https://www.listennotes.com/e/9696990a78974632b3043ab98dbec47f

There's something about you that I can't.

Help but smile when you smile and.

Laugh when you laugh, something's around. Welcome to the human intimacy podcast. Dr. Kevin Skinner. Maryanne, talking about a difficult topic today, and it's specifically around discovery and disclosure process and just a painful experience for so many people. And I want to approach this in a sensitive way and a caring way. What are your initial thoughts?

Marianne, as you said, this can be. This is a hard topic. And for our listeners and those who are viewing us, I know that this can be a, ooh, I already went through this. I don't know how much I really want to hear about this. That might be your gut reaction. And so just acknowledging that that might be coming up for you. Talking about the day that I found out that my whole world changed isn't always our favorite topic. I hope that our conversation will be validating for you and also we'll give you some tools to hopefully move forward. Many of my clients come to me and it's just a state of devastation. What do I do next? What do I do? We'll be addressing and giving some tools there, but also acknowledging some of our very first thoughts when we discover that we've been betrayed or it's been disclosed to us are kind of that catastrophic thinking. Does that mean that they're a pedophile? Does that mean that there are children that have been harmed? Does that mean that we're getting divorced? That's immediately where our mind goes. And that's really normal because we don't have answers. We have no idea where the edges of this are and how far in wide and deep it goes.

You're describing a lot of questions like, what about this? And is there more? And I typically have found that upon discovery, a lot of people are like, is there more or don't I know? And then start gathering information. And often their mind goes, what I refer to as worst case scenario, thinking, what about this? Did this happen? Did this happen? And the more you do that, your partner or spouse may be like, what do you mean? And yet all of those questions come online when there has been deceptive behaviors and hidden behaviors. Begin to question everything that you thought you knew. That's a phrase I have often heard. And now it's like comparing it to the new information that we have.

Yeah. And there's a state of we don't know what we don't know. Oftentimes when my clients come to me and they'll say, well, I found this out and my partner said this in My experience, what my partners know, depending on how they found out, oftentimes, unfortunately, they know the tip of the iceberg oftentimes as we go along. And that's the tricky part. We don't know how bad it is, like, what level are their children involved or what does this mean? But we don't know the depth. And it is often like what the research shows us is that. And what my experience at least shows me is that most of the time when something's being disclosed or it's been, especially if it's been discovered, we don't come clean. We say, oh, okay, you have that much information. Okay, yeah, I'm caught. So, yep, I did that. And I'll acknowledge that. But if you don't know about these other things, I'm not bringing them up right now. That would just be dumb if I did. And so we might only know this much when there's this much more. And I don't say that to. To surprise our listeners or viewers, but that's. That's what I often see. And it's tricky.

Yeah, the term we use, staggered disclosure, where you start getting information over time. Trickle disclosure, where you have partial. Partial. Partial disclosure information. And really what we look at, what that does to the coupleship. Right. Because eventually you get to the point where I remember as a little boy hearing the story of the boy who cried wool, and it's in some way similar to that is like, okay, wolf, wolf, okay. Problem, problem, disclosure, disclosure. Okay. There's just so much more. So it's like, there's more. There's always. You're going to cry wolf all the time. I don't know what to do with that.

And if we're looking at a relationship, we're sure not getting closer together. We're sure not getting vulnerable if that over and over and over again. Yeah, we get kind of not calloused, maybe that's not the right word, but a little bit deadened. Like, oh, here it is. After a while, it's just like, I'm just dead. I don't. I don't feel a whole lot. It's just like, yeah, but I'm sure not turning towards you. I'm sure not connecting with you. I'm sure not gonna wanna be vulnerable with you because you're not safe for me. Once again, you've just proven to me that you're not safe. And so I'm not letting my walls down. And we might turn into some destructive habits at that point. Sometimes we shut down or sometimes we really get into some self defeating behaviors just to numb ourselves from that.

