After Infidelity: Focus on the Feelings, Not the Facts

How understanding the desires that led to infidelity can help both partners rebuild trust

What’s the true nature of your feelings for your lover?

An honest answer to that question is what a therapist needs in order to help a couple decide how to move forward after infidelity according to Esther Perel—author of the international bestseller Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence.

It opens the discussion to what the affair means to both partners and creates a space for exploring how they want to move forward from there.

Esther Perel, therapist and author of the international bestseller Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence, is the recipient of the 2009 book award from the Society for Sex Therapy and Research. This clip is taken from her session in our couples video course:

The Changing Face of Marriage
Explore the forces shaping intimate partnerships today and the best-practice approaches for helping your clients—some of whom may hold ideas about partnership, commitment, gender roles, personal autonomy, and sexuality that are different from yours. Find out how you can:

• Develop a clear, nonjudgmental understanding of contemporary approaches to relationships and sexual behavior that may challenge your own values and beliefs


• Help couples balance their need for commitment and safety with their desire for more spontaneity, playfulness, and eroticism


• Address the centrality of economic issues and financial stress on couples, including helping them "right size" their lives


• Explore the wide range of meanings that emotional intimacy and sexual compatibility have in gay, lesbian, and straight relationships


• Understand the different patterns found among Boomer, Gen X, and Millennial couples, including how traditional gender roles and conceptions of masculinity and femininity are being redefined
  

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