ERP 175: How to Heal From an Affair – An Interview With Scott Woolley
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Hi, thank you for joining today’s podcast episode. Today’s episode is 175, “How to heal from an affair. An interview with Dr. Scott Woolley.” Before we get started I wanna invite you to take a moment and perhaps tune into some level of gratitude, acknowledgment and appreciation for your tuning in, your willingness to grow yourself, improve yourself in the way of relationship.
On this show, the Empowered Relationship Podcast show, we explore the landscape of intimacy, knowing that it is complex, may even activate or trigger challenge at times, where we may feel reactive, threatened, afraid, and that there’s something happening there, that if we explore that, that there’s learning and growth to be had… But that it just doesn’t come; we have to say yes to that call.
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Let’s get started in today’s episode.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Dr. Scott Woolley, PhD holds the rank of Distinguished Professor at Alliant International University. He is a founder and Director of the San Diego Center for Emotionally Focused Therapy and the Training and Research Institute for EFT Alliant.
Dr. Woolley has trained thousands of therapists in many areas of the world, including Canada, Chile, Finland, Great Britain, Guam, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Norway, Russia, Sweden, Taiwan, The Netherlands, and throughout the U.S.
Dr. Scott Woolley, thank you for joining us today.
Dr. Scott Wolley: Thank you, I’m glad to be here.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: It’s just a personal privilege to have you here, because I did take the externship in January with you and Dr. Susan Johnson, and I love your teachings and I just feel super-privileged to have you share your time with us today.
Dr. Scott Wolley: Well, thank you.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Today’s topic is how to heal from an affair, and I would love to just get people acquainted with you and your perspective… Can you talk a little bit about what got you interested in helping couples who are dealing with affair? I know you train a lot of therapists, as your bio talks about… So can you help us around where you’re coming from with affairs?
Dr. Scott Wolley: Yes, absolutely. Well, I think there’s probably two factors that really kind of got me interested. One was watching a close family member go through having her husband have an affair, and kind of the devastation that occurs as a result of that… And then also, early in my career as a fairly brand new therapist I was working with a case where there was an affair, and the woman kind of snapped. Her husband was having an affair, she snapped, went out, bought a gun, and almost killed her husband. I talked her down from that, but as a new therapist, and talking somebody down with a loaded gun in their hands was a scary thing… So I just thought “I’ve gotta learn more about this.” And I’ve never had that kind of a dramatic situation since then, but affairs can bring up just very, very powerful base emotions, and I think it’s important to understand how to work with them, and frankly, prevent serious problems.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes. What an initiation into your therapeutic work… That’s intense. I can imagine what that was like for you. And were you already interested in EFT (emotionally focused therapy) at the time?
Dr. Scott Wolley: At that time I really had had really no training. I’d kind of learned about it, but I didn’t know much about it… So I didn’t have the advantages of emotionally focused therapy at the time.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Gotcha. Okay. So when you’re working with affairs, what’s the lens you’re coming from now, as you’ve evolved in your works?
Dr. Scott Wolley: Well, it’s definitely emotionally focused therapy, which is based in attachment theory, which is really — there’s some basic premises of attachment theory and emotionally focused therapy. One of the primary ones is that people get together for emotional reasons in most parts of the world at this point, and they often fight and split up for emotional reasons, and they have affairs for emotional reasons. And you’ve got to understand the logic of emotion in order to help people.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Would you help listeners know a little bit about the logic of emotion? I know that there is no way to really do this full justice on a short podcast, but is there anything you can say that helps people understand that perspective?
Dr. Scott Wolley: Absolutely. Emotions obviously are complex, and one of the challenges has been that historically in the field people have assumed they can’t really be understood, and when you assume something can’t be understood, you don’t try to understand it. But through lots and lots of good research we’ve kind of come to understand that there’s several aspects to it. First it’s that emotions have a huge impact on the way we see the world. They inform the way we organize material. That’s very broad, I know, but if you’ve feeling good, just even if you’re physically feeling good, if you’re happy, things seem to just go better; it’s easier to not get offended; if somebody is maybe not kind, it’s easier to handle it well.