And if I was to extend that a little bit, that the coping strategy of not knowing what to do because I think discovery and this preparing for disclosure or. And even the disclosure. Most couples, I think we should say this, they do it on their own before they ever get therapeutic help. They've had a lot of conversation around what's happened and usually that's why we get a partial disclosure because there isn't the depth that is required to really understand the complete truth. And I think sometimes couples think, well, that's enough. And we'll often hear phrases like, well, I've told you everything.

Or my clients will say, he's told, he's told me everything. There's not anymore. I've looked through the devices and I'm pretty sure that, that we've got everything. And I wish that were the case. I can't say that I have had a couple of formal therapeutic disclosures which I know we're going to talk about in just a minute. But I have had a few, maybe a handful where my clients have said, you know beforehand, I'll say, how much do you think? You know, just to kind of gauge where, where they're at? So when we're done we can say, how much did you actually know with what was shared? And I've had some clients say, yeah, the behaviors I pretty much knew, but I've never had one. Like usually they'll say, I knew the behaviors. I had no idea how frequent, how long this has been going, like how deep and how wide this is. And usually there's some, oh, holy cow, this is gonna take me a while to wrap my mind around because I knew it was happening, but just not how much.

Well, and this whole process that we're talking about. So let's go back from the very beginning. So there's discovery, what we refer to as D day, usually the preparation for a full disclosure where all the information is real. That can be an extended period of time. Months.

Yeah. I want to just touch on one thing that I think is really important. What I have found through all of the women that I have interviewed and worked with over the years. What I have found is, and what the research shows is when we discover a partner's acting out behavior, the impact of discovery is more damaging to us than having a partner come and say, I need to talk with you, I need to share something with you. Like that the levels of damage, of impact of PTSD type trauma that comes from that they're significantly Different. And so I at least start there.

Yeah. You talk about stealth disclosure versus shock disclosure.

Yeah. So whether it's an email or a message or somebody says something or I find something. And there's also a. I think in between those two, I'll sometimes have clients who come to me and say, something's off. Pretty sure I know what it is, but I can't find evidence of it. And so there's maybe like this in between of. I'm pretty sure I see all the signs, but I haven't found evidence. And it usually comes eventually.

Yeah. And. And so while there's many different forms of that discovery process, sometimes your instincts are telling you, sometimes your partner tells you, sometimes you find out. Research shows that more often than not that people find out on their own some kind of discovery, which, again, as you indicated, often we see elevated levels of some of those trauma, and then we hear statements like, well, you would have never told me if I hadn't discovered. And I think that that also is that continuous thing of rigorous honesty. Once you get into the recovery journey as an individual and as a couple, any slips or relapses, it's like we're talking about these. Because if we don't, then it's like, oh, you're still hiding. And is there even more that I don't know?

When my clients come to me, one of the hardest conversations we usually have. So I have a client show up in my office and say, this is going on. I just discovered this. Oftentimes I'll say, I have no idea what to do. Like. Like they're just hanging on by a thread, and they're so grateful to be sitting with me saying, okay, I know you've got some tools. One of the hardest conversations that I usually have to have with my client in that first session is to talk about getting an STD test, because we don't know how far, how wide. For some of my clients, they'll say, that's the most humiliating thing I've ever done there. There's a lot of pain in this first stage because most of the time what we know is a fraction. It may be a fraction of what's really been going on. And so that STD test, it might just be porn. Like, we'll say, well, it's just porn, so I don't need to worry about that. And that might be the case, and I hope that's the case. But because we don't know, at least that's something in my control that I can check off and say, Is my health at risk? Yes or no?

And I've worked with individuals. That's a really hesitant one for actually both partners. Well, what are you accusing me of? Right. Yeah. Right. So I hear that, and then it's like, oh, I don't want to go talk with a medical professional. And so there's this hesitancy. And I think what we're saying here is gathering information is really important because without that information, you can make decisions that could hurt your health for years.

Yeah. This is about trying to piece together your reality. And because of the dishonesty, we don't know what our reality is in that moment.

Right.

Here's a tool of saying, what is this? And what is this? Not, am I safe, at least in my health?

