Mimi Doe Interviews Ewa Schwarz on Marital Affairs* and Infidelity

Mimi Doe is an award-winning author of Busy but Balanced and 10 Principles for Spiritual Parenting, was a recipient of Parent's Choice Approved Seal and a Books for a Better Life Award Finalist. Founder of SpiritualParenting.com, Mimi was called a "parenting guru" by Ladies Home Journal and has appeared on Oprah. She appears weekly on New Morning on the Hallmark Channel. 

*Please note that while the term "marital affair" is frequently used in this interview, it can be applied to an affair in any type of relationship.

1.  What does an affair do to the soul of a family?

To answer this question, I would like to first define what I understand as the soul of the family, because that can mean different things to different people. I consider the soul of the family to be the pulse of the health of their relationships with each other. In practical terms it is the openness and understanding that each family member has for the other.

The soul of the family starts with the parent’s relationship with each other, who then in turn become the role models for their children. If the parents can communicate freely and openly without judgment or assumptions, then that is how their children will be.

On the opposite end of the spectrum if the parents have unresolved issues with each other or within themselves, they will come out in the relationship. There will be endless misunderstandings and miscommunications that drive a wedge between the parents. Children in turn will misunderstand what is happening, not understand their own feelings, and act out.

When there is an affair, it is as if a bomb explodes in that realm of communication. There are pieces scattered everywhere that make clear and nonjudgmental communication close to impossible. There typically is only hurt, blame, mistrust, and anger.

If a couple attempts to hide their feelings from their children, it will backfire on them. People ignore the fact that body language, tone of voice, and changes in behaviors broadcast everything to the children that the couple thinks that they are hiding.

Children get these broadcasts and because they lack the ability to understand the information they receive, their subconscious fears interpret the information personally. They end up questioning themselves for their parent’s distance. They feel the hurt, blame, mistrust, and anger and their subconscious mistakenly assumes that it is directed at or because of them.

In a family that has experienced an affair, all the fears and judgments and misunderstandings create increasingly further distance amongst the family members. The soul of the family is muddled, confused, and hurt. Without an outside perspective and guidance to heal the communication and create understanding, all members of the family continue to evolve as fractured beings.

2.  How might trust be rebuilt once the affair is over?

Once the affair is over, the couple needs to learn new communication skills. They need to backtrack and look clearly at the path that both of them have walked up until this point in time. The hardest part of this journey will be to stop blaming or to stop feeling guilty for any part so that the focus can be put onto healing the relationship.

What I am about to say next will be controversial for many people. The only way to rebuild trust and heal the issues in the relationship is for both partners to come to the understanding that each partner is equally responsible for the breakdown in communication up to that point.

As long as the attitude exists that one person is the perpetrator of hurt and the other is the victim, there is no hope of healing and learning how to really trust one another. I don’t actually agree that trust can be rebuilt, because the trust was never really there prior to the affair.

Both people already did not trust or feel safe with each other long before the marital affair. This lack of inherent trust and safety is what drives a person to seek to be trusted and feel safe from an external source. It is a result of emotional needs not being met that drives a person to look for it through somebody else.

Let me clarify this. An individual can only meet their emotional needs themselves, not through an external source, not even from their partner. It is the mistaken and societally perpetuated belief that your partner should meet and fill your needs emotionally. That is the core of the problem. That is just not possible and why so many couples are experiencing problems.

If a person does not know how to meet their own emotional needs, they unknowingly set themselves up for failure by first expecting their spouse to meet their needs, and then eventually through an affair. This breakdown in trust is because both people have not learned how to take care of their own emotional needs, do not understand themselves and their partners. You can’t communicate what you don’t know, even if you have good communication to begin with.

Trust is built after a marital affair by working on developing a strong sense of self and a strong sense of self-value, by identifying and changing mistaken beliefs about each other. It is about developing a new level of understanding that did not exist before and being able to safely communicate.

Ultimately trust is about questioning the assumptions that both partners did not even know that they were making about each other. It is only through this type of clarity that communication can be changed and the sense of safety created within the relationship. That is how trust is built.

