Endless Tears

My husband and I are on our way to the north Georgia mountains to spend yet another gorgeous fall weekend with some dear friends. As my husband took a call from a fellow racer, I gazed off at the exquisite color of the leaves. Something along the side of the road caught my eye. It was a roadside memorial. Someone had taken their last breath at that very spot. A chill ran down my spine.

It was a cross made of red and white flowers, faded and graying. An immense sadness gripped me, thinking not only of the woman (judging from the color of the flowers) who had died there, but for the family and friends who had erected that small, poignant reminder of their lost loved one.

Whether she was young or old I'll never know. But somehow I imagined her to be in her early thirties. I imagined her mother, howling in anguish upon learning of the death of her daughter. I knew for a certainty that her life was forever changed in that moment. A mother myself, I can't fathom how she could continue another day without her beloved child.

We use the word "closure" so freely and so reassuringly in this culture. But closure is a lie. There is no such thing. Yes, as people like to remind us, life does go on, after a fashion. But it is never, ever the same. Emotional scar tissue begins to form around that raw, gaping wound. But the scar lives on, and often it aches like hell.

I couldn't stop imagining this woman's life after the loss of her daughter. Was she physically unable to get out of bed for days, weeks, even months? Did she lose her appetite and begin to wither away? Did she withdraw into the privacy of her home, away from the well-meaning, but painful, questions of friends and family?

How long was it before she felt she could begin to breathe again, to look around and see some small spot of beauty or comfort in the world? How long before that wracking, searing pain began to recede ever so slowly and she had a day here and there that, to the outside world, looked "normal"? For, mercifully, just as the flowers on the roadside cross have faded in the baking sun of the Georgia summer and the cold gray drizzle of winter, her unrelenting pain, though never absent, will also begin to fade.

The Holidays: Blessing or Curse?

It's that glorious time of year again. The heat of summer has abated (this was Georgia's hottest summer on record), and the light is changing along with the leaves. The calendar's pace seems to accelerate, each day passing faster and faster. As I schedule time with clients, family, and friends, the amount of available time seems to mysteriously dwindle.

Not that many years ago, when my children returned to school the middle of each August, a sort of mad rush toward the holidays would begin. With my girls gone during much of the day, I began planning Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations. I began compiling gift lists based on hints dropped here and there, as well as observation of what my daughters seemed most interested in at the time, along with gift ideas that I thought would surprise, fascinate, inspire, or guide them. I planned elaborate menus for family dinners and dinner parties for sixty!

My elder daughter was home sick one day early in the school year. Over a lunch of chicken noodle soup and crackers, the subject of Christmas came up. We played a Windham Hill holiday CD as we chatted. One of the tracks had a rather Mexican flair, and we began imagining what a Mexican Christmas party would look like. We brainstormed about menus, decorations, and music. We were off and running with the idea.

My daughter was well enough for school the next day, but I kept returning to our lunchtime conversation. I decided to turn that vision of a Mexican Christmas party into a holiday reality. Over the next couple of months, I made hundreds of tissue paper flowers and yarn ojos de dios ("eye of God") to decorate Christmas trees and grace earthenware pots filled with tiny twinkling lights. I bought small chimineas and Mexican crèches. I purchased all sorts of linens in various shades of red and green, as well as vast quantities of votives and other types of candles. In other words, I transformed my home into a cozy suburban Mexican restaurant. We planned the musical selections and an extensive menu. We made nametags and ensured that everyone on the guest list would know at least one other person.

The evening went off without a hitch, everything as planned, and people thoroughly enjoyed themselves and the somewhat unconventional Christmas celebration. Our months of preparation paid off beautifully. As a result, I felt emboldened to plan other large-scale events and throw myself into months of cooking and decorating. These events were a labor of love for me, but eventually the "labor" part of the process came to loom large. While my children enjoyed the end products of my labors, I wasn't so sure about my then husband. His actions made it clear that he resented getting pulled into the process. I couldn't really blame him. After all, these shindigs were my idea and I didn't consult him about them, other than to check to see if he'd be in town that evening.

