Can Your Relationship Survive Infidelity?

Once life begins to re-stabilise a little, the focus of therapy can shift to understanding the reasons, the inspiration for the affair. It’s often useful to focus on what the partner who had the affair was looking for, hoping for, yearning for within themselves, rather than focusing on the qualities of the third person, which is what the aggrieved partner may feel drawn to do. Often an affair is motivated by a feeling that something is missing in life, inside oneself more than in a partner. The third person may simply have been the person who was conveniently available at the time when the affairing partner was yearning desperately to feel young again or virile, or loved, rather than them being better than the long-term partner in some mysterious way. It’s helpful to have full disclosure about what happened but it’s equally important for the deceived partner not to torture themselves unnecessarily by asking to replay intimate details of betrayal .