On the other hand, if you’re feeling down, if you’re feeling sad, if you’re feeling over-stressed, somebody may say something and you may react, and you may see it very differently.
Think about if you’ve ever been on a trip someplace, and you have gotten sick; think about how that impacts your memory of that city, or that experience. Typically, you’re not gonna have good feelings about it, and you’re probably not gonna wanna do it again. So emotions impact the way we see the world… When we feel comfortable with people, we tend to wanna spend more time with them. If we don’t feel comfortable, if a person feels unsafe, we tend to pull away. That happens in couple relationships as well.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Thank you for that. And are you able to speak to the attachment underpinnings of the early imprint perhaps of relationship, that informs some of these emotions, for people that aren’t as acquainted?
Dr. Scott Wolley: Yes, absolutely. So each of us, as we are growing up, develop what John Bowlby, the father of attachment theory, called internal working models of attachment. That’s a fancy way of saying that each of us develop models about who we are, who other people are, and how we relate with them. Those models are very complex, largely not conscious, but they impact us.
If as a child, when we’re growing up, in general, when we have needs, if people were responsive to those needs, we tend to see people as being safe, at least in our family. It doesn’t mean we always see people at school as being safe, or outside of the family, but we see people in close relationships as being safe.
On the other hand, if we end up having relationships, particularly with family members, caregivers, intimate kinds of relationships, emotionally close relationships where people betray us, people are abusive, people are unpredictable, if the caregivers are alcoholics, rageaholics etc. if there’s a lot of instability, it’s hard to feel secure in intimate relationships. We don’t know whether people will be there or not. Those models that we develop as children oftentimes carry forward.
Now., the cool thing about that though is that they’re not locked in stone. They do carry forward through time, and they do tend to influence models going forward in the way we relate to people, but they often can change. People that have insecure models of attachment, if they get into secure relationships, they can become more secure.
On the other hand, some people have maybe very good, secure relationships growing up with their parents, they could go to their parents for comfort or connection, with their sadness, with their triumphs, with their joys – all those things they could share openly with their parents and their parents listened… Then maybe down the road, in an early love relationship, for example, a first crush, they may end up with just — oftentimes people are so vulnerable when they have a really deep, powerful crush early in their teenagehood for many people… If that relationship doesn’t go well, if it’s abusive for example, or if there’s a major trauma or a tragedy, it can really impact people’s sense of security in a love relationship. And of course, that’s particularly true when people grow up, and they get married, and divorced, and other kinds of things, and of course, it can absolutely happen with affairs.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes, yes. And I’m listening to you, Scott, and I’m hearing as you spoke about the emotional lens (if you will) that colors our experience, as you mentioned, going to a vacation… I was talking on my podcast a few weeks ago how my husband and I had a trip to the Palm Springs area, and I had this crick in my neck, and it was incredibly painful, and I’m like “I’ve just had that experience!” Luckily, we were able to still have a great time, but yes, it absolutely impacted my experience. And coming back to the emotion… Do you find that the emotion also reinforces the attachment tendency, in that if someone is feeling insecure based on maybe the early attachment experience and just what they’ve known in relationship, it might feel tentative, maybe not feel so open and happy, and that they have that emotion… Can you talk about how they relate?
Dr. Scott Wolley: Yeah, okay. Well, one of the things is if you have had experienced growing up where people were safe and secure, and the world was also safe and secure, you tend to trust relationships more, and you feel safe in them; it’s easier to be vulnerable and open. Vulnerable emotions are incredibly important. Vulnerable emotions, on the negative side, can involve sadness, and fear, and hurt, and loneliness. On the positive side, they can involve feeling deeply in love. Being deeply in love with somebody is a vulnerable experience. Sharing joy can be vulnerable, depending on where you share it.