Years later, after my children were grown and had left the home and I had relocated to Georgia to start a new life, time didn't permit me to plan and host these events. After all, I was either teaching or seeing clients. And space was a factor, as well. I had downsized my home and was operating in a much smaller kitchen. I found myself going through a period of mourning my bygone entertaining diva days. I even felt guilty that I had done it for my family before, but wasn't able to do it for my beloved new husband. Frankly, he was probably relieved, knowing that I'd be preoccupied with my preparations and in a state of high anxiety.

I went through a few transitional years during which I did feel guilty about not serving up entirely homemade dishes at Thanksgiving and Christmas. I began purchasing pre-packaged holiday meals at my local grocery. To my surprise, they often rivaled my own recipes. They weren't inexpensive, but the really lovely part of finally giving myself permission to go this route was that it freed up several days before each holiday to spend with my husband and with visiting friends and relatives. This became a gift I gave to myself and them, the gift of time and loving attention.

As you prepare for your holidays this year--whatever you celebrate--perhaps a few moments of reflection on what you truly value for yourself and your family are in order. Are the holidays a time of anxiety and stress over all you need to get done, or are they occasions for reconnecting with loved ones and sharing yourself generously with them? As we approach these sacred times this year, I wish you the joys of togetherness and contentment with the blessings in your life.

The New "Normal"?

In my clinical practice, I see couples struggling with various aspects of their marriage. It may be sex, money, infidelity, childrearing, communication, you name it. For many couples, by the time they make the decision to seek therapy, significant damage has already been done to the relationship. Highly toxic attitudes and patterns of interaction may have developed which make it extremely difficult to pull the marriage back from the brink of dissolution. And so some of these couples end up divorcing.

As a therapist, my task then becomes helping them navigate the process of divorce with as little emotional damage as possible. If there are children, this involves helping them forge a plan for coparenting that keeps the best interests of the children front and center. Even when there is significant animosity between the ex-spouses, emotions must be managed so that parents are responsible and cooperative caretakers. The children's needs always come first.

Another therapeutic task is helping the partners to begin to utilize the divorce process as a vehicle for personal transformation. Yes, divorce feels like a tragedy to many people. It can lead to feelings of depression, lowered self-esteem, even worthlessness and hopelessness. But, like all life crises, it holds the potential to help us discover new or hitherto untapped aspects of ourselves. For instance, if one has been financially dependent on a spouse, divorce may force us to become resourceful and self-sufficient. If one has never lived alone, it may require that we learn to tolerate solitude and loneliness.

There are a number of common emotional responses to divorce. The partner who wants the divorce may feel an overwhelming sense of relief. For the partner who wants instead to save the marriage, feelings can range from anger to fear and anxiety to depression. An almost universal response to divorce is the sense that one has failed at something that was meaningful, a major life task, as well as a primary source of one's identity.

It's common for those who've gone through a divorce to view a previous marriage as "failed". After all, the " 'til death do us part" clearly didn't work, did it? We rarely marry with the thought that we'll divorce. Most of us still hold to the fairy tale ideal of "happily ever after". This may carry us through the stress of wedding planning and the honeymoon. The real test of the marriage begins the day after the honeymoon ends, however. The newlywed couple now begins to settle into daily life. Stresses and strains of jobs, finances, and in-laws can quickly take their toll. The newlyweds may find themselves arguing and unable to resolve conflict.

While at any given time, more than half of us are in a first marriage, a second marriage is not uncommon. Approximately forty-three percent of all first marriages end in divorce within the first fifteen years, but seventy-five percent of those people will go on to remarry, usually within the first three years after a divorce. An interesting fact is that, for most of this country's history, remarriage occurred after a spouse had died. By the late 1980's, less than ten percent of those who remarried did so because they had lost a spouse.

