It's quite easy for couples to address life, marriage, and even recovery after infidelity or addiction with a transactional approach - "let's just fix this and move on.” Yet, this transactional approach to repair work never leads to a transformative experience, typically resulting in a 'go along to get along' mentality. When couples hit this point, restoration is extremely difficult, and true healing remains elusive. A rewarding repair work process must transcend the transactional "you do this, I do this, and we make this work, void of joy and excitement.”
When we remain stuck in a transactional approach to recovery, we typically experience a range of frustrating, debilitating emotions, keeping us in basic survival mode, real satisfaction out of reach. However, when we can identify where we are taking a transactional approach to change, we can then make the proper adjustments, paving the way for us to reach the ultimate goal of repair work: true and lasting transformation.
Comments
Both betrayed and unfaithful
After having read the many many accounts of unfaithfulness and betrayal, I am feeling like a square peg in a round hole, because I don't seem to find any examples that reflect our situation. The reason is that I was unfaifhful to my wife decades ago (one-night stand, no emotional attachment). The problem is that, at that stage, I have been harbouring hurt and anger towards her because of her unfaithfulness years before, 2 years after we were married, while I was away doing military service for my country. I only found out about it because a third party informed me, and after I was convicted about confessing about my own wrongdoing, our marriage seemed to slowly descend into a farce, with both parties still hurting. My wife seems to feel that the fact that I kept it from her for decades is the hurtful aspect, while I sometimes doubt whether I would ever have known about her infidelity, had I not been informed by someone else......in other words: how can I ever know whether she would have told me of her own accord? Her response to this question was: What sort of person would even ask that? I'm stuck.......we are stuck........please help! We have been married for 46 years
i get it...
hi there. i'm so sorry for what you're dealing with. this is more common than you might think, but there aren't many videos about this sort of situation.
the best suggestion would be our ems weekend as you need experts who can help you navigate through the pain of it all and the uncertainty of it all and
work through the if's and coulds and why nots. there are a ton of them. but, i've seen many work through this and heal and find restoration both personal and marital.