So let's now take it to the next step. Okay. Because I think now, okay, discoveries occurred. Now we're gathering information stage. And this is where I think we often want to rush through it, Marianne. We want to just go super fast, like, so we're talking and asking lots of questions. And that's where I see the betrayed partner asking lots and lots and lots of questions. And sometimes they get information and sometimes they don't. I've told you everything. Or why do you keep asking the same questions over and over again? And when we get couples at this point in the therapeutic process, when they come into therapy, our job is to get a thorough assessment of what's actually happened. Because I have found that when I ask more thorough questions, what I call a sexual history timeline, I do a sexual history timeline. I get a whole lot of information with really, in many situations, the person who's been acting out, they see their life, their sexual life, sometimes even in a different perspective. And sometimes things come up or memories come up that they hadn't even thought about for years.

And I want to talk about. Boy, I want to dig into that, because I love this. This part of the conversation. But before that, I think there's. There's also another part I want to make sure that we're just really validating and talking for just a few moments about. And that's in this stage, in this early stage. Oftentimes, for a betrayed partner, there is a hyper vigilance. It's part of the PTSD criteria. And oftentimes there's some detective, there's some, like, I am going to scour everything, because once again, I'm trying to figure out what's my reality, how deep, how far, how wide is this? And it's a normal behavior. It's not Usually super healthy for me to be the police on what my spouse or partner's doing. But it's a normal reaction because we call it, in therapeutic terms, we call it safety seeking. I'm trying to figure out if I'm safe or not. And it's not healthy. It's not a healthy place to get into. And I can imagine our viewers and listeners are like, what do you mean? Not knowing my reality, that's not safe. And so there's a fine line between saying this hypervigilance that says, I don't know if I'm safe, but I'm trying to figure out if I'm safe versus I'm going to police you, I'm going to follow you, I'm going to track you. I'm going to just be so focused on everything about you that I lose myself.

And that's an important distinction because the concept of safety seeking, I think it's actually very normal, especially at the beginning. It. The challenge is staying in that space. Yeah, right. Cause I think in the beginning you're gathering in this information, trying to get all that data. And then if you stay in that space, then you are in a place where your world is so focused on what they're doing that you stop living your world. And that is where I see people get stuck. And they're still. You use the word policing. They're still trying to monitor everything their partner does. And it literally becomes a new reality for them. They don't live their life.

Sure. My healing stops because I'm so focused on. All of my time and energy is focused on what my partner's doing.

Right.

So I just want to make sure we're addressing that. That's normal. And we want to move out of that place as well. And that's where we say, okay. When we're stepping then into the therapy office, we're really saying, okay, now I'm really working on my own healing now. Cause I can't control what my partner. Partner's doing. And so I gotta figure out what can I. I know you use the term that I love, locus of control. What's within my realm and my power to work on. And that's my own healing. It's making sense of my reality in my world. And then as you were leading into earlier, and for gosh, I'm just excited to talk about the formal therapeutic disclosure process. And I know you were jumping in there. So let's go back there.

Yeah. So a couple things that are important for, I think all of us to understand Here is again, I said earlier, most couples do this part on their own, and they feel like it's enough. So we need to separate this out. Why is it important to do a formal disclosure if we've already talked about the details? And what is that process that we would go through? And why would we go through it? What's the benefit of it? Why should we keep bringing it up? That's really the question and the pushback that we get most often, Marianne. So let's answer that question.

Yeah, I want to respond to that maybe by asking you a question, Dr. Skinner. And my question is when you've done formal therapeutic disclosures, which means it's something that you've prepared in therapy, you've prepared both partners for. How often have your betrayed partners known everything or found more information?

In a few cases, I would say that there has been, because they've talked so much about it. It was just more of a formality, but also a completion of that story to make sure that there's not more. Sometimes there's a little bit more. One or two items that have never been talked about. And sometimes it's the shock factor of, I had no idea how much was going on. And those are. Are almost always more difficult and more challenging because it's. It's. How do you prepare for somebody for that kind of just intense amount of information.

