I Cheated:Affair Recovery Advice For When You Have Been Unfaithful

By Savannah Ellis

If you cheated in your relationship, this book could be the best gift you've ever given yourself...and your hurting partner. Infidelity doesn't have to mean the end of your relationship, if you can learn to understand why you cheated in the first place and how to keep it from happening again. Using the affair recovery strategy offered in "I Cheated", you and your partner can move from trauma to empathy, recovering the friendship and passion that brought you together in the first place.

Clinical Psychologist and Affair Recovery Specialist, Dr. Savannah Ellis looks at the myths of infidelity and the mistakes couples make post-affair, then provides exercises and templates so that you and your partner can become proactive in understanding and rebooting your relationship.

The help offered to struggling couples in this book is based on the author's two decades of experience researching infidelity and counseling thousands of couples, feedback from couples coaches she has trained, the latest scientific findings in neurobiology, and research from other leaders in the field of infidelity and affair recovery.

If you have cheated on your spouse or have thought about it, you need to read this book first.

Expanded Contents:
CONTENTS
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
Housekeeping
RECOVERY MYTHS AND MISTAKES
Myths
Mistakes
The 20 Most Common Mistakes:
CLASSIFYING YOUR AFFAIR TYPE
Type 1: Accidental Affair
Type 2: Avoidance Affair Type
Type 3: Philanderer Affair
Type 4: Entitlement Affair
Type 5: Split Self Affair
Type 6: Exit Affair
Type 7: Sexual Addiction Affair
Emotional affairs
Financial Infidelity
Affair Type Quiz
Relationship Recovery Advice
The Conflict Avoidance Affair
The Intimacy Avoidance Affair
The Sexual Addiction Affair
The Split-Self Affair
The Exit Affair
The Entitlement Affair
The Philanderer
The Accidental Affair
UNDERSTANDING YOUR PARTNER
Stages Of Recovery From The Trauma Of Infidelity
How To Get Closer To Your Partner
Handling Your Partner’s Rejection
My Partner
Handling Your Partner’s Anger
UNDERSTANDING YOURSELF
Attachment Styles
How do you connect?
The Secure Connector
The Anxious Connector
The Avoidant
The Fearful Connector
My Attachment Style
Common Coping Styles and Patterns
Coping Style
Love or Addiction
Friendship
THE APOLOGY
Part A
Taking Responsibility For Your Actions
Explain The ‘Whys’
Be honest.
Partners May Ask For Details
The Apology Letter
Elements To An Apology Letter
Part B
RELATIONSHIP COMMUNICATION
Rules For Fair Fighting
Action:
How to Handle Conflict Effectively
Communication Patterns Between Couples
REBOOTING YOUR RELATIONSHIP
The Love Bank
Love Busters
Questionnaire
Emotional Needs
Ranking of Your Emotional Needs
Action:
SEX AND INTIMACY
Types of Intimacy
Rebooting Your Sex Life – Choose a Plan
PLAN A – You Do Not Want Sex
PLAN B – For Couples Desiring Sex
Foreplay Map Exercises
Intimacy Tips
Sex Addiction?
RESTORING TRUST
The Five Forms Of Trust In A Relationship
Creating Transparency
Building Transparency Through Confessions
RENEW YOUR RELATIONSHIP CONTRACT
Preparing to Write Your Relationship Contract
Sample Contract Guide
PREVENTION
Seven Facts You Need To Know About Infidelity
What You Need To Know About Love
Seven Tips for Preventing Infidelity
Commitment
How to Stay Committed in Your Relationship
CONCLUSION
What Makes a Great Relationship?
APPENDIX
Protecting Your Children from the Fallout
RESOURCES
Infidelity, Addiction, and the Internet
Love and Intimacy
Sex
Divorce
Understanding Yourself
Web Sites
Support Groups
References
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

• Language: English
• Publisher: Savannah Ellis
• Release date: Feb 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311650573

