Rebuilding Trust after an Affair

    How do you rebuild trust in your partner after an affair? That's the problem facing the wife of former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards. A month after her husband admitted he had an affair, Elizabeth Edwards told the Detroit Free Press she struggles daily to overcome her feelings about the confession and rebuild trust.

"It's an ongoing process of finding your feet again, retelling your story to yourself. You thought you were living in one novel, and it turns out you were living in another," the 59-year-old, who has inoperable cancer, told the newspaper. "Each day is different. You might think, 'I'm doing great today,' then tomorrow it's terrible. It's not like a straight-line graph. Not with a single one of these experiences that I've been through has it been a straight-line graph."

But, she said, she is focusing on her children, Cate, 26, Emma Claire, 10 and Jack, 8, so they can remember their father at his best -- as an advocate for the underprivileged. Elizabeth Edwards told the newspaper she was going through "an ongoing process of finding your feet again." "When you mention trust, that's probably the most difficult hurdle," she said.

Last month, John Edwards told ABC News that he repeatedly lied about having an affair in 2006 with Rielle Hunter, a film producer who was doing webisodes on his campaign. After his admsision, his wife admitted he told her about the affair after it happened and pleaded for privacy. She talked about the issue earlier this week with the Detroit paper, as part of advance press on her visit to the city. 

John and Elizabeth Edwards aren't alone in their marital struggle with the issue of infidelity. It is estimated that between 30 to 60 percent of all married Americans will engage in infidelity at some point during their marriage. 

Bruce Elmslie, professor of economics at the University of New Hampshire, said John Edwards wasn't thinking about the cost of an affair. "John Edwards had everything to lose, but he still went ahead and did it," said Elmslie, a professor at the Whittemore School of Business and Economics, who studied why people cheat on their spouses. 

The research was recently presented in an article called, "So, what did you do last night? The Economics of Infidelity." The bottom line: Men want sex. And when they have the opportunity, they often don't resist. And women want men who have the financial means to provide for a family. "It does say that biology has a lot to do with the way we operate," Elmslie said. "How you respond to those urges, though, it's a conscious decision."

Whether you're Elizabeth Edwards or any other victimized spouse, realizing that you’ve been living with someone who’s betrayed you makes you question everything about the relationshipo. “The discovery of infidelity is devastating because it shatters basic assumptions about the security we expect in committed relationships,” wrote the late Dr. Shirley Glass, author of “Not Just Friends: Protect Your Relationship from Infidelity and Heal the Trauma of Betrayal.” 

Dr. Glass, who died of cancer in 2003, once compared the emotional shock over an affair to the trauma experienced by combat veterans. Dr. Don-David Lusterman, author of “Infidelity: A Survivor’s Guide,” has agreed with Glass. “Your marriage is very important to you and if you really believe the contract of monogamy still applies, it's a terrible shock because your whole life is tied up in your marriage,” he said.      

Upon discovery of the affair, betrayed partners are often especially harsh with themselves for not seeing it coming. “People say, Oh my God, that's been there for year! Where have I been? I never pieced it together. It never even entered my mind,” Dr. Lusterman told Divorce360.

According to sociologist Dr. Edward Lauman of the University of Chicago, 90 percent of Americans believe infidelity is wrong, so when it does happen it is often a sign that the relationship is over -- at least for the cheater. While some married couples manage to make it work after the affair, Lauman said adultery often causes permanent pain. 

It's the kind of pain Elizabeth Edwards is struggling with today as she tries to put her marriage back on stronger footing. "People have this idea that we represented as a couple some sort of perfection. ... They thought by his actions he had taken that away from them. But there is no perfection out there. ... Take whatever you've got and make the most of that, and recognize that even in those bad things that it allows you a clarity about what's important," she said. 



Dr. Romance: Tips to Overcome an Affair

To recover from indfidelity and save your marriage, Dr. Tina Tessina, Ph.D., aka Dr. Romance, offers these tips.

1. Tell the Truth.
Assuming your spouse found out, you didn't confess -- this is the time to tell the whole truth. It's probably best done with a therapist present, to keep a lid on the emotional reactions. 

2. Talk to Each Other. 
If you’re serious about fixing the problems in your relationship, it’s crucial that you both begin to face each other honestly and openly. Most of the time, affairs occur because the communication and intimacy in the relationship have broken down. It’s time to take an honest look at what went wrong.

3. Give your Spouse the Power.
When you cheated, you took your partner's power away, so now let your spouse be in charge. Your spouse had no say about the cheating, so giving up control will help re-balance the power. Confess, apologize, and then ask what you need to do to be forgiven. Humility is the order of the day.

4. Get some Therapy.
Both of you need to recover from anger, resentment, grief, guilt and shock; this takes some time. You may each need individual therapy as well as couple therapy to repair the damage. Do whatever it takes, if you really want the marriage.

5. Focus on the Marriage.
Cheating implies both a personal problem with integrity and impulse control, and a relationship problem that created an excuse for the cheating. Focus not only on confession and forgiveness, but on repairing whatever was wrong in the marriage.

6. Make the Changes.
Once the problems have been identified, be willing to make the changes that will fix them. Doing things the same way you always have will give you the same results.  

Photo by: John Edwards 2008


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