One of the worst things can be if you really had some profound, joyful experience, and sharing it with somebody who kind of makes fun of it, or doesn’t like it. That’s hurtful, right?
Vulnerable emotions… One of the things that happens with couples is when they fall in love, the process of falling in love involves this process of the couple getting to know each other and risking sharing aspects of themselves – feelings, thoughts, values, experiences. Feelings – positive feelings, negative feelings, happiness, sadness, dreams, hopes, fears, vulnerabilities. When couples start to do that with each other, when they experience the other person as accessible and responsive and engaged, it’s very powerful. To be vulnerable, and have somebody very attuned with you is powerful, and almost all couples, as they are falling in love, will have these deep, moonlit night talks. They have deep talks, and they experience each other as both accessible, and responsive and engaged, and as being vulnerable; when you’re vulnerable and somebody else is vulnerable. That really is what fuels love. It creates love. One of the reasons we fall in love with children is because they are so vulnerable, and we attuned to them and they attune to us, and it fuels our love for children. Same thing happens between the members of a couple.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes, absolutely. Well, I just realized I could continue to ask you questions, but I wanna pivot towards the topic today, which is affairs. What do you typically see, that happens when a couple is experiencing the injury or the trauma of an affair? Are all affairs the same?
Dr. Scott Wolley: No. Not all affairs are the same. There are different types of affairs, both in their dynamics and also what fuels them, or what leads people to be unfaithful. And of course, the results are different as well. One of the most traumatizing ones are for people when they think everything is okay in the relationship, and then they find out – often through a second or third-party; through somebody else, not because their partner comes to them – that their partner is having an affair. It’s absolutely devastating for people. It’s like my world isn’t what I thought it was. This relationship isn’t what I thought it was. This person that I sleep with, that I love, that I share oftentimes all of my home, my bed, our children, our finances, everything else, isn’t actually with me, and I don’t know who they are. That feels absolutely devastating, and very traumatizing for people.
Those tend to be the worst. I don’t think it’s very good. Sometimes though, when couples are more disengaged, and there’s a lot of fighting and anger… In some cases people threaten. I’ve had people who said “If you don’t shape up, I’m gonna have an affair.” And when it happens, if it happens under those circumstances, it isn’t this bad, but it’s always — even under those circumstances, it’s always traumatizing.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes. What do you find is more common, or are there more common types of affairs?
Dr. Scott Wolley: Well, it depends on the way you categorize them, but… Let me just talk about three motivating factors for affairs.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: That sounds perfect, yes.
Dr. Scott Wolley: That might help guide the way we’re talking. These are based on some of the research I’ve been involved in doing, and it’s really based on what motivates or leads people to being unfaithful.
The first one is there are affairs that are motivated very directly by either a reaction to what’s going on in the relationship, or an attempt to change the relationship. So they’re kind of relationship-driven.
Now, let me be really clear as I go through this. At the end of the day, nobody makes anybody else have an affair. I don’t care how bad the relationship is, how long it’s been since they’ve had sex, anything like that. It can’t make somebody have an affair. I’ve never seen a case yet, for example, where somebody puts a gun to their partner’s head and says “You are gonna have an affair or I’m gonna kill you.” That doesn’t happen. However, relationship dynamics can influence having affairs.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: The dissatisfaction, the loneliness, the despair of feeling so disconnected, perhaps…
Dr. Scott Wolley: Exactly. So sometimes people have a protest or a revenge affair. It’s a protest to either feeling completely unloved, and rejected, or it’s kind of a revenge against a partner for past hurts, which of course, just makes it worse. So that’s how [unintelligible 00:20:12.26]
Another type is a “come and get me” affair. I’ve seen people who have said “If you don’t stop working, I’m gonna have an affair.” They keep working hard, and they don’t spend any more time at home, so they up the ante – “I’m gonna have an affair with so-and-so, who you know.”
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Wow… Yeah.