Yeah. And. And once again, we go back to that. At least I use this phrase over and over. We just don't know what we don't know. When I'm working with my clients, preparing for a formal disclosure, I'm preparing for trauma. I'm preparing for there to be big discoveries, because more often than not, there are. And once again, we get knocked back into that world of like, oh, my goodness, how do I make sense of my reality? Get knocked back into that discovery or that D day that we talked about earlier? How do I make sense of my whole world now? And so when we're prepping for that, we're. We're usually prepping for trauma. And one of the tools that some CSATs use, some CSATs don't use, is a lie detector test or an eye detect. And, you know, there's some controversy, and different therapists have different ideas on it. What I found in my experience is that it often brings things up that probably would have gone to the grave. My clients say, I wasn't gonna share this with anybody, but it does. It does bring more information up. And some people might say, well, this is like, I don't need that and that's okay. It's usually about what my partner feels like they want or need. And sometimes it might feel like that's really extreme. But here's the reality. We're looking at a relationship, we're looking at a couple where there hasn't been honesty. And we're trying to figure out how do we start helping this couple heal. We've got to get the secrecy, we've got to get the lying. We've gotta get the dishonest behaviors addressed and out in the open so that we can start reestablishing safety and rebuilding that trust in the relationship. We can't do that if we have secrecy, hiding and lying.

I want to emphasize something here because this is where I have found that so many times. I get there's pushback, like, why? Why are we doing this? And there's two research studies, one by Jennifer Schneider. They where they identified that after the disclosure, about 90 to 93% of those who did the disclosure reported that they were glad that they did. So nine out of ten, we're glad we did this. But maybe more important is the work by Dr. Peggy Vaughn. She did some research with a thousand individuals who'd been betrayed. And what she found, they were all infidelity cases that when couples did not talk about the details, about 55% of them were still married. So she basically put them in three buckets. The first bucket is we did not talk about the details. The second bucket is we talked about some of the details. And the third bucket is we talked about the details more in depth. So of that splitting it into buckets, those who didn't talk about it, 55% of them were still married. But those who talked about the details, 86% of them were still married.

That's a huge number.

A 31% difference or increased probability of the marriage continuing. And I think it's because of what you were just saying. The honesty, the transparency, addressing the deceptive behaviors, those are the areas that individuals are getting stuck in. And when I don't have that information, we go back to the concept of the zeigarnic effect of I don't know how to complete this story. And so the disclosure process is finishing, helping finish the story of the unknown. So I'm not guessing anymore. And when it's done properly, again, I think we also have to be careful in getting too detailed in the disclosure, where we're asking questions that we can never get out of our mind. So we also have to be sensitive to that part of the disclosure.

I love the disclosure process for the individual who's been acting out, the one who's betrayed. You know, there's different books you read, and sometimes I'll read books and I'll say, oh, yeah, this will take, like, you know, four weeks. And I look at that and go, oh, I can't get my client ready in four weeks for that. Because for me, what it usually looks like, my client will put together their personal, like, sexual timeline. You know, I discovered a magazine under the bed at grandpa's house when I was 7 or whatever, and they'll give me these bullets. And then we'll sit down together and we'll say, okay, what did you do with that? What. What did your mom say about that? Well, I thought I was bad. And this is where shame showed up, and this is where lying showed up. And so we start to. They're giving me, like, this happened, and then we're starting to make sense of it. And as we put that down on paper, we start to get a really good picture of these patterns and core beliefs of shame and the ways that I've thought about myself for years and years and years until we get that on paper, we often don't see the patterns. And my job as therapist is I'll usually say, and what about this? And what about. Oh, my goodness, I didn't even realize. But oftentimes in this space, too, a client might tell me, oh, yeah, my cousin, who was five years older than me, did X, Y, Z. And I'll say, oh, yeah, did you realize that that was somebody offended against you sexually like that? We would consider that sexual abuse. And then my clients need to stop and say, holy cow, and, like, try to make sense of their world. We're doing so much uncovering of shame and trauma and patterns that they're in the head that we haven't looked at in chronological order and been able to make sense of. And it's. It's really an awareness space.

