Seventy five percent of the counseling business involves infidelity. That’s not very hard to comprehend if you believe the statistics. Approximately seventy eight percent of men & forty eight percent of women are unfaithful during their married lives or committed relationships (although the female numbers are growing at a faster rate then men’s).

Although infidelity constitutes a large population of therapy clientele, it also accounts for a highly successful therapy result.

There’s an order to things. Firstly he (using ‘he’ for the sake of simplicity & numbers) has extramarital sex. There seems to be as much damage inflicted whether this constitutes a one night stand or a long-term affair. The emotions & experiences at issue are breach of trust, rejection, agony, jealousy, treachery, homicide, doubting one’s ability to know another human being, humiliation & feeling a loser. Pretty much the full gambit of negative emotions.

So in they come, Harry & Sally.

Harry is writhing in guilt, embarrassment, fury at his stupidity, fury at being caught, confused that there can be so much air-time’ over what was ‘just sex’, frustration at having already said ‘I’m sorry’ a hundred times, wondering why ‘we have to go over this again’ & not understanding why saying to his spouse ‘you won’, is not working.

Sally is writhing in agony, fury, wondering how this could have happened to her, questioning her intelligence, doubting her attractiveness, her hair, her breasts & wanting to know what restaurants they went to, what kind of underwear the other woman wore & what perfume the other woman used.

The first step is that Harry is going to have accept that there is nothing in the female vernacular that equates to just sex’ any more than ‘oops I accidentally totaled your 1922 Bugatti’. He has to be willing to experience the most profoundly wrong moment of his life. If he’s going to have a hope in Hell of salvaging his marriage, he has to get that there is no excuse, no minimizing, & no side stepping the issue. He has to be easily able to let in & really acknowledge the massive degree of pain his partner is in (similar to a richter 10 earthquake). AND that he caused it!

Next he’s going to have to prove that he’s understood the massive pain by paraphrasing what he perceives her experience has been like. It’s this that will create the bridge of intimacy between them. Strange as it seems, Sally who’s been hit by a train, needs to download & share her train-wreck experience the way most people who are violated & in shock need to use catharsis to heal. And even though he’s the one who’s betrayed her, he’s the closest most meaningful person in her world. It’s from him, the transgressor that she turns to for comfort, support & understanding.

Why would Harry be willing to put himself through this? Because he really wants his marriage to work & secondly, I promise him that this is a process & that processes have endings.

Ultimately it’s Sally who must decide whether or not to proceed with the marriage. At the end of the day, Harry can apologize with the appropriate level of intention that matches her pain. He can demonstrate that he’s developed commitment, that he’s learned intimacy & has come out the other end of this a better man & husband in many ways than he was going into their marriage years ago. That’s the best it gets.

However, Sally has to know whether she can integrate the affair into the fabric of their relationship. There’s no frontal lobotomy & no erasure of the tapes that will for a long time play in her head. There will be bad :cry: days, songs, smells & reminders that will catch her completely unawares & take her breath away. And she’s going to have to wear this & ride it out. Otherwise Harry will feel defeated, judged, forever ‘sin-binned’ with no hope of exoneration, forever condemned.

Treated properly, infidelity either becomes a thread woven into the tapestry of a relationship OR it becomes the tapestry. It is up to Sally.

Toby Green is Chief Relationship Psychologist of http://www.RelationshipTrainers.com & HeartofCheating.com Toby is famous for her no-nonsense advice when it comes to Relationships. She is a Best Selling Author, TV Personality & a Renowned Weekly Columnist & has helped rescue Relationships including dealing with Cheating & Infidelity for over 30 years.

Visit http://www.RelationshipTrainers.com For Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Relationships ? And Didn’t Know Who To Ask. Here Toby gives great Relationship Advice By Email, By Phone, Face2Face, Advice Journals & Coaching Programs.

Visit http://www.HeartofCheating.com for Relationship Advice on how to get your life on track after an Affair. Great Advice based closely on 30 years of Client Counseling for both the Victim of the Affair & the Cheater.