Savannah Ellis

Savannah Ellis has coached thousands of couples and individuals from Sydney, Australia to Las Vegas, USA to help them achieve their relationship and personal goals. Her passion is to help people be authentic to themselves and others.​Savannah specializes in infidelity counseling and personal empowerment; having personally coached many cases specifically helping couples survive and recover from relationship infidelity. She provides specialized coaching and seminars to move people through hard times and onto an easier path.​She provides coaching, training and consulting programs to conscious large corporations and small business owners who want to educate their people on what workplace affairs can do to individuals professionally as well as personally.​Savannah holds Psychology degrees from Monash University, Australia: Bachelor Behavioral Science (BBSc), and post graduate degrees in Clinical Psychology. She also has many years of business management and coaching experience, and holds Management qualifications: Master Business Administration (MBA) and a Doctor Business Administration (DBA). She is currently completing a Masters in Mental Health Counseling through Walden University, USA.​Savannah is a member of the Australian Psychological Association (APA), an Associate Fellow Member of the Australian Institute of Management (AFAIM), and a Certified Prepare & Enrich Facilitator . Savannah is featured on Cheaterville.com, DearPeggy.com.

Book preview

I Cheated

Affair Recovery Advice for When You Have Been Unfaithful

by

Savannah Ellis

DBA, MBA, BBSc, MPsych

Copyright © 2015 The Infidelity Recovery Institute

www.infidelityrecoveryinstitute.com

²nd Edition

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without permission in writing from the copyright holders. You do NOT have resale rights to this book.

Dedication

To my clients in LasVegas, Nevada.

Thank you for trusting in me.

Savannah Sharon Ellis

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

Recovery Myths & Mistakes

Classifying Your Affair Type

Understanding Your Partner

Understanding Yourself

The Apology

Relationship Communication

Rebooting Your Relationship

Sex & Intimacy

Restoring Trust

Renewing your Relationship Contract

Prevention

Conclusion

Appendix

Resources

References

About The Author

PREFACE

Thank you for choosing this book. It takes strength of character to admit you have been unfaithful, if only to yourself. At this stage you may not have told your partner that you have cheated. Maybe you are uncertain if you want to save your marriage or relationship? Perhaps you are looking for advice on how to leave your partner with the least amount of destruction. Maybe you are still in a relationship with the 3rd party? Maybe you are not sure what you want anymore? Or you could be looking for advice on how to work on saving the relationship and creating a new relationship from the current one.

This book does not guarantee you all the answers. Depending on the reasons for you cheating (your affair type), you maybe justifying why you had the affair. However, let’s get serious. If you’re reading this book, then your partner believed they were in a monogamous relationship with you. You would have had to sustain this perception and the charade. Due to the communication style in your relationship, your history with honesty and truth telling, your personality type, and the influence from your upbringing, you have been unable to express your true wants needs and desires. Thus creating an environment for infidelity.

I’m a strong believer that we all make mistakes. If you are being honest with yourself, I’m sure you can think of many things you would do differently if you could, not only in your current relationship, but also throughout your life. Successful people understand that life is a huge learning curve. The difference between successful and unsuccessful people is that unsuccessful people blame others. Successful people learn why they made the mistake, look for a way to do things differently, and apply that new knowledge immediately. This is exactly what I am asking of you.

Nobody comes into my office saying they meant to have an affair. Nobody says they meant to hurt their partner. Most people acknowledge that the affair was a selfish act designed to meet their own needs without consideration of their partner.

Time for my own disclosure. I am pro-marriage. This means that I believe your relationship can be saved. There’re very few cases in which I believe the relationship should be dissolved. In all cases, with the exception of domestic abuse or when a person comes out, the reason the relationship cannot be saved is due to ego and/or personality type issues. Even if you are not sure about your desire to continue in your marriage, you need to give your spouse the respect of information and honesty.

If you’re ready to keep trying until you succeed in your relationship, you’ve found the right place to get the tools to help you succeed. The goal of this book is the same as the goal of my 7 Step Infidelity Recovery Program. Stick together until you are less emotional! Then make your decision on what to do next.

You do not have to read this book from cover to cover. Instead, you can refer to the Table of Contents and choose a topic revelent to your most pressing concern. The information is presented in a simple and easy-to-implement style. I would encourage you to follow the exercises where offered.