So let me contrast that, right when couples are doing it on their own, what about this? What about this? And what about this? And. And so in that moment of intensity, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to give you all the information accurately, which leads to that staggered disclosure process. In contrast, think about how much preparation you're talking about. Let's do that. Full sexual history timeline. Let's go to specific timeframes. Let's go to events, then this and then that. Oh, wow. Didn't think about that. That preparation. When I do a disclosure from that preparation place, it's thorough. My heart is more into it because I'm not in the moment of a fire, just trying to respond. And the effectiveness increases significantly because it's properly prepared.

You know, I'm smiling because you said properly prepared, Dr. Skinner. For listeners or viewers, I'm just gonna leave it there. We have to watch our old. Our older episodes to get that in there. We're opening up shame patterns and we're opening up trauma. And those are things that oftentimes you want help with, especially if you're getting ready to go into your partner and say, here are the things that I did. Having somebody who can help you sort through that and make sense of that. If my client goes into a disclosure and it's all about them, that's going to be a really rough disclosure for the partner to receive. And so there's a lot of shame busting, I would call it. There's a lot of work. And it's. What I'm trying to say is it gives us a map of the work that we need to do as soon as the disclosure is done. So we'll say, okay, here's. Here's our map of everything that got uncovered that we need to go work on to help heal and resolve for the return.

And you're talking about dealing with negative beliefs. You're talking about dealing with shame that's been with them for maybe decades. And that takes time to really uncover that. And that's the hardest part, because if we look at this, the other side, the betrayed partner, I want this information. How can I even make decisions moving forward? What's taking so long?

Yes.

And that's where I see this internal battle, even amongst therapists, like, we're trying to rush through this. If you're working with, say, the betrayed partner and I'm working with the betraying partner, I might be trying to go as fast as possible. But then you got a vacation here and you got this there, and you. And they're sitting in limbo, and that's in a really painful space when I. I'm certainly not going to be connecting, and I don't know what to do with this at this point. That's where I see couples are having a hard time. So we gotta set down the parameters. And often trying to set a timeframe. So both individuals have this concept of we're trying to reach this point by a certain time, and it may be a month or two out in some situations, sometimes even longer. If there's complex trauma on the person acting out, I'll Give an example of that. I was working with somebody in supervision, and they. I mean, the complexity of the person just getting their sexual history because of so much childhood trauma, it was shutting them down every time. You know, it's like, I don't know if I can go there. So it was almost like, are we going to skip some of that? Because it was so. So emotionally overwhelming to the person. And so there's so much complexity to this process. Earning the trust and being able to create that relationship with both partners is. Is not an easy process.

So there's this. I think this is a good space just to maybe add in. And. And I'd love for you to speak to this as well. You know, oftentimes I'll have a couples or individuals come to me and say, hey, we need couples counseling. And it's like, oh, no, we need to wait for the couples counseling until we can start working through some of this stuff so that we can get the honesty out so we can start the healing. However, in this space, what's really tricky is we're in this waiting pattern. I'm waiting for my partner to get their disclosure done, and I'm trying to figure out what's going on with my life. And in the meantime, we have kids, we have jobs, we're trying to manage a life together, and we often get stuck with some communication patterns because of the pain. And I know for me, this is where I have created a course at Human Intimacy on building boundaries. This is why I created a course on couple communication and reflective listening. There are still tools that my clients need as a couple to work on. Even though they're not ready for couples counseling and couples work together, there's still some basic communication tools that they need. And I know you've got a couple. What are they like, how to communicate.

When you don't know what to say. Couples still need relationship skills, is what we're saying. Because just because I'm working recovery or working through healing from betrayal, it doesn't necessarily mean that I have the skills of communication that are going to be necessary moving forward. So, yeah, we want to develop the relationship skills, but the couples therapy at that point is helping them to communicate effectively, understand each other. And what we're not doing in most cases is we're not creating deeper intimacy in the relationship yet because we don't feel safe enough or we don't have enough information. And so a lot of couples, it's like there's a holding pattern as the preparation is being put into place, and that's really what I call it. This is a holding period and it can be very difficult because we as a culture, we want it now, we want the answers to be done. I want to be through this. And it's just not possible to go that fast.

