1/ An old college friend of mine confided in me that he recently discovered that his wife had been unfaithful to him over a long period of time.... and he was hurting deeply. (ctd...)

2/ The pain came in waves, sometimes for days at a time, and then there would be a brief respite, before the unhappiness cranked up again...(ctd...)

3/ When we deep-dived into exactly what was hurting, the sexual infidelity was a big part of it, the fact that she was experiencing intimacy with another person not him. (ctd...)

4/ I suggested that he was considering the situation beautifully from his wife’s point of view, and from her lover’s point of view, but that there was another way to look at the situation... (ctd...)

5/ The other point of view held that the “party” was wherever he was at. Not where his wife was. This point of view held that he didn’t miss out on much at all. If anything, his wife missed out because she wasn’t with him. He was whole and complete then, now in the future...(ctd)

6/ Complete, even if he could not see it from time to time. He went silent for a long time, then he said to me: I know it. I know it but I can’t hold it. I see it for a while when I feel good, then I slip back into the old way of seeing it. (ctd...)

7/ I suggested that he not try to force it. If he tries to force it, then it will not hold. Rather just be aware, have a floating awareness of the wholeness (whole self) point of view... because there is something else that goes with it...(ctd...)

8/ And that something else is the ridiculousness, the absurdity of how you are expected to respond to an unfaithful partner. Once you pop the bubble of that expected response by *being* the whole, centered person, by being “where the party is at” ... (ctd)

9/ Then the tipsy-turvy perspective of the unfaithful partner clangs to the ground. As I recall, Virginia Satir wrote in Family Therapy, how the situation is like a tripod. There is the wife, husband and lover. Here, the wife and lover *depend* upon him for the affair to prosper.

10/ The husband does the heavy lifting, dealing with all the frustrations and dissatisfactions of the unfaithful wife, and she saves the sweetness for the lover, who is getting a free ride with few of the responsibilities... (ctd...)

11/ When the betrayed partner withdraws from the relationship, the unfaithful partner turns to the lover for the support that has now been denied her. And the lover usually is not prepared for the added responsibilities. (ctd...)

12/ The point is, far from being a whipping boy, the husband has a lot of reserve power in this tripod. When he withdraws, the affair tripod becomes unstable. Essentially, he is whole and complete with or without the unfaithful wife and her lover, but he just can’t see it. (end)