Couple therapy – making sense of emotions

Recognising and naming what we are feeling is a valuable part of couple therapy, but it’s not something that comes easily to most of us.

It is important to learn how to recognise and name what we’re feeling because, in one sense, we are what we feel.  It is often through our feelings that we reveal ourselves to others, that they get an understanding of what we want, what we’re passionate about, what moves us. And that helps create intimacy.

Identifying what we are feeling is also essential for us  as individuals in terms of knowing and understanding ourselves.

But unfortunately many of us are not fully aware of what we’re feeling and, even when we are, we may be reluctant to share that with our partner for fear of appearing silly or being judged. 

This can apply, in particular,  to emotions such as sadness or vulnerability, as many of us are brought up to see these as examples of weakness. Similarly, for many people acknowledging anger is very uncomfortable because in many families the children are given the message that it is not acceptable to show anger. 

There is also a very strong problem-solving attitude in our culture. One that says, “it doesn’t matter what you’re feeling, just focus on the solution.” While that may be an appropriate response in some situations, in couple problems it doesn’t work because usually part of the “solution” is working with the emotions that are present and allowing them to help point us towards a new experience of being with our partner. 

As couple therapist Robert Taibbi says*, part of the therapist’s job is to draw out new emotions: “Your job is to change the communication, to stir the emotional pot. You’re moving toward the holes, looking for what they are not saying. This is where their anxieties and, ultimately, the solutions lie. “

Often in couple there will be a mirroring – one partner may be rather emotionally contained and the other “over emotional”. While not always the case, in heterosexual couples there is often a gender aspect, with the man finding it harder to name what he is feeling.

When I’m working with couples I’m often trying to get them to be clear about emotions. So, rather than “upset”, I ask if they mean “upset angry” or “upset sad”, as there is a big difference between the two. 

I may also introduce “feeling” language into my comments in the session. For example, “I’m wondering if that was annoying for you when Jill said that?” Or, if a client seems to be wiping away imaginary tears, I may offer the suggestion that they may have been feeling sad. 

For people who are rather detached from their emotions it can be difficult when they are asked questions about how they are feeling, so I sometimes offer the idea that there are four primary emotions – fear, sadness, joy and anger – and ask which of those primary feelings is closest to what they are feeling. This can help open up something new in the conversation between the couple. 

When we are able to say what we are feeling and have our partner acknowledge it, we can feel validated. This is something that a couples therapist can help with, encouraging and coaching the one partner to simply acknowledge the feelings of the other partner.

Acknowledgement is not agreement. We are not saying that because parent A is angry that means partner B is in the wrong. We are instead saying that partner A is angry and partner B can acknowledge that reality without immediately feeling the need to defend themselves. A further step can be taken in the therapy, whereby partner B not only acknowledges the other person’s anger but also is able to understand why they my be feeling angry. 

For clients who really struggle to know what they are feeling I may suggest they keep an emotions diary between sessions. This is something that can be easily done using a small notebook or mobile phone, just jotting down several times a day what they are feeling at that moment and (if they know) why they may be having that feeling. 

Part of the process of identifying emotions is understanding that sometimes we use one emotion to hide another. This is particularly so with anger and sadness. Some people major in sadness and find it very hard to acknowledge anger, perhaps because that was a taboo in their family of origin. For others it’s the opposite – they can get angry easily but sadness is taboo. Helping these individuals acknowledge and feel the underlying emotion can be valuable in creating a more authentic connection within the relationship. 

Doing Couple Therapy, Robert Taibbi, 2009, The Guilford Press.

Advertisement

Why detaching from conflict can kill a relationship

Many people believe that fighting is bad in a relationship and of course that’s true if the arguing is toxic and non productive. However, for a couple therapist the worst indicator for the relationship is  when one of the partners seems to have given up.

This partner may have got to the stage where everything seems to hopeless that they detach from the relationship – they no longer even care enough to get angry.

This roughly equates to what couple therapist and researcher John Gottman describes as stonewalling and he argues it’s the most damaging pattern in a relationship.

It is when one partner withdraws from interaction with the other, as he or she is feeling overwhelmed or hopeless. When there is a problem in the relationship the woman will sometimes insist on long talks late into the night to try and resolve it but this can leave the man feeling drained. If he withdraws emotionally in this situation, his partner can then feel she is not being valued and she in turn begins to withdraw.

I’ve seen this pattern often in couple therapy, especially if there has been a betrayal by the man and his partner wants to go over the details again and again. She has a need to try and understand as much as possible about what happened but he feels interrogated and is afraid of not remembering something important and getting into worse trouble.

