Healing After Betrayal: A Path to Trust

Michael Preston (00:16.093)
All right, welcome back to Couples in Focus. My name is Michael Preston. It’s good to have you with us. I’m as joined as always by my good friend Thomas. How are we doing Thomas?

Thomas Westenholz (00:29.992)
I am good. And I have to say, the listeners have noticed, Michael got a new microphone and he’s sounding good.

Michael Preston (00:37.801)
Yeah, we had some technical difficulties that were solved by replacing my mic. And if you listened to the last episode, I’m very sorry I did that with AirPods. I didn’t have a new mic yet, but we wanted to keep rolling. And now I’ve got my mic and so we’re good. We’re good now, right?

Thomas Westenholz (00:54.73)
There we go. So this should be nicer on the ears. And yeah, what are we talking about today?

Michael Preston (01:00.841)
Yeah. So today we’re going to continue our conversation somewhat around the world of our sexual conversation we’ve been having so far. So we’ll be touching into the world of recovering from sexual injury, a sexual affair. Cause we get that question a lot, right? And it shows up in our office a lot. And so we’re going to be discussing that today, but we’re also going to be expanding that conversation into a more generalized look at injuries in a relationship.

Right. And how we, as clinicians look at injuries, how we define what an injury is, and then also what is the process of recovery. So if you are suffering right now, if you’re going through an injury in your relationship, hopefully throughout this episode, you will be able to find some kind of answer around what does it take to recover this relationship. Right. Cause that’s a big question people, people ask us all the time. Is it even possible?

And we’ll cover all that in today’s episode.

Thomas Westenholz (02:00.846)
That’s right. And I also just want to say to some people out there who might think injury, what is he talking about? That we are talking about emotional injuries, not physical injuries like a broken arm. are talking, and I just for some people might not write this as terminology we use that we are talking about emotional injuries of times of places where there have been distress, where you felt let down, your trust has been broken, et cetera, where you felt very hurt or felt alone in moments of distress, things like that. So

Michael Preston (02:08.297)
Right. Right. And that’s a great point. No, that’s, you’re absolutely right.

Thomas Westenholz (02:29.186)
That’s kind of what we use the term injuries for. Just wanted to clarify that.

Michael Preston (02:33.193)
No, that’s really good. That’s really good. All right. Well, shall we jump right in?

Thomas Westenholz (02:39.222)
let’s do it. know, and I think we were talking just before we started rolling basically about the even the let’s look at this definition, right of infidelity or cheating or, or these kinds of injuries that we’re looking at. And I think that as we were saying, there used to be this very black and white definition that, that it basically meant having a physical affair with somebody else, being sexual that meant that you have caused this, you know, the cheating and fidelity, this injury to the relationship while

Now I think we have a more wider definition and I think especially, you know, what we practice attachment theory gives us a much wider framework to understand these injuries, right? Cause like we were saying before, it’s much more nuanced. might not be a physical affair at all. Right. It could also just be, Hey, I am giving all this attention to someone else, but not to you. And that over time can keep sending this message. Hey, you are not that important to me as this other person.

Michael Preston (03:18.526)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Preston (03:35.531)
That’s right.

Thomas Westenholz (03:37.09)
which also can have the same impact on the nervous system as even a physical infidelity, right? And often that’s a bit harder to understand because it’s not as black and white, right? There’s not this, you went to bed with them, so now you have been, you know, infidelity. So therefore it’s a bit more nuanced and can be harder to spot, right? And they can go on for longer periods of time without you even knowing maybe that you’re causing…

Michael Preston (03:50.207)
Yeah.

Thomas Westenholz (04:02.094)
infidelity. Normally with the physical we know if we’re doing that that we are causing an injury. But I feel often with the other side that I’m talking about here, the person who might be causing the injury is not even aware that they are causing the injury, right? And they don’t necessarily know why their partner is getting so distressed or so upset. And they might even find it’s unfair, right? And say, hey, I’m just spending a lot of time with whatever my female friend, why is that? Are you insecure? What’s the problem here?

Michael Preston (04:06.41)
Yeah.

Michael Preston (04:12.157)
Okay

Michael Preston (04:16.267)
It’s great.

Michael Preston (04:29.193)
Yeah, yeah. It’s easy then to feel like I can toss it back on my partner as being insecure. Right. And so we’ll say this too.

People come in with emotional affairs where they spent a lot of energy in a relationship outside of their primary relationship.

How to save your relationship

Michael Preston (04:58.205)
When that does happen, I will say couples do come in and they’ll say, I know it didn’t become sexual as that’s like the next thing, right? But it doesn’t change how like it hurts. It hurts deeply and it inflicts a major wound on the relationship. And I’ll even, and I’ll add that going into a sexual infidelity, it amplifies that pain, right?

So I want to name that as well. if that’s what you’re going through, we’re not trying to equate it as like, these are the same things, but that they both cause injuries. And, I would say likely if you’re pouring your energies into someone else, what we would say is you end up having this competing attachment, right? There is some one else outside of the main relationship that is now competing for your attention and your time and your energy.

Thomas Westenholz (05:55.832)
Yes.

Michael Preston (05:56.243)
and it can create a tenuous and potentially dangerous situation for the relationship itself.

Thomas Westenholz (06:06.638)
Yes, absolutely. And I really want to say, because as you said before, often it’s pushed back as is, or you are insecure or whatever it is. And actually I want to say, no, that’s not necessarily the case because we have a very wise biological systems that is aware that all of us have a very limited amount of time and energy and resources that we can give. So if they are seeing that you’re giving a lot of that time and resource to somewhere else,

Michael Preston (06:22.72)
Yeah.

Michael Preston (06:28.106)
Mm-hmm.