In some sections of this book, I will ask for both you and your partner to participate in the exercises. If your betrayed partner will not participate right now, that is fine. Respect that choice. I suggest a strategy common in psychotherapy, and that is empty chair work. Quite simply, you will visualize your partner sitting opposite you and say what you need to say to the empty chair. You will be surprised with yourself on how real this will feel.

Family and friends may be telling you to ‘throw in the towel.’ I believe this is not the time to give up! This is the time to find out if your marriage can be enriched by the work you can do to help your partner, and your relationship, recover from this wound. If you cheated, you will vacillate between feeling guilt, rage, and remorse. You also may feel depressed and quite lonely. Giving up is the easy option, but choices can harden into character, affecting us the rest of our lives. You can break that ‘give up and start over’ pattern and be a better you, in a more rewarding relationship!

The person that you fell in love with is still the same person but now feels wounded. It’s time to mend those wounds, and then from a place of love the two of you can decide the next steps in your relationship. Working through the affair issue in a structured and respectful manner is essential. It is better to walk away from your relationship with empathy and respect still intact, rather than dwelling together forever in revenge and hatred.

Commit to the challenge of finding your way through this issue. Work through the exercises in this book. If the challenge becomes too much for just the two of you to work through, feel no shame in asking for help from a neutral third party, such as Therapist, Psychologist, Pastor, or a Certified infidelity recovery coach.

I wish you love and happiness.

Founder, The Infidelity Recovery Institute

INTRODUCTION

In life, some things just cannot be undone. There is no ignoring or changing that simple fact. We often spend a great deal of time dreaming about alternatives, wishing that we could undo some event. We come up with a million ways in which we might have done things differently.

If only I had...

It is likely that you have spent a great deal of time saying or thinking something like, If only I hadn’t done it. If only I could have seen the hurt I was causing. But what’s done is done. No amount of imagining or regret will change the past. The affair cannot be undone. You can’t blink your eyes or wiggle your nose to make it ‘un-happen.’ It did happen, and its effects are real. You know this only too well.

It is important to note a couple things about the reality of your situation. First, the relationship will never be the same again. The scar of the affair will be there always. Second, as you move into the future, believe it or not, long periods of time may pass when neither of you mentions, or even thinks about, the affair. These stretches could even last for a year or multiple years, but probably at some point, the memory will come up again, renewing the hurt. Those future times should be somewhat less intense and not last very long.

So you could be thinking, Why even bother trying to save the marriage? I would say that anything worth protecting is worth fighting for. A major problem with society today is that we give up too easily. We are a ‘ME’ society, totally geared towards our own satisfaction and personal needs. Is that different from past generations? The answer to that is…no. People have always been ‘unfaithful.’ But today we are less forgiving and less committed, and we place less value on keeping the family unit together.

This manual will give you practical and simple guidelines to help you recover from your affair and move forward from the trauma. It is not a ‘be all and end all’ solution. You will not skip down the garden path together into a sunset. You may not live happily ever after. The book is designed to give you enough information to answer some of your questions and to entice you to research solutions for yourself.

This manual will:

- Tell you the truth about some popular myths surrounding infidelity.

- Tell you why partners cheat.

- Describe, in detail, the stages of recovery.

- Describe the different types of affairs.

- Show you how to handle your partner’s anger.

- Explain the issues that have to be dealt with in order for you and your partner to be a committed couple again.

- Walk you through what is necessary in order to apologize effectively.

- Provide you with the most comprehensive sex life recovery program you will see in a coaching workbook.

- Walk you through the steps necessary to regain your partner’s trust.

- Help you understand the attitudes and behaviors that poison a relationship.

- Teach you how to rebuild your friendship.

- Show you how to convince your partner you ‘Get It.’

- Explain how to rebuild your connection with your partner.

- Help you look at what commitment means to you.

- Teach you how to prevent infidelity from recurring.

- Show you how to restart and improve sex and intimacy.

This material is based on:

- Research for two decades with thousands of couples.

- Feedback from my coaches around the world.

- The latest scientific findings in neurobiology.

- My work of coaching clients in my Las Vegas clinic.