And this is a place where I would say that we need more tools because we're heightened because we don't know our reality. I don't even know if I'm going to stay in this relationship. And so we're already at a harder place communicating because our trust has been broken. I want to just really briefly, just for our listeners, just say this is what it looks like. So if you were doing a formal therapeutic disclosure, when we get to that point, it's actually a three point process. It has three parts. This first part that we're talking about is really just here's what I've done. And it looks like you with your client who you know, it's two therapists and two clients in the office. It's the couple and the two therapists sitting in an office. Usually the betrayed partner has put together a list of questions that are going to be addressed. And that always takes some time with my clients for them to say, here's my questions. And then we go through. Make sure. We always want to make sure we're doing like a 500 foot view versus a 5 foot view. Because sometimes too much information, we just don't need it all. There's information that's just not always going to be super helpful for my clients and it might be more triggering in their brain and they can't get rid of it. And so we sort through what information do you know? What specific questions do you really want to make sense of? Like, was this a lie? What was going on? We're making sense of our reality. So it looks like here is everything that I've done, here's my history, and here's me answering the questions that you asked through your therapist. After that, usually the betraying partner and their therapist, like there's a separation and we work with the betrayed partners. Say, okay, based on everything that you've just heard, what other questions do you still have? What doesn't make sense? What do we need to ask to just have explained a little bit more. And so when we're ready, then we all come back together again and it turns into more of a conversation. Okay, in the disclosure, you said you were at this place or you know, you told me this. Help. Help me understand that because this is what you told me. How does that fit and so it's not a gotcha, it's not a blame or shame clarification. Let me make. Did you say what I think you said? Because if you said what I think you said, then, oh, there's some pretty big ramifications around what that means. And so it's a clarification space and that's that first phase of the disclosure process. What I'm wondering what you'd want to add to that.

The only thing I would add to that is when we go through that process in a therapeutic setting, as you just are describing, even the preparation afterwards. Right. We probably might not be driving in same car, so we might have a friend that's to support us afterwards. Having that kind of sponsor or somebody that you can reach out to. And then usually after that there's a follow up with the therapist within a short period of time to help evaluate where they're at. And sometimes it's just I've had people not only driving separate cars, but not stay in the same place that first night or two just as they're trying to process it. Now some couples, it's not that way. They're like, we want to talk about this more and we want to spend more time. So I don't want to say there's rules or guidelines, it's just you have to. But I do say that it's usually a pretty intense experience and being able to do some self reflection afterwards is a very valuable process.

And for me and my clients that's usually I take six to eight weeks getting my clients ready for that. Because we're saying, okay, what are you going to eat beforehand? We're planning on an A, B, C and D scenarios. We don't know what we're going to find. And so where are you going to sleep tonight if you don't want to sleep where your partner is and who's going to take care of your kids and who are gonna be your support people? What are you going to do to regulate yourself? Because once again we're planning for possible trauma. And so everything we can do beforehand to prepare for afterwards because it can be devastating. There's a lot that can come out.

Yeah. And so now we've got there, then the next part of that is what's referred to as an impact letter. And to me that's, that's often not used. And even in the CSAT world a lot of people don't take that. And for me it's a little surprising because that impact letter is the betrayed partner now responding to the information that they've just had, but also the previous experiences, like the. Maybe the lies and the gaslighting. It's like I was led to believe. And so there's a process that we go through where they write about their experience and. And it's so helpful in giving a voice to. To what they've experienced. And both, again, both partners have to be prepared for that, because if you're the betraying partner, you can go straight into a shame spiral of like, oh, and so they have to be prepared for this, because the impact is significant. In many, many cases that I've had, it's finally where the betraying partner is able to hear, oh, that's the impact my behaviors have had. And. And that's a painful place to be. But again, if they can stand with that, they can be with that pain. That's, again, a reparative process that's really effective. I wish more people understood it.