This certainly lines up with what I observe in my clinical practice, in which it's not all that rare these days to see a couple, one of whom is in a second or third marriage, and the other one in a third or fourth marriage. Given the prevalence of divorce and remarriage in our culture, perhaps it's time to reconsider what "normal" means in the context of marriage. Our ideal, for many years, has been monogamy--one man and one woman (please note that the question of gay and lesbian marriage is a different topic) for life. Of course, this often takes place after an extensive period of dating numerous other people until we find the "right" one. The expectation is that we will then settle down and be sexually and emotionally faithful to our spouse.

The subject of divorce, infidelity, and why monogamy seems so fragile in this society is a vast subject and requires attention in a separate piece. But the reality is that, while we continue to pay lip service to monogamy, many of us will end our first marriages and enter into a second marriage--perhaps even a third and a fourth--as time passes. As a culture, we're still devoted to the institution of marriage and the ideal of total, eternal commitment. We still believe we can "make a go of it" with another person, that this time we've found the right one. Statistics tell a different story. The odds of second and subsequent marriages lasting decrease with each new marriage.

So, we hold onto the hope that our marriage will last forever. And, if both partners give it their very best effort and cherish the relationship, it probably will. However, for approximately one-half of us, something goes awry. We get tired of working on the marriage, we begin leading parallel lives, we get careless with outside relationships and an affair develops, and so on. The outcome is divorce and, in many cases, remarriage. We tend to refer to this pattern, somewhat tongue in cheek, as "serial monogamy". And perhaps this is the new "normal" for love and marriage, American style.

Jeanette Sliwinski: Broken Dreams

While pounding the treadmill this morning, I scrolled through my TV guide and came across the program, "Snapped". A long-time true crime and mystery buff, I figured this would be as good a means of distracting myself from the tedium of exercising as anything else. This episode featured the story of Jeanette Sliwinski, a young woman whose life came into sharp public focus on July 14, 2005, when she took the lives of three innocent people in an apparent attempt to end her own life. Driving at over 90 mph, she slammed her red Mustang into the back of a Honda Civic waiting at a red light. John Glick and Michael Dahlquist likely never knew what hit them. Doug Meis, however, lived for several hours after the dreadful event. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Jeanette's story is a tragedy from a number of perspectives. The families and friends of her victims will forever be deprived of their companionship, their smiles, and their unfolding life stories. The world will never know what they might have gone on to accomplish. But Jeanette's story, too, is sad beyond words. A withdrawn, socially awkward child who seemed uncomfortable in her own skin, she managed to "reinvent" herself during high school into a physically striking young woman. And her appearance became her identity and sense of self.

Jeanette worked as a stripper (perhaps as early as high school, by some accounts) and a lingerie model to help finance her college education. In 2002, she and her boyfriend moved to Los Angeles, where she dreamed of becoming a supermodel. Over time, however, she found work only as a trade show model, considered to be the lowest rung of the ladder in the world of modeling. It was also during this time that Jeanette's boyfriend broke up with her. Her hopes for career and romance dashed, she unhappily returned home to live with her parents.

By all accounts, Jeanette's mental health was tenuous during this time. She was treated for an unspecified mental illness with a variety of medications. She was also allegedly self-medicating with herbal preparations and using alcohol and club drugs. Her mental status became the central issue in her trial, with her attorneys offering an insanity defense.

While watching her story unfold, I couldn't help but wonder how things might have turned out differently if Jeanette's modeling dreams had come true and if her relationship with her boyfriend had continued. Would she have found the happiness she apparently thought that life would bring her? Would she have gone on to live a productive life instead of making headlines for killing three people? Or, what if she had anchored her ultimate life dreams to something less fleeting and superficial than physical appearance? Clearly, the world of modeling makes stringent demands in terms of diet and exercise, a willingness to tolerate being objectified, and cutthroat competition.

I contemplated the role of personal dreams in all our lives. They start early for many of us--veterinarian, lawyer, teacher, doctor, artist. They are the point on our own personal horizon that identifies us and keeps us moving forward during good times and bad. As children, these dreams remain largely that--fantasies that provide us with comfort, escape, and a sense of direction in life.

