subject: Marriage Counseling - How To Survive An Affair [print this page] Many married couples in sharing their marriage problems tend to think that no one actually can grasp what they are going through. When a couple think they are encountering problems that are far too serious to be solved, I always like to ask them if they are the only couple ever to experience such a challenge.
For lot's of people, how to survive an affair is not something they think can be learned. When people like these see examples of couples who had to go through challenges like theirs and yet went through it to became even closer, they find strength and hope from it.
No marriage can claim to be facing a problem never before faced by another. No marriage counselor would encounter your story and say they had never encountered it before unless that counselor just started practicing. Marriage counseling would only be effective if the couple involved are committed to making their marriage work.
I have seen a lot of situations where one of the couple virtually forces the other so they can go for marriage counseling. What this results in is a couple where one has a desire to fix the marriage and the other sees no need for it. They usually think the counseling is a waste of precious time. You can't expect to achieve anything in this type of situation.
Any therapist with experience would know not to proceed unless he or she has succeeded in drawing out the forced spouse. Unless this spouse is made to realize the necessity for counseling, no tangible headway would be recorded.
We are not even going to try to examine what results in affairs in marriages. We are all aware that nothing can ever justify an affair. There is no arguing that certain circumstances can be very difficult that there seems to be no other option. This brings to my mind a couple I knew some years back. They could not have kids. Doctors had confirmed both of them okay after lot's of tests.
For some unknown reason, the lady still felt her husband was the cause of their childlessness. She continued this for a while. This went on until the man felt a need to prove himself, so he went out and got another lady pregnant. Its a good thing that they were able to sort things out and save their marriage. The woman however does not have a child yet, but she does not accuse her husband again.
Despite the fact that what we are really looking at is how to survive and affair, I seriously believe that it is more important to know how to prevent one. In the absence of an affair, there would be totally no need to learn how to survive one.
If there is one tool that can help marriages very much, it is communication. Any couple that really communicates with each other wouldn't encounter any challenge they won't be able to take care of. When there is no communication, things are accumulated in the heart until they pour out like a volcanic eruption.
Ensure that you communicate with your spouse on a very deep level and you would never encounter a challenge too serious to be handled.
