The issue
Carrie and Shawn feared for their relationship and children after Shawn revealed he had been having an affair. Carrie had been worried for some time that something was wrong and when she confronted Shawn and said that she was fed up of him being so difficult and angry, he confessed he was seeing another woman. Carrie felt terrified that their relationship was unravelling before her eyes.
The process
Carrie rang Tavistock Relationships the morning after Shawn told her he was having an affair and they were offered a couples therapy appointment the next day. At the first session, it became clear that Shawn was as upset as Carrie. “I think I might have blown it”, he told the psychotherapist who saw them. “She says I’ve got to move out, but I can’t bear the thought of that... what about the children?” Both Shawn and Carrie cried and shouted at their first appointment but by the time they began weekly therapy, things had begun to calm down. Shawn had stopped his affair and the couple had begun to talk things through.
The couples therapist was able to explore what had happened and it became clear that Shawn’s affair was simply a symptom of other issues that had been long neglected. Neither Carrie or Shawn had found it easy to speak about anything difficult and so they had both shut up shop and stopped talking at all.
The outcome
They came to couples therapy for 10 months. By the time they finished the affair didn’t seem important at all. What was important was the fact that for the first time since their children were born, they were talking together and sharing their feelings whether they were good feelings or bad feelings, upset feelings or happy feelings. They had got to know each other again and they were back on track.