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My wife started counseling last Wednesday and her counselor said something that concerned me. She explained the affair and that she was carrying a lot of guilt for lying, cheating, and deceiving me, so she's been answering all of my questions honestly. The counselor told her "You know you don't have to answer any questions if you don't want to?"

Okay, fine. She's right. My wife doesn't have to answer any questions at all if she doesn't want to. Only if she wants to rebuild trust and salvage her marriage. What kind of advice is that?

To my wife's credit she told her counselor that she wants to answer my questions as a show of good faith and rebuild trust, but I'm not sure how to take this counselor now.

Dang! Kuddos to your wife!

I guess the counselor is technically right, if not reconciling is the aim. Your wife was spot on, and I hope the therapist grasps the direction your wife and you have chosen to take together. If not, there are plenty of fish (therapist) in the sea.

Asterisk.

Okay, fine. She's right. My wife doesn't have to answer any questions at all if she doesn't want to. Only if she wants to rebuild trust and salvage her marriage.

Exactly right. She doesn't have to, but you don't have to stick around if she does. I'd be worried too, but you are getting this second hand. There may have been qualifiers around that.

New IC in my humble estimation.

You need someone who has a little compassion for the partner who was hurt by all of the actions of the WS.

Pretty clear to me the IC who experienced betrayal, those who have never had to deal with it and those IC who are former WS, based on the how well they understand the pain of the BS.

An IC's mission is to advocate for you, to be on your side. He/she should not take the client's spouse into consideration when giving "advice". I do not see an issue with what the IC said

Now, had the IC said you shouldn't answer any questions or you shouldn't tell your husband everything, that would be an issue

An IC's mission is to advocate for you, to be on your side. He/she should not take the client's spouse into consideration when giving "advice". I do not see an issue with what the IC said

Now, had the IC said you shouldn't answer any questions or you shouldn't tell your husband everything, that would be an issue

Okay, I like this framing. That makes some sense. And no, she did not tell my wife that she shouldn't do those things. Just that she didn't have to. There was no pushback when my wife said she wanted to answer my questions honestly. In fact I think she indicated that was a good thing.

Exactly right. She doesn't have to, but you don't have to stick around if she does. I'd be worried too, but you are getting this second hand. There may have been qualifiers around that.

This is true, too. One of those qualifiers may have even been "You didn't have to, but you did anyway. Good job."

I didn't think of that, and I don't know if that's the case, but it is one possibility.

That’s kind of a strange thing to say when your WW had already told her IC what her goals were.

Once those goals were expressed, the IC should know that to achieve those goals requires 100% honesty with you.
I’d keep your ears open. Shitty therapists can absolutely fuck everything up quickly.

While I'm of the opinion most affairs are not exit affairs, those that are, should end the marriage.

If an IC is drilling down to figure out if someone had a real exit affair, then they should probably leave the marriage. The M shouldn't factor into IC. I don't expect my IC to encourage reconciliation as the BS, and I don't expect it for the WS either.

"You don't have to answer questions" is effectively the same as "you don't have to stay in the marriage".

My 0.02.

Many, MANY counselors got their accreditation from The University of Rugschaweeping. It is a no-good very bad school. This sounds like your WW's IC.

I think it’s ok for you to tell the MC your concerns about what they said. And while it may be true, saying it without also stating the ramifications of choosing that path, is to me, malpractice.

This isn’t a popular point-of-view on this site, but I don’t think you should be talking about your wife’s IC with her...
For one – it’s individual counseling. It’s for HER. If done properly it improves her thought process and enables her to deal with the why, to acknowledge her mistakes and find ways to make amends (both to you and herself).

Then there is the fact that it’s maybe an hour of back-and-forth, and what she brings home and shares is maybe a condensed version of what stuck most in her mind. That might not even be the main issue from the session, and by focusing on it (and maybe getting that affirmed by you) it becomes that. It even creates a situation where you and she are contradicting what the IC might be getting at. It changes the session from an hours discussion to a three minute focus on one aspect.

The IC statement about her being able to chose what she shares with you is true. But you aren’t 100% certain in what context it was made. MAYBE it was to suggest she clams up or lies. MAYBE it was done to make your wife know she has free choice – including the choice she made to have an affair – and that way create the basis for accountability. Based solely on what your wife shared you don’t know if the IC is a quack or a genius.

I can share this example: About a year ago I went to physiotherapy due to pain in my knee caused by a torn ligament some decades ago. I expected the physio to focus on the knee with lasers, IR, massage and such. Instead he had me do all sorts of seemingly useless and stupid exercises focused on improving my balance. I grumbled about this to my wife, who as a highly experience nurse did the sensible thing and ignored me... After a couple of months, the pain was gone and I am still doing the stupid exercises... Turns out that by training some minor balance-focused muscles I improved my overall foot-strength and thereby the ligaments. Your IC might be directing your wife in the right direction, only neither you nor she realize it now.

I suggest you limit your questions and discussions on her IC to:
"Did you have a good session?" and then allow her to work on whatever the IC planted.
Don’t impart your views or opinions.
Rather evaluate how she acts and behaves as things develop.

This isn’t a popular point-of-view on this site, but I don’t think you should be talking about your wife’s IC with her...

For one – it’s individual counseling. It’s for HER.

I actually agree with you. To be fair, I didn't pry or ask. I just said "So how'd it go? Did you like her?" and she proceeded to give me a rundown of almost the whole session. It's her wanting to demonstrate openness, honesty, and transparency. In retrospect, and the next time I'll just tell her she doesn't have to tell me everything or even anything because those sessions are for her, not me.

