Things I Learned from Changing Patterns...

"In January of 2006 I discovered my husband's six year long affair. The world we had created together for 20 years crumbled under our feet on that day. There was nothing about 'us' that felt real or solid anymore. Three and half years later and a long, hard road traveled we have a marriage that has been rebuilt on the bedrock of real trust and mutual respect. We are happier than we've ever been in the 25 years we've been together.

Rebuilding that trust and mutual respect wasn't easy and took not only understanding intellectually what happened, but also took understanding the feelings and actually feeling them as we began to sort out the puzzle pieces of our relationship. We learned how to manage and channel those feelings in a productive way versus resorting to the destructive patterns we learned over time, many of them influenced from our families of origin.

It was clear from the beginning that we each had to take responsibility for the disintegration of our marriage. We had to look harder at our own roles and behaviors that contributed to its breakdown versus blaming and finger pointing at each other. This wasn't easy to do with a betrayal of this magnitude. But in the end, we believe it's what saved us.

Other things that contributed to re-establishing trust and mutual respect in our marriage were:

• My husband being open to questions from me about the affair and what led up to the affair without being defensive.
• Me allowing my husband to express his feelings and not make his feelings about me or hold those expressions against him.
• Consistent and clear communication from my husband about his whereabouts and me giving him the space to prove himself trustworthy to do this.
• Me allowing my husband to be himself and not what I thought he should and ought to be.
• Re-establishing intimacy in dialogue and sexually by allowing ourselves to have fun, be playful and experiment.

This has been a difficult and at times excruciatingly painful journey, but one well worth it. We both feel whole as individuals in our relationship and solid as a couple now. We continue our work at Changing Patterns and will probably do so for some time to come, but the worst is behind us now and we can say we've changed the patterns that kept us from loving ourselves and each other fully."

Nick and Vivian