3.  What specific tools would you recommend for a couple to repair after an affair where one partner was looking outside him/herself for importance?

To repair an affair you first have to better understand why affairs happen. Long before an affair starts, a couple is experiencing communication problems in the relationship. The partners feel increasingly unsafe and unable to say how they really feel to one another. Both feel criticized, misunderstood, and not accepted for who they really are.

If a person had a marital affair that helped them to feel important outside of their own relationship, I would give the following advice. First, examine in detail what it is that you were attracted to in this other person. How did they make you feel? Once you have that list, what you really have is a list of clues as to what to work on in yourself.

That feeling of importance may give you a better sense of self value, of being heard, validated, honored, cared for, etc. It is slightly different for everyone. Then you ask yourself: How do I not value myself? How do I not listen to myself or how do I invalidate myself? As you honestly answer these questions, you identify what you need to change within you.

Every relationship acts as a mirror. Your issues are also the issues that your partner has. It is just that you are both acting out the issues differently. Both of you can draw up your own lists and then support each other in meeting those needs for yourselves. This is of course an ideal situation!

You have to keep in mind that by this point, the relationship is in crisis. If one partner is still deep in emotional reaction, then you have to do this on your own. Your only recourse is to show that you have recognized your mistake; that you have learned from it, and then to show the changes that you are making, your commitment to yourself and to the relationship.

4.  How does our biochemistry come into play in affairs or the need to feel worthy outside of ourselves...infatuation supplying endorphins, etc?  Especially in midlife?  It seems there is such a wave of midlife affairs in happily married couples. I receive hundreds of emails from (mostly women) saying their husbands say the typical: "I love you I'm not in love with you...I'm not happy." and it means they have found someone else who gives them that "rush" of infatuation.  Of course it's not real...

I question if a couple is really happily married when an affair happens. Typically there exists a mentality of “if I ignore it, maybe it will go away”. Many aspects of a marriage may be good, so the belief is that an unresolved or misunderstood issue is not important. But an unresolved issue will grow out of control if not properly addressed. There is always a communication breakdown with a couple if a partner has an affair. That is not a happy marriage.

This wave of midlife affairs is a result of the dam bursting on unaddressed issues. There seems to be a movement towards having the freedom to be happy. That is a great goal, but not if you don’t understand what happiness really is. Having an affair creates the illusion of temporary happiness, releasing those feel good chemicals in your body. But the reality is the opposite.

Few people know how to make themselves feel good. I am speaking emotionally of course! As people get older, they get caught up in all the stressors and responsibilities and blame their lives and their partners for how they feel. Having a marital affair is not unlike a child throwing a tantrum because he/she doesn’t want to be responsible for how they feel anymore. They don’t know how.

But there is a different solution, but a far more difficult one. An affair is easy in comparison, but so much more damaging to the psyche.

A person can learn to feel good and be happy on a permanent basis, without having to jump out of a plane, have an affair, or eat ice cream! This can be accomplished all while having the same challenges that a typical family has now. There is so much that needs to be unlearned and then learned from scratch. There is just so much misunderstanding in relationships.

A person can learn how to feel good and be happy through a different understanding and with a thorough understanding of what their choices are. Perception really is everything. If a husband (or wife) says “I love you, but I am not in love with you”, it really has nothing to do with the spouse they are referring to.

What they are really saying is “I don’t know or understand myself, so how can I understand you or the value of my relationship”. They are saying “I don’t know how to unconditionally love and value myself”.

5.  Skype affairs are more and more common...is this like the office worker who goes into the bathroom and snorts cocaine...ie: a quick rush to get through the day? 

Skype affairs are an easy way out. There is the illusion of “safety”. That is because there is no physical cheating, that they aren’t really cheating. Frankly, the justification that people create in their minds for their actions is frightening. There is no accountability.

A quick fix or rush is a band-aid. A marital affair of any type is a reflection of the lack of understanding and denial of unresolved issues. The lies that a person must tell themselves and their partners is staggering. Yet contemplate this thought:

How many lies and untruths have existed in the relationship long before any type of affair has started? This is only an extension of what has already existed. People keep compromising themselves for their relationships, having been taught that that is what you are supposed to do in order to make your relationship work in the long term.