According to Gottman’s research men are much more likely to stonewall than women. They may try to avoid arguments, perhaps because they don’t believe the arguing is helping, but the net result can be that the woman begins to detach and this can be a major indicator that the relationship is dying.

When one partner is angry about something in the relationship it shows that that person at least cares, even if it is uncomfortable for both partners. When one partner emotionally checks out it is far more damaging because it suggests that they have given up believing that things can change.

Part of the answer to this conundrum is not to remove conflict from the relationship – as if that were possible – but to learn how to handle conflict differently.

Couple therapy can help the partners learn ways of expressing their thoughts and feelings in a way that the other person can truly understand. It can help the couple express underlying feelings, such as vulnerability or grief, rather than sticking to anger and judgment. Allowing in these unacknowledged emotions can shift the dynamic. 

Couples can also be helped to understand whether there is anything in the current situation that echoes what may have happened in their childhood. Frequently, we unconsciously bring unresolved issues from the past to our adult relationships and untangling this knot can help lessen the emotional temperature.

The Distancer-Pursuer Dynamic

You may have noticed, in your own relationship, that often one partner really wants something from the other partner and becomes extremely frustrated when they don’t get it.

I have had many couple clients who bring this kind of problem and I have seen it at work in my own relationship – and it can be very painful!

The way it works is one partner pushes for something and the other partner won’t give it, or won’t give it in the way that the first partner wants it. This is called the distancer-pursuer dynamic.

The pursuer is the one wanting something and the distancer is the partner who is not giving it. Usually both partners end up feeling that they are being unfairly treated.

Here are some common things that people caught in the distancer-pursuer ‘dance’ may say:

Him (pursuer): “Most of the time, when I want sex, she knocks me back.”

Her (distancer): “He’s always wanting sex – it makes me feel pressured and even less in the mood.”

Or:

Her (pursuer): “Whenever I try to have an intimate conversation, he seems more interested in watching TV or checking his phone.”

Him (distancer): “She’s always trying to have deep conversations – I feel like I don’t have time to just chill out.”

The more the pursuer makes demands or vents his or her frustration, the more the distancer feels under pressure and even less likely to give the pursuer what they want.

The object of the pursuer can be one of many things – sex, attention, affection, emotional intimacy, appreciation. But the actual thing being pursued is less important than the dynamic that is being played out.

The important point to realise is that the distance between the two partners always remains the same in this behaviour pattern, so as the pursuer tries to get closer the distancer moves away. Uncomfortable as it is, in my experience it is often the case that both partners unconsciously make sure that they stay stuck in the pattern.

But why would the couple make sure they stay in this painful pattern, even on an unconscious level?

Basically, it is because the distancer-pursuer dynamic enables both partners to avoid some of the challenges of intimacy, while blaming each other.

The dynamic regulates the emotional closeness within the relationship. While we all may say we want a close relationship with our partner, in reality we move between a desire for closeness/relationship and a desire to autonomy or independence. This is one of the fundamental challenges of being in a relationship.

In their book Sex, Love and the Dangers of Intimacy, Nick Duffell and Helena Lovendal argue that the distancer-pursuer dynamic is a way for the couple to try and manage the conflict between closeness and autonomy.

They say: “We can establish lifelong patterns of one wanting more and the other less, one wanting closeness and the other space. We can play these games till we die and many couples do.”

The dynamic may go both ways, so that in certain areas one partner is the distancer while in a different area it is the other partner. A common pattern is for men to be the pursuer when it comes to sex and women when it concerns emotional intimacy.

John Welwood in his book Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships,  highlights how the dynamic reveals the early wounding we may have experienced with parents. One partner may have experienced an intrusive parent and thus fears engulfment in adult relationships, while another may have had a parent who was distant and so felt abandoned.

He says: “Many people suffer from some of each, resulting in a ‘push-pull’ relationship, where one partner pursues when the other is pulling away, but then retreats when the other comes forward.”

In a future post I will go into this dynamic in more details and talk about how we can respond, when we find ourselves caught in it.

What scares us about intimacy

I think that most of us, if asked, would say that we want an intimate relationship with someone. A relationship in which we can truly be ourselves and feel close.

So why is it that so many people struggle to find this in life?

This is a complex question. But one strand to it is the fear of either being engulfed by our partner or being abandoned. In other words, we can experience our partner as either too loving/controlling/intrusive/demanding or too absent/uninterested/cold.

