This question was posted recently on a Marriage & Family Therapy LinkedIn Group Page.
Briefly here are my thoughts;
Affairs lie on top of a broken communication code that kept the couples from communicating their true intimate selves. Experience as an EFT Couples therapist has proven many times over that relationships can become much more honest, vulnerable, authentic and intimate if we as couple therapists can help a couple can move through & beyond the shame and blame often associated with the revelation and aftermath of an affair. Certainly not an easy task. Books have been written!!!! “Getting past the affair,” Synder, Baucom & Gordon is a very good one.
Here is what one non participating partner wrote, after 32 sessions of EFCT, and following the establishment of emotional security that was sorely lacking in the lead up to the affair, “I don’t think we have ever known each other like we do now. We never knew each other in our first 17 years like we do now. We have come leaps and bounds.”
While absolutely not condoning affair behavior, perhaps they can be the “wake-up call” that must happen for partners to authentically awake to each other.
Joseph