As we move into our teen years and begin to have some control over the realization of our dreams, a number of things can happen. Depending on the clarity of our dreams, opportunities for exploration, support from parents and teachers, and the overall level of psychological health of our environment, we may well make significant progress toward accomplishing our goals. We can seek out opportunities for volunteer work, take music or art lessons, join a sports team, etc. These opportunities allow us to assess how much of a match a particular activity is for our personality and our individual preferences.

During this time, many of us essentially put our dreams on hold. We don't take steps to explore them, even though we may continue to identify them as personal goals. This may be a function of our level of motivation, or we may get somewhat sidetracked by the peer scene that is so compelling during the high school years. Then there are those young people whose dreams wither due to lack of nurturance. Or perhaps their dreams are actively discouraged or even ridiculed during the adolescent years. Parents may exert a negative effect on pursuit of dreams. he social environment in school, as well, may prove overwhelming for some students.

At any rate, whether due to lack of opportunity to explore different activities, lack of parental or teacher support, or serious difficulties in psychosocial or psychosexual development, one's dreams can become derailed. The future one had envisioned turns into day after day tedium, or, worse, a nightmare, as in the case of Jeanette Sliwinski.

There is no ultimate psychological "safety net". Teachers, guidance counselors, fellow students, parents, and friends can all strive to be alert to individuals who appear to be unduly struggling with life. Jeanette Sliwinski had already received mental health services and was scheduled to be seen on the very day that she snuffed out three lives, ostensibly in an attempt to take her own life.

I can't help but wonder how things might have turned out differently for her, John Glick, Michael Dahlquist, and Doug Meis had her life dreams been different, or at least nurtured differently, and had she accepted the harsh reality that few women make it to the top in the world she had chosen for herself. Unlike the victims of her incredibly selfish act, Jeanette Sliwinski will get a second chance at life. She was paroled after serving less than half her sentence. She may even be eligible for a driver's license this fall. One can only wonder what her dreams for herself are now and how they will impact those around her.

Five Steps to Affair Recovery

Have you or your partner had an affair? Have you tried to "get past it", but just can't? As a psychologist, I witness couples struggling to put their marriages back together. The betrayed wife, for example, may decide she has to monitor her husband's every move, and he may agree, in his guilt and his desperation to reassure her, that it's OK to do that. Some husbands have even told me that, if their wife is so angry that she wants to physically assault them, they're willing to tolerate that. They feel they deserve that for the pain they've caused her.

Many couples struggling with the aftermath of infidelity want very badly to repair the marriage. After all, they have history together (often decades), they are financial and household partners, and they likely have children together. And, in spite of an affair, they may still love each other very deeply. In other words, they have a lot of themselves and their lifetimes invested in the relationship.

One common mistake that couples make is waiting to get help. As with other types of psychological and relational distress, they may think that if they ignore it or try to cope with it on their own, it may seem a bit less real or serious than if they admit they need professional help. Or perhaps they don't want to spend the time or money. Unfortunately, by the time some couples come to the conclusion that they can't fix the relationship on their own, it may be too late. Too much damage may have been done. The distrust which follows an affair may have become too deeply entrenched; negative communications may have become the only messages conveyed; and dysfunctional ways of thinking about and behaving toward each other may have become habits which are hard to break. In other words, the couple has become "stuck" in a destructive cycle of anger, punishment, distrust, and misery.

But there is some good news in all of this. Couples who are willing to reach out to a psychotherapist who is both knowledgeable and skilled at working with infidelity issues can often find hope and healing. While there are no guarantees, they often find they can learn new, more authentic and more effective, ways of communicating with each other. They can work toward rebuilding a feeling of emotional safety and security for the betrayed spouse. They can work toward understanding how the affair came about in the first place and what role it played in their marriage. And they can develop a new vision for their marriage and their future.

