Teaching fidelity

Abstract

Working therapeutically with individuals or couples either following an affair or prior to its occurrence requires teaching them about risks to monogamy and the challenges of recovering from infidelity. Risks to monogamy include cultural myths about both infidelity and marriage that may be shared not only by lay persons, but also by their ill-informed therapists. Exacerbating risks to fidelity are physiological components of emotional and physical attraction that contribute to cognitive and affective disorientation. Therapists can promote fidelity and recovery from infidelity by attending to the fundamental tasks of modeling compassion, debunking myths regarding infidelity, confronting individuals with their own choices, promoting emotional closeness, and helping individuals to understand both their own and their partner's learned attitudes that distract them from maintaining a faithful marriage. Several cases illustrate these fundamental therapeutic tasks. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Clin Psychol/In Session 61: 1407–1419, 2005.