Thomas Westenholz (06:33.162)
It’s actually very natural for the nervous system to have a response because it intuitively know that means that there are lots less for me. And if you’re already coming from a relationship dynamic where there was a lack of attention, of time and effort into each other, that’s going to probably hurt even more. Right. And rattle the nervous system even more as it’s now seeing, but what I’m not getting and what I’m craving is being given to someone else. Right. And the challenge of this is while

Michael Preston (06:50.09)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Preston (06:59.051)
That’s right.

Thomas Westenholz (07:01.698)
the physical infidelity is quite straightforward to communicate. It’s like, you did this, it’s wrong. And the other person normally can kind of see, okay, it was probably in many instances that was not the right thing to do. This is much harder. So it’s much more likely that the person who’s been hurt is going to come be frustrated or maybe critical and then be invalidated, right? So there’s no, like, you’re not going to be this, I’ve done something wrong, as there might be in the clear physical sense of cheating, right?

Michael Preston (07:22.281)
Mm-hmm. That’s right.

Thomas Westenholz (07:31.266)
There might be more dismissing of this need and saying, you’re being hysterical or why you’re always making such a fuss. Meaning that the person who is distressed is feeling now also invalidated in their distress, meaning it feels even more alone. Right. And they might even start doubting when they get this message. And I know on social media, it’s very popular on Instagram and these platforms to say, if somebody have these responses is because they’re insecure. And I think what we are saying, no, it might just be they’re having a natural healthy response.

Michael Preston (07:36.448)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Preston (07:56.491)
No, we’re not. That’s right.

Thomas Westenholz (08:01.261)
to saying, there’s some risk happening here that doesn’t feel safe.

Michael Preston (08:04.747)
That’s right. I want to name what happens is when these things start, the meaning that’s made by the partner is the part that doesn’t often get organized and understood. The meaning that we can make around these things, these moments, can be I’m losing my partner.

It’s like watching them slowly drift away. I’m watching my partner give parts of them away, parts that I’ve been asking for. But likely our conversational cycle, our dance of our relationship hasn’t let them come fully forward in our relationship. And that’s what often opens up people to doing things like this. But we can’t talk about it. We can’t name it. And so I want to…

I want to, for everyone listening, when I use the word injury, I want to define that really clearly. That when a couple comes in and talks about an injury, I’m very specifically talking about not about the dance or the cycle that we’ve been talking about, but a particular moment in the relationship. Oftentimes it’s around the discovery of an affair. That’s usually the most common injury that shows up in the office. And in the moment, an affair is discovered.

it drastically

changes how they see their partner and there’s a there’s a

Michael Preston (09:49.451)
sense of betrayal and the person who they thought their partner was is no longer that person. So it’s big. It’s a big shift. So when we say injury, that’s what we’re talking about. When we say cycle, we’re talking about a pattern that happens repetitively over and over and that they’re awful and they can kind of create a kind of like, I don’t know if you grew up like this Thomas, I grew up with a lot of siblings and a bunch of boys in the house. And so

Do you know what, do you know what getting frogged is? No. Okay. That’s yeah. So it’s, it’s kind of like when you make a fist and you take your knuckle and you, and you punch someone, but you keep doing it in the same spot over and over over over over over over until you get like a bruise. And then it’s like, ow, that really hurts. And we used to play this game in school where we would do this and we would hit each other, but you, the loser would be the first person to yell. Like we would just keep going until someone would go, ow. And then they would be out of the game.

Thomas Westenholz (10:20.653)
what does that mean?

Thomas Westenholz (10:29.624)
Catch ya.

Michael Preston (10:47.263)
But it’s not like we would hit each other hard. It’s just over and over in the same spot. And that’s more like what a cycle will do. It goes over and over and over until it creates a bruise that anytime we come near it or touch it, it just sends it right off. When we’re talking about an injury, we are literally talking about, hey, here’s a moment and it doesn’t have to be an affair. There’s lots of injuries that can happen. primarily are their affairs or their financial injuries. Like suddenly finding out your partner has a hundreds of thousands in debt they didn’t tell you about, right?

Thomas Westenholz (10:56.514)
Yes.

Thomas Westenholz (11:11.852)
Yes.

Thomas Westenholz (11:16.579)
this.

Falling back in love podcast episode.

Michael Preston (11:16.991)
These are injuries. They’re outside of the normal cycle and they drastically change how you see your partner in a particular moment. And we have to find a way to help couples organize that.

Thomas Westenholz (11:28.578)
Yes. And I think there’s a few elements also that happen when suddenly it comes up that maybe there’s been an affair, whether it’s emotionally or physical, right? I think one part is that it’s suddenly distilled our trust in our own sense of reality, which can really be shaking because the fact is we had a sense of who this person was and to us, how they were in relation to us or what we thought we could count on. And it shakes that whole sense of reality, meaning it’s not just doubting

the sexual part of our relationship, it’s now doubting everything that made us feel safe. Right? So in that moment in shake our whole perception of can I trust all the things I have perceived in the last whatever 10, 20 years I’ve been with this person. So it now casts all of that into doubt, which is why the person on the receiving end can be so distressed and so shaken up. It’s not only about knowing that physically you have been with another person. It’s that they now have to doubt.

Michael Preston (12:03.05)
Yes.

Thomas Westenholz (12:26.634)
everything that they have experienced, right? And that makes the world, not just you and your relationship, but the whole world feel unsafe. Because what can I trust if the person that I put all my trust in and trusted the most, my best friend or best whatever it is, best girlfriend, whatever, suddenly are not what I thought they were, right? So this is why it can be such a fundamental shock to the nervous system.

Michael Preston (12:27.465)
everything.

Michael Preston (12:52.01)
Mm-hmm.

Thomas Westenholz (12:52.44)
that creates so much instability. And I know often for very avoidant partners, this is hard to understand because for them they’re, but I was just physical. I get that it hurt, but it didn’t mean anything. But yes, it does. Because if we understand the significance of the, you can say, monogamous contract that we have, the physicality is also a symbol of the trust and safety and the commitment that we have in one another.

Michael Preston (13:03.679)
Yeah. Yeah.