There are five critical steps in recovering from an affair. While the steps tend to follow a predictable sequence, they do overlap, so that a couple may be working on more than one task or step at a time. The first step is REMORSE on the part of the partner who had the affair. Remorse, in this context, is a deep, distressing feeling of guilt over the pain one's affair has caused one's spouse. This can come about in two ways. A spouse may discover an affair and confront the participating spouse about it. Or the spouse who had the affair feels tremendous guilt, worries that the husband or wife will learn of the affair, and divulges it to his or her partner. One's remorse over one's actions must be openly and sincerely communicated. You can't expect your husband or wife to know how truly sorry you are for the pain you've caused him and for the damage you've done to your marriage without communicating it. And your remorse must be sincere. If not, you run the risk of making matters worse. Anything less than a genuine, heartfelt apology will merely wound your partner more deeply and make you appear even less trustworthy.

REGRET is related to remorse, but is subjectively a very different phenomenon. Regret is complex and, at the risk of offending some readers, I'll say that it may not be absolutely necessary for rebuilding a marriage. Therefore, I'm not treating it as a separate step. Remember that remorse is the first step and is that deep, heartfelt sorrow for the pain and distress you inflict on a partner when you have an affair.

The role of regret in affair recovery is complicated, and may actually be the most difficult part of it. It implies wishing, on some level, that you hadn't had the affair, wishing that you could undo past actions. And this is the hardest part for some individuals. Yes, they are sorrowful about the pain they've caused a spouse and the devastation they've wreaked on their marriage. But they may have very fond memories of the affair or the affair partner. The affair likely served some important function for them at the time. After all, people have affairs because they feel good--at least, in the beginning. We'll look at the reasons people engage in affairs in another post, but suffice it to say for now that it's often a combination of the exhilaration, the novelty, and the ways it makes us feel desirable. An affair offers a heady cocktail of emotions and experiences, and even after it has ended, the participants may be loathe to relinquish the memories, in much the same way one might not want to part with a cherished photo or keepsake which connects us to some part of our past and provides comfort or joy.

It's precisely because of the positive aspect of affairs that it can be so difficult for some people to feel regret. They may feel remorse, want to repair the marriage, and have absolutely no intention of recommencing the affair. But they are reluctant or unwilling to try to give up the positive feelings they have about the affair or the affair partner. They may even mourn the loss of the affair and, on some level, blame the spouse for it ending. This mindset, while perhaps understandable, complicates the tasks a couple must complete in order to repair their marriage. It suggests that the spouse who had the affair is willing to devote most--but not all--of himself to that process and to the new relationship. Thus, those marriages in which the spouse who had the affair can genuinely come to feel regret for it probably stand the greatest likelihood of restoration.

Both partners must RECOMMIT to the marriage. This stage may sound extremely simple. You either decide--or don't--that you intend to work on rebuilding your marriage. And, in a certain sense, it is that simple. To recommit involves an act of will, a decision. While you will never forget how your spouse betrayed you, you make a decision to forgive--based on your partner's remorse and your own level of motivation--and to agree to work on repairing the relationship. There are no guarantees in the area of affair recovery, but recommitment is not a partial or "if, then maybe" process. Both partners must fully and unequivocally dedicate themselves to participating in the work of repair.

While recommitment to the marriage is essential for relationship repair, both partners may not reach that decision at the same time. For instance, a wife who has had an affair and terminated it may know immediately that she wants to stay in her marriage and make it work. That may have been the determining factor in her ending the affair. Her husband, however, may feel so betrayed that he needs time to consider his alternatives and contemplate whether he can ever trust her again. Or, upon learning of her husband's affair, a wife may state from the outset that she wants to do whatever it takes to keep the family intact. Her husband may still have positive feelings for his affair partner, however, and be conflicted about what he wants.

The point is that recommitment by both partners is necessary for recovery from an affair to take place, but it may begin at different times. But only with full commitment to the process can the other steps effectively begin.

