Step 2: Create Transparency
When a wayward spouse ends the affair, and agrees to rebuild the marriage, extraordinary precautions must be taken to guarantee that there will be no relapses. Affairs thrive on what I've called a secret second life. It's what you do under the radar. You know, or at least suspect, that your spouse wouldn't approve, so a part of your life is hidden from him or her. When a spouse is able to come and go without any accountability, men like Alex can have an affair with relative impunity. The temptation of an affair is great because there's little to stop them.
So I encourage couples to end their secret second lives by being transparent in the way they live their lives. It not only guards against affairs, but it also helps create intimacy and build compatibility. It's not a punishment for bad behavior -- it's an essential ingredient for a healthy marriage.
Transparency occurs when couples follow the Policy of Radical Honesty that I introduced to you in chapter 7. Reveal to your spouse as much information about yourself as you know -- your thoughts, feelings, habits, likes, dislikes, past history, daily activities, and future plans.
Nothing should be hidden. Passwords, email, text messages, telephone logs, computer histories, and all other forms of communication are made readily available to a spouse. It's the way my wife, Joyce, and I have lived during our 47 years of marriage. By revealing everything we know about ourselves, we have not only avoided an affair, but our transparency has helped our marriage in a host of other ways, too. It's not a lifetime prison sentence, where disclosure prevents us from having what we need most -- it's the formula for a very fulfilling life.
If I were to counsel Alex, I would encourage him to give Elaine a twenty-four-hour-a-day schedule of his whereabouts, and Elaine should do the same. Such a schedule is essential in a great marriage because spouses who are partners in life check with each other throughout the day to coordinate their decisions and activities. Elaine should call him several times a day, and he should call her as well just so they can check in with each other.
How does this twenty-four-hour-a-day checking feel? Admittedly, there is one real drawback in arranging for this kind of checkup system for someone like Alex. While it will provide Elaine some reassurance, it is likely to be very annoying to Alex, at least at first. Being accustomed to an independent lifestyle, he must now account for his time and activities. He must consider Elaine's feelings whenever he does anything. That's what couples do in successful marriages, but Alex hasn't learned to be thoughtful when he makes decisions, and he would feel at first as if he's married to a parole officer.
Typically a straying spouse, confronted with the demands of transparency and having no contact with his former lover responds with total depression. He is trying to save his marriage, but he feels miserable. Now, cut off from Harriet -- somebody he loves very much and who met some of his most important emotional needs -- and with the checkup going, he finds himself feeling trapped.
Step 3: Meet Each Other's Basic Emotional Needs
When the decision is finally made to reconcile and to avoid all contact with the lover, it's usually with the hope that the spouse can learn to meet needs met by the lover much more easily than the lover can meet needs met by the spouse. This is certainly true when the couple has children. The lover will simply never be able to take the place of the spouse in the family, but the spouse can take the place of the lover.
My primary goal in helping couples recover after an affair is for them to establish a romantic relationship that's just as passionate as the affair. I don't want their choice to be between passion and reason -- the affair offering passion and the marriage offering reason. I want them to have passion and reason, something that can only be found in their marriage.
If all goes according to my plan, Elaine will make herself available to Alex sexually and start joining him in some of his favorite activities. An ideal scenario would find her reading a book about computers and programming to understand better what he does for a living, and to put icing on the cake, she could start giving him more support at home and stop criticizing him about how he doesn't earn enough money or do enough around the house.
All this could take many weeks and months. Probably Alex hadn't shown Elaine enough affection, and that's why she resisted him sexually. In addition Alex would need some coaching in having conversations with Elaine that would be enjoyable for her. Instead of simply judging Elaine for not being interested in his computer world, he would have to learn how to talk to her about her interests and feelings. Elaine needed very deeply the quality of conversation Alex had shared with Harriet.
Obviously Elaine's basic need for honesty and openness has fallen into serious disrepair. Alex will have to work hard and long to regain her trust, but he can do it if he learns how to become transparent to her.
If I counseled Alex and Elaine, I would make a special point to warn Elaine that she has started down a long and bumpy road. In fact at first, she might receive little positive return for her efforts. Elaine should not expect that as a result of all her changes in her behavior Alex would suddenly become more loving, caring, and faithful. In fact, as I mentioned, Alex will initially react with depression. If he honestly described his thoughts, he would tell Elaine he spends a great deal of time thinking about Harriet. Elaine could even expect some lying and deceit on Alex's part at first. Alex will feel tempted to try to sneak away to meet Harriet again.
Regardless of how well Elaine meets Alex's needs, he will remain in love with Harriet for some time to come. Even if they reignite the flames of their own love by meeting each other's five basic needs, all their efforts may not completely extinguish the flame of love ignited by Alex's affair with Harriet. It may burn low, but it might never go out completely. Just as an alcoholic remains addicted to alcohol the rest of his life and never dares to touch another drink, Alex will remain vulnerable to Harriet for life and should not ever see her again.
I've found that breaking a man away from his lover after he reconciles with his wife usually proves more difficult than breaking a woman away from her lover. I am not sure why this is so. Perhaps women feel more uncomfortable loving two men, while men adjust better to multiple relationships. Throughout history, in the common system of polygamy, men have supported many women, but most societies have not permitted women to do the same. Usually sociologists have assumed this discrimination had an economic base (men could support women, but women could not usually support men), but the reason may also turn out to be emotional -- men usually enjoy having several wives, while most women find having several husbands to be repulsive.
Your Marriage Will Become Stronger Than Ever
A person who discovers his or her spouse in an affair experiences one of the most severe blows anyone could possibly sustain. It also sends both partners on an emotional roller coaster. But when a couple follow my narrow path to recovery, they often tell me that they have built a better love relationship than they ever would have had if the affair had not jolted them into constructive action. The affair provides the traumatic trigger that finally gets the couple to meet each other's basic needs. Once they start meeting those basic needs, their marriage becomes what it was supposed to have been all along.
Granted, it's certainly more difficult to learn to meet each other's basic needs after an affair than it would have been before an affair. And it's lot more painful. But with or without an affair, couples can create a very passionate and fulfilling marriage if they simply learn to meet each other's basic needs.
People who have never been through recovery after an affair usually feel that they could never love or trust an unfaithful spouse again. But the thousands of couples who I've guided down this narrow path are living proof that this is not true.