- Research from other leaders in the field of infidelity and affair recovery:

- Shirley P. Glass, Ph.D.

- Deborah Tannen, Ph.D.

- John Gottman, Ph.D.

- Willard F. Harley Jr., Ph.D.

- Peggy Vaughan, B.A.

- Dave Carder, M.A.

- Sue Johnson, Ph.D.

Housekeeping

There are a few guidelines I would like couples to understand:

1. Domestic Violence – There is never a reason to resort to domestic violence. You can choose to walk away from an argument, even as the wrongdoer. There will be a lot of arguing and disagreements in the next few months, so it is better to learn a better way of communicating now. If you have a gun in the house, now may be the right time to take it off premises and put it in safe hands.

2. Children – Some rules to help the kids:

a, Do not involve them or ask them to choose a side.

b, Do not give them information about the affair.

c, Both parents should give the kids reassurance.

d, Keep their routine the same as before.

e, Children are not your support system. Find a friend or seek professional help.

f, Do not expose the children to the ‘lover.

3. God – There are so many fantastic books on infidelity recovery written by Christians, including psychologists. In fact, I think some of theses books are the best written on the topic of infidelity. While I believe in a higher power and have a long history of studying various religions, I recognize that not everyone feels that way. I choose to leave God out of affair recovery. If you would like to ask your God (or any other higher power) for forgiveness, then do so. Praying with your partner and reconfirming your faith can be bonding and feel positive. I have worked with many ministers, pastors, and counselors encountering challenges in helping their church members or clients process infidelity. Consensus is that the repair work must be done between the couple. If the problems at the couple level are not resolved, then the old habits and routines will quickly come back and destroy the relationship once again.

4. STDs –I can’t tell you how many clients of mine have had STD issues from cheating. You may not know this, but some STDs can be life threatening. Getting checked for STDs may not be pleasant, but it is 100 percent the right thing to do for both you and your partner.

5. Consistency – is your saving grace! You need to start new habits and routines now. You probably do not even know what to do to save the relationship right now. I hope that by reading this book and by doing these exercises you can start the repair process.

6. Consideration – Your life of hiding secrets from your partner must change now. Learn the difference between privacy and secrecy. Discuss these terms with your partner. The next time you are about to do something and you are not sure if your spouse will approve or not, ask!

RECOVERY MYTHS AND MISTAKES

People in general like catchy phrases. Wrap a truth in a small, bite-sized package that you can apply easily to a variety of situations and we eat it up. And frankly, the truth of the statement is often secondary to the catchiness of it. There are some statements we hear over and over because they are true, but many other phrases are repeated only because they sound true.

Myths

Here are four popular myths about infidelity. They can destroy the process of restoring a relationship, and sometimes kill a relationship permanently. We may have heard them from friends, family, or in social media, and they may sound true at first, but be careful. A belief in these myths can sabotage relationship recovery.

Myth #1

If someone has an affair, his or her marriage is over.

For those who have not experienced unfaithfulness in their relationships, it’s hard to image enduring the pain. The idea of waking up every morning next to the person who has hurt you so intimately seems like serving a life sentence. If a spouse cheats, then it’s over. Right?

Not necessarily.

Researchers have found that when infidelity occurs in a marriage, only 20 to 25 percent of those relationships end because of the affair. This means 75 percent to 80 percent of couples survive the adultery. Why? The short answer is that most people want to believe their partner is truly sorry, and they want to trust the person in whom they have invested so much of their lives.

This topic will be discussed in greater detail later, but it is sufficient to say that most people want to make their marriage work. If you have been hurt and are reading this, you are testament to that fact. If you are the one who has been unfaithful, remember to be patient with the hurt your spouse is suffering; your partner wants the relationship to be better as much as you do.

The real reason that couples divorce is that they feel distant from one another and do not know how to reconnect. Betrayal has much to do with that, but it is the lack of resolution that leads to feelings of alienation and separation, not the infidelity itself.

Myth #2

Most affairs are sexually driven.

When someone discusses cheating, what is the first image that comes to mind? Secret texts? Late-night rendezvous? Lying and manipulation? For many the