Marriage Counseling Can Help Heal Relationships Damaged By Infidelity

Marriage counseling is available at Take Charge, Inc. in Overland Park, KS to help heal relationships damaged by infidelity. Infidelity is breaking a promise to remain faithful to a partner, whether that promise is in the form of a legal marriage contract, a verbal agreement, or an unspoken assumption between lovers. Infidelity is an indication that a relationship needs help, but it doesn’t have to mean that it is over.

The first sticky part of examining infidelity is that it doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone. Some people are fine with anything short of sexual contact, while others consider speaking flirtatiously to a stranger or viewing pornography as cheating. It is therefore crucial to vocally define your personal boundaries with your partner early and often in the relationship. Marriage counseling can help you to communicate these boundaries clearly.

Many people assume that infidelity means that the cheater is not happy in the relationship. This is true in many cases, but it isn’t a given by any means.

In surveys of individuals who have cheated, the most commonly cited reasons were:

• Falling out of love
• Seeking variety
• Feeling neglected
• Situational forces
• A desire to raise self-esteem
• Anger with a partner

Marriage counseling can help to identify the underlying reasons for infidelity and take steps to heal the damage it causes and prevent it from happening again. 

There are neurological elements to infidelity as well. Love and infatuation flood your brain with neurotransmitters that produce a “high” that some people can actually get addicted to. Neuroscientists have determined that after a time, between 6 months to 2 years, the brain slows production of stimulating chemicals and levels of these chemicals start to drop off. People often confuse this normal shift with “falling out of love,” and even if they don’t, they sometimes seek out the sensation outside the relationship.

Problems in the part of the brain responsible for self-control can also lead to infidelity. The self-control system is a sort of balancing act between the part of the brain that motivates you to seek out pleasurable activities (the deep limbic system) and the part that considers consequences (the prefrontal cortex). A prefrontal cortex with low activity can create an imbalance that causes you to give in to your impulsive desires without fully thinking it through.

None of these elements are sufficient excuses for infidelity, but they do help to explain why people may step out of their relationship even though they still love and want to be with their partner. Marriage counseling can help to get past infidelity, and suggest ways to strengthen brain health as well as the relationship bond.

For information about marriage counseling, call Take Charge, Inc. at (913) 239-8255. To schedule an appointment, click here.