“I want to come in with my husband to talk about his affair,” said the woman on the other end of the phone call.

“Is this marriage counseling or divorce counseling?” I asked, since I needed to know how to approach their session. I didn’t receive a clear-cut response. After she answered a few more questions, however, it became clear that the woman’s husband had agreed to come to counseling—and anything else she wanted—in the hope the marriage could be fixed. She explained to me that her husband told her about his affair when it became obvious that the secret would be out soon. He said he revealed the truth at that time in an attempt to protect her from hearing about it from someone else. So, we planned an appointment.

Two nice people in their mid 50s showed up in my office. They had been married for over 25 years and, judging by their interactions, they seemed very much married in all the good ways. By this I mean, their communication with one another appeared excellent, they were respectful of and caring for one another and both talked openly about how much they loved one another. Their problem lay in the fact that she felt so terribly angry and hurt by her husband’s several-month long affair with a past employee. In fact, she was so, hurt that she did not know how she could stay with him.

As she talked about her concerns, the wife stressed that she was at a loss when it came to understanding how her husband could have done what he had done, especially with this particular employee. The other women, who was known to both of them, was older than the wife, by the husband’s judgment was less attractive than his wife, and had a long history of emotional and financial problems. While the wife recognized her husband’s courage in being honest with her and believed the affair was over, she could not stand the thought of what he had done to her and to their marriage.

As I talked with them, I had to admit I shared her confusion about what was going on here. The husband’s behavior seemed out of character and not in line with what he said was important to him, what he wanted, and how he had lived his life previously. So, doing what therapists do, I started asking some probing questions about their history. In response to questions about when they thought things in the marriage started changing, I found out that about five years earlier their 19-year- old son had died in an automobile crash. The father and son had been best friends and had shared lots of sporting and outdoor activities. The mother and son had been very close also.

The moment their son’s death was mentioned, both the husband and the wife became overcome with their grief. They cried openly and appeared to sink into depression. I stopped them from retelling the story and led them both through a Thought Field Therapy process. They used traumatic stress patterns that included both guilt and anger. At this point, the session’s focus turned from the couple’s marriage to helping them to grieve for the loss of their son and to share the story of his death. We tapped each time they sank back into a depressed state, until finally they could tell me the whole story without overwhelming upset or depression.

As they talked about their marriage after their son’s death, it became clear that the joy had left their relationship along with their son, and since then they had simply been getting by day-to-day. Additionally, this wife and mother had gone into a deep depression that had lasted for about three years. While talking about what they had done to live through the loss, the husband talked about how his affair began. He explained that at the time the other women had made herself available to him, he was feeling so dead inside and hopeless that he lost sight of what mattered to him. As he said these words, a visible change occurred in his wife’s affect and demeanor. She reached out to him and cried with him and told him, “It will be okay.” After some more tapping, she told her husband she wanted to find a way to stay with him and make the marriage work. She admitted that she would need help learning to trust him again, but she said she really wanted to try.

When I asked her how she had come to her decision, her response was very clear. When she heard her husband talking about how dead and hopeless he had felt at the loss of their son, she had related to his words, because she had felt the same way. She knew how crazy that feeling made her feel and what she herself was capable of doing to try to rid herself of that emotion. She got it. She had found a way to understand how her husband could have had the affair. With this explanation, she could go on with the marriage.

The couple worked hard to do what had to be done to reestablish trust in their marriage. They worked out a system where he had a dedicated cell phone that only she used. He would answer this phone under any and all condition, at work or play, in the middle of conversation, or racing a car. He was always available and accountable to her.

They had a few more sessions with me but did not need any long-term work once they found a way to keep talking. The course of their marriage counseling was shortened considerably, because Thought Field Therapy helped them get unstuck from the place where they had gotten stuck in the grieving process. Thought Field Therapy helped them bring the pain of their loss down to a level where they could feel alive and have hope again. From that place, they could also feel their love for one another and continue their marriage. Additionally, they could focus upon their daughter while keeping the memory of their son alive.

When her older brother had died, she often was ignored by her parents, because she too would easily become overwhelmed, triggering all three of them. This would cause a shutdown in communications and grieving. Now, they all had a way to share their loss and to move forward in their lives.

For more about how tapping can help and how to tap instructions please check out my book, No Open Wounds.

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