Our experience as infants can feed into this drama and prime us to see relationships through a particular lens. For example, an infant may experience their primary caregiver (usually mum) as being “too present” and not providing enough space and freedom for the child to explore. This chid may grow up to experience a fear of being smothered or controlled in adult relationships.

However, an infant experiencing their caregiver as sometimes cold or uninterested may be particularly sensitive to what they experience as rejection or abandonment in adult intimate relationships.

“Engulfment fears generally lead to withdrawal in relationships, while abandonment fears lead to clinging,” says therapist John Welwood in his book Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships.

Each partner may at times feel a fear of engulfment or a fear of abandonment, but often each person gravitates towards a particular stance. This obviously creates tension and unhappiness.

“She’s always trying to get me to do things with her, but hates it when I just want to relax watching some sport on the TV,” he says. Or she may comment, “He seems more interested in his job and his friends than in me – I feel like he doesn’t love me.”

The effect of this is that one partner is often pushing for something more, while the other is trying to pull away – which is known as a push-pull effect.

Partners can be stuck in this dynamic for years, without understanding why they can’t seem to get genuinely close. Or people can change partners and then find the same patterns of push-pull in each new relationship.

Part of the way out of this stuck pattern is understanding how our early experiences may have influenced the way we relate to people as adults. If we can feel empathy and compassion for ourselves as a child, who felt either deprived or dominated by parents, we may be able to see our partner more clearly and take his or her behaviour less personally.

We may also find ourselves, gradually, being able to allow ourselves to be vulnerable with our partner and to let go of judging them.  Which is a good foundation for truer intimacy.

Why acknowledging our wounding helps our relationship

While most parents do the best they can, they cannot be perfect.

All of us, I would argue, have some degree of emotional wounding from childhood and the particular wounding we bring will be triggered in our intimate relationships.

While that may sound negative, and can cause lots of problems in relationships, it is also potentially positive because when we can acknowledge our own wounds – and become more aware of our partner’s – a healing can take place in the relationship.

Unfortunately, many adults are unaware of, or have buried, their emotional wounding. So, when their wounds are activated in their relationship they blame their partner for it.

Our wounding

For some children the wounding they receive from parents, or others with power over them, is severe – emotional, physical or even sexual abuse.

For many others the wounding may have been less traumatic. It could have been a parent who was not able to meet your needs because of a busy job or other commitments. Or perhaps having a sibling who seemed to get more attention or approval from one or both parents.

Some children will have grown up with a parent who was quick to anger or was controlling in other ways.

In some cases the child may have got the message that they were valued more for their achievements – their academic grades or sports performance – than just for themselves.

How it is triggered by our partner

As adults we take these earlier wounds into our relationships with partners, where they often get activated in a painful way.

Here are some examples:

•  Karen grew up with an angry father who sometimes scared her. She picked a husband who seemed very calm, but he seems annoyed more often and she feels afraid and panicked.
• As a child Peter felt that his mother often disapproved of his behaviour, even though he tried to be a good boy. He now finds that his partner seems often disappointed in him and feels that he can never get it right for her.
• Sarah’s father abandoned the family when she was a girl. In her adult relationships she finds herself with men who, for different reasons, seem to let her down and whom she finds it difficult to trust.

These are just some examples – there are many more.

Acknowledging and staying open to our wounding

One of the opportunities in couple therapy is for both partners to recognise and acknowledge – often for the first time – the wounds that they may be carrying from childhood.

Therapist John Welwood, in his book Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships, says that when we find ourselves shutting down in our relationship it is often because our partner’s emotional wounds have triggered our own wounding.

So, our partner may be angry about something but because we associate that anger with rejection, we shut down when they are angry. Instead of shutting down, when our partner triggers our wounds, we can try and stay open to what we are feeling and to what is going on for our partner.

“If my partner and I can learn to speak together about the wounded places that give rise to our emotional reactions, this will also help us remain more awake when the wounds are triggered,” says Welwood.

My experience in working with couples is that when they are both able to talk about and feel the feelings of that earlier wound, something can shift in their relationship. Each is able to soften slightly, and to offer their partner (and themselves) more understanding and compassion.

“Coming to terms with our woundedness helps us navigate the complex emotional dynamics of human relationship and gradually bring a more all-embracing love into this world,” says Welwood.

Are you a rescuer, persecutor or victim in your relationship?

