Infidelity Recovery: Q&A with Dr. Talal Alsaleem (Bonus)

“Infidelity Recovery: A Q&A with Dr. Talal Alsaleem” – bonus

August/narration:

“Regardless of the circumstances that lead to the affair and the potential outcome of this journey, you owe it to your partner and to yourself to take this opportunity to understand why this happened. Because what’s worse than ending the relationship is ending it and walking away with the wrong conclusion of why it ended.” — Dr. Talal Alsaleem, Infidelity: The Best Worst Thing That Could Happen to Your Marriage.

As you know if you’ve heard the last two Girl Boner Radio episodes, Dr. Talal, worked with Jennifer and Adam after Jennifer’s infidelities — which ended up having ties to her childhood trauma. If you haven’t yet listened to parts one and two of her story, I suggest going back and hearing those first. Regardless, I think you’ll find Dr. Talal’s wisdom today interesting and perhaps helpful – especially if you or a loved one has had an affair of some kind.

With that, here’s my conversation with Dr. Talal:

August: So you heard from Jennifer first, and then spoke with Adam. What was your first impression? 

Dr. Talal:  She seemed to be concerned about the future. She seemed to be really, truly remorseful and feeling guilty about what happened. And she was really concerned that Adam would not be willing to repair the relationship with her. 

So it was clear that Jennifer wanted to make this work and, Adam was really, not even on the fence. He was really just not interested in making the relationship work and he was concerned about being pressured to do so by pursuing counseling services.

She also really was struck by what she’d read in your book too, the importance of doing the work before making a decision about your marriage. Would you speak to that a bit? Why that is an important approach to couples therapy when infidelity has happened?

The purpose of infidelity counseling is not to repair the relationship. That’s one potential outcome. The purpose of infidelity counseling is to give the couple the opportunity to process what happened, understand the what and the why, and get that information to help them make an informed decision about the future of the relationship. 

Yeah. That makes so much sense. I was really struck by this line in , your latest book. The motivation for infidelity is not always due to the fulfillment of real or imagined unmet physical and emotional needs. And you talk about these deeper conditions and issues and challenges that can be at play.

August: In Jennifer’s case, childhood trauma played a major role. How common is that? 

Dr. Talal: I think this gives me an opportunity to talk about the ideology of infidelity. So, there is this common misconception about why people cheat. If you ask the average person, and I would say even if you ask the average therapist, why does infidelity happen? Most people say it happened because people are not happy in their relationship, or they’re dissatisfied with their partner.

Now, it is true that relationship deficit is one of the leading causes of infidelity, but it’s not the only one. When I did my research, as well as my clinical work, I was able to identify three categories of ideological factors that causes infidelity. One of them is relationship deficits, but the other category is individual factors in the arena of mental health issues that the unfaithful partner is dealing with that has nothing to do with the relationship.

An example of that would be issues related to childhood trauma, personality disorders, and a variety of other mental health issues that can increase as one likelihood for engaging infidelity. There’s also environmental factors that can cause folks to be unfaithful. A classic example on that is, the type of jobs people have.

There’s a website called Ashley Madison. it’s a website designed for people who are choosing to have affairs. I believe in 2014, there was a data breach for the site and, this data breach allowed researchers a golden opportunity to collect and analyze a whole bunch of socioeconomic information about people who are on the site.

And they, when they did the analysis, they realized that they are. People with certain jobs and job categories who tend to have higher representation on this website. One was folks who are in the military. If you’re in the military, you’re going to be dealing with a lot of deployments and deployment can put a lot of stress on the individual mental health as well as on the relationship. Oftentimes deployments is happening in places where it’s in a different state or a different country, which means your level of anonymity is higher.

And a lot of times people fantasize about infidelity and they don’t engage in it because they’re worried about discovery. But if you’re in the setting where you’re less likely to discover it, it’s going to be easier for you to act on those fantasies. 

 Also there is a cultural component, similar to what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

When they are deployed, there is this cultural norms that all your peers are engaged in this activity. So it wouldn’t be so bad for me to do so. Well as the stress that the deployment put on the individual health and the relationship strains. 