RESTORATION of trust is the "nuts and bolts" phase which involves the couple sitting down and regularly evaluating and planning the concrete steps they need to take to help the betrayed partner begin to feel more emotionally secure. The details and the conditions that emerge from tis stage will be different for each couple, but they might involve things like an elaborate coordination of times to communicate with each other, whether by phone, email, or text. If the partner who had the affair travels frequently on business, it might involve the betrayed partner calling the hotel rather than her husband's cell phone. A couple may decide to meet for lunch of coffee two or three times a week, just to take time out of their busy work days, to check in and emotionally reconnect with each other. If the spouse who had the affair must work with the former affair partner, it might involve spelling out in detail the conditions under which the two work together; for example, no lunches or dinners alone, no traveling together, no communication about personal lives, with the betrayed spouse checking emails and phone messages in order to feel comfortable that the arrangement is being adhered to.

The question that invariably arises for couples, particularly for the spouse who had the affair, is how long this kind of monitoring needs to go on. Unfortunately, there's no single answer to that question. Each couple is different. For some it may be only a few weeks, for others it may last up to a year. There are a few factors, however, that determine how protracted this part of the process of healing may be. First, there's the baseline level of trust which the betrayed partner tends to feel in intimate relationships. If his expectations about fidelity and trust have been violated before and he tends to feel emotionally fragile in this area, the process will likely take longer than if he generally felt secure in his relationships. Second, there's the question of opportunity for renewing the affair (or for a new one to develop). That is, if the partner who had the affair travels frequently, spends much of his time away from home, or in the company of individuals who aren't respectful of his marriage, there is enhanced opportunity for extramarital involvement. And third, the intentions of the former affair partner need to be considered. If she is at all still motivated to pursue the affair, extra vigilance on the part of both spouses will need to be exercised; for example, they may need to send a jointly written message that she is to have no further contact with the spouse who participated in the affair.

My response to couples who ask the "how long" question is that your intuition will guide you in this area. At some point, the betrayed spouse will begin to feel that he can relax in this area, that he doesn't need to monitor his wife's activities so closely. He will feel more comfortable relying on her to truthfully account for herself, and the time and energy spent in hypervigilance will begin to feel too costly. It's time to adopt a new baseline for communication and accountability and to get on with things.

Note: I always address with the couples the reality that the decision to trust again involves risk. The spouse who betrayed you once could betray you again. Keeping in touch with your spouse via cell phone doesn't guarantee that he is where he says he is or with whom he says he is. This is where your risk tolerance and risk aversion come into play.

The next step is REWRITING the narrative of your marriage to include the affair. Each of us has a "story" about our life that we tell ourselves and others. For example, "As a kid, I had asthma and couldn't play sports like the other kids". "I was a nerd in high school". "I was a jock and my world revolved around sports; I felt valued and valuable only when my team was winning". "I was painfully shy and had very few friends as I was growing up". "I was an only child and envied kids from large families". "I was the middle child and felt eclipsed by my first-born sibling and by the "baby" of the family--it was hard to get my parents' attention". "When my parents divorced, I was sure it was because of something I had done; ever since, I've worked very hard to be 'good' in relationships". And so on.

We also have stories about our marriages that include how we met, what we first thought and felt about each other, and milestones in the relationship (for example, our first argument, the first time we had sex, meeting our in-laws, our first "real" job, etc.). These stories are important narratives about who we are, choices we've made, obstacles we've overcome and those we still struggle with, and who we aspire to be, both individually and as a couple. For example, the guy who seemed like just a geek actually has an irresistible sense of humor. Or, you've struggled with self-esteem issues your whole life, and the girl you met in college makes you feel like there's nothing you can't do. Or, you only feel like you can interact with your wife's coworkers at a cocktail party when you've had a few drinks before leaving home. Or, you love your wife and children dearly, can't imagine a better partner, but you can't stop thinking about other women in sexual ways and wondering what it would be like to be with them.