This is one of my favorite places to work with my clients, because what I see is putting a disclosure together and saying, here's everything that I've done that's hard. That's hard work. It's ownership and responsibility and pushing through denial. Like the things that I've told myself that it's not a big deal for a betrayed partner to say. Now, let me tell you how I feel. What I've done is a lot different than. Let me tell you how I feel when I am naked and I look in the mirror and what I see and how your behavior has impacted what I see when I look in the mirror or when we are being sexual. Let me tell you how that impacts me at this deep, deep level. Let me put that into words. This is vulnerability at such a deep, deep level. Because I'm not just telling you about facts. I'm not just telling you about things that I did. I'm telling you about how I feel about it and how I interpreted it and how I translated that and made meaning out of it for myself. And it is powerful. And it's such a great place for my clients where we really work a lot on learning to use our. Our owning our language and not shaming and not blaming. And yet finding our voice of saying this devastated me. And let me paint you the picture of how this felt and how this impacted me. It's deep, beautiful work. And my clients can write it down. And then when I say, oh, let me have you read that out loud. Oh, the emotions. This is where all the emotions are giving. They're given a voice. They're being honored, they're being noticed. And that's where the healing can start to come. Because we're releasing it, we're not carrying it inside anymore.

And as couples do that process again, those are the first two steps. The third step in my mind is also as critical because now it's the betraying partner responding, saying, okay, it's what we call an emotional restitution. I love the words because how do I restore? How do I make it better? How do I make amends? And it is this one where it to me, it's like, this was how I deceived you. This is how I lied to you. This is how I manipulated. And it's like giving the game plan of here's, here's was my game plan of deceptiveness. But it also is responding to the impact letter. And now that I have the awareness of how it impacted you, I can also address some of the core elements that you described in the impact letter. And again, this is me from a humble place saying, I see your pain. And that is where I see many betrayed partners that transition when it's done well. And it's. This is so complex and so hard. And most people don't want to go through this process because it is emotionally difficult. But when you do that kind of work, there are no more secrets. Even the deception and the lies, which we often we've talked about in the gaslighting podcast we did previously, then we're actually addressing some of the gaslighting and the hidden behaviors that have not been talked about. And again, that's a very powerful, powerful step.

Yeah. The impact letter I see as almost like a treasure map. Here is the path to helping your partner heal. They're giving it to you. And then in that emotional restitution letter, to take ownership and responsibility and acknowledge my behaviors. Cause that there is power that comes and healing that comes from acknowledging. It's part of the forgiveness process. It's part of the healing process. And if we zoom out a little bit, what I love about this formal therapeutic disclosure process, it is a model for healthy communication. It is a model for the future, for moving forward. Hey, I made a mistake. Let me tell you what I did. The partner saying, oh, wow, let me tell you how that's impacted me. And then being able to respond say, I can see that's impacted you. Let me work to make that better. And I can see how I did that. It's a macro for this. We're talking about it.

Micro concept of day to day conversation.

Yeah, It's a model. And so when our clients use this process, it can be a really sacred place because this is where we see each other. This is where we're so vulnerable. We've pushed through the shame and we allow ourselves to be seen by our partner. And it can be incredibly connecting and attaching.

I don't know how many I've done, but I can just tell you that when couples go through this process, it's like accelerating the healing process. And then because we have this new foundation of communication and openness and trust. Trust in the process. Not necessarily the person completely, but trust in the process that what we're doing is showing a commitment. Because going out through that process is a commitment building process. When that's happening, it is creating the foundation to move forward, to increase the trust over time. And that's one of the best experiences that I've had in the couple healing process, is building that foundation. And now we get to talk about how to create better trust and intimacy and connection in the relationship because we have the truth and we're not guessing.

I have just a couple thoughts before we wrap up on this. The first one is I always want to try and trust the process. As a therapist, things might be going really slowly or they're not working out and I have to, okay, I'm going to trust what's going on. I'm not sure why, but, you know, I had a disclosure a little while ago. My client was really upset with it. She was just like, I was really crappy. That wasn't like, she was really disappointed with it. And, and I was like, oh, yeah. And what I often see, and Dr. Skinner, you and I have talked about this is often betrayed partners, they will like, binge on books and on healing resources, on and on podcasts. On podcast. Yeah. And it's like, give me all the information that I can because I want to figure this out. And their partner might be going slower. And. And I know we're going to talk about that in a different podcast, but sometimes my partners who've betrayed, sometimes, like their emotional capacity is like this much and their partners is like this much. And so they may come listen.