Dr. Scott Wolley: You know, trying to get their partner to come back. It doesn’t work, but anyway; that’s another type. Another type that’s related to the relationship dynamics is when people are very burned out on their relationship; they have a hard time being direct in ending the relationship, so… I call it the burned out affair, where they end up — it’s a way of leaving the relationship and trying out a new relationship, but they’re really pretty done with the relationship anyway. So those are all related to relationship dynamics.
A second category of affairs are related to life stressors and problems in the relationship, but it’s really distance. When people get under lots and lots of pressure, they end up doing things that they normally wouldn’t do. In healthy relationships, when people get under pressure, they turn to their partner for comfort and connection. But if the relationship isn’t in good shape, instead of turning to their partner for comfort and connection when they feel huge amounts of pressure, they may end up turning to somebody else. And oftentimes essentially the affair is an attempt to avoid dealing with problems at work, or family, or in the relationship, or feelings of failure; sometimes it’s escaping into a life of excitement and romance and deception, which by the way, we should talk about, because that oftentimes fuels affairs.
But anyway, the third area is what I call interpsychicly-driven affairs. There are some people who have what I would call a power player affair. They are usually men; sometimes you see women doing this, but usually they’re men, who are usually contenders in society, and they try to get their sense of security through power and control. You oftentimes see folks like this in politics, you see them in the head of businesses, that kind of thing, because they’re very driven… And oftentimes they have gender insecurities, and they oftentimes see bedding women as a way of feeling like they’re a man, feeling like they’re successful etc. That’s an example.
There’s compulsive affairs, where people get involved — typically, they start off with getting involved with pornography, and then going to strip clubs, and then they go to prostitutes etc. It has a lot of sexual addiction, compulsivity characteristics.
Anyway, those are kind of interpsychicly-driven. You can have these affairs that are driven by the relationship, by problems in the relationship and really crushing circumstances, and kind of interpsychic challenges.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Do you find that they’re all at play, or do you feel like there’s more common motivators?
Dr. Scott Wolley: In other words, which ones most?
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yeah, do you see more frequency in one area of the motivator?
Dr. Scott Wolley: We actually have some research on that, and I’m not remembering it exactly… But I’ll tell you what I see in my practice. I see the interpsychic dynamics, I see the compulsive affairs, pornography-driven kinds of affairs, kind of sex addiction oriented affairs probably the most. The second one is probably the types of affairs that are related to relationship dynamics.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Do you find that there’s a combination of motivators? I’m thinking of clients I’ve worked with and I’m like “I think that there could be a couple things interacting at times”, perhaps.
Dr. Scott Wolley: Absolutely. Any of those factors can be, or all of the above. I’ve seen all of the above. But one of the reasons this is important, Jessica, is that in terms of healing – and we haven’t really gotten to healing yet, but one of the big questions is “How in the world did this happen? Why did this happen?” And yes, at one level somebody made a decision; no question about it. It’s never somebody else’s fault. At the end of the day, somebody made a decision. But what were the motivating factors? How in the world did this happen? And if I stay with this person and we try to work this out, how are we gonna prevent it from happening again?
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Precisely, yes.
Dr. Scott Wolley: You don’t understand why it happened, it’s gonna be hard to trust that it’s not gonna happen again.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes. I have a couple that I worked with earlier this year, and the gentleman was the one that had the affair. It doesn’t probably matter for me to describe the situation, but he was very much boundaried, and like “It’s not gonna happen again”, but he was reluctant to really want to dig into the motivating factors and the vulnerability around it. He did do some of the work, but… I think he runs his life very much by kind of willing himself into these right and wrong… So I get that it can be easier for some clients than others to really dive into that deeper work.
Dr. Scott Wolley: Which really probably suggests that he’s not very emotionally aware of his own emotional needs.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: That was what we worked on, yes.
