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1 found at the bottom of this page Welcome to the Home Study Course sponsored by the Healthcare Training Institute, homestudycredit.com. This course is entitled, Infidelity Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for the Hurt Partner and Unfaithful Partner. Our primary intent for this home study course is to provide quality education to foster your professional growth. The Institute has provided quality education since 1979. The purpose of the course is to assist you in increasing your knowledge regarding how to treat patients, clients, etc. dealing with cognitive behavioral therapy for both the hurt and unfaithful partner undergoing an infidelity crisis. As each case study is given, if the concepts seem to be applicable to your situation, I encourage you to turn your CD player off and make a few notes regarding the application of the principle to your setting. However, these notes are for your purposes only and are not to be sent to the Institute. Also each track is very content dense. So feel free to replay the track to review the content either for your own purposes, or if you feel appropriate play the track in an individual or group session for client education. Also permission is granted to reproduce this CD. We encourage you to duplicate and give copies of this CD to colleagues, clients, etc. as you deem appropriate. We feel the information on our CD's is valuable. Thus, we have an interest in distributing CD's in as many ways as possible, to benefit the greatest number of people, who have a need and are receptive to this practical information. The questions in your Answer Booklet are sequential and deal with the section of content that preceded it. For this reason, to facilitate the answering of each question, you might read the question from the Answer Booklet prior to listening to that CD track. By knowing what the question is ahead of time, you will then know the content to listen for that contains the answer. So just a hint, after you write down the answer to a question in your Answer Booklet, read on to the next question in order to give you a “heads up” to listen for the content that contains the answer to the next question. Merely write the correct letter on the corresponding blank line in your answer booklet. Each answer is only used once. Keep in mind there is nothing tricky or hard about these questions. They are merely intended to verify the playing of this CD. For the purpose of brevity, most generally, I will use the term “therapists” or “mental health professional.” However, don’t let these terms deter you from applying the concepts to your situations. When you hear the word “therapists,” if your job title is social worker, psychologist, marriage and family therapist, mental health counselor, professional counselor, resident director, program assistant, etc. merely substitute the appropriate term that is the most meaningful to you. In short, don’t let my use of the term “therapists” cognitively set you off track from hearing the content because your job title is school counselor, for example. I will also use the term “client” for the purposes of brevity. However, if you deal with patients, residents, students, consumers, etc., transpose “client” for the term that is the most meaningful to you in your work setting. On this CD set we will discuss such topics as: the impact on the hurt partner; gender differences in the hurt partner’s response; the unfaithful partner’s response; gender differences in the unfaithful partner’s response; exploring ideas about love; 5 indicators of trustworthiness; questionable reasons for staying together; the impact of essential growth experiences; the Flip Flop Factor; low cost behavioral change; high cost behavioral change; overcoming the resistance to change; and intimate listening techniques. So let’s get started On the rest of this track, we will discuss three therapist judgments that can interfere with counseling couples experiencing an infidelity crisis. These three therapist judgments are, judging whether an affair is good or bad, separating the couple into victim and victimizer, and suggesting the couple should stay together no matter what. We will also discuss choosing terms in infidelity counseling. Norman and Alicia had been married for nine years. Recently, Norman had revealed to Alicia that he had been carrying on an affair with a friend of theirs from church for the past two years. Norman stated, “it was the worst night of my life. Of both of our lives! Sue was Alicia’s best friend from church, and I was betraying Alicia with her. I tried to break it off a couple of times, but Sue and I always ended up back together. Finally, I told our pastor what was going on, and he told me I should tell Alicia right away.” When Norman told Alicia what had been happening, she was understandably crushed. Alicia asked Norman if he wanted a divorce. Norman sincerely wanted to recommit to his wife, so on the advice of their pastor, he and Alicia sought marital counseling. Norman were concerned about marital counseling. He stated, “I know we need to do this, but I’m worried about always coming off as the bad guy. I know I did a terrible thing! But are we just going to focus on all the horrible things I did!?” I explained to Norman and Alicia that there are three judgments that I do not make during infidelity counseling. Each of these three judgments can interfere with the couple’s healing process. I stated, “the first judgment I do not make is labeling the affair as good or bad. An affair can be enhancing for one partner, while it is devastating for the other. I do believe that a continuing affair carried on without the consent of both partners perpetuates dysfunction in the relationship. A continuing affair also makes intimate attachment between the couple virtually impossible. I also believe that if the unfaithful partner is serious about recommitting to the relationship and the other partner is not interested in an open marriage, he or she, in my experience, must give up his or her lover.” I stated to Norman and Alicia, “The second judgment I do not make in infidelity counseling is separating the couple into victim and victimizer, or betrayer and betrayed. Each of you should accept an appropriate share of the responsibility for what went wrong in your marriage. Rather than assigning blame, I encourage you to confront those parts of yourselves that led to the affair. I also encourage you to change in ways that we help rebuild trust and intimacy. This doesn’t mean that each of you is equally accountable for the affair. Clearly Norman had a choice, and he made it, and is responsible for his actions. But I do encourage both of you to hold yourselves accountable for the distress in your marriage that may have contributed to the affair.” In addition to not labeling the affair good or bad, and not separating the couple into victim and victimizer, a third judgment I do not make during infidelity counseling is that I do not assume that the couple should stay together no matter what. I invite each partner to explain to me their unique reasons for having or giving up a lover. Likewise I invite them to explain their reasons for choosing or refusing to recommit to their marriage. I stated to Norman and Alicia, “your decision to recommit should be deliberate and well considered, not based on feelings alone.” As you have probably experienced, choosing terminology to use when referring to the partner involved in the infidelity counseling can be challenging. I tend to refer to partners as the hurt partner and the unfaithful partner. I explain to my clients that I refer to the partner whose assumption of monogamy has been violated as the hurt partner. However, I explain that this does not imply that the unfaithful partner does not feel equally hurt at times. I do feel that in general, the hurt partner experiences the greater sense of devastation. I do not categorize partners as betrayer and betrayed because these words can be interpreted by clients as conveying a certain moral righteousness or condemnation. The words betrayer and betrayed may also be interpreted by clients as putting the burden of responsibility on one client alone. I usually use the term lover to refer to the person with whom the unfaithful partner had an affair, whether or not the affair is still going on. Do you use the terms unfaithful, hurt, and lover? Or do you have other terms that you use? Do you need to reexamine the terminology you are currently using in your couple’s therapy sessions in which infidelity has occurred? On this track, we have discussed three therapist judgments that can interfere with counseling couples experiencing an infidelity crisis. These three therapist judgments are, judging whether an affair is good or bad, separating the couple into victim and victimizer, and suggesting the couple should stay together no matter what. We also discussed choosing terms in infidelity counseling. On the next track we will discuss the psychological impact of an affair on the hurt partner. We will specifically discuss the five emotional losses experienced by the hurt partner following the affair. These five emotional losses are, the loss of the sense of specialness, the loss of self-respect, the loss of the feeling of control, the loss of a sense of order, and the loss of a sense of purpose.
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1 Answer Booklet for this course Forward to Track 2 Table of Contents Top |