Trauma, in general, can impact impulse control. A lot of studies show that when people who experience traumatic events and they have not dealt with it properly, it affects their ability to make healthy decisions and appropriate choices. If we talk about sexual trauma, especially if it happens in childhood, based on the intensity, uh, the length of the sexual abuse and how it was handled, as well as the relationship with perpetrator, it can significantly damage the sexual identity of the individual who is dealing with a sexual abuse.

It can affect the type of attachment that they form in adulthood, as well as the type of sexual behavior they engage in in adult life. A common thing that I have seen with women who have been sexually molested or sexually abused, they somehow, associate their self worth and value, with what they can offer. So they end up feeling that the only thing that they can offer to the world is their sexuality. 

There are many women who, engage in sexual affairs, not because there is a sexual deficit in their relationship, but they feel that in order for them to get the emotional connection that is lacking in their relationship, they have to give another person the sexual needs that they are seeking.

August: I know it’s the couple’s decision, and you obviously respect that so much. You don’t like psychically guess what’s going to happen. But I’m curious if there were maybe indications because obviously Jennifer and Adam were able to work things out. They decided to stay together. Were there things that were working in their favor or that work in folks favor in general That are often kind of those green flags of, oh, this, this relationship, this marriage is salvageable. 

Dr. Talal: Great questions. I guess to answer that one, we have to explore a little bit more about what is the process of recovery and what are the milestones that couples need to go through to decide whether or not we should stay together or heal individually. 

An important milestones of recovery is getting the story of the infidelity. And I would have to say, this is what makes or breaks the whole process. Because if you don’t understand or don’t know what happened and why it happened, you’re not going to be able to decide if this is something that you can work with, something that you can change.

So how successful, both the unfaithful and the betrayed are in completing this milestone is going to be a make or break for the process. 

So one thing that I look for in terms of success for the unfaithful is how transparent they are about what happened. How willing they are about sharing and revisiting the story and sharing some of the unpleasant truth that led them to be unfaithful.

Now granted, it’s never easy. It’s not easy for people to look back and introspect and share their motivations. Sometimes they’re embarrassed to share it. Sometimes they don’t even know why they did what they did, but being able to give the story is, a green flag because if you’re dealing with an unfaithful who is denying, minimizing, whitewashing, or trying to change the narrative, then that’s not a good sign, for a relationship that would be successful for staying together. It’s a setup for relapse because you’re not uncovering why this happened and if you don’t know why this happened, you’re not really ready to make those changes.

What I look for on the betrayed end is their capacity to actually accept the narrative when the narrative is actually uncovered. It’s not that they would say, you know what? I get it. It was okay for you to cheat. It’s really more along the lines of understanding why the sequence of events led us to be here, because sometimes the unfaithful is actually telling the story and the story is logical and truthful and adds up based on what was discovered, but the betrayed is not willing to accept that narrative. 

That’s also not a good sign, because if, if you have a story that both parties are not agreeing on, they cannot rebuild their relationship. 

Another important milestone is acknowledging the impact. And this is the opportunity for the unfaithful to showcase whether or not they truly understand the damage that they have caused to their partner and everybody around by their actions of infidelity. They need to demonstrate this understanding, not just on the intellectual level by identifying the scope of the damage that they have caused, but also whether or not they actually have the appropriate feelings associated with that understanding. Because as the betrayed partner, why would you want to rebuild with somebody who doesn’t get the damage that they caused, or why would you want to rebuild with somebody who gets the damage intellectually, but they don’t feel bad about it?

Another important piece, or milestones of recovery is, the action plan. And this is the part when you uncover the story and the reason why it happened and all these factors and come up with a plan to fix those issues that led to the infidelity.

Some people follow through with the changes needed to address those individual, relational, as well as environmental factors that led to infidelity. And some people just do lip service, right? They, they don’t do the work. So how much people stick to the agreements that we have made can also be a determining factor on whether or not they’re going to be successful in their effort to rebuild the relationship.

August: Mm. I was struck by what you said about, the honesty being so important because affairs typically involve a lot of dishonesty or hiding things at first, I guess I’m curious when or how you rebuild trust when , obviously the lies have to stop. And so the betrayed person, how do they know that, oh, okay, the lies have stopped, and now this one really is the truth.

