It might depend on who did the cheating, the husband or the wife. My experience, and that of most of the men in my support group whose wives cheated is that this gentle, speak from your pain approach isn't effective. Pretty much all of our wives were the same, disengaged, avoidant, uncooperative. Mine outright refused to read or listen to podcasts. A more successful approach was to separate, emotionally for sure but sometimes physically. Other men have basically told their wives "I'm done trying to save the marriage. Either step up or leave." We pretty much all discovered that our wives would be disengaged for as long as we put up with it. It takes some healing and some strength to get there, but I advise every betrayed spouse do not try to reconcile with a spouse who isn't all-in and committed to amending their cheating and repairing the marriage. You'll just get more hurt. Doesn't mean you have to divorce, but you'll probably have to separate to get them to wake up. For example, I asked my unfaithful wife why she doesn't apologize when she sees my anguish. She said "I already apologized, I'm not apologizing anymore." Totally the wrong heart and the wrong attitude. Absolutely nothing to work with and it was so, so foolish for me to even think about staying.
There's a lot I agreed with in this video. Treatment for the unfaithful, figuring out why they cheated, this is critical for the relationship to survive. For comparison I went to marriage therapy with my unfaithful wife and it was absolutely horrible. The therapist concluded that my wife cheated because she was unhappy, and so the solution then was to treat her unhappiness; Our sessions were about addressing my wife's grievances, how I contributed to her unhappiness, things I could have done differently, etc. and her adultery basically got zero attention. The therapist told me to stop talking about it, told my wife not to answer questions, it was basically a two-against-one gang fight. I quit shortly after. There's a lot of well meaning therapists that just end up making things worse. What I appreciated about this video is that I didn't hear any reference to the state of the marriage or the typical drivel about how the betrayed spouse should share blame.
I think we should be honest, the people watching these videos are the betrayed partner, not the unfaithful. Generally the unfaithful partner does not research infidelity recovery, and so the advice to the unfaithful partners is mostly going to go unheard. This is OK with me, because my view is what the unfaithful spouse wants is very subordinate to what the betrayed spouse wants, and it's going to be for a while. In other words, I don't care what the unfaithful spouse wants. My focus is on the betrayed spouse. I chased my ambivalent, defensive, avoidant, uncooperative, unfaithful wife for 1.5 years before giving up and moving to divorce. She softened a bit but just like the video suggests, it was too late and I never trusted her, I still don't. I would be open to trying again, in theory, but I can't imagine the circumstances that would have to happen to bring that about. Appreciate that video, despite feeling that the audience we want to see it, is never going to see it.
Your online resources and book really helped me to help my partner to understand how much he truly had hurt us and the devastating affects that was and still is having on me and ‘us’…. A very long and painful journey, one I hope will be worth it in the end 🤞 Truly thankful for finding you and your wonderful resources! ❤
Let's talk about workplace violence- fraudulent documentation in Healthcare. Elder Abuse in Healthcare building where I worked. My trauma COMES from there. Can you help me?