Dr. Scott Wolley: And he therefore didn’t know how to turn to his partner and ask for his emotional needs to be met, ask for comfort, ask for connection. He did not know how to do that.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yeah, that’s exactly what we worked on. Perfect. Scott, for people that are listening that may be in this terrain/circumstance in their life, what would you recommend for people to start to do? I guess as I’m listening I’m like sometimes there’s people who, depending on if they’re the person that had the affair, or the person that was cheated on – one or both of them have a choice around do they wanna work on the relationship? What do you recommend in that beginning phase?
Dr. Scott Wolley: Well, in that beginning phase don’t make any major decisions. I think one of the most dangerous things – people get so hurt, and these days with the internet people are so hurt, and then they go for revenge publically, which is very destructive. Don’t go on Facebook, be very careful who you talk to. There may be a time when you decide to let family in etc. depending on the direction, but… One of the first things I encourage people to do is slow down and don’t make any major decisions. Even though in the moment it’s hard to understand, you’re gonna have a hard time making sense out of it, with time and with education and good professional help, you can make sense out of this.
It doesn’t mean that everything’s gonna get better, but we actually have some pretty good research showing that many, many couples where there’s been an affair are able to heal their relationship, they are able to get better, so it is possible… But it’s not gonna happen unless people learn how to be really open and honest, and that’s gonna take some time.
It makes it harder to do that when people get on the internet and are like “I can’t believe this is what my husband just did/this is what my wife just did.” Don’t do that.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes, and there’s all this layering of injury… They’re just in this reactive, downward spiral that’s really hard to tease out and really help them land in a safe place. So yeah, I guess what I’m hearing you say is there’s an initial crisis that can be incredibly shattering, and threatening, and really bring your system in total fight, flight or freeze, and that’s gonna take some time to really regulate and ground and get some clarity before maybe moving into decision-making.
Dr. Scott Wolley: Absolutely. And you do need support. Both people need support. You just have to be really careful about who that is. It’s somebody that’s grounded, that’s not gonna take your side against the other, or whatever. You need somebody that’s gonna be in your camp, to support you.
One of the challenges that happens is that some people – their partner has had an affair, and they then tell their friend, and their friend goes “I can’t believe that he/she did that. I can’t believe that this happened. You’re gonna leave them, right? I’m sure you wouldn’t stay with them.” And they immediately go to what they think they should do. “You ought to do this, this and that. I’ll help you, I know a good divorce attorney.” That’s not necessarily helpful.
Finding a friend, and ideally finding a good therapist who works with affairs, who understands how to work with them, where you can go in and find a safe place to talk it through, make sense out of it, think about all the different aspects of it going forward.
If you’re the one that had the affair, there’s a couple of things about that. For your relationship with your partner to heal, you are going to have to get honest, completely honest about it. One of the things that happens is people oftentimes when confessing an affair — and by the way, it’s much better that you tell them, than they find out by seeing credit card receipts, through checking your online profile, or whatever… It’s much better for you to tell them. But you’ve gotta be open and honest, and tell them as much as they’re ready to hear. And that comes from them, not from you.
So what happens a lot of times is people feel so ashamed, they’re so scared to talk about it, that they only give a part of what happened, and they say that’s it. “We rolled around on the bed and kissed, but we didn’t actually have sex.” Or “We had sex one time.” They do all these kinds of things. Or “There was only one other person.” And all of that is bad enough, but the fact of the matter is that too often people in confessing an affair kind of dribble out what happened, and they minimize, and that makes the damage worse. Secrecy tends to feed affairs, and honesty tends to heal affairs, and you have to get honest and open. If you’re scared to do that with your partner, do it in a therapist’s office, particularly somebody who knows how to work with couples. Do it there, where there’s some safety to support your partner, and also work on seeing your partner’s pain. If I can go into that one… That’s actually an important one. Is that okay?
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes, let’s do that.
Dr. Scott Wolley: One of the trickiest things is that typically people who’ve had affairs – they have a lot of shame. Most people who have affairs – it’s inconsistent with their value system. I’ve talked with so many people over the years who have had affairs that say “I just never imagined myself doing this. I always thought people who did this were scum, and now I’m the one that did it.” Or they end up having a lot of shame. And that’s normal.