Dr. Talal: That’s the most challenging part of the process. you know, when I train other therapists to do this model is to really say your job as a therapist is to, to be the one who calls BS on the stories that doesn’t add up. A lot of therapists are not comfortable doing that because, you know, as therapists, you train to be therapeutically neutral. 

And what I’d say in infidelity recovery, yes, neutrality is important and valid to a point, but the clients are expecting you to make a call. Because if you leave it up to them, you’re going to be dealing with somebody who wants to minimize the story. And you’re going to be dealing with somebody who wants to exaggerate the story.

You’re that, third party who doesn’t have a horse to win in this race, which means that you have to be able to review what’s being said within the context of what was discovered. But also, In order for you as a therapist to actually figure out how much of what’s being said is honest or not, before I talk to my clients about the narrative of infidelity, the first thing I do is gather a lot of history.

I ask them to tell me the history of their relationship. How did they start? How did they get here? I ask them to tell me about the past relationship that they had and the quality of those relations. And, also information about their family of origins and the model of a relationship that they were exposed to, what kind of trauma they were exposed to. What cultural norms that they have experienced, because if you grew up in a family of origin where infidelity was a common place, then the seeds of infidelity started way long time ago before you even met your current partner. 

Using all this information that you have gathered prior to diving into the story of infidelity is going to help you have context and interpret what’s being said within this broader context so that you can actually tease out is what’s being said, adding up based on all this history.

But also when infidelity is discovered, there’s usually evidence, right? There is text, there’s emails, there’s pictures, there’s videos. So you put the stories being told to the test of logic, as well as within the context of the information that you have gathered and what was discovered to come up with a cohesive narrative.

August: It’s such a layered, nuanced process, it sounds like.

Dr. Talal: It is. And I always give the description. I feel like. doing traditional couples counseling in comparison to doing infidelity recovery is like the difference between doing surgery and outpatient, which means that your role as a therapist is going to be different. The type of therapist who can do this work also is going to be different than the garden variety therapist.

Even the length of the session is different because this is 15 minutes or up, go home. You cannot end the session when people are, in the middle of a crisis. So oftentimes, the first few sessions are intensive two hour sessions or marathon sessions. And I usually actually give myself a one hour buffer in between sessions, just in case I need to give folks extra time.

 People are experiencing intense emotions and you need to provide them with a safe space so that when they go home, they’re not getting worse.

August: Your book that really resonated so much with Jennifer, The Best Worst Thing That Could Happen to Your Marriage, there’s an encouragement and a hope or a possibility in the title that seems I think helpful when you’re in a crisis to hear that there might be some sunshine, something to look forward to. 

Would you talk about how infidelity could be the best, worst thing? It certainly pivoted things for, Jennifer and Adam and the work that they did with you really did pave the way to, I would say a whole new marriage almost. 

Dr. Talal: Well, I do believe that infidelity doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Everything we do good or bad, it happens for a reason. There’s nothing that excuses infidelity, but it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t understand the reason that led to it. And also something as awful as infidelity can actually be a catalyst for change.

And it’s really hard for people to wrap their mind around it. And sometimes people say, well, are you recommending infidelity to fix the relationship? Like, no, that’s the thing away from what I’m trying to say. But if infidelity happened, it’s a really rude wake up call to let you know that there is something seriously is going on in your life, whether in your relationship, whether in your environment, whether within you as an individual level.

I always give the analogy of a heart attack. We all know that we need to eat healthy and exercise. Not everybody does that, but when something bad happened like a heart attack, this would be the time for people to either eat better and exercise better than they ever had in their whole life because they want to live or continue being on that same path.

The same thing happened with infidelity. I think most people are aware that they have relationship deficit. Most people are aware that they have past trauma or individual mental health issues that they’re not dealing with. Or environmental stressors that are impacting their individual health as well as their relationship stability.

But often times, they don’t do anything about it. A variety of reasons. It could be taking your partner for granted. It could be not having access to resources. It could be hoping and wishing that it will go away on its own. Or sometimes you are socialized that this is what happens when you’re in a relationship for a long time.

Like this is a marriage rut, which I don’t believe in. But when the infidelity happened, no, they can no longer actually ignore these issues. They are forced to be in a position where they actually have to look at these issues and decide whether or not they’re going to fix them. 

