SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Wanting to hear your stories if your partner cheated after doing individual therapy.

Cheated no, didn’t have the time because I snapped out of ptsd so she went into trying to win me back.

Betrayal yes. She was getting into the usual pattern that leads to emotional betrayal with her boss and "friend ".

Comparing me to the other man, having his name way too often in her mouth, excitement when he called , running to the other room, speaking highly.

You know the usual…. Just friends.

Now she is awkward about with the ick just mentioning it.
I am considering it as cheating even if it is very unlikely that she slept with him, I set the score at that, safer that way knowing her. Just in case like giving a chance to heal but having the divorce papers ready.

Although she was not in therapy for her betrayal patterns but for her childhood trauma.
In fact her therapist kind of ditched her after she confessed her past serial cheating.

Not sure if it fits your inquiry

Unlike medicine that has a high probability of curing it’s intended disease if taken, therapy has no such guarantee.
If you got penicillin to treat an infection and all you did was swallow the pill twice a day for five days, odds are the infection will go away and you heal. If you go to therapy then what the therapist might be able to do is – based on what YOU share – point out faults and mistakes and suggest tools to change. However nothing changes unless YOU do what is recommended, along with follow-ups to ensure you are doing it right and possibly adjusting your path as you go along.

If your cheating partner shares the truth with his IC, listens and adapts the recommendations to his daily life and then stick to the program... the odds of another affair are lowered.
Just be clear that this changed behavior isn’t really valid until after some time. Like it might be easy for him to be open about his social media for 10 days, but maybe not so open about it after 30 days, or 3 months, or maybe closes it to you after 3 years...

Yes before, during & after.

During the 2nd affair I was convinced my H was going to therapy to validate his reasons to D me.

He was unhappy — but not unhappy until he met the OW. He had a typical midlife crisis affair BTW.

Funny how when I planned to D him and refused to R is when he took therapy and Reconciliation very seriously. Stopped lying and cheating immediately.

My W is a CSA survivor; she's been in therapy for ages, before and after her A.

Top-notch therapist, a leader in her pretty large national organization. W hid her A from her therapist.

What support are you looking for?

Yes, his therapist was not a good therapist. Husband also lied to the therapist so that didn’t help matters. But, having heard the bogus advice that was offered by this therapist guy it doesn’t appear that the truth would have helped. He played right into my husband’s victim mentality. It has made me fairly hopeless about the potential from therapy. It has been 10 years since the cheating episode and to my knowledge no relapse. He tried therapy again last year but spent most of his sessions amounted to him people pleasing the therapist. She was nice but it was going nowhere so when he started missing sessions I just told him to forget it. We were also getting marriage counselling during the cheating. She was not much better. She thought I should show trust in him that he was working on a plan to move his secretary to another division. She couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t just trust him. Our latest MC is a nice lady with good advice. But she has no real training in infidelity and can’t really seem to understand why we have trust issues.

I hope your experience ends up better than this.

I've been through plenty of individual therapy in my life, long before I met my husband. I always found it useless but it was a way of getting medication which is what I needed for chronic anxiety. My whole childhood was lone long PTSD syndrome so it's not something that can be resolved, it's just like living with one leg - you get used to it and hobble around as you can.

My idea about marriage counseling is that it seems few counselors are actually trained in what should be a specialize area of infidelity recovery, and this should not be centered just around recon and marriage preservation. Because these are very deep wound that attack the heart of the marriage and involve so many areas - love, self esteem, trust, money, lies, sex - so many areas, that it should be its on programming in counseling licenses. I really kind of think it's beyond the skill of most counselors. It seems more like it should fall under some kind of religious experience with sin, repentance, expiation, etc. I think it might even be more difficult than substance abuse issues because the wounds are so personal. You can be a drunk or drug addict but that can be viewed objectively by a spouse but when you cheat, that's a personal wound to your spouse (aside from physical abuse of course).

I wonder if there even are mental health or counseling programs in this field of infidelity recovery, or whatever it might be termed.

[This message edited by BondJaneBond at 12:00 AM, Tuesday, February 24th]

My wife was actively in therapy (and had been for years) when she cheated.

Therapy is like a personal trainer for your brain.
If you go to the gym and hire a personal trainer that person might give you a program for actions that could improve your health, or build up your shoulders or whatever you aim for. They might even guide you through some exercises. Might give you ideas for healthier eating and whatever.
Yet... if you don’t do the exercises, don’t change your posture, don’t stop eating fries and shakes... no matter how often you see the PT then nothing will change.

A counselor can only guide you, but can’t change you. YOU do that.