The IC statement about her being able to chose what she shares with you is true. But you aren’t 100% certain in what context it was made. MAYBE it was to suggest she clams up or lies. MAYBE it was done to make your wife know she has free choice – including the choice she made to have an affair – and that way create the basis for accountability. Based solely on what your wife shared you don’t know if the IC is a quack or a genius.

What's heartening about it is, regardless of context or intent, my wife told her that she wants to answer my questions because she wants to be open, honest, and transparent going forward from now on, so I say good on her. It's not like she came away from the session changing her mind on that. She has another one at 1 o'clock today, so we'll see how it goes. I'm also encouraging her to touch on some other things that have been bothering her, like her seizures coming back after almost 25 years seizure free. She been really bummed out about that, and I understand. She hasn't been cleared to drive for almost a year now, and she's always had a car since she was a teenager. That's really been a drag for her, to have to rely on me for transportation after all those years and I do feel bad for her.

[This message edited by Pogre at 6:32 PM, Wednesday, September 17th]

While I'm of the opinion most affairs are not exit affairs, those that are, should end the marriage.

I want to counter this with a different perspective.

I have read studies that women are more likely to have an exit affairs than men because we are not as good at compartmentalizing.

I think a lot of people enter an affair not realizing the type of affair they are having. There was very little analyzing for me because I didn’t want to stop it from happening. I do not think I am in the minority there, often ws have their head firmly in the sand on logic or consequences. They (we) reassure ourselves with quick justifications.

Personally, I didn’t realize mine was an exit affair until hindsight. A large portion of WS are avoidant and what can happen is what I did. I let all my resentment pile up (I mean I did complain sometimes but didn’t have the skills or emotional maturity to conduct productive conversations that would have brought some of the changes that were needed) and by the time I had an affair I was not invested in my marriage anymore. In hindsight I can see I was not attending at all to being in control of my life and I was basically just blowing up the marriage so it would just make it end in the most passive aggressive way rather than doing anything proactive about it.

In the aftermath of that, I came to realize I was the biggest source as to why I was no longer investing in my marriage and that a lot of the ways I had been conducting myself had not been in attention of what my needs actually were or having any kind of analysis of who was responsible for making sure they were met. I bought into the whole "if he wanted to he would" rather than "if you tell him he might have a clue" and I think that mentality is common.

In the end, the relationship was actually in a reparable shape had I attempted it in a real way with focus. I do not think I was in a state at the time that I was capable of that.

An exit affair is not always a situation where the ws has no ability to ever love or be attracted to the bs again, nor does it have to mean they never had those things. However, for me and a lot of ws getting our feelings back for our spouse has to start with getting in touch with who we are and what we want, the diversion of an affair makes it a lot harder of a path because in its immediate aftermath we are comparing a relationship we had taken for granted and have mentally left to one that is nothing more than an illusion.

Back to the part about compartmentalizing, the study I had read about showed that there are people who can do that so well their feelings for their spouse are still preserved for them during the course of the affair, making them cake eaters. Where as others like me can’t compartmentalize to that extent, they minimize their feelings for their spouse because they more fully invest in their affair partner and that’s when it more often becomes an exit affair. It’s weird to say but there is a tendency in these situations towards monogamy which I know that’s ironic to say. I think people like me have a lot of tells when it comes to having an affair and would only be capable of doing it in the short term. I was two months in and already felt pressure to resolve the duplicity of it.

In other words I think exit affairs are sometimes based on whether the person can compartmentalize or not, and often they aren’t started with any conscious choice to leave.

Then you have people who are like my husbands ap, she wanted the lifestyle he could provide so she truly was trying to Level up from what I can tell. So I am not saying all exit affairs are unconscious but there is a subset that are.

And then rounding to the last point, just as it was pointed out the IC is there to advise the ws. A ws worth reconciling with will help steer the IC to see they do want the relationship. By offering things like "you do not have to do this" or "what is it that you want" they provide the ws the ability to start claiming their choice and taking steps that align with what things they really want. And in that sense, the ws who does want to reconcile will keep making decisions that align with that. They are there to guide you towards what your heart is telling you to do and if she is going to be someone to reconcile with her heart will guide her to answer in ways like what she did- she wants to answer the questions she wants to do the work that gives her the best chance at being fully your wife again. Focus more on her responses and decisions because that’s all the IC is trying to uncover. They are not there to tell us what to do with our marriage, they are there to help us discover what we want to do with our marriage.

No one wants to reconcile with someone who is just there to have the IC tell them what to do, because IC is a temporary stage usually.

My first ic told me flat out not to confess. I fired her. If your wife feels like she is being guided wrong towards the goal she truly aligns with, she will need to be strong enough to say "this IC is not for me, they are not helping me get to where I want to go" and that too is a good sign she is taking the needed steps to do the repairs to get what she really wants.

I hope that makes sense.

[This message edited by hikingout at 8:32 PM, Wednesday, September 17th]

No one wants to reconcile with someone who is just there to have the IC tell them what to do, because IC is a temporary stage usually.

So true.

My first ic told me flat out not to confess. I fired her. If your wife feels like she is being guided wrong towards the goal she truly aligns with, she will need to be strong enough to say "this IC is not for me, they are not helping me get to where I want to go" and that too is a good sign she is taking the needed steps to do the repairs to get what she really wants.

At this point, and after a day of reflection since making this post, I have enough faith in her sincerity and desire to R the "right way" that she would stop seeing this therapist if she feels she's being guided in a direction that's antithetical to her goals.

I hope that makes sense.

It does. I've been here for a few months now, and you, along with Bigger (there are a few others as well), are a couple of my favorite contributors to this site. I've read quite a few of your replies and really appreciate your advice and insights into the mind of someone from other side of the fence, so to speak. I wish you nothing but the best.

Thank you. Same to you.