The Five Pitfalls to Developing Transparency

From: Dr. Frank Gunzburg

Pitfall #1: Late Nights out without a Reason

If you have to work late, stay out late at a business dinner, or want to stay out later than you were scheduled to with your friends, you need to let your partner know about it. This is an easy one to see from the perspective of the partner. What would you expect if the situations were reversed?

If your relationship didn’t have a history of infidelity, and your partner was waiting at home wondering why you were late and hadn’t called, they might begin to think you were in an accident or involved in some other emergency (perhaps medical in nature) that left you in a condition in which using the telephone would be impossible. Once there has been an affair in a relationship, this absence without knowledge is turned into a fear that you are meeting your lover, starting another affair, or, maybe, just hiding from them. These kinds of fears do not assist your partner in the healing process in any way whatsoever.

Pitfall #2: Hiding the Mail

If you worry about your partner seeing bills that reveal a hotel reservation, a trip you didn’t tell them about with your lover, or long-distance telephone conversations, rest assured that it is too late to hide these things from them. Doing so is only going to cause a lot more trouble. Even though it is not logical, it will reopen the trust issue as if you had made no progress at all.

Being transparent means that you open up to your partner and share the good and the bad, the comfortable and the painful. It can be hard to show them some of the things you have been hiding, but if you don’t, you are going to do further damage to your relationship. You have to ask yourself if keeping things private is worth that cost.

Open up, and air out the dirty laundry as it arises. It will make you a freer person, and it ultimately will save your relationship.

Pitfall #3: Taking Business Trips without Calling Home

If you travel for work or need to be away for some other reason and cannot take your partner with you, make sure that you schedule calls home regularly and often, and make sure you stick to that schedule.

I recommend that you avoid any and all business trips for a while if that is at all possible. Many bosses will be surprisingly accommodating for “family issues” if you ask. Any time you are away from home is going to be a difficult time for your injured and suspicious partner. The best option is to take your partner with you on any and all trips until your partner feels trusting again. See if your company makes allowances for spousal accompaniment (sometimes this extends to domestic partners as well). If not, see if you can manage to make business trips into partial vacations for you and your partner.

If this is impossible, creating a regular schedule of calls to contact your partner and sticking by that schedule will help salve their fears. Throwing in some additional unscheduled calls helps even more.

Pitfall #4: Keeping Secrets and Telling Little White Lies

For the cheater, lying is a dangerous trap. Dishonesty is how you got where you are now. And like an addict in recovery, lying is a drug that can draw you back into a web of behaviors that could take you down the path to cheat again. This means that you want to be very careful about the “little white lies” that you tell and the secrets that you keep.

In your situation, no lying is excusable. Even a small, “innocent” lie could be the one behavior that sets off a chain of other events that can cause you to relapse or cause your partner to lose faith in you.

If your partner asks for specific information, tell them the truth, in detail, and tell it to them quickly. Even if you are planning a nice surprise, it can turn into a nightmare if you aren’t forthcoming with what you are doing.

Pitfall #5: Using Language like “None of Your Business” with Your Partner

When you are trying to regain your partner’s trust, using a phrase like “that’s none of your business” isn’t the way to do it. For the time being, everything is your partner’s business. If you don’t take this approach, there is no way you will achieve transparency.

By now, you recognize that your affair has sensitized your partner to your whereabouts and activities. Having an affair does this. Being transparent is part of making amends in an adult way. As long as you aren’t engaging in activities that you shouldn’t be engaging in, then there is nothing you can do that couldn’t be your partner’s business. All that can come of telling them is increased trust. But you can destroy your relationship if you keep petty secrets from them.

Dr. Frank Gunzburg is a licensed counselor in Maryland and has been specializing is helping couples restore their marriage for over 30 years.

For more information about restoring the trust after an affair, please visit: http://www.surviveanaffair.com