Thomas Westenholz (13:18.54)
So when that’s suddenly taken away, it’s a lot more than, you have been physical with someone else. It’s suddenly that that foundation has been ripped away and I didn’t see it happen. And how can I now trust my own perception even going forward? So one part is I lose trust in my partner if they have done this to me. But the second part is in that action, I also lost trust in my own perception.

Michael Preston (13:23.563)
That’s right.

Michael Preston (13:44.53)
That’s right.

Thomas Westenholz (13:45.346)
Can I trust what I see and what I believe? And that makes the world pretty terrifying.

Michael Preston (13:50.347)
Well, it flips the world upside down, right? And this is the part that we have to help couples get to. So let’s pause on that because that’s so important and I want to get to there in just a second. But that’s not where couples show up, right? That’s not where couples see their struggle, right? That’s where we want to help couples begin to name that place. But I’m curious, as you see it, as what shows up in your office, and I’ll see what if it matches mine, but I’m pretty sure it does.

Thomas Westenholz (13:52.589)
Yes.

Michael Preston (14:18.389)
How do we normally see couples when they’re bleeding out? They’ve shown up on the scene. This is kind of how I describe this situation to couples. It’s like there’s been a car wreck. I show up on the scene and the first thing I have to do is triage. And so I’ve got to start looking at the most injured person in the room. Both people are bruised up, but one of them is bleeding out. So that’s kind of where they show up and I’ve got to do some focus here.

Thomas Westenholz (14:44.493)
Yes.

Michael Preston (14:48.085)
But when they come to our office, what do you normally see happening between the two of them as they try to navigate this massively painful thing that’s happened in their relationship?

Thomas Westenholz (14:59.598)
Well, I normally see, I say an escalation of the normal anxious avoidance cycle that we might have described before, but in a much more intense way than it would normally be. So what tend to happen when they come is that the person who has obviously been exposed to this, they’re in a lot of distress.

Michael Preston (15:05.875)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Preston (15:20.426)
Yes.

Thomas Westenholz (15:20.534)
And they’re trying to get the other person to understand. And sometimes it could have been that they come two years after this happened. Or I just had a couple where it’s six years since it happened and they just showed up, right? And it’s literally six. And the person who maybe did it is getting frustrated because they keep feeling this guilt, this coming back at them, right? And they’re like, it’s been two years. So they often are very dismissive because they don’t want to feel the guilt anymore, right?

Michael Preston (15:27.062)
yeah. Yep.

Michael Preston (15:40.299)
That’s right.

Michael Preston (15:46.569)
Right.

Thomas Westenholz (15:46.958)
And part of what they’re saying is too hard for me to constantly have to come face to face with this guilt of what I did. So I needed to go away and I do that by dismissing you. Right. And that becomes more and more where they might even become irritated and say, why are you bringing this up again? We already discussed this. I apologize to you a hundred times. I’ve already said to you, I haven’t done anything. I allowed you to look at my phone. Why is this still an issue? I was just out with my friends. So they very much dismiss what’s happened. Right. And the other person.

Michael Preston (15:51.434)
Yeah.

Michael Preston (16:09.663)
Right. Yeah.

Yeah.

Thomas Westenholz (16:16.65)
is getting more and more distressed that they can’t get out and can’t get this person to understand that yes, they have apologized, but it doesn’t take away that their whole sense of self, the relationship, their world, their own perception was literally shattered with a sledgehammer. Yeah. And all the pieces are lying everywhere. And the person who did it came back with one brick and said, I’m sorry. Here’s a brick that fell off your house. Not realizing that the whole house is smashed.

Michael Preston (16:36.011)
That’s right.

Michael Preston (16:42.601)
Yeah. It’s gone. That’s right.

Thomas Westenholz (16:45.77)
It’s gone and the bricks are everywhere and they still feel alone having to pick up the other 955 bricks that were smashed and they’re trying to say to their partner, I can’t do this alone. I need your help. But the partner of course feel guilty and they try to then minimize it. And that’s what I see just kind of escalating and escalating until at some point as the normal cycle, one person will just give up, right? But normally at that point it becomes

Michael Preston (16:48.235)
Yeah.

Michael Preston (16:53.216)
Yes.

Thomas Westenholz (17:13.942)
At least in my experience, that’s when it becomes very difficult to rescue.

Michael Preston (17:18.163)
Yeah, no, absolutely. It gets really hard at that point to help a couple recover. It’s already hard enough to help a couple recover. Right. But it gets really hard when they get to that place where, where, so what, what you’re naming, right, is there’s a normal cycle they have in their relationship. We talk about that all the time, right? The pursuer, the withdraw, that dynamic. But when you add an injury to it, you end up

Thomas Westenholz (17:28.686)
It is.

Michael Preston (17:44.532)
with a more exaggerated version of their cycle, but it’s a cycle that particularly begins to organize itself around the injury. Right? So that’s at the center of this particular cycle. And that’s, that’s where people show up all the time. And that’s our first step is to begin to help couples see there is a way in which you’re talking about this that is organized around this injury that will never allow this injury to heal.

Right? Because one partner is often incredibly understandably angry and is coming in hot. Understandably. Cause there is, there is a true sense of primary anger in what happened. Right? So when I say primary anger, mean, generally speaking, we talk about emotions in two camps, primary and secondary. If you want to put different words like soft and reactive.

Right. And so generally speaking, anger can be quite reactive, right? But in this case, there is a true violation that calls for primary anger that says, am so angry at how you hurt me. You shattered my heart into a million pieces and no matter what I do, it will never be put back the same way. And that’s really the, the, the angering piece, right?