The one who actually end up fixing them, they’re going to end up with better, healthier, not just individual health, but a better relationship because now, they’re putting all the effort, all the work to fix those issues. The one who don’t, it’s a clear sign that this is the time for you to end this relationship, and this is your opportunity to walk away.

August: So the best worst thing could be a breakup.

Dr. Talal: Exactly. 

August: I have to ask you because, this idea gets thrown around so much still, is that once a cheater, always a cheater. How do you respond to that?

Dr. Talal: My answer for that is this. I do believe that there are some people who is just either going to be unwilling to make changes or unable to make changes or a combination of both. So those people exist, but that’s not the majority. I would say the clinical scenarios where I’ve seen, once a cheater, always a cheater when you’re dealing with an individual factor related to personality disorders.

If you’re looking at somebody, who has antisocial personality disorder, somebody who’s a narcissist, they have such a poor prognosis in terms of preventing relapse, because they are very resistant to treatment. They’re not impossible to fix, but they’re very challenging to fix. A lot of it has to do with the fact that they are A OK with who they are. They don’t experience any clinical distress. Their distress is that the world is not bending to their will.

There are many people who, when you show them the way here’s, what’s broken, here’s what you need to fix and you give them the tools. If you pave that way and give them a safe environment to actually practice the skill set, then they will actually succeed and make sure that this won’t happen again, because it is really a cause and effect. If we’re able to capture all the reason why the infidelity happened and you fix them, then you don’t have to worry about relapse.

August: So much depends on the underlying cause, it sounds like, as well as the individuals’ and the couples’ willingness to, as you said, be honest and to do this work.

Dr. Talal: Absolutely. Because, if people do the work and you address the causes of infidelity and you fix them, the additional layer of this, once people grow through infidelity and they decide to repair their relationship, they end up having a healthy level of hypervigilance, which is strange to say, because we associate hypervigilance as a bad thing.

When you experience something as awful as infidelity and you fix their relationship and you end up with a better relationship than you have before, you’re going to be very proactive at protecting this new relationship that you have arrived at because it came at a heavy sticker price. So it often teaches the couple to be more really thinking about preventative measures.

So even though they fix the issues and now they’re happy and they have better relationship they become more proactive about making sure if there’s any changes in their life, they address it right away. And I think this is a good advice for anybody in a relationship with or without infidelity.

I believe successful relationship should be treated just like a business partnership. In any kind of business partnership, you have regular meetings. This is your own therapy session without the therapist and a minimum once a week, you need to be taking the time to meet with your partner to talk about what you’re happy about, what do you like, what do you appreciate?

But also what are the things that you have concerns about or what are the things that’s going to be happening in our life that might impact our ability to meet each other’s needs. Because if people are ahead of it It’s going to be easy for them to avoid resentment and it’s going to be easy for them to avoid dealing with a significant relationship deficit. 

August: I love that. It made me think of, I interviewed a therapist a few years ago who suggested getting couples therapy when you’re not in a state of crisis. And it actually inspired my partner and I to do some couples therapy. And there were some challenges that came up because you’re doing this deep emotional work, but we enjoyed it so much. We called them therapy dates and it was actually a really cool experience.

Dr. Talal: I think that’s actually a great example of what I’m saying. Also another layer of this it’s easier for people to resolve conflict if they address the conflict in peacetime versus wartime, because if you try to address it in the moment that you’re triggered, you’re not going to be in the best state to speak well and listen well, but if you know that you have an outlet right where you can actually come in and have a serious talk without distraction a serious talk when everybody’s at their best, a serious talk when everybody actually know what they’re going to talk about and have chosen the language to better convey that message, you’re going to be more successful in identifying the problem, identifying a solution and agree on a solution that works for everybody

August: Mm. Yeah, I could totally see that. This is a huge question, and I know that there’s so many individual differences that you need to take into consideration when giving advice about all of this. But for folks who are listening, and they’re going through infidelity or the aftermath, is there any particular advice that you feel is especially important for folks to hear?

Dr. Talal: Accepting the fact that a complicated issue like infidelity is something that a person cannot fix on their own. I even say this in my books, they’re self help books, but I say like, these books are not going to fix your relationship.