When, as a society, are we going to finally see that this is not working? Society’s understanding of what a successful relationship is needs to be turned upside down and all the nonsense shaken out. We need to all learn how to make ourselves feel good from the inside out.

Loving yourself unconditionally is the best drug around once you know how to remove all fears and judgments and open yourself up to it!

6.  How does someone forget their "love" after the affair ... especially in the midst of the devastation they've created in their family who takes them back...(another email I get a lot is around this issue).

The ability of the human mind is phenomenal. Yet most of the power of our mind is 95% subconscious. Love is not forgotten; it is buried. Just like everything else was buried prior to the affair. But this creates far deeper problems for an individual.

When a person has an affair, it creates a cycle of guilt, punishment, sacrifice, resentment, anger, blame, attack, and back to the beginning. This is very damaging to the human psyche. It increases a persons low self esteem. Lets get something very clear here. A person with a truly high level of self esteem does not have affairs.

Many people act as if they have high self esteem, but most people don’t have it. Having a marital affair, while on the outside triggers all these great feelings, creates internal damage. A person with high self esteem meets their own emotional needs. They can also identify the ones that they still need to work on. Their communication with their partners allows them to discuss any potential issues with their partners to resolve them.

The person who forgets their “love” is highly insecure, critical, and judgmental of themselves and their partners. Love is never forgotten. The shiny new toy simply distracts them from the truth. We all have the capacity to love all human beings equally.

We choose the partner that we want to share our emotional, physical, and spiritual love with. If we choose to change partners, for whatever the reason, the love remains the same. Many people confuse neediness with love. They confuse attachment with love. If you think you can’t live without your partner, you are confusing fear with love.

I understand that many of these concepts are new to many people. To explain all of this in detail really would easily take up a whole book! A couple just needs to go one small step at a time.

7.  How do you work with couples w/out meeting them in person?

When I work with couples online, I use 3 way emails in our communication. They each send me their version of what the issue is. Then I send a different set of questions to each partner to answer, which they send to each other and to me. My job is to then help each partner understand the answers differently than they usually would. So in effect, I act as a translator for two people who are speaking different languages.

Typically, there is a more vocal personality and a withdrawn one. Neither can understand the others tendencies and they take those differences personally, as hurtful behaviors directed towards them. Yet the truth of the matter is that both partners feel unsafe and unable to clearly communicate with each other.

Through my emails, I show each partner how they are misunderstanding each other and are making assumptions about what the other person’s behaviors means to them. I show them how to perceive their partner as either acting out of love or fear; that their intention is not to hurt the other. They learn how an attack or withdrawal is really only a defensive reaction out of fear.

From there, the couple practices new forms of communication with each other with my guidance. This new communication is geared towards creating safety in the relationship, where both partners are taught to ask questions rather than to make mistaken assumptions about each other and even about themselves. They are taught to reinterpret those old behaviors so that they can choose to respond instead of react.

This is what compassion really is, just a deeper understanding of each other.

I also give the couple exercises to do on their own and to do together. When a misunderstanding happens in real time during the period they are in counseling, it becomes the perfect opportunity for me to show them how to effectively use the new tools that they have been learning. It is this actual hands on practice that creates lasting change in the relationship. 

This unique process teaches a couple how to minimize their fight or flight responses so that they stop emotionally reacting and learn how to communicate clearly instead. It is a highly effective method of building trust and intimacy in the relationship.

When a couple finally gets these tools and learns how to communicate safely in their relationship, their intimacy with each other increases. That bond is what a strong relationship is built on. Any couple can reach this point, even ones who are in crisis after an affair. The choice is up to the individual.

I would like to thank you for the opportunity to share my ideas with you and your readers. I appreciate your support! 

Author’s bio: Ewa Schwarz has been a counselor, life coach, healer and teacher for over 20 years, having studied a wide range of mind-body healing practices. She owns and runs OnlineCounseling.org. Sign up for her free monthly personal growth Ezine, read one of the many articles, blogs, or archived free counseling’s that she provides to help everyone, whether they can afford counseling or not.

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