Many couples that run into problems find themselves on the ‘drama triangle’. This is a model that maps the unhelpful behaviour patterns couples can find themselves in. It was developed by US psychiatrist Stephen Karpman in the 1970s.

The persecutor, rescuer and victim are all roles that people in relationships can play. These roles interact with each other, so there is always someone in a more powerful position and someone with less power.

While individuals may shift between the different roles, they usually feel more comfortable in one of the roles, due to their personality and the behaviour patterns in their family growing up.

What are the roles?

A rescuer will often have grown up in a family where the child’s needs were not acknowledged and so he or she grew up looking after others’ needs in order to feel loved. The rescuer was the good, responsible child who avoids confrontation.

The victim got the message from their family that they were not able to handle their own problems and so grew up expecting others to step in and make things okay. They can often feel anxious about things.

The persecutor is the person who criticizes their partner. But it is important to realise that underneath the persecutor is a victim – someone who, as a child, did not have their needs met and often feels powerless. Putting their partner down helps them escape their inner self of low self-worth and makes them feel powerful.

A rescuer can be controlling

Often couples will begin their relationship with one of them in the rescuer role and the other in victim role. The rescuer gives the victim the message: “You need me to help you – just do what I tell you.” While the rescuer seems helpful and nice on the outside, they are actually being quite controlling of their partner.

The person in the victim role often feels their problems are overwhelming and they can’t cope.

The two make an unofficial deal – that the rescuer will get to feel good about themselves and feel that they are in charge, while the victim gets looked after and doesn’t have to take responsibility.

Becoming the persecutor

What can happen is that the rescuer gets fed up with their role, maybe they feel their efforts are not fully appreciated or they just feel tired out. So they then start to criticise their partner, therefore becoming the persecutor.

Another possibility is that the victim gets fed up with being the victim and becomes critical (the persecutor), which makes their partner into the victim.

The way out

The way to help a couple step out of the drama triangle is to, first, get them to see what is going on and how the two of them are usually playing one or other role. With this awareness the members of the couple can be encouraged to take more responsibility for their needs by accessing their inner ‘adult’.

The adult is that part of us that does not take too much responsibility for our partner (the rescuer), neither does it expect our partner to make us feel good (the victim). The adult is able to clearly express what he or she wants, instead of trying to manipulate or intimidate their partner to get what their needs met.

 

 

 

 

How what annoys us in our partner can teach us what we need

 

 One of the common themes in couple therapy is each partner complaining about behaviour in the other that they find really hard to deal with. ‘If only my partner would change that behaviour, then everything would be ok,’ they say to themselves.

A common example in heterosexual couples is the ‘rational’ man who finds his partner’s emotionality irritating, while she complains that he is too logical and unfeeling. Or there is the partner who is fiery and sometimes quick to anger, while the other is extremely laid back and avoids conflict.

Another instance is where one partner is very responsible, in areas such as household finances,  while the other is much more spontaneous and loves splashing out on purchases.

Opposites attract

The interesting thing about these kind of ‘opposites attract’ couples is that, when you scratch beneath the surface, you find that often they found their partner’s differences endearing in the early stages of their relationship. So, the over-rational man was charmed and excited by his girlfriend’s high emotions, while she felt somehow secure with someone who seemed so stable.

But this initial appreciation of differences can begin to fade when the honeymoon period is over, which is usually from six months to two years into the relationship. A major life event, such as the birth of a first child, can also bring to an end this phase. At the end of the honeymoon period these opposite qualities in the other person start to seem less attractive. In fact, they can become downright annoying.

‘I loved her fieriness at the beginning, it was exciting. But now it feels more like she’s always nagging,’ he complains. She replies: ‘His laid-back nature was very reassuring when we started going out, but now it feels like he’s so determined to avoid an argument that we never resolve problems.’

Psychologists Hal and Sidra Stone describe this process in their book Embracing Each Other, arguing that we are all made up of many different parts or selves. Some of these parts we feel comfortable with and others we unconsciously ‘disown’ because they were not welcomed by our family or environment growing up.

When we are in an intimate relationship all these different parts, or sub personalities, are present, they say: ‘It is not just two people who sit down for a nice, friendly, sensible chat. We each have within us numerous selves or sub personalities, each vying for attention, trying to get its needs met.’

Viewing the problem as potentially healing

A couples therapist who works in a soulful way will view the kinds of relational conflicts couples bring as not necessarily negative but as potentially playing a positive role in helping each individual to grow and mature.

This is because, although the process of falling in love is mysterious, we are often attracted to people who have a quality that we have disowned or repressed in ourselves.