When there has been an affair, these narratives--both those about ourselves as individuals and those about our marriage--need to be rewritten. The new narrative needs to incorporate the facts of the affair--who, what, when, where, and how. In other words, the narrative needs to account for who the affair partner was, how you met, and how you managed to conduct the affair. Most importantly, it needs to account for why. And this is the part that may take some time. Frequently, a betrayed spouse wants most of all to understand why the affair occurred. She may ask, "How could you do this to me? What was missing in our marriage? What did she have that I didn't? Why did you feel you had to go outside the marriage? The reality is that the participating partner may not initially understand what motivated him to engage in the affair.

This is some of the most difficult work in the therapeutic process--exploring why. In working with my clients, I usually frame the question in terms of "What made you vulnerable to an affair?" It's important to emphasize throughout the process of affair recovery that understanding and vulnerability are not a "pass". The spouse who had the affair must, from the outset, take responsibility for her actions. Nothing in a marriage ever justifies an affair. But understanding what was occurring in one's life, one's partner's life, and the condition of the marriage at the time is important for reconstructing the narrative and for making a future affair less likely.

So, the "why" question addresses issues such as how the participating partner was feeling about himself at the time (for example, was his career going well? did he feel physically attractive?); how was he feeling about his marriage and his family (did he feel loved and desired by his wife? did he feel connected emotionally to is kids, or were they totally involved in their own worlds of school, friends and extracurricular activities?); how was he feeling about his future (was he merely anticipating more of the same drudgery, or did he have a feeling of hopefulness and excitement about things to come?).

"Why" also looks into the qualities and the behaviors of the betrayed spouse before and when the affair commenced. For example, had he become obsessed with work or some outside activity? Had she seriously neglected her physical fitness and appearance after the children were born? It also examines the state of the marriage before and when the marriage began. Was the sexual part of the marriage vibrant and satisfying? Were you and your spouse able to communicate effectively about problems in the marriage and arrive at mutually acceptable solutions? Was there a sense of optimism about the future? Did you look forward to coming home at the end of the work day, or was work an escape from the routine and the antagonism of home life?

Doing the hard work of "why" is what allows couples to make sense of what is, to most, incomprehensible. We need a way to write into our individual and our couple narrative what few of us anticipate and from which we struggle to recover.

RENEWAL is in many ways an extension of rewriting the narrative of the marriage. When couples initially commit to each other, they generally have some sort of vision for the future, whether it's explicit or not. They may have talked about building a home on a mountaintop, sailing the Caribbean, raising six children, hiking the Appalachian Trail, working to improve literacy among inner-city children, founding their own software company and retiring by age forty. Whatever you can imagine, someone dreams it. The common denominator here is shared values, a jointly cherished vision for the future, and the desire and willingness to work together to make the dream a reality. In point of fact, the dream often remains just that--a dream. But it nevertheless functions as a common point on a couple's life horizon, a point which unifies them and keeps them focused on their life together and their commitment to each other.

When one of the members of the couple has engaged in an affair, this vision is threatened, if not outright destroyed. The participating partner's commitment to the vision, even to the future of the relationship, is in question. If the couple is able to navigate the earlier steps of the process--to deal with the depth of remorse, to recommit to a future together, to work out the specifics of rebuilding trust and security in the marriage, to understand their story as a couple and as individuals in a way that accounts for the affair and why it happened--then they will likely have the emotional energy and motivation to create a new vision for their future.

Here is the where the phrase "older, but wiser" is so very apropros. We begin our most intimate relationships with hopes and dreams. These guide us in our day to day activities, but are also impacted by unforeseen forces in the environment--individuals who come unexpectedly into our lives, the challenges of illness and financial reversal--the list goes on. While none of us plans to have to cope with the aftermath of an affair, the reality is that many of us will. We may be the participating partner, or we may be the betrayed spouse. The good news is that there are knowledgeable and skillful professionals to help guide you and your partner in the recovery process. If you are willing to commit yourself to honesty and effort in therapy, an affair does not have to spell the end of your marriage. Many couples have succeeded in building a new relationship, one grounded in transparency and rededication to a shared future.