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Rebuilding A Marriage

Brian: I think it's almost impossible for the betrayer to come out and start wanting to discuss the whole thing. I think there's the aspect of confession and the explanation and I think they can do that, but to be able to go through and tell you all the things that happened and why they did it. I think it's difficult. And I think it's difficult because they don't really fully understand it themselves. I think that if they understood it they wouldn't be doing it, but they are quite confused about the whole thing. They are making decisions to do things that possibly weeks or months or years before, they would never remotely have considered. They don't really know why they are doing it now, but they don't take initiative to really examine why they feel the way they do. Certainly, midlife is a common factor.

Anne: Other common factors are things like major financial loss, major career set backs, difficulties with children and dealing with disease or a death.

Brian: Yes, any traumatic experience that hasn't been worked through creates vulnerability and a need. I think affairs are just an outward expression of some inner struggle that the person hasn't been able to get a hold of, and it manifests itself in things like affairs. I wouldn't say 100% of the time, but most of the time people who have affairs have some issues in their lives that aren't really big issues, but they have been left buried. An affair is somebody trying to do something... but it's channeled the wrong way and they're not even aware of it. I think that people who have a fulfilling clear direction in their lives are not people who are falling into affairs. They know where they are going. They have a known destiny and purpose.

Brian: By 40, people have been in their dead end jobs, no purpose, whatever. And with Jane's husband he's probably as high up in his corporation as he can go and less sure about his job now more than ever before. He's probably tired of traveling and sleeping in different beds every night, therefore he's susceptible to the flirtations of other people. In a job that requires so much travel and never being at home, I can't see how that can be a healthy thing. He's probably quite lonely. You're traveling with strangers who are your colleagues, but how close can you really get?

Anne: It takes a lot longer for them to heal because he's only home maybe 2/7 of the year or something like that.

Brian: But the problem is that I doubt that they're having fun in the time that he is home. I think Jane just wants to have her husband back and the other woman out of the picture and then we're just going to go on with life the way it was, without anything else changing. How hard is this? If she doesn't want to take a day off work to be with her husband, well how much does he know that? How hard does he think that she really wants to work on it? He's saying well how much do your really love me? Where is he on her priority list? First she would need to understand that this is important to men. She needs to acknowledge his needs (recreational companionship). I don't think she really acknowledges what his needs are because I think she's just wrapped up in herself and she's not able to look beyond herself at him or anything that's going on emotionally for him. There are probably a lot of little things that go on that need to be straightened up.