The tricky part is in telling their partner, it’s easy to get caught up in feeling bad about yourself, instead of feeling bad about your partner’s pain. There’s a big difference there; I wanna go back over that.
If you are feeling bad about yourself, and how awful you are, or how awful what you did is, that’s about you. If you have empathy for and feel bad about your partner’s pain, about his/her suffering, and you genuinely care and can express, which means you’ve gotta be able to tolerate their hurt, and their anger, and whatever emotions they’re having – if you can stay with them through that, that in the long run is gonna be very healing for them. Yeah, they need to know how you feel about you as well, but essentially, the affair itself – they’re gonna experience it very much as being about you, about being selfish, about whatever. They’re gonna experience it that way.
If when you start talking about it with them you talk about you instead of their pain, if you talk about your pain and your shame, it’s still all about you. If when you’re talking to your partner about his/her pain, and you are expressing genuine remorse over the suffering that they’re going through, from this kind of catastrophy in your relationship, you are with them, which at a very basic level starts the healing process, and is healing in and of itself.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes, it sounds as though that interaction, if the person that has had the affair is able to get to a level of (whether or not it’s) regulation, or emotional equanimity in themselves, to be able to hold some space for their significant other to be able to be with their pain, that interaction in and of itself is relationship and is intimacy, however painful it might be. It sounds like you’re saying that’s the beginning space where they can start to connect and start to feel. I mean, it sounds enormously difficult and painful…
Dr. Scott Wolley: It’s hard for people to do, but when people can do it, when they can stay with their partner’s pain and really focus on it, and hear and see their partner before they want to be seen and heard, it makes all the difference. They can be open and honest, they can see their partner’s pain. It makes all the difference. It is not easy, but a good therapist can help you with that.
Sometimes I talk about “Yes, you’re gonna have all of this shame come up. It’s gonna come up, it’s gonna come to the forefront, and it needs to be dealt with. It is important. And it’s important that your partner knows that. But right now, you’ve gotta stay with them. I want you to put it on the backburner.”
I’ve had people that have said “You know what, I wanna go [unintelligible 00:36:49.04] but I know I need to stay with you.” Sometimes people can get very clear in their head as they’re going through this process, and then it helps them stay with their partner. And then when their partner is ready to hear what’s going on inside of them, then they can talk about it. The shame, everything, how they violated their own values system, and how bad they feel about it etc. The partner will hear that when they’re ready, but you don’t wanna start there. You wanna start with the partner’s pain.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Thank you, Scott. That’s so helpful for people to get a real entry point here around healing, and the beginning stages. I know we don’t have time to flesh out the whole process, but I guess I’m curious if you can speak to some really important pillars of healing, in the process of healing an affair. I realized that as you’re talking there’s the initial betrayal, and the person that was cheated on – for them to be able to have that space to talk about their pain, and their partner to be with them… And then it also sounds like, based on what you were talking earlier about the motivators, that there’s a time and a place to then confront those aspects. Can you talk a little bit more about some of what this healing process includes?
Dr. Scott Wolley: Sure.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I know I’m asking you big questions and I know that we don’t actually have the time to probably do it all justice, but I appreciate your diving in with me.
Dr. Scott Wolley: No, it’s fine. You’re saying it well, you’re talking about it as a process; it is a process. And I just wanna say, for most people (like you say) it’s a major crisis, they feel the hurt, they’re often angry etc. But some people don’t; it hurts in there, but some people numb out, and they don’t wanna feel it, and they wanna avoid talking about it. This is for the injured partner. That’s a challenge.
Sometimes people will go right to “Okay, I forgive you, I forgive you.” They’ve learned from church or whatever that they need to forgive, so they kind of jump to that part… And if they do that without really feeling it, it’s not gonna stick. People have to feel it. And the relationship – you’re gonna be at risk of having it again.
