Has your relationship been rocked by a betrayal?
There are so many feelings and emotions that arise when one partner betrays another. However, emotionally focused therapy (EFT) can bring some much needed emotional relief and relationship solutions.
What Is EFT?
EFT is a form of therapy that encourages partners to discover and analyze patterns of behavior, reaction, and response in their relationships. Once this type of awareness is initiated, you can then move forward, creating a more secure bond with your partner. The objective is to help the couple have a closer and healthier attachment to one another based on understanding and compassion.
How Betrayal Harms Relationships
When you feel betrayed, the complexity of the emotions you feel can drive some powerful reactions. This is because betrayal is a violation or your life together, your commitment, and your future plans. The betrayal of your life partner breaks the crucial connection of trust between you.
Trust is key in any relationship, familial, professional or friendly. But, when your partner betrays you, the pain is often heartbreaking and acute.
Your partner is the one person who supposedly “has your back,” so-to-speak. So, when the trust you hold is violated, your sense of belonging, protection, and support are significantly rocked. The aftershocks are very deep and very personal. The stability of your relationship feels lost and possibly unrecoverable.
Indeed, it can seem as if you may never be able to trust your partner again. This is why so many relationships that experience betrayal simply end.
How EFT Therapy Can Help
Fortunately, with time and dedication, EFT therapy can help to rebuild mutual trust and create a closer bond with your partner. With the guidance of a couples therapist, there are three stages of emotionally focused therapy you can employ.
1. The first step is to work on identifying key concerns and how negative interaction patterns escalate into conflict. Your therapist works with you both to identify any hidden fears and emotions that are impairing your connection and helps you reframe them.
2. Guided by your therapist, you and your partner work to change your patterns of interaction. As a couple, you work on expressing yourself as well as accepting each other's emotions and needs. Also, you both receive coaching from the therapist, couples "homework", and guidance regarding discussion of topics that trigger conflict in the relationship.
3. During the third stage of EFT, your therapist shares tools on how to better communicate with one another. Again, you'll practice these skills outside of the therapy session to gain more experience using them, noticing and sharing in future sessions their effect on the health of your relationship.
As you can see, EFT couples therapy is a very intentional process. The end goal is to show couples how they can better communicate and establish a more secure relationship.
How Does EFT Help Couples with Betrayal?
Emotionally focused therapy can help couples in several ways. First, the process provides a structured approach, where partners to express their feelings in an emotionally safe space. This is much better than venting to one another which leads to arguing.
Then, couples work to change those negative patterns and are asked to acknowledge each other’s feelings. Finally, couples learn and practice new skills that can help them better communicate in the future. This whole process helps couples to better understand why the betrayal happened.
They can then begin resolving the betrayal, the process of forgiveness, and the work of moving forward.
The Role of the Therapist
The role of the therapist in the EFT process is critical for success. If couples were attempting to do this on their own they would quickly become stuck. Soon the emotional pain might lead to bickering, blaming, and unproductive arguing. This might would take over any path to reconciliation.
Your therapist can be an effective moderator for the discussion. They are also a coach that provides insight and challenges you, as a couple, to look deeply into yourselves. Throughout the three stages, your therapists’ role is to support you as you navigate this process.
Coming back from betrayal is never easy, but it is possible. Learn more about relationship recovery on my infidelity counseling specialty page.
By working through the stages of EFT therapy and collaborating with a therapist, like me, you can regain the trust lost from betrayal.
Click to learn more about marriage counseling and treatment with Naomi Casement - LMSW.
