You can survive infidelity
If your marriage has been ravaged by the devastating effects of an affair (or repeated affairs) then you are probably overwhelmed with anger, depression, fear, guilt, loneliness, and shame.

A betrayed spouse might ask, how could this have happened? How could my spouse do this to me, lying to me again and again? How can I ever trust them after this? My feelings go way beyond hurt—I’m filled with anger and rage! I can’t even put into words the pain I’m feeling.

An offending spouse might ask: I don’t know what to do. One minute all I want is to be with my lover forever—then, when I look into the faces of my children I’m racked with guilt and confusion as to what to do. I used to beg my spouse for affection and intimacy, but I sure don’t have to beg from my lover—they think I hung the moon and all I hear from my spouse is what’s wrong with me. I don’t want to give up my family—but I also don’t want to lose the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

When couples struggle with such strong emotions many wonder if marital reconciliation is ever possible.

How can we ever recover from such pain? How can we live with the memories of the affair? How can we ever trust each other again? Is it possible to love each other again?

As marriage counselors we have been asked theses questions thousands of times. Let us assure you that if you put into practice our specific “Road to Recovery”, the outcome of your future together looks very good.

The “Road to Recovery” is very narrow, and unless couples learn and implement the steps, the tragedy of an affair can permanently cripple a marriage.

Your emotions may be so strong right now that you don’t know if you even want to try to recover. Even if you have decided that marital reconciliation is nearly impossible, we would like to suggest that you carve out 4 to 5 days of your schedule to see how the “Road to Recovery” can turn around your hurting marriage. Our “Road to Recovery” has proven successful for thousands of couples. It can help you make your marriage better than it’s ever been, and protect you from future affairs.

You can do better than survive—you can have the marriage you have always hoped for!

We have yet to have a couple come in for marriage counseling who did not have communication problems. How can people to know how to communicate effectively when they have never been taught how? It’s never been taught in high school, or in college. If couples could communicate effectively, 90% of their problems would never have happened in the first place. Good communication is that important.

At Marriage Rescue Associates we don’t merely teach effective communication. We have couples bring their issues to the table and then we have them actually practice the tools they have learned with their own issues. We have them practice their new way of communication with each other so that it’s not a foreign skill when they get back home.

There are two roles in communicating. There is the speaker, and there is the listener. The speaker needs to be taught how to speak to their spouse in such a way that it doesn’t invite their spouse to become defensive. The Listeners job is to listen in such a way that the speaker not only feels heard—but feels completely understood. When each spouse does their role effectively—issues are resolved and new issues are not created.

What both spouses have been doing is trying to convince the other of their points of view at the same time. They don’t take turns at being the Speaker and the Listener. In 30 years of counseling we have never seen this approach work. When couples learn how to be effective speakers and listeners, communication can be a joy.

Conflict and arguing are where all the hateful, hurtful, damaging words live. They are where physical violence lives –because of escalated emotion. Conflict and arguing only tear down; they are never productive. They make us feel the most hopeless about our marriage. Conflict and arguing make us have self hate; “how could I have said that?” Conflict and arguing damage our children if they witness it or overhear it.

Even if our children don’t witness our conflict and arguing first hand they will have a tendency to handle tough topics the way we do.

The first thing for us to do is to have realistic expectations about conflict in marriage. Conflict is common to all marriages. So, the goal of marriage should not be to be conflict free. It is to learn how to handle conflict in a way that does not damage each other. This will be done be learning how to deal with issues in a healthy way using the tools that we teach.

What if we have the expectation that having a good marriage means having no conflict? We would doom ourselves to have a very unfair opinion of our marriage.

At Marriage Rescue Associates we can help couples learn how to deal with the complicated and never ending job of parenting and step-parenting. Be it tots to teens unwanted behavior or disciplining a step-child, we can teach highly effective ways to respond to children and step-children. Parenting issues and step-parenting issues can drive such a wedge between spouses that it can pull the marriage right down. Disagreeing about how to handle things with the children can be the cause of much conflict. Usually the children are aware that the conflicts are about them and they feel much guilt and shame, and it lowers their self esteem.
 
Many times parents think that the children are not within earshot of their disagreements, but rest assured, they pick up the tension.

Coming into agreement about how to handle things with the children can be the major focus of a marriage intensive. The marriage will continue to have a strain on it as long as there is disagreement about dealing with the children.
Not only will you learn how to deal with the problems, but you will also learn how to guide and nurture the children to make a harmonious family.