What the Involved Partner Needs to Know

You keep replaying everything in your head… how did you get here?? You never thought you’d be the kind of person to cheat on your partner. Who is this person you’ve become?

OR, you’re playing through all of your partner’s mis-deeds, thinking you have every right to pursue a different type of relationship – one that makes you happy.

You’ve decided to end the affair and do whatever it takes to make your marriage work.

OR.

You’re still involved with your affair partner and not sure about your marriage.

We understand that there are a lot of reasons that affairs happen. And we bring this understanding into our affair recovery work with couples.

Here’s the skinny of what you need to know:

There’s a difference between who you are and what you do. You can be a good person who engaged in behavior that is hurtful (to your partner, your family, yourself, your affair partner…)

AND

It’s ok to not yet be 100% committed to your marriage at this point. Part of this process is for both you and your partner to have clarity about the future of your relationship.

BUT.

You DO have to commit to put the affair relationship on hold while you do the recovery work. Otherwise, the blending of the two continues to make things too complicated to get clarity.

That might look like 3-6 months, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. Relationship recovery is complicated like that.

We’ll shoot it to you straight – During that time of initial affair recovery work, you’ll be doing the heavy lifting of being accountable for your actions (in a MODERATE way, not punishing) to rebuild trust with your betrayed partner. If we try to shortcut this step, anything that comes next is built on shaky ground.

Then, we take a look at the pre-existing patterns that were present in your relationship before the affair – the things that made the relationship not-so-great for both of you. Once we have a better idea of these patterns, we can shift them from losing strategies to winning strategies to create Marriage 2.0.

Is it a lot of work? Absolutely. Is it worth it? We believe so. And so do the couples who have gone through this process with us. Let us hold the structure to help you make it a little easier.

At Harper Therapy, we have the training and experience that you’re looking for. You can call 813-434-3639 to schedule a free consult so that we can answer your questions and make sure it’s a good fit.