How to Talk About It After Discovery, Before Full Disclosure

In the first months, immediately after new information about unwanted sexual behavior or betrayal is discovered; late night marathon conversations, high anxiety, big emotions, questions that come one after another are the norm – and can be very exhausting and frightening for most couples. Often husbands start out with good intentions to answer questions as directly and forthrightly as possible but then begin to get either tired, scared, or feel like “its not working” or “it’s never going to end or be enough”. Couples can spin their tires in this stage and so it is important to get help as soon as possible to help these conversations be more productive. For most couples this stage doesn’t last forever, and it can be less anxiety provoking by adding a sense of structure.

Before we get to some thoughts about structure, it is important to name that it makes sense that she would need a significant amount of information and that it is not a fair ask to ask her to wait entirely for a therapeutic full disclosure process. It is wise of her to want to know the scope of the behaviors, so she can make decisions around things like if she needs testing for STI’s, if the kids are safe, if she needs to make decisions about money - a wise adult would feel the need to have a significant amount of information. Often the questions end up circling around either 1) “why?” questions and these are more difficult to answer on the front end because he likely hasn’t figured that out yet, or 2) about his thoughts - what he was thinking, and these aren’t yet trustworthy. So, these two types of questions are best processed with a therapist. Once the partner with unwanted sexual behaviors is in a focused process of preparing for full disclosure, we do often ask for a wife to suspend her questions until after full disclosure and just write them down, but how could her legitimate need for information be handled in this in-between time?

Things to think about for the Men:

• Practice transparency, she gets to decide what she needs to know.

• The old rules of the addiction get in the way of the recovery. This means that the old posture of him managing the information and deciding what is or is not shared will no longer serve us in recovery. Jim Farm, our clinic director often talks about how the movement is from limiting vulnerability in order to manage outcomes (ie. how she feels about me) to now in recovery risking vulnerability and letting go of outcomes.

• It makes sense that this would be scary and that your internal sense is saying this is a bad idea. You have, after all, protected this information for some time. Your body, your heart, your mind doesn’t yet know that you can be known and be safe.

• Your desire to do this well also makes sense.  You could say, “I want to answer your questions, and I will. I’m wondering if you would be willing to get a support person/counsellor/ therapist trained in betrayal trauma to help you decide on what information you want and how/when you want it and to help you process it. This isn’t because I want to avoid answering your questions, you have a right to know, I just want to know you have support to process it.”

• Let go of controlling information, surrender is key. Answer her questions as best you can.

For the Women:

• Hyper-arousal and hypervigilance immediately following discovery is the brain’s attempt to keep you safe. This activating response is giving you the message that “You must act now!” And while this response makes sense, it can be more helpful to practice slowing down after the initial days.

• Get support in deciding if you actually want to know a particular piece of information - your activating stress response will also want you to move toward having all the information, and while this makes sense and it might not be the most helpful (determining where that line of what to know/what to let go of is not, however, for your husband to decide).

• There is a weightiness to this responsibility of deciding what information you would like – you will have to “do battle” with the information; make sense of it, grieve and integrate each part of it. If there is detailed information, it might slow your recovery down as this information integration will take a lot of time. (again, this is not for your husband to decide if you are up to it or not).

• There is sometimes a possibility of trying to know “too little”, trying to stay in your little girl chair, or a “Pollyanna place”. To be wise women, to grieve well, we need to know enough of the information of our environment to be able to move through the process of making wise decisions, caring well for ourselves and naming, grieving and moving through forgiveness. “Trying to not know” is not forgiveness.

• Why questions and questions about what he was thinking are probably best to be processed with a therapist, rather than your husband, at this stage.

For the Couple:

• Set time limits

• Choose the time wisely – for example right before work or after 9pm are often not helpful times.

• Set aside frequent regular times to talk about it (i.e. every other day at 7pm we go for a walk, when the 2-mile walk is done, we save the conversation for another time).

• If questions come up for her outside those times, she can ask if he is in a good place for her to ask a question. He is in charge of knowing whether he is, or finding a time in the next 24 hours when he could be in a non-defensive posture of openness.

• We can practice having light and polite conversations as well. Healthy compartmentalization is possible – we can take breaks from talking about the hard stuff.

• If either person is not able to self-regulate and needs a break – you are in charge of naming and asking for that. If you ask for the break, name when you will come back and then be sure to come back when you said you would.

• Surprise questions are not helpful, ask if he is able to hear a question. It’s more helpful if he can take a moment to get himself into a non-defensive posture to be able to hear her.

• Triggers are not her fault; she’s not doing it on purpose. Triggers often lead to questions. Initially, the couple may choose to try to answer the questions as she is trying to integrate much new information. Within a few months, ideally, she is iceberging her triggers before asking questions.

• We are each responsible to self-regulate. If you are not able to self-regulate (ie. Raging, swearing, hitting, name-calling, shutting down or attempting to shut the other down is NOT self-regulating), you will need to work on those skills first.

• Her anger and her need for information does not make her unsafe. It might feel unsafe, but she is not automatically unsafe because she is angry or has a legitimate need for information.

• There is an inverse relationship between a husband’s willingness to talk about it and create space for these conversations and the need your partner has to keep re-visiting. If she senses withholding, it may create a scarcity mindset – she is likely then going to be focused on getting access to the information. If there is a sense that if I need to know it, the information will be available to me, she may be more able to slow down and consider it first and then ask from a wise adult place.

As always, slow down and take care of yourselves well in these days. Neither of you have done this before and you each are just trying to figure it out. Reach out for help from your safe support people.

To watch the video on this subject: https://youtu.be/LbakmF2qJp0