’s demeaning to say you don't want to tell your secret for fear of hurting the other person—they deserve to be aware and know the truth so they can make conscious decisions that are best for them. 
3. Want to save your relationship? End your affair/s NOW. STAT. ASAP. Sever all connection—stop touching, stop joking about the difficulty of stopping touching, stop communicating absolutely. RADIO SILENCE. Finito. Dunzo. "Never ever ever ever getting back togetherrrr."
4. If you keep a secret bank account or messaging app, get rid of them. If you really don’t want to disconnect from affair partner, like with all of your being, consider seeing a therapist to do some "discernment" work and explore how much you *really* want to stay with your primary partner.
5. Please, please avoid repeatedly lying/avoiding answering your partner’s direct questions like, “Is there something I should know?” "Is there something going on?" or even, “Are you cheating on me?” It's called 'gaslighting' if you let someone think they're crazy when you know they're not and I’m pretty sure if we studied this in the lab, you could slap on 1+ month of therapy for every time an involved partner denied a true allegation from a hurt partner. "You're making a huge deal over nothing! It's probably your anxiety," takes forever to heal. 
6. Lying by omission can feel as bad or worse to hurt partners than bald-face lies because it can feel like pressure is now on them to be ever-vigilant for future signs of the unwanted behavior happening again—like it’s somehow their responsibility to police the situation for signs that they need to check in and make sure that you aren’t still deceiving. 
7. Tell the truth and nothing but the truth, but do use a helping professional to help navigate co-creating a shared version of “the whole truth.” Do NOT share the most explicit, sexual details of your affair—especially at first—with your hurt partner. Unfortunately hurt partners tend to seek answers to these types of painful questions when they're most unable to handle it, as Julie Gottman says. Typically, it never becomes necessary to explore these painful images.
8. It’s possible that sexual details won't be the most painful information for your partner to hear, though, so also be mindful of how you convey details about the emotional connection you had/have with your affair partner. Looking into someone's eyes as they wake up the next morning can be more painful to imagine than the preceding raunchy night of sex. 
9. Maybe your partner found out about your affair/s via a tech-based medium. In my experience, this can tend to go along with a lengthier treatment and more complex prognosis, especially if the hurt partner saw sexually explicit photos/videos/audio or written material like text exchanges over many weeks. It can be a horrific, Domino-like experience to see something that got built up over weeks/months/years unfurl before hurt partner's eyes in real time over a few hours. 
10. Consider mindfully limiting who you disclose details of the infidelity to and make sure to be on the same page with your hurt partner about who gets told what by who and when. I recommend finding ONE person you really trust who you can talk to, and encourage your hurt partner to do the same until you can get into a counseling session where you can have a longer version of this critical conversation and really make an actionable plan that limits pain for everyone. 
11. Steer clear of verbally defending your affair partner/s to your primary partner—espeeecially at first. Maybe you also lied to your affair partner and you feel guilty for what they are going through—that’s nice and humanistic of you, but keep this to yourself and don’t stick up for your affair partner if your primary partner bashes them because it feels like you're allying with affair partner. You have to repair your “couple bubble.” There might be a space in the future to make amends with your affair partner, but if your goal is to stay with your primary partner—keep quiet or talk shit, but don’t talk about how great your affair partner is or how undeserving of pain/wrath/etc. they are. 
12. Make it CRYSTAL clear that you wouldn’t go near this person with a 10-foot pole even if someone paid you millions of dollars. I’m not kidding. Maybe all you can think about is being in the arms of your affair partner right now, but if you really want to be with your primary partner—if you want a life with this person, you’ll do whatever it takes. Without hesitation. It’s moments of hesitation that you’ll look back on with regret.  
13. "Name it to tame it." Adopt a reflecting and validating style and try to postpone problem-solving and fix-it-oriented responses when listening to your hurt partner. Arguably one of the hardest things you’ll likely go through in the coming weeks and months will be the barrage of tears and/or "How could you?” "How could you?" is just "Why?" dressed up for a showdown. Validate, validate, validate: “You’re so hurt.” “I’ve caused you so much pain.” “It hurts and it doesn’t make sense.” “You feel afraid—I feel afraid too.” When we feel out of control, our urge can be to try to fix, but your partner needs to feel their feels so that their nervous system can discharge the energy and get back to being regulated and in balance. 
14. Can't soothe your partner? Our ability to soothe our partner/s is rooted in secure attachment; being accessible, responsive, open, and safely emotionally engaged. As the stability of the relationship is restored, you will find your efforts to soothe your partner more and more accepted/successful and eventually reciprocated. If you can just stick with your partner through this difficult time, there’s nothing more powerful you can do to demonstrate your commitment and ability to be trustworthy and provide a safe emotional home. 
15. If you feel angry, overly-blamed, resentful, or just plain pissed during the early stages of the trust recovery process, find a good counselor or trustworthy close friend who you can complain to when it's feeling rough. “It’s not like I killed someone,” and similar minimizing responses are best saved for a bestie or homeboy, NOT for the wounded partner whose nervous system might very much feel something along the lines of what happens during bereavement.
16. Attempt to see your hurt partner’s behaviors and responses through an attachment lens—look for the frightened little kid inside them who’s just plain scared to death that this all means you don’t love them and you’re going to peace out. What you have to remember through all this is: your partner's responses are protective and adaptive. Without any moralizing we can just agree that infidelity as a context (especially in the US where there’s a prominent Judeo-Christian heritage and monogamy-centered sociocultural values and norms) is ripe with conditions for both of you to feel what attachment theorists call "primal panic.” 
17. Try to give yourself some extra, gentle TLC throughout this process. Identify some activities that are health-promoting (e.g., go for a walk, do a yoga class, paint, take a hot bath) you can easily do in about 30 minutes or so that make you feel really relaxed and schedule them into your calendar. It can be easy for involved partners to stop taking care of themselves and if you aren't balanced and healthy, it'll be really hard to get the relationship flourishing. 
18. Think deeply about WHY you *really* went outside your relationship without your partner knowing. When you ask yourself, "Why?" don't settle for the surface bs answers your brain is likely offer up first… “I was drunk.” “Someone wanted me for the first time in years.” “I'm an idiot!” “I just couldn't say no.” “My partner deserves better than me anyway.” What needs have maybe been going ignored? When was the last time you felt close and connected? What do you believe a relationship is even for? 
19. It might be too early for this perspective, so table it if it feels that way, but these painful experiences can give us a golden opportunity to do some existential heavy lifting. If we can see it this way—a chance to reevaluate, learn, and grow—as individuals and together, it can become a powerfully transformative season for a relationship. Think deeply about your primary partner and what you adore, appreciate, treasure, and respect about them. If you're struggling, your relationship could be in what The Gottman Institute calls “Negative Sentiment Override,” which makes partners see things in a negative light. Speak with a helping professional before deciding to throw in the towel. 
20. Never forget: you are a whole, worthy human who is deserving of love. You don't have to be perfect, you have to show up. Breathe out. 

The last thing I want to leave you with is a saying in my industry: the grass is greener where you water it. Esther Perel said, "If people brought to their relationships 1/10 of the boldness + playfulness they do to their affairs, they might not feel the need to stray."

Love, 
MJ