I will never be, I will never not be someone you cheated on. Right? That is such a real experience, valid experience, and it needs to be named, but it can’t be named when the other side is trying to minimize and deflect and push it away. Or they just trying to say, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, which we talked about in an earlier episode, how I’m so sorry just doesn’t cut it. And in this kind of moment,

Even more so, it’s not going to cut it. It’s not going to heal. Right? So our first step is, if you’re, if you’re listening and going, what’s happening to us, can you look at this? Right? Can you look at your relationship and say, what are we doing? Right? What does it look like? Am I, am I the injured partner? Right? Am I coming in with my anger and, you know, yelling at my partner or losing it or asking questions about like, Oh, how could you and how dare you and what’s wrong with you? Cause it can get quite nasty. Right?

Thomas Westenholz (19:42.324)
Exactly.

Thomas Westenholz (19:55.31)
this.

Thomas Westenholz (20:06.381)
Yes.

Michael Preston (20:07.037)
It can get quite nasty on that side of things. Right. So I just want to, I want to fair is fair here. Right. I want to make sure that we’re handling this honestly, the anger when it comes in that nastiness, you know, naturally, cause you’re, you’ve just been hurt tremendously. Right. It also pushes the partner away and unable to stay close to help heal. Right. And so we’ve, we’ve

Thomas Westenholz (20:13.154)
Yes.

Thomas Westenholz (20:21.966)
this.

Thomas Westenholz (20:32.066)
soon.

Michael Preston (20:33.387)
what to encourage you to look at that part. Like, what are we doing? Because if couples could have a meaningful conversation around this, we really believe that the meaningful conversation could help them heal. But our job is to say, what is stopping that meaningful conversation? Right? And often it’s that dynamic that you’re naming, right? That the one that’s been injured comes in hot and angry.

Thomas Westenholz (20:45.122)
Yes.

Thomas Westenholz (20:57.729)
Yes.

Michael Preston (20:57.833)
And that anger says to the other one, there’s no way we’re going to make it through this. It’s just going to get me blasted. I’m not going to be able to manage that. There’s no way. Minimize it. Why are we still talking about this? I’ve already said, I’m sorry. What else do you want from me? And oftentimes on the other side, that narrative is if there’s nothing I can do to help my partner heal, then why do we keep going back just to yell at each other?

Thomas Westenholz (21:21.368)
Yeah.

Michael Preston (21:27.551)
Right, because it feels so pointless because if they knew a way to help heal, I think they would do it because that’s what they want to do. But this cycle keeps them from doing that. So eventually they do have to minimize and pull away because they’re going, I don’t know. I don’t know the way to healing. And since I don’t know it, I can’t do anything.

Thomas Westenholz (21:27.553)
Yes.

Thomas Westenholz (21:35.744)
Salud.

Thomas Westenholz (21:40.746)
Yes.

And that’s exactly, and I think that’s often what’s behind the dismissing of the pain is that I don’t know how to make this better. So it’s unbearable to be in this place where I can only keep failing because I know I failed and fucked up and messed up. And now I’m just being reminded again and again of how I failed and messed up and I have no way to fix it. And you’re right. Sorry doesn’t fix it. You know, I remember this woman.

Michael Preston (21:50.281)
Of course it is.

Michael Preston (22:00.829)
Yeah.

Michael Preston (22:09.78)
Mm-hmm.

Thomas Westenholz (22:13.582)
who had an ex-partner who never paid the contribution to the kids on time. And she said, sorry, doesn’t pay the bills. And here in this, what we talk about now, sorry, it doesn’t rebuild the house of trust that was broken. So this is why sorry in itself doesn’t work, because it doesn’t rebuild the house, just like it doesn’t pay the bills, right? And it doesn’t actually show the felt remorse and often in the dismissing of the anger.

Michael Preston (22:25.387)
It doesn’t, right?

Michael Preston (22:33.877)
That’s right.

Thomas Westenholz (22:40.842)
Actually, the message they’re getting is, you still don’t get how much you hurt me, right? And that’s why the sorry isn’t landing. Because what’s really needed to try and break this cycle is that the person who was hurt can see the emotional impact it had on you that you hurt me. Because only when I see that can my nervous system trust that your empathy actually is online and you actually get it.

Michael Preston (22:44.351)
Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Preston (23:04.757)
That’s right.

Thomas Westenholz (23:06.4)
And biologically we know that only if empathy is online and get how we hurt someone are we not gonna do it again, right? And this is why when we can’t see the empathetic response, meaning the emotional impact in you from having caused this pain, we can’t heal. Because our body biologically knows, we don’t logically think this or know this, but biologically we already know that unless the other person shows an empathetic response to our suffering,

Michael Preston (23:13.227)
That’s right.

Michael Preston (23:22.112)
Yeah.

Thomas Westenholz (23:34.914)
They haven’t really got it. And if they haven’t got it empathetically, they’re not going to change behavior. Because what makes us change behavior is empathy says, I can see the pain this is causing and I don’t want to do that again. And that’s why sorry without showing the emotional impact it had on you to cause this pain doesn’t work. What they really need is to see. And this is not about you being fake. But if they can see the tears and the pain that you feel from having caused that pain.

Michael Preston (23:44.619)
That’s right.

Thomas Westenholz (24:04.46)
then their nervous system can start trusting that maybe he does get the pain, maybe he feels the pain that he caused. And that can make me start to trust and feel a bit more safe that it won’t happen maybe again.

Michael Preston (24:16.875)
That’s right. Right. And you know, I just to, it’s great to help people get there. The thing that we have to help people see first is your partner can’t meet you in that pain if you haven’t found a way to begin to organize what happened to you. Right. And that’s, I think that’s where a big part of a good guide is so helpful because the pain kicks up the anger so much. Right.

And what they’re not able to, what often happens, right, is they go in and they’re just, they’re so angry and the partner can’t see the pain, right? So yes, the partner needs to come in and hold that pain. But this is the really, this is the really, really hard part. And this is what I talk about a lot. If you’re the injured partner and you’re listening to this today, I want to validate that it’s really painful that you’re the one that got injured.