It's very small and then very big.

Yes. And so understanding that sometimes in that disclosure, sometimes the person disclosing doesn't have a whole lot of emotional bandwidth. And, and so it can feel frustrating. And what I've seen though, is even the, the scenario that I shared where my client was frustrated, what was beautiful is they went home and because they'd broken this open, they started having the conversations, and they were able to keep having the conversations. It was kind of like the gateway that for a decade, they'd never talked about any of this stuff, and now that barrier is down. So was it an awkward, not super great, not really eloquent, not really hitting everything that my client had hoped? Yep. And it provided a doorway into a new phase where conversations could start.

Because you started having hard conversations, Marianne.

Yes.

You helped them have these hard conversations. I really believe that as couples, we need to learn how to have difficult conversations. But in this situation, we have a couple walking us through perhaps the most difficult conversations, and we have guidance and preparation and understanding. And that process is that model that could be for effective communication throughout the rest of your marriage, rest of your relationship. So I guess if I have a final thought is you may find yourself hesitant. You might find yourself afraid or scared or worried. What happens? Maybe they won't be able to handle it. They might not. But here's what happens. Right now, we have more and more people getting divorced because they don't have data, don't have information. And that's what that research piece showed, is when we're not talking about the details, I don't have hope. When couples are making it, There is a disclosure process in most of those cases that are succeeding. And if I look at it one more way, it's how I can make amends. I can be honest, and I can be truthful.

I love that. It's beautiful. I want to add just one last. I don't think we can close this conversation without talking about when do we not do a disclosure. Because I think that's important.

Very, very important. Very fair.

And so what I would say to that is, and the way that I've been trained is, if divorce is on the table, we don't usually do a disclosure at that point because we're not trying to heal the relationship. And knowing that my partner was unfaithful, I don't need to fill my brain with all the gritty details of that. We're not working on reconciliation. And so we don't use a disclosure to say, well, this is what happened, and bring that up in court. Like, we're very careful about that. That's not the purpose. It is used as a therapeutic healing tool. I have clients say, I don't know, Marianne. I don't know what I don't know. And so we say, can you table that for a while? We'll get through the disclosure. Then you'll have informed consent saying, my partner shared all of this with me. And now I really know what's going on. Now I can make a good decision about whether I want to continue investing in this relationship or not. But. Yeah. What do you want to add to that?

I think that's a very important part of this. It's not wise to do a disclosure when you know you're going to get divorced. There may be rare exceptions there. In general, if you're going to be going through a divorce, that information and data, you may say, well, I need to know everything. Your spouse, if they do give that information, that may be by their choice, very rare. I've actually had one case where that's occurred where it's like the person said, I don't care. I just want to help my partner heal as much as possible by my truth. But in general, it's not something that is recommended.

Yeah. So I am really grateful that we've had this conversation because, you know, most clients that come to me, they're coming to me because of betrayal or because of sexual acting out behaviors. And they want to understand the path through it is work. It's a lot of introspective, looking at myself going deep. And what I will say, just as we're wrapping up the marriage that you had before, it's dead, it's gone. And this is a model and an opening for a new marriage. One that has. Yeah. One that's got transparency and responsibility and ownership and vulnerability and it can be a beautiful model for moving forward.

All right, well, thank you, Marianne. Thank you to our listeners. May you be blessed in your journey. And we've talked about something very difficult today. It is work. But in the work, the consistency over time, connection is possible, healing is possible, recovery is possible. But it usually is truth, honesty. Dealing with this pain that you've had and experienced as a couple can be very building. So thank you very much for listening. May you be blessed in your. In your dreams. Creating healthy and intimate relationship. Thank you very much.

Amen. Thank you.