When an affair is discovered, people inevitably, but unhelpfully, point fingers. The gossip machine starts working overtime. “He was always over friendly”, “I always thought she might be having an affair”, “Why she staying with him?”, “How did he not realise?”, “This was always going to happen”. In essence we are generally looking of someone to blame.
It wasn’t me
On a first meeting a client recently came in very distressed from a counselling session she had received elsewhere. She explained that she was the victim of an affair, not the perpetrator, but was made to feel like she had made the affair happen. Whilst her previous session had not been handled particularly sensitively I can see how the misunderstanding may have occurred.
It is very rare for one person to be totally happy and secure in a relationship whilst another desperately unhappy. We generally know if our relationship is emotionally healthy or not. Whilst affairs do occur in contented relationships they are not the norm. Talking to my new client she understood that there were various issues in the marriage but would never have resorted to an affair and therefore didn’t understand why she was now being “blamed”.
She wasn’t. Not by me or the previous counsellor. The fact that this was how she was experiencing it was possibly because she had blamed herself from the very start. However, all she’d had from family and friends was sympathy and being treated like a victim. This was a safe and comforting place to be and helped her bury the blame she had initially felt. Accessing it, and understanding it and working with it was hard.
It’s not you it’s the relationship
In session I always try and eliminate blame as far as possible. This isn’t ignoring the feelings of the “victim” but it isn’t helpful to a relationship to remain in the victim/perpetrator roles. There is time for acknowledging the pain and understanding the hurt. There is also a time to look at the relationship, why it happened and where we go from here. We work together on when those times are right.
If we need to blame then it can be helpful to blame the relationship. Take it away from the individuals and blame the co-created way of engaging. Again, this isn’t dismissing the the distress and upset the affair has caused but it is helpful if a couple are wanting to re-build. This of course takes time but it is a good starting point.
External factors
The relationship is created by the two individuals but how it operates is influenced by many external factors. Jobs, money, health, family are just a few forces that shape our relationship. How we manage them between us can shape how our relationship feels.
The best way to stop these factors from acting negatively on our relationship is to talk about them. If we can regularly voice any concerns about our health or any money worries for example we can avoid resentment and build emotional connection – key to any healthy relationship.
I’ve only got myself to blame
We wouldn’t ever condone an affair, but they do happen. Whether it’s a one night drunken mistake, a carefully planned rendezvous or a double life they do generally get discovered. Whilst perpetrators won’t escape blame from many corners they often get the hardest time from themselves. We have worked with many people who have had or are having affairs. The guilt and shame is usually immense.
There are a multitude of reasons as to why an affair has happened and although many would argue that it is a conscious decision we would always look a bit deeper to understand the person behind the affair. An individual, post affair, usually finds they are on a long and difficult journey with themselves trying to balance the self torture and working on the future.
We can make sense of things if we find the reasons why. So whilst never condoning we also never blame. We’ll ask some questions, dig a little deeper and try and make sense of all the situations we’re presented with.
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This post was written by Yvonne
Source: https://www.affairclinic.co.uk/whos-to-blame/
The content is originally owned by Yvonne. Visit the site here for more interesting articles.
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