They are designed to give you clarity about what needs to happen to get there. Something like infidelity require not just the services of a couple therapist. It would be requiring the services of a couple therapist who specializes in infidelity recovery. In addition to the couple’s counseling, I always recommend for the betrayed and unfaithful to engage in individual therapy as well, too. Especially if some of the reason that led to infidelity are individual factors that has nothing to do with, relationship deficit. For the betrayed, they need to engage in individual therapy that is trauma based. This will help them shorten the cycle of the triggers that they’re dealing with and the intensity of those triggers.

More importantly too is that, sometimes, couples make the awful mistakes of exposing their kids to the knowledge of the affair. That create a lot of problems for the kids. Even adult kids. It can affect their development, it can affect the alliances within the family because some will side with the betrayed, some will side with the unfaithful. It will change their perspective on what healthy relationships are. So in those situation, I strongly recommend for them to engage their kids in family counseling.  

So people need to be mindful of how much exposure, they give to the world about what happened. A different version of this too is that whoever you try to solicit support and advice from, whether it’s family members or friends, you’re also going to solicit their bias. And if you’re going to be making an important decision about the future of your relationship, those decisions cannot happen by external influences, because some people will tell you to stay. Some people will tell you to leave based on their worldview and their personal experience, but that’s their worldview. That’s their personal experience. It is not yours. Even the ones who have dealt with infidelity, I would put money that the reason why the infidelity happened in their situation is different than yours.

Another piece of advice is really to enter the therapy process with an open mind. You cannot just walk in saying I’m going to fix it or I’m going to leave, consider both options. But really the process of infidelity recovery is designed to give you that information so that you can make the appropriate decision. And the decision cannot be emotional, it has to be calculated based on what happened and why it happened and whether or not people are interested in making the changes needed to prevent relapse.

August: The piece about being really thoughtful about who you tell about the infidelity, does that also apply if one person cheated and the other person doesn’t know about the betrayal? 

Dr. Talal: Great question. I get quite often calls from the unfaithful to say, I’ve been unfaithful and I would like to fix it, but I don’t want to tell my partner. That’s a problem because infidelity recovery can not happen on an individual level. You need the other partner to understand whether or not this was related to a relationship deficit.

Not only that, at some point of time, the fear is going to come out to the surface, so even if I help you as the unfaithful to understand why this happened, right, and what you need to do about it, at some point of time this is going to happen. And it doesn’t matter what changes you have made, the betrayed is going to feel left out of this whole process.

With a caveat. Let’s say that the relationship has ended and somebody trying to get clarity and closure and this is the best way for them to do that, then that’s fine. But they cannot expect to fix the relationship through individual counseling.

And I believe that the level of disclosure is different case to case. Not every detail is going to be important. There is such a thing as overexposure. This is especially important for the betrayers who they want to know every little thing or want to see every little picture and every little text.

It is important to ask the questions. that the betrayed is concerned about, but also give the answers at the lowest level of detail possible. We don’t need techno color. Because really the purpose of the story is two things, understanding the type of infidelity that took place and the reason that it happened. So find the path to achieve those objective that doesn’t overly traumatize the betrayed partner. Because they’re going to have to deal with those images and thoughts in their head, then it will prolong their recovery process.

August/narration:

Learn more from Dr. Talal Alsaleem by reading his books. The Best Worst Thing That Can Happen to Your Marriage, which Jennifer found so helpful, explores the causes of infidelity, milestones of recovery, trajectories for healing and steps for successfully moving forward. 

He told me he wrote his second book, Unfaithful & Unrepentant: Affairs Beyond the Hope of Repair, because of his many clients who’ve chosen the recovery path, yet despite their best efforts, really struggle to rebuild trust and heal. 

Dr. Talal: So that book is designed for the people who feel like, should I really stay in this relationship? I chose to stay in this relationship, but it’s not working out. Here’s why it’s not working out because I’m dealing with this kind of unfaithful partner. So it’s really designed to highlight the situation where recovery through rebuilding the relationship is not possible. And here’s why it’s not possible. 

August/narration:

Dr. Talal also offers training for therapists who’d like to be educated and certified in his model of infidelity repair and recovery. You can also find him on YouTube, as The Infidelity Doctor.

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