And in order to begin to heal this thing, you’ve got to stick your neck out again. You have to take risk here. You have to do something really vulnerable. And that’s really, really hard. And I have this conversation with couples that I work with from the very beginning and I tell them, you don’t have to do that. Right. If you want to walk away, I just, but I need you to know what is necessary to heal. And that means even though you’ve been hurt, even though in time,

You are going to have to risk big risk of putting your heart back out there because your partner can’t heal the heart they broke if they can’t see the heart they broke. That’s the hard part. And so we have to begin to help the injured partner say, this is what you did to me. This is what this injury meant to me. Right? I need you to know that you were my place of solace and rest and peace.

Thomas Westenholz (25:54.296)
Yes.

Michael Preston (26:13.365)
But on that day, you became my greatest tormentor. Right? And that is shattering and I’ll never be the same. And that’s a really vulnerable thing to say to someone when that someone is also the person who hurt you.

Thomas Westenholz (26:30.316)
And that is why this is very difficult to do on your own. Cause as you say, there’s no way if you choose, you want to come back and try and heal this without being vulnerable. But that’s hard to do on your own with the person who caused the suffering, right? Which is why often when they come in, we are able to provide that sense of validation in the beginning that helps a nervous system calm down a bit and say, Hey, someone gets this pain.

Michael Preston (26:34.485)
Yeah.

Michael Preston (26:39.595)
Yeah.

Michael Preston (26:43.531)
It’s hard.

Michael Preston (26:51.199)
Mm-hmm.

Thomas Westenholz (26:57.526)
And that makes it more possible to access these more vulnerable parts, right? And help communicate them, which often always get lost at home. Because at home, all the partner who maybe did this violation, they just get the anger, right? And it makes sense, because of course, if you’ve been hurt that bad, you’re not going to say, hey, let me come out and be vulnerable with you how you hurt my feelings, even though you just broke all my trust. Yes.

Michael Preston (26:57.643)
That’s right.

Michael Preston (27:10.507)
That’s right.

Michael Preston (27:17.193)
Right. No way. Nor could we do that right in the beginning of therapy, right? We have to validate the hard place they’re in, validate the good reasons they’re so angry, validate the reason why they’re saying, I’m not doing that. Of course you wouldn’t, right? Of course you wouldn’t. And it’s so important to know that if you never do, you can, this relationship won’t find healing, right? That’s the hard part. And it’s just the juxtaposition that like,

Thomas Westenholz (27:24.396)
Yes, yes, that’s it, yes.

Michael Preston (27:47.135)
I think it’s hard to really lean into and believe that the person that broke me can also be the person that healed me. Right. It’s just going to take time and work and effort and organizing to begin to help the injured partner come forward more with what happened to me rather than the attack attack. But then we have the next, the next task, right? If we can help that person begin to settle down and the injured person take those risks.

Thomas Westenholz (28:09.23)
That’s right.

Michael Preston (28:17.405)
We’ve got another job to do, right? We’ve got the other job, because the other side has to take this in. Right? And that means your partner is going to have to be able to say, see you. Right? And I’m glad you’re sharing this with me. And of course you’re angry. That makes so much sense to me. Right? You’re going to have to meet you in that painful place.

Thomas Westenholz (28:22.861)
Yes.

Thomas Westenholz (28:39.724)
Yes. And you know what? And it’s amazing when we get to that place. And what I think then can become challenging for the person who may be caused this violation is to understand that doing it once doesn’t create the trust in the nervous system again. The nervous system now have to see this many, many, many times to start trusting that it’s real. Right? And that’s just how it is when we have major fractures.

Michael Preston (28:57.279)
No.

Michael Preston (29:00.924)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Preston (29:04.725)
That’s right.

Thomas Westenholz (29:08.524)
You know, I think often the person who maybe have caused it think that, okay, but we have this conversation. I did generally, you saw that I was really sad. Why are we still talking about it, right? This next week again, we just talked about it with a therapist last week and I recognize. And what I think is important message for them to get is that if there has been such a big violation, it will take a lot of repeated exposure to the same process again.

Michael Preston (29:14.955)
Thank

Michael Preston (29:19.211)
That’s right.

Michael Preston (29:22.763)
That’s right.

Michael Preston (29:32.661)
That’s right. Yeah.

Thomas Westenholz (29:36.864)
And again, before the felt nervous system actually start to say, okay, maybe I can trust this now.

Michael Preston (29:43.081)
Yeah. And to that point, right? One of the things that I hear so often is people come into my office and they’ll be like, everything was a little bit better, but then they come into my office and they find out my partner has been in pain and they haven’t been turning to me. Right? They’ve been more withdrawn or just kind of like avoiding this thing. And one partner will say to the other, okay, why didn’t you come to me? Why didn’t you tell me? And you can hear…

The injured partners say so often, I don’t know that you won’t get tired of me coming to you with this. I don’t know. I’m scared that eventually we’re going to go back to doing it what we were doing it where you’re going to tell me, we’ve talked about this. This is enough. Can’t we move on? I can still hear that.

cycle living in my head, right? So this cycle that happens lives on and stays with our partner until we can meet them in that place and you know when the partner is able to respond with one, that makes so much sense. You know, could we just say when your partner shares something with you, if you will just say, that makes a lot of sense to me, here’s why it makes sense to me, I can see where that’s coming from, that’s gonna solve

Thomas Westenholz (30:41.282)
Yes.

Thomas Westenholz (30:55.309)
Yes.

Michael Preston (31:08.587)
99 % of arguments just across the board of a relationship. It’s such a great phrase because what I have to do is I have to organize my partner’s experience. Right. And I have to be able to say to them, that makes sense. I did say those things. I can see why you would feel that way. Hey, can I just say, I want you to come to me anytime. Right. The that’s safety signal, safety signal, safety signal, right.

Thomas Westenholz (31:10.508)
Yes.

Thomas Westenholz (31:19.416)
Yes.

Thomas Westenholz (31:35.83)
That’s right. That’s right.

Michael Preston (31:36.775)
And we have to keep sending a safety signal if our partner is going to keep digging at this thing and helping the relationship heal and recover.