So, for example, a child may grow up in a family where showing anger is taboo or the opposite,  where one of the parents is excessively angry. The child may then, unconsciously, repress his anger because it feels wrong or scary. But it is not just his anger but also his fieriness or willingness to risk confrontation by sticking up for himself that is also repressed. As an adult he may find himself attracted to fiery women because they carry that part of him that he has disowned and, at some level, misses in himself.

The therapist can help each partner to move away from such strong judgments of their partner, and instead help the individual to get in touch with their own disowned qualities. In this way, each partner can take responsibility for their own psychological growth and therefore not expect their partner to ‘carry’ all the anger or all the vulnerability or whatever the quality is that is being disowned.

 

 

The ‘four horsemen’ of relationship breakdown

American couple therapist John Gottman has been researching for many years the reasons why relationships fail.

He has identified four important reasons, which he names the Four Horsemen. These are:

• Criticism – which is often expressed by saying ‘you always…’ or ‘you never…’

• Contempt – insulting or putting someone down in a way that shows you think they are inferior.

• Defensiveness – not taking responsibility for your behaviour and instead criticizing the other or finding excuses.

• Stonewalling – refusing to talk about something or withdrawing from the relationship to avoid conflict. In reality, the partner who stonewalls is withdrawing as a means of punishing the other because they are communicating separation and disapproval.

In gender terms, women are more likely to criticize and men to stonewall. So, a woman may crticise her partner, who then stonewalls by ignoring her comments or withdrawing and this makes the woman angrier and so she criticizes even more.

Of these four behaviours, the most important in determining whether a relationship will survive or not is contempt. Where there is contempt expressed by one or both partners there is far less chance of them staying together.

It’s important to realise that contempt does not just mean insulting the other person but can also include sarcastic comments or even rolling your eyes to other people when your partner says something you don’t like.

The reason contempt is so poisonous to a relationship is because it is not just criticizing the other person, it is putting yourself in a superior position. It is a rejection of the other person.

Criticism vs complaint

It is better to complain, rather than criticize. By complain, I mean expressing your feeling, such as annoyance or hurt, about a specific behaviour of your partner.

Criticism is often more generalised and blaming. It often includes phrases like ‘you always…’ ‘you never…’ ‘you’re the sort of person who…’. It is hard for someone to respond constructively to this kind of criticism and they are more likely to become defensive.

A complaint would be: ‘When you forgot to get me a present for our anniversary I felt hurt and angry.’ A criticism would be: ‘You never show your appreciation for me – you just don’t care.’

What’s your attachment style and how does it affect your relationships?

It may seem strange to believe, but the way we grow up relating to our parents – our ‘attachment style’ – has a big impact on how we get on with romantic partners as adults.

When we realise our particular attachment style, and that of our partner, we can more easily understand the cause of arguments and disharmony

British psychologist John Bowlby pioneered attachment theory, arguing that the bonds formed between infant and mother/caregiver had a lasting impact on a person’s life and relationships.

There are three main attachment styles:

• Secure – these children develop trust in their caregivers and know that their needs will be met. As adults they are able to form trusting relationships and value intimacy.

• Anxious/ambivalent – these children get the message that they cannot always rely on their caregiver to meet their needs. As adults they are worried that they cannot trust their partner and they may appear ‘needy’ or obsessed.

• Avoidant – these children also got the message they could not depend on their caregiver.  In response they become self-reliant and independent. As adults they may devalue the importance of intimate relationships and fear getting too close to their partner.

Often in romantic relationships one finds people with secure attachment styles end up together and are able to form generally harmonious and trusting relationships.

The people that come to couple therapy tend to be from the third of the population that have anxious or avoidant styles. Often someone with an anxious attachment style, frequently but not always female, will get together with an avoidantly attached partner, frequently but not always male.

This is a recipe for unhappiness. The anxiously attached partner will often be possessive or jealous, seeking reassurance and comfort. The avoidantly attached partner, who values their independence and devalues ‘emotionality’, will feel boxed in and under pressure and react by seeking even more emotional distance. This, in turn, leaves the anxiously attached person feeling abandoned.

It is this vicious circle that can be so damaging and the fact that each partner is not aware of their attachment style and how it is affecting the relationship. Part of couple therapy is to bring these unconscious ways of relating to the surface so that they can be acknowledged and worked on.

By talking about attachment styles the therapist can more easily help the individuals look at their behaviour in a non-defensive way and not to see it as necessarily ‘wrong’. The avoidantly attached partner can be encouraged to gradually open up and connect more, while the anxiously attached partner is encouraged to back off a little bit in their demands.

