Emergency Advice for Cheaters Who Just Got Caught.
As a Marriage and Family Therapist and relationship crisis manager, I’ve dealt with hundreds of couples in the throes of infidelity, maybe more. What I’ve learned is that without knowledgeable and experienced guidance, most duos manage to make a more painful and bigger mess of their lives than was necessary. Of course, this lessens the likelihood of the usual desired outcome — complete recovery and a stronger and better marriage than existed before. Instead, they bumble their way to relationship breakdown, and too often, divorce.
Counseling with friends and family almost never helps. It’s a matter of the biased and clueless coaching the biased and clueless, and it ruins relationships moving forward — how can I break bread and ha-ha again with a mother-in-law who has been telling her daughter, and my wife, that she should cut her losses and dump me? If I had my way, families and friends wouldn’t be told about the matter until long after the situation has been managed and settled down, or never.
The first thing to understand is that when a human is in a life crisis, they are activated in the same way as any mammal who is sensing a threat to its life. Sure, you and your spouse aren’t being faced down by rabid dogs, but your brain thinks you are. It ascertains that the threat is serious, and sends you both into fight, flight or freeze. Most injured spouses go into fight mode, and it lasts much longer than average, so get ready. The cheaters can do all three, or only one or two, it just depends. What you need to know about this is that when couples are activated, they can’t make intelligent decisions, so no major decisions should be made at this time. What you need is to manage the crisis and not do more damage, and that’s where I come in.
Note for serial cheaters: Some men and women live by a creed that says
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