Recovery Resources For Everyone

For anyone new on this journey, my hope is that this post gives you a starting point to find the right support you need and equip you with some tools for the road ahead.

A metaphor of what the first 18 months of recovery felt like

Our journey of recovery and healing began after I called it quits on an abusive marriage. (For 25 years I didn’t even realise that this is what I was in because of the covert nature, cycles and the level of manipulation we experienced)

There had been infidelity in 1994 and some “seemingly” minor offences that were largely swept under the rug with I’m sorry it won’t happen again kind of thing.

We didn’t have any full therapeutic disclosure (I didn’t even know such things existed when all hell broke loose in my world) Truth trickled out as I searched for answers and asked my own set of questions which by all accounts is consistent to what is recommended. (no poly though)

However, I do believe that I am as close to knowing everything as is possible and am satisfied with the level of knowledge I have and apart from an affair child appearing (God forbid) I’m not sure anything else would alter the work needed to recover. Having said that, we have discussed going through the exercise of a FTD for our ongoing learning and to help me in my practice. Dave and I both believe that exploring the materials that we’ve found together has given us a better grasp of what each of us has experienced and understanding both sides of the coin has aided us in our recovery.

When things finally began to come to light in 2019, I had no idea that this compulsive acting out would be considered an addiction, and although it might be on the lower end of the scale, it still fits the category.

Emotional affairs-tick, pornography-tick, sexual affairs-tick, a forgotten one-night stand-tick, dating site-tick, financial infidelity-tick, grooming etc… And then there’s the multi-faceted layers of abuse.

We had one 2-day couples intensive with a social worker, Dave had some individual counselling and I saw a therapist for several sessions early days, the Social Worker specialized in affair recovery and has her own lived experience.

Everything on this list is what we’ve discovered via the internet—these are the ones we recommend and have found to be the most beneficial to our healing. I’m sure you’re probably familiar with many of them so I hope there is something of use, most of the sites either have, groups, podcasts, videos, blogs, programs and some have downloadable worksheets. This list is not exhaustive and I will continue to update as I come across resources that I believe are of value in recovery and relationships.

We practice something each and every day, SELF-CARE & COMPASSION are an essential must for both parties regardless of the state of the marriage. The greater our window of tolerance is the better we can show up for one another and manage stressors!

Before diving into this endurance marathon, I felt that it would be worth both partners having a birds-eye view of the real impact of betrayal so I’ve written the following letters—Dearest Betrayed & Dear Unfaithful

Now, read on to access some of the resources we have in our recovery toolkit, there is so much available on each site, and a lot of it doesn’t cost a cent!

Firstly bible Apps on infidelity, shame, trust, identity, pornography, lust etc—prayer

I found the Affair Recovery site in January 2019 ( D-day happened Christmas Eve, basically this is when H got busted, we’d been working toward reconciling!!!) There are literally thousands of great short video blogs for the unfaithful and betrayed. There are paid courses you can do, Emergency Marital Seminar for couples, Hope for Healing for unfaithful (17 weeks) and Harboring Hope for betrayed (13 weeks).

We highly recommend these. The free 7-day online Bootcamp (self-paced) is a wonderful starting place for anyone, either individually or as a couple.

We still sit and watch video blogs regularly out of a desire to learn more (av 10 min) and this opens up for discussion, initially, it was a daily ritual with our morning coffee and prayer. We enjoy listening, learning and sharing with others.

AR was our major go-to; learning and understanding how emotional flooding hijacks our rational brain helped us to explore ways around this. We utilized timeouts and self-regulating techniques to lessen conversation blowouts. This wasn’t always successful though—as you know, once the lid is flipped it is hard to reign it back in.

We learnt the art of making a true apology and gentle start-up.

Gottman method helped tremendously with this. We laminated the 4 horseman of the apocalypse & their antidotes 😉 and kept it on hand for easy access.

We scheduled a weekly check-in together so that we knew there would be opportunity to specifically update each other on how we were doing and use this time to focus on us. I guess we did this so that we could continue with our day-to-day comings and goings knowing that we intentioned some time to debrief, we found this form of “compartmentalization” useful to lessen rumination.

These were our questions

Has there been any flotsam and jetsam over the past week?

Fears/insecurities/doubts

Any niggly bits? Has there been anything that has felt like emotional disconnection/separation?

Have we felt heard and understood?

Have we honoured each other and spoken each other’s love language?

What do we need to improve on this week? How can we improve this week?

How we communicated with each other became and continues to be a very strong focal point, we utilise the Imago Dialogue tools. Perspective has been very important in our healing we’ve become really curious about what’s going on for each other and really seeking to understand how the other person sees things, not necessarily to agree but just to gain that binocular vision.

Values-based communication and boundaries were instrumental in learning how to show up for ourselves and each other.

Most importantly we were/are both committed to doing the work, when we blew it (and there were plenty of times we did—and still do), we cooled our heels, gave ourselves a time-out and then leaned into each other once again to continue on the path to a healthy and loving relationship.

For All

Matthias J Barker (Christian)

Andrew J Bauman (Christian)

Christina Bell (Christina has a whole page of editable worksheets)

Byron Katie (I would say a lean toward New Age, but she has some very good tools)

Your Sobriety Will Make Me Happy a Youtube clip that first drew my attention to Byron’s work.

Compassion Power Steven Stosny

Daring Ventures Dr Jake Porter

Seeking Integrity Robert Weiss

Dr Omar Minwalla

Helping Couples Heal podcast Dr Minwalla Pt 1

Helping Couples Heal podcast Dr Minwalla Pt 2

Helping Couples Heal podcast Dr Minwalla Pt 3

Forums: USE WITH DISCRETION, they can be validating and welcoming but there may be some unhealthy elements and negativity which could undermine progress in recovery and healing, I notice a tendency amongst members to overshare and whilst there is often helpful feedback, the opinions of others are not always healthy