These small changes can free up some valuable space for the couple to look at how they relate to each other. Recognising each other’s attachment style can help them make these changes because they take the other’s behaviour less personally and are more willing to question their own habits of relating.

Photo from Moriza at Flickr creative commons, http://www.flickr.com/photos/moriza/

The role of affairs in relationships

Your heart is not living until it has experienced pain…the pain of love breaks open the heart, even if it is hard as a rock.

– John Welwood

If you find out your partner has had an affair it can be one of the most devastating experiences possible. The shock, sadness and anger experienced by the betrayed partner are often what bring a couple to therapy.

In couple therapy we need to give a place to these feelings and to acknowledge the hurt and the breakdown in trust the affair has caused.

But, if we are working from a soulful perspective, we also need to look below the surface, at what the affair may be signaling about deeper issues in the relationship.

In a paradoxical way, while not devaluing the pain and damaged trust that an affair can bring, it is possible that exploring the deeper meaning can actually help a couple improve their relationship in the longer term.

Getting to this place is a gradual and often difficult process. It will depend on the betrayer being willing to take responsibility for their actions and the painful consequences. The hurt partner also will need, in time, to look beyond the immediate experience of anger and distress.

At a basic level, one partner having an affair is signaling that something is not working in that relationship. This may be because one partner is feeling, either consciously or unconsciously, neglected.

When a couple has children, for example, many fathers experience feelings of neglect and exclusion, alongside the more acceptable feelings of joy and elation. If they are not fully conscious of the more troubling feelings and not able to talk to their partner or another trusted person about them, they can find themselves caught up in an affair in which they feel ‘special’ again.

Similarly, a woman whose partner seems to be constantly working or disinterested in her may find herself, without consciously intending to, drawn into an affair with someone who attends to that part of her that feels neglected.

At an unconscious level the affair can be a signal by one partner that they want more attention. When the other partner finds out about the affair it can, therefore, is a catalyst to looking at what may be missing in the relationship. But that transformative effect is more likely to happen if the couple is able to work through their feelings in a supportive and non-judgmental environment, such as couple therapy.

It may emerge in explorations of the feelings around the affair that earlier ‘betrayals’ have been re-awakened, such as the anger and despair of a child whose father or mother abandoned the family.

It may transpire that the partner having the affair seeks romance with others as a way of avoiding intimacy with his or her main partner. The couple therapist may ask, what is it about intimacy that this person fears? And what about the other partner, are they colluding in an avoidance of deeper intimacy?

These kinds of questions can help the couple look at their relationship and the expectations, hopes, fears and disappointments that they bring to it. Out of this can, potentially, emerge something different – a new and more authentic way of relating.

Helping both partners get in touch with earlier emotional wounding can shed light on the possible role of the affair and how it can, potentially, help them come to terms with earlier, unresolved pain.

Couple therapists Hal and Sidra Stone argue in their book Embracing Each Other that the partner having the affair is often acting out a deeper unmet need of that individual and of their relationship.

For example, a very responsible family man may find himself in a romance with a very sensual, free woman. He falls for her because, at a deeper level, she allows him to connect with his disowned wildness.

Or a woman who, with her husband’s encouragement, gave up her studies and career plans in order to be a stay-at-home mother, may find herself having an affair with a man who values her intelligence and ambition.

‘There is usually an intense pull to have an affair when something within wishes us to break form and move ahead,” say Hal and Sidra Stone. But an affair can be used either to maintain the status quo or to risk something new – it can shore up a relationship that lacks important elements or it can be a catalyst that releases new energies, ‘and either changes or ends our current relationship’.

But there are rarely clearcut resolutions or complete closure when it comes to affairs.

There is always the possibility that the ‘victim’ partner will be so hurt by the affair that they are unable or unwilling to continue the relationship, even if the other partner is genuinely taking responsibility for their actions and the consequences.

Nevertheless, as psychotherapist and author John Welwood argues, to allow ourselves to truly feel the pain of betrayal can lead to a deeper understanding.

Referring to a male client, whose pattern has been to end relationships by having affairs but who now finds that his partner has had an affair, Welwood writes in Journey of the Heart: “He began to realise that his pain was not just about being betrayed. On a deeper level, it was also a sorrow about never having given himself fully to a relationship. In opening to this sorrow he saw all the ways he had kept himself apart from Sarah, just as he had with women all his life.”