Question:I have discovered that my husband of 25 years has had an online and telephone relationship with another woman. He works away from home and what began as chat soon developed into sending explicit texts and making phone calls (not sexual, he says). While he is distraught and swears that it will never happen again, I am overwhelmed by the sense of betrayal. How can I rebuild my trust in him?
Answer:While your husband may well be telling the truth about the fact that he and another woman exchange sexually explicit texts but prefer to chat about the weather when they use the phone, I can understand why you might doubt the veracity of his story.
Whenever a person hides an intimate relationship from his partner he or she is being unfaithful. However, a recent survey by Divorce Magazine suggests that when it comes to infidelity gender differences apply. Sexual exchanges over the internet do not count as adultery according to 54 per cent of the men in its survey. I suspect that 100 per cent of those men would change their mind if they caught their wives logging on as “Sexy MILF looking for naughty fun”.
Do not underestimate the impact of your partner’s deceit. It can take up to two years to get over infidelity.
Research into the reactions of betrayed spouses shows that they resemble the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder — the most severely traumatised are those, like you, who had the greatest trust and were the most unsuspecting. No matter how penitent your husband is, in these early stages, expecting him to make you feel better will only make matters worse. You need to talk to a counsellor or a friend who can listen in a supportive and non-judgmental way. It is crucial that the person offers only comfort and avoids validating knee-jerk reactions because right now you are too emotional to make decisions that are in your best interest.
It sounds as though your husband is prepared to abandon his affair and work at the marriage. That is important because unless both parties are equally committed marriage-guidance counselling is hopeless.
Rebuilding your trust in him will not be easy. First, you will need to identify his motivations because unless the underlying cause is addressed he is likely to do it again. You also need to be told the whole truth about what happened in the relationship. He may be reluctant to do this for fear of hurting you even more, but concealing the details will leave questions unanswered and that will prevent you moving on. During this process of unravelling it is possible that you will hear some harsh truths about the state of your marriage, but infidelity is not necessarily an indicator that a relationship is troubled.
Unfaithful partners will always argue that they were not getting enough from the marriage but it is often the case that they were not giving enough either.
Your husband does not sound like a philanderer, but the fact that he works away from home has given him the opportunity to stray and often that is all it takes. In the past 15 years the anonymity, disinhibition and accelerated intimacy that internet exchanges allow has created a crisis of “unintentional” infidelity that has now been fully commercialised.
There are even websites designed for married men and woman who want to play away from home. They find each other at the click of a mouse and, unsurprisingly, the number of divorces triggered by online affairs is now 33 per cent and rising.
Several factors influence whether a couple can survive an affair, but the most important one is the quality of their relationship before it, because this determines their level of commitment to repairing things. Good communication is also important, as is a willingness to seek help in the form of individual (www.bacp.co.uk) and couple counselling (www.relate.org.uk).
The good news is that couples who survive infidelity often find that they develop a stronger relationship because they are forced to examine what went wrong with their relationship in the first place. I hope this helps in some small way.
问：我发现结婚二十五年的丈夫通过网络和电话与别的女人有联系。他离家在外工作，他们先从聊天开始，很快就开始发送很肉麻的信息，打电话（他说，没有发生性关系）。当他在我面前信誓旦旦说这种事情再不会发生的时候，我被一种欺骗的感觉压得喘不过气来。怎样才能重新建立起我对他的信任？
答：当你丈夫告诉你他再和别的女人通电话时谈论的是天气，而不是说很肉麻的话时，也许这是事实，但是你不相信，我能理解你怀疑的原因。
无论何时，当某一方对自己伴侣隐瞒另外一段亲密关系的时候，他们都是不忠诚的。而最近，由Divorce Magazine发起的一项调查表明，性别不同，对背叛的理解也是不同的。在受调查的男性中，54%的人认为网络上的出轨不算是背叛。我怀疑，他们中间所有人在看到自己的妻子登陆像“Sexy MILF looking for naughty fun”这样的网站的时候，都会持相同的观点，认为妻子的行为就是一种背叛。
不要低估欺骗带来的影响，背叛在心理上造成的不安用两年的时间就可以消除。
对被背叛配偶进行研究发现，他们的反应类似于外伤后精神失常的症状，受伤害最严重的是给予最大的信任，并且从不怀疑对方的人。在最初几个阶段，无论你丈夫有多耐心，你希望他能让你舒服一点的想法只会让事情变得更糟糕。这时候，你需要同心理专家或者朋友谈一下，他们能从一个提供支持和非判断的角度聆听。能仅仅给予宽慰并且避免做出下意识的反应的人非常关键，因为这个时候很容易感情用事，而不能做出对自己有利的决定。
听起来似乎是丈夫打算不再和其他女人有什么瓜葛，重新努力经营婚姻。这一点很重要，因为除非双方都能平等遵守婚约，否则找心理医生也没什么用。
重建对他的信任不太容易。首先，你需要明确他的动机，因为如果深层原因不能解决，他就有可能重犯。同时，你也需要知道整个事情的真相。他可能不大愿意告诉你，怕你受到更大的伤害，但是，隐藏细节，有些问题将得不到解决，这也会让你很难继续向前。在坦白的过程中，你可能会听到一些与你婚姻有关又让你难以接受的事情，但是背叛并不一定是夫妻关系紧张的预兆。
背叛的一方总是声称他们从婚姻中得到的不够多，但事实上，他们付出的也不够多。
你丈夫似乎并不是一个感情高手，问题是离家在外工作给了他背叛的机会，这也是大多数婚外恋发生的缘由。在过去的十五年里，默默无闻，网络互动减轻了压力，并且使亲密关系急速升温，这些都催生了“无意识”背叛的危机，并且现在已经完全被商业化了。
现在甚至有些网站专门为想寻求婚外情的已婚男女设立。他们毫不费力的点下鼠标找到对方。因而，现在由网络引发的离婚案件占全部离婚案件的33%，并且还在增长也就不用大惊小怪了。
有几个因素会影响到夫妻双方能否度过危机，但是最重要的是危机之前他们婚姻的质量。因为这决定了弥补过错时候的投入程度。有效的交流也很重要，这表示他们愿意从个人(www.bacp.co.uk)和双方(www.relate.org.uk)角度寻求帮助。
令人高兴的是，但凡能顺利度过信任危机的夫妻都会发现他们的关系比以前更牢固，因为他们首先都会强迫自己检查他们的关系到底是哪里出了问题。希望这些建议对你能有所帮助。
责任编辑：八月骄阳