Thomas Westenholz (31:44.27)
Yeah. And you know, I think this is what often is so scary for the person who might have felt violated is that often there’s also this worry that if I actually share my distress, I will push them even further away. Right? So therefore I keep holding it and then it will come out in this sudden burst of maybe I get angry when he’s out with his work colleague. And maybe I know this person, he did something with it. A Christmas party is there and suddenly an explosion come and he’s confused what’s happening.

Michael Preston (31:57.195)
That’s right.

Michael Preston (32:01.973)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Michael Preston (32:11.611)
Thomas Westenholz (32:13.25)
Because it was really hard to say, hey, I know you’re out at your work party and actually it’s coming up. I’m getting really distressed again and feel really scared of losing you. Can you call me? That’s hard to say in that moment, right? That’s really hard to say.

Michael Preston (32:20.639)
That’s right.

Michael Preston (32:24.981)
That’s hard to say. And it could be, again, this is where it goes, yes, this is the risk, right? Because your partner can drop you there, right? And when you’ve already been injured, don’t want to get dropped, right? You’re already injured and it’s going to hurt even more if you take that risk and your partner misses. And it does happen, right? Good couples, great couples miss each other, right? We’re not saying that you have to get it perfect.

Thomas Westenholz (32:38.99)
That’s right.

Michael Preston (32:54.249)
in order to get through this thing. But we do have to notice the moments that we do drop our partner and say, hey, that wasn’t how I wanted to do that. I got into my own stuff. Let me come back to you. We have to make those repairs, right? The repair has to come. So I want to name that as well, that we’re not asking for perfection. We are asking to step into a process of listening and understanding

And knowing that if there’s an injury in your relationship, it will take time to heal and it will take what I call good time. So you can’t just not talk about it for six years and then be like, let’s have healed, right? That’s not how these kinds of wounds work. It takes good time where we’re constantly bringing out the fear and the pain into the light of the relationship and holding it together. And then we can start healing.

Thomas Westenholz (33:27.308)
Yes.

Thomas Westenholz (33:31.128)
Yes.

Thomas Westenholz (33:36.407)
Yes.

Thomas Westenholz (33:44.152)
That’s right.

Thomas Westenholz (33:49.518)
Yes.

Michael Preston (33:49.557)
but it can’t just heal by time alone. That whole lie that we grew up with, is us, time heals all things. I’m like, time doesn’t heal anything.

Thomas Westenholz (33:58.838)
time enhance whatever cycle you have going on. Whatever cycle is going on will become more, right?

Michael Preston (34:00.949)
That’s right. Time literally will just make this worse. Right? is so the opposite. Right? Time doesn’t help, but good time does. And good time is spent when I’m able to bring the hurt and the pain forward and you’re able to meet me in that place. Now we’re in good time.

Thomas Westenholz (34:19.938)
Yes. And you know, I want to say one thing I really notice in these dynamics, at least for me, and you might have different experience in your practice. But for me, it’s been very much, I noticed that it’s much easier to facilitate this process if the person who maybe did this violation have not had a lot of shame in their life. Because what I noticed is if they had a lot of shame, they will identify what they did with, I am a bad person.

And that make it almost impossible for them to hear this message and take responsibility and say, you know, I can see I hurt you, because their defense to protect their sense of self is so strong. So it’s much harder to go through this process we’re describing. While when people didn’t have a lot of shame, they might feel guilty, but they don’t feel fundamentally that they did this means something is wrong with them. And that makes it much easier to get them to take responsibility and to say, listen,

Michael Preston (35:08.169)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Preston (35:11.774)
Mm-hmm.

Thomas Westenholz (35:13.536)
I see what I did had a horrible impact, right? So I really, what I noticed is the process is much harder and take much longer if the person who did the cheating had a lot of shame growing up, because it becomes much, much harder to get them to take on this message because they have a lot more defense towards this idea because what they hear is something is wrong with me. They don’t just hear I made a big mistake. It doesn’t mean I am faulty as a human being. It means at that moment,

Michael Preston (35:32.107)
That’s right.

Thomas Westenholz (35:42.956)
I had bad judgement.

Michael Preston (35:44.479)
Yes. Yeah. And that’s so true, right? And that’s true against all injuries, right? If there’s already a lot of shame there, it’s not going to help on any injury when that person is already stuck in such negative view of self and so prone to going into shame already. And then they do something that their body goes, this is shameful and just lays into them. So I think that’s such an important part of it. I want to take a step forward here.

Thomas Westenholz (35:53.367)
Yes.

Michael Preston (36:15.311)
And if we can help a couple begin to lower the reactivity around the affair and we can help them or the injury and we can begin to help them share the meaning that made what happened to me. Right. And we really begin to stabilize that relationship. I want to name one of the things that we have to do and help couples begin to do as, part of the back, back end of therapy is really to begin to observe their relationship. And this is tricky.

Because here’s the moment where we want to help couples begin to understand how we got here. And this becomes like, we have to be really clear. How we got here is a process that happened together. Right? When one person steps outside of the relationship, that is a choice one person made because both people were in the relationship that was terrible or going off track or

We were both withdrawn from each other but one person went outside the relationship Right. So that is a different move, right? So we have to delineate that like a stark difference But if we don’t help couples understand the story of their relationship that made it vulnerable to an affair then it’s likely that They could find themselves in that same boat again because they they don’t understand how we got here And so that is an important

Thomas Westenholz (37:41.794)
Yes.

Michael Preston (37:43.511)
we have to help couples with but oftentimes by the time we get there we’ve we definitely Should have helped this couple begin to talk about this injury name this injury begin to begin and Have healing conversations around it where they can dive into the pain and they can turn to their partner say this is what I need from you I need this from you and once we can help couples do that then we can start to say let’s go back and Let’s figure out. How did we get here?

Thomas Westenholz (38:01.826)
Yes.

Thomas Westenholz (38:05.678)
this.