The person who’s been through it does need to be able to feel it, they need to validate, they need the pain validated, and it needs to be organized; there are what we call primary emotions, which are really the deep, vulnerable emotions. There are secondary emotions, which are the more reactive emotions. Secondary emotions include things like anger, and jealousy, and resentment, and frustration… And it’s very easy for people to be stuck in the anger and resentment and jealousy phase (the secondary, reactive emotions) and they don’t get to deeper, more vulnerable, primary emotions. They’ve gotta be able to go down and feel those, or they get stuck in anger, or resentment, or numbness. So they’ve gotta do that.
They also have got to at a point understand what has happened, like we’ve just talked about, for the person who was not faithful. The person who had the affair – what was going on there? Oftentimes that person doesn’t know. I’ve talked about those three motivating areas, and you can have all three, but often the partner doesn’t know. They don’t know why they did it. Or they may have some surface idea, or they may have something that they blame the other person for, in some reason or another. “You were mean to me” or “You would never have sex with me”, or whatever. There’s those kinds of blamy things… Which is not the reason that they had the affair. Maybe on the surface, but that is not the deeper level, that’s not the deeper issue.
People who feel blamed and feel like it’s their fault that their partner had, have got to let go of that, and at the same time also look at how their relationship, the problems that existed in their relationship before the affair, and most of the time there are problems. People don’t always know about it, but there are; they’ve gotta learn and understand that. That takes some time.
They both have got to develop, and this again, takes some time. People have to develop kind of a coherent story around how this happened, and why it’s not gonna happen again. I’ve seen kind of very thin ways of describing that. “Well, he just wasn’t very interested in sex, so I wasn’t interested in sex, so we didn’t have sex. So we’ll just start having sex again.” Well, that’s a very thin way of thinking about it, instead of looking at “You know, we didn’t talk to each other about our desires. We weren’t being open and vulnerable with each other. We weren’t reaching for each other. When we got hurt in sex, when we felt rejected sexually, we didn’t talk about it.” When sex wasn’t enjoyable, one or both partners may have decided to not work on it… And really, affairs involve sex, but they’re really not caused by sex, they’re not about sex; they’re about emotional disconnection, and emotional disconnection around sex is super-powerful. But getting people to really develop what I think about as a coherent, rich, thick understanding of how this happened and why it’s not gonna happen again. That usually involves getting the couple to be able to learn how to be emotionally close, connected and bonded, which really helps protect the relationship.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes. As I’m listening, it’s almost repatterning the whole system, because there’s this injury with the affair, and the betrayal and the trauma, and addressing the crisis, or helping people really show up for that aspect, and then the deeper relational dynamics, and the stressors, and the interpsychic stuff that’s at play in the relational pattern… And helping people to really learn how to connect, like you said, or learn how to reach, learn how to be vulnerable and be with each other. It just sounds like enormous work, and I’ve heard you say several times in this interview just how much time this takes, and really giving that process its due justice.
I feel like a lot of times couples are looking for support and they’re looking for immediate relief, and understandably… And I’m just hearing what all is at play here, and it sounds like it’s quite a process.
Dr. Scott Wolley: It is quite a process. And on the other hand, typically what ends up happening is if you’ve got two people who really wanna go through the process, their marriage or their relationship ends up much, much better than it ever was before. That’s the positive side. And oftentimes yes, it does take time, on the one hand. On the other hand, I’ve seen it — I’m thinking about one couple; it took them two years of hard work. They finished therapy maybe ten years ago now, and occasionally I get cards from them, or whatever, and I just hear about how they’re doing; I’ve watched their kids grow up every year when I get their Christmas card… And it’s like, okay, they’ve put two years of hard work in it, and their marriage is better now than it ever was.
Their relationship is strong, and they are having a great life. And it was two years of hard work, but that’s like way in the past now. They are having a happy life, a happy family, the kids benefit, the grandchildren will… Important things in life take time and they’re hard work, but you can do it; I think that’s the thing.
Getting professional help, with somebody who really knows what they’re doing, is very helpful. Reading can also be very helpful. There’s a lot of good things out there for people to start educating themselves.
When you end up having the emotional pain and devastation, and it’s kind of like the nuclear bomb of relationships – so many people feel so fragmented. Being able to read and organize what happened can make the pain a lot easier to bear, and eventually help that pain heal.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes. In my experience, I’ve noticed at times with couples the affair (like you said) will be that nuclear bomb, and it’s almost as if it allows them to access things that they had been avoiding, or not looking at, and if they’re willing to really dive into that deeper vulnerability and really get honest about maybe some of the things they haven’t been looking at, there’s an incredible amount of potential that can happen, even probably in a few sessions.
Then I’ve also noticed maybe other people that hold really tightly to some of their patterns, whether or not it’s not being vulnerable, or maybe not being emotionally aware, and some of that takes a little bit longer to build trust around some of that work… So thank you so much for all that you’re offering today. Is there anything else you wanna say as we wrap up?
Dr. Scott Wolley: I just would like to say that healing is possible. I would never, of course – and I’m sure you would feel the same way – encourage anybody to have an affair as a way of fixing their relationship, because there are much, much better ways of fixing it. Sometimes in the pop psychology world I’ll hear “Oh, an affair might spruce up your relationship.” No, no, no, no… No. And in fact, affairs can and should be avoided.
On the other hand, if you’ve had an affair, if your partner has had an affair, don’t give up. Don’t give up on healing it. Real healing is possible. Your relationship can be better than it ever has been. The key is you need to learn how to be honest and open. Secrecy fuels affairs. Openness tends to heal relationships. Learning openness, learning how to understand your own emotions, your partner’s emotions, learning how to tune in… You can do it. Even if you haven’t done it your whole life, you can still learn how to do it.
So I guess my closing message would just be that there’s a lot more out there, and there’s an awful lot of hope for people who have been through affairs.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Lovely. Thank you so much for that. Scott, how do people get in touch with your work, or what you have to offer? How would you recommend people getting in touch with you or anything you have to offer?
Dr. Scott Wolley: I do most of my work training therapists, and if people are interested, they certainly can go to my website. If they just google “Scott R. Woolley” they’re gonna come up with trainings and other kinds of things. For me, I do have a website that you can put in the show notes… And I would say that I do have a small practice here in San Diego, so if you’re in the San Diego area… I’ve also trained an awful lot of therapists in the San Diego area, and of course, in many other areas of the world. Most of the time when people come to me, I don’t have room in my practice, but occasionally I do. So those are always possibilities.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Wonderful. I highly recommend it for anyone that is contemplating or interested. Scott, I just really appreciated your teachings when I was doing the externship with you for five days, all day; I just felt the richness in your experience, and your understanding, and your ability to convey and teach and lead people through healing and therapeutic process.
I got to see you work with a couple, and just the transformation and help, how you were able to assist them in just even one short session… So I thank you for what you’re doing, and thank you for your time today.
Dr. Scott Wolley: Thank you for having me on. It was a delight.
I hope you have enjoyed today’s episode. Again, an interview with Dr. Scott Wolley, as he provides insight and understanding to some of the underpinnings of what a couple is dealing with as they’re trying to repair and heal after the injury of an affair.
If you’re interested in accessing some of which Dr. Scott Wolley has addressed in today’s episode, please feel free to visit today’s show notes, which can be found on my website, DrJessicaHiggins.com. Click on Podcast and you can find the episode there, 175, “How to heal from an affair. An interview with Dr. Scott Wolley.”
After this show Scott and I were talking about the interview and recognizing how much we attempted to cover, and that it is a lot. So if you’re recognizing just how much is involved, it is a lot, and I just encourage you to get more support, if you’re interested in learning more, or are perhaps trying to heal your relationship or your marriage after an affair.
Again, you can find today’s show notes on my website, DrJessicaHiggins.com, click on Podcast, and you can find all the episodes there. Again, this is episode 175.
Until next time, I hope you take great care.
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