Thomas Westenholz (38:09.134)
That’s right.

That’s right.

Michael Preston (38:12.681)
And that’s so important and delicate.

Thomas Westenholz (38:15.062)
Yes, because what you’re saying is, once we dealt with this big attachment injury, then we have to look at the fact that there were circumstances and this might be hard to look at that we both played up. And that doesn’t mean the person who was cheating on is to blame at all. That’s not what we’re saying here. It’s still not, it’s still, it’s still not an acceptable action, right? To break trust in this way. But what we’re saying is we still need to look at, there has probably been some things here that fundamentally we’re wrong with the relationship for a long time.

Michael Preston (38:23.339)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Preston (38:29.823)
Right. Yeah. Yeah. You guys should be really clear about that.

Thomas Westenholz (38:44.834)
What is very common in dynamics where this happened, and again, this is not to blame anyone, but there will be relationships where we haven’t talked very much openly about issues in our relationship, right? So it has just kind of gone under the radar or we swept it under the carpet. A lot of the issues that happen and that tend to be a tendency I see in most of the people coming in and having these issues. Therefore, sometimes they even say, I didn’t even know we had issue, right? Or whatever it might come up.

Michael Preston (38:56.213)
Absolutely.

Michael Preston (39:01.163)
Yeah.

Michael Preston (39:12.747)
Mhm.

Thomas Westenholz (39:14.4)
And we have to go back and look at what was all these things that were not spoken about? What was all this silence that was building up? Because there’s a lot of different reasons for why people might go and have an affair with somebody else. And it’s not necessarily about just a physical need. Actually, in many cases, I would say that is not really the main reason people do it. Yeah, there has often been an emotional disconnect, right? And there has been other elements.

where people slowly have gravitated away. could be somebody have felt alone with all the financial responsibility for so long and nobody to share it with. And suddenly he meets a woman in the bar who wants to listen to him and how stressful it is. And he suddenly feel this sense of… And that doesn’t justify the action. That’s not the point, but it’s to understand what was it that went missing, where you started drifting apart that then became the motivator for this action to be taken.

Michael Preston (39:53.077)
Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Preston (40:08.075)
That’s right. The ship was already going down in most cases. Right. And so now we’re trying to discover where are the holes, right. That made the ship take on water. And I can remember, Ooh, this is a long time ago, but I was working with a couple and you know, the husband was so, he was hesitant even to say anything was wrong. Right. And, it was his wife that said, you know, I stopped paying attention to you a long time ago. Right.

And you would come to me with these ideas and I wouldn’t listen. And I would just say, no, no, don’t do that. You can’t do that. You can’t do that. And I just stopped exploring with you. Cause this guy was always like coming up with new business ideas. Like, what about this? We could do this. Very few of them ever became anything. Right. But it was, it was his process of dreaming that she left. Like she just said, got no, I’m done. Right.

And there’s lots of good reasons for that as well. But what he did find was someone who was interested in what he was dreaming about.

Thomas Westenholz (41:15.138)
Yes.

Michael Preston (41:16.739)
And when he found someone who was interested in what he was dreaming about, it was intoxicating. And she was able to say, I see it. I see. I gave up on listening to your dreams and it must’ve felt like I gave up on you. Right. And so that becomes a window for understanding how this relationship began to deteriorate and make it vulnerable to

Thomas Westenholz (41:23.479)
Of course.

Michael Preston (41:46.301)
an affair. And that is an important part that we got to hold together. Because if couples are going to recover from this, they’ve got to do with some assurance that like, okay, we understand how we got there, so that we don’t have to go back there again.

Thomas Westenholz (41:47.522)
That’s

Yes.

Thomas Westenholz (42:00.584)
Exactly. And I think, you know, this is a good example you’re giving and it’s nice to have a practical example of how this might look like. Right. And another one could be this, which, which I have seen in my, my office is where, you know, the man would say, Hey, for, for 20 years, I always took the initiative and I never felt desired because I always was the one who had to take the initiative. And suddenly I met someone who was pursuing me.

Michael Preston (42:06.368)
Yeah.

Michael Preston (42:21.771)
Mm.

Thomas Westenholz (42:30.444)
And it was almost like the first time in my life I felt desired. Not that I was pursuing or forcing sex on somebody, but that I was actually wanted. And again, it doesn’t justify cheating. That’s not what I’m saying. Neither am I not saying it’s a wife’s fault at all. But what I’m saying is, like you said, we have to go back and see what were the needs that were missed and never discussed that caused us to get here. And in this instance, it was that he had a deep, again, a normal need.

Michael Preston (42:34.591)
Yeah.

Michael Preston (42:42.389)
Mm-mm.

Michael Preston (42:52.491)
That’s right.

Thomas Westenholz (42:59.17)
to feel desired and for 20 years he had never been able to express that to her. So he had just gone with this feeling of I’m not desired and yeah, I can get her to comply with sex, but she doesn’t really want to, which made him feel horrible about himself. And when suddenly he got someone who pursued him, like you said, it felt intoxicating because it’s this thing that I had been craving for so many years that it became really hard to say no to it. And it was actually not…

Michael Preston (43:10.219)
That’s right. Yeah.

Michael Preston (43:18.579)
Yeah, it is.

Michael Preston (43:25.663)
And often people aren’t even aware that they’re craving it to that extent and then it shows up and it’s like fire.

Thomas Westenholz (43:32.78)
Yes, and

Michael Preston (43:34.571)
So I was going to say though, like what we’re trying to do is not justify but contextualize how it happened and humanize the person who did it. Right? Because if we can’t see their humanity, the relationship can’t recover, we’ll just stay angry and bitter. And in a situation like this, like the one that you’re describing, what we would keep going back to is helping people understand it’s the cycle that you were in, right? It’s not your fault or

their fault. It’s the cycle you’re in and the inability your relationship had to communicate around this. That’s so massive. And then that grew and grew and grew. And then suddenly this thing happened and bam, it’s on. Right? So that’s the contextualizing and the humanizing your partner and understanding. But that does take long. And we would never want to do that towards the beginning of healing because there would be no capacity. Right? And of course, because of the humanistic approach to therapy here, the humanistic approach goes, you’re a human.

Thomas Westenholz (44:07.288)
ride.

Thomas Westenholz (44:12.942)
Yes.

Thomas Westenholz (44:25.326)
That’s right.

Michael Preston (44:30.187)
So we don’t expect you to do like above human things, right? Which would be to suddenly in the middle of your bleeding out, look to your partner and say, I’m so sorry you were bruised. Like that’s not going to be a human thing, right? We’re prioritizing this person who’s bleeding out intentionally. So I want to take one, two minutes here, right? Cause we’re going to wrap up the episode now. But one of the questions I get a lot and I would love to hear how you would answer this is, is it possible?

Can we really recover? Does it get better? Is it worth going through this painful process if we’ve had an injury? And what would you say to that?

Thomas Westenholz (45:14.124)
And it depends on a couple of factors. So I think it depends on the overall strength of the relationship before this happened. So if a couple come in and they generally have never really had a sense of safe base together, this has now escalated. There’s not a particular big willingness from both parties to actually want to be there. Then I think in many cases, it’ll be very difficult.

Michael Preston (45:15.221)
you and your nuanced self.

Michael Preston (45:26.411)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Preston (45:40.139)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Preston (45:43.499)
Mm-hmm.

Thomas Westenholz (45:43.628)
And in some cases, it could make it worse. So that’s why I say it depends. If you have two people who actually had had times in their relationship where they had a good solid loving foundation and this happened and there’s a willingness and both people actually want to be there. I think, yes, it’s definitely possible. And I have seen it happen right in my office. So I know it’s possible. But I think the process is much harder, much longer if there not is a clear willingness from both people.

Michael Preston (46:02.357)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Preston (46:11.701)
Mm-hmm.

Thomas Westenholz (46:13.11)
And if there isn’t a safe reference point in the past to go back to. So for that is what I have noticed is quite important. And if there’s been a period of time where it felt safe and like we were a unit, we had this together, it’s easier to come back. If that was never there, I at least found it slightly definitely more challenging and difficult.

Michael Preston (46:18.067)
No, I like that. I think that’s important.

Michael Preston (46:36.459)
Yeah, no, I like that. And I do a lot of work at like assessment work at the very beginning before we even start this work to make sure we’re on the same page, meeting with both people individually, really getting a sense for what they want because they do have to be aligned on this one. Right. And there has to be a good reason. But in, in particular, when, when, when I have a couple that comes in and says, we both want this to work. Right. I have love for this person. I really want this to work. Often what I do share is not only is recovery possible, right.

Because if you both want it and you both work at it, we can get you there. I would actually say that couples that go through this kind of injury, their relationship is far better than oftentimes they’ll finish it going, we came in for healing or finding a way through this thing. We had no idea that we would be this close, this connected. We didn’t even know this was possible before this happened. the after walking, because of the level.

Thomas Westenholz (47:32.109)
Yes.

Michael Preston (47:35.919)
of pain you have to walk through together, right? Picking up this stuff brick by brick and looking at it together and holding it together. And that bond that you create, most couples come out of this work who stick with it, do the hard work saying, this relationship is better than one we could have dreamed of having before the affair. We didn’t know this was possible.

Thomas Westenholz (47:38.478)
Yeah.

Thomas Westenholz (47:57.794)
Yeah, and I think that’s spot on. And I think part of the reason is what we mentioned for that is once you heal that wound that happened, we can actually go back and look at what were the patterns that weren’t working before. And when we can do that, of course, we’re going to end up probably with a much more functional relationship that’s much more honest, where they’re much more able to respond to each other, right? That actually can end up being a better relationship than what they had before. So I think you’re spot on because this kind of highlights

Michael Preston (48:07.86)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Preston (48:18.697)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Preston (48:22.091)
That’s right.

Thomas Westenholz (48:26.412)
that there was some wounds, right, that we hadn’t actually properly addressed, right? And because the leg fully broke, it was so painful that now we actually had to look and see, we were already bleeding. Yeah. And that means if we then put it back together, we can actually put it back together fully. So it’s fully restored, right? And we don’t have all these cuts. So in that way, I think you’re right that if people have the willingness and the capacity here, then they could end up with a better relationship afterwards.

Michael Preston (48:33.675)
Yeah.

Michael Preston (48:54.795)
That’s right. So if that’s you today, if you’re sitting there going, should we do this?

first we’d ask you to say is this what you want to do? Knowing that the work is hard, knowing that it’s going to require a lot of you and your partner and the road won’t be easy and the road won’t be short but if it’s both what you want I think we would both say the road would be worth it. And so if that’s where you are today

One, just want to say we’re sorry. We’re sorry this is happening in your world and it’s been shattered. But in this situation, finding good help is really important. And finding someone who can help hold what’s happened in your relationship, what’s happened in your world and turn it upside down, that’s going to be really helpful. And so on these occasions, we would say seek someone, seek help. And if that’s, again, if that’s what you and your partner want to do, more power to you.

We absolutely believe that it can be not only healed, but better than you ever imagined. And we hope that’s, we hope that’s really encouraging. And we hope that kind of hearing a little bit about how this process works lets you know that, a good therapist is going to have a map. Right. And it has a process and knows what needs to come first and knows how to walk through these with people in order to find the best way to help you heal. All right. Well, that, I think so that’s where we’ll wrap it up today. All right, Thomas, we’ll see you at the next one.

Thomas Westenholz (50:16.086)
right. Yeah, that’s a good way to end. think yes. Yeah.

Michael Preston (50:24.139)
All right.

Thomas Westenholz (50:25.144)
I do a quick clap again. Then I have one at the beginning and end. Amazing. Let me just quickly stop.