202: Breaking Up with Your Affair Partner

Hi everyone, I’m Dr. Marie Murphy, and I’m a non-judgmental infidelity coach.  If you are engaging in anything you think counts as infidelity, I can help you deal with your feelings, clarify what you want, and make decisions about what you’re going to do.  No shame, no blame, no judgments.  So much of the so-called advice that’s out there for people engaging in infidelity is little more than thinly veiled judgment, but that is not what I provide.  I give you guidance and support that respects the fullness of your humanity, and the complexity of your situation – no matter what you are doing or have been doing.  If you want my expert assistance with navigating your infidelity situation, there are two ways you can have me as your coach.  We can work together one-on-one via Zoom, or you can enroll in my self-guided course, You’re Not the Only One.  To get started with either of these options, go to my website, mariemurphyphd.com.  I can’t wait to meet you.

In today’s episode, we’re going to talk about breaking up with your affair partner.  I’ve dedicated a few past episodes to talking about the process of breaking up with someone, and those episodes are definitely relevant to breaking up with an affair partner.  But today I’m going to talk about some things that are more specific to breaking up with someone who is your affair partner, rather than, say, your spouse.

There are lots of possible affair partner scenarios out there.  Maybe you’re in a committed relationship and your affair partner isn’t.  Or maybe you’re in a committed relationship and your affair partner is, too.  Or maybe you aren’t in a committed relationship, but the person you’re having an affair with is.  And of course, there are other kinds of situations you might be in, too.  But today, I’m going to focus on two examples.

The first is, breaking up with your married affair partner when YOU are not married, or in a committed relationship.  You aren’t cheating on anyone, but your affair partner is cheating on someone by being involved with you – and you’re breaking up with them.

The second scenario is, you’re married, and your affair partner is not in any kind of a committed relationship.  And you’ve been planning to leave your marriage for your affair partner.  And perhaps you’ve even taken significant steps in that direction.  Perhaps you’ve moved out, or filed for divorce, and to anyone observing you, it would look like you are very serious about ending your marriage.  But then, something happens.  Some surprise comes out of nowhere, and you decide that you actually want to stay with your spouse – and I mean, you really, truly WANT to stay with your spouse – and you decide to end things with your affair partner instead.

SCENARIO ONE:

So let’s start with the first scenario.  Here’s a pretty common thing I see.  Two people will be having an affair, and maybe both of them were in committed relationships at first, and then one leaves their committed relationship and the other doesn’t.  Or, maybe one person was never in a committed relationship to begin with, but the other person was and still is.  For a while, the person who has left their committed relationship or was never in a committed relationship is okay with being involved in an affair.  We’re going to call this person person one.  Person one is absolutely crazy about their affair partner, and their affair partner has made noises about leaving their marriage, so person one is like, okay, I’ll hang in there with this situation for a while and see what happens.

But then, time passes.  And it starts to become apparent that the married member of the affair couple isn’t taking any concrete steps to leave their marriage.  And then person one starts to grow uncomfortable with this, and then they may come to the decision that they don’t want to be in an affair relationship for any longer, and that may translate into a decision to end things with their affair partner.

Some people get to that point and they’re like, “Okay, this really sucks!  I love my affair partner, and I believe they love me too, but if they’re not going to leave their marriage and I don’t want to be in an affair relationship anymore, then I guess I’m going to exercise the power I have to make a decision, and my decision is to end the affair.”  Some people come to this recognition, and make this decision, and they’re not thrilled with what’s happening, but they feel confident that ending the affair is the best choice for them.

But then all kinds of questions come up, and they get thrown off.

So I’m going to tell you some of the common questions that come up that people get stuck on when they’re planning to break up with their married affair partner, and how you might handle them.

The first question is, How do you tell someone that the reason you’re breaking up with them is because they’re still married without sounding like you’re giving them an ultimatum and telling them to get divorced?

The second is, How do you actually execute the breakup – do you try to do it in person?  Or by phone/text?  What’s the right thing to do in situations like these – especially if it’s hard to spend time together in person with your affair partner?

The third question is, What about post-breakup processing?  I love my affair partner a lot, and I really want to help them deal with their sadness about our breakup.

And the fourth is, How can I ensure that my affair partner and I stay friends if I end the affair?  My affair partner is my best friend, and I cannot imagine NOT having them in my life at all.

The fifth question is, How do you deal with breaking up with your affair partner if you work with them?

I’m going to say something specific in response to each of these questions, but before I do, here is the most basic, overarching point I want you to keep in mind.  If you have decided that it is time for you to end a relationship – or to end a particular phase of a relationship – ending that relationship is your main objective.  Everything else is secondary.  Yes, if you’re breaking up with someone, you may want to effectively break up with them, AND do it in person.  That’s fair.  If you’re breaking up with someone you work with, you may want to effectively end the affair, AND maintain a civil, or even pleasant professional relationship with that person.  It’s fair to want that, too.  But at the end of the day, if what you want to do is end an affair relationship and move forward, you have to make that your highest priority.  

And what happens a lot is people decide they want to break up with their affair partner, but then questions like the ones I mentioned become obstacles to actually ending the relationship.

So let’s talk about the first one.  How do you tell someone that yes, you are ending your relationship with them because they’re still married without making that sound like an ultimatum, or like you’re telling someone that you want them to get divorced?  This is a wise thing to be attuned to, and hitting the right note doesn’t have to be terribly complicated.  You can tell your affair partner that you don’t want to be in an affair relationship anymore, and since they’re still married, your relationship is technically an affair, and you’re not interested in doing that anymore.  And you don’t have to justify that decision.  You can simply say, this isn’t the kind of relationship I want to be a part of anymore.  You are still married, and I don’t want to be involved with someone who is married anymore.  I did it for a while, but now I’m done.  

Telling your partner this is not giving them an ultimatum.  Giving them an ultimatum could look like, “You have to file for divorce in six weeks or I’m going to break up with you.”  But you’re not telling them what they have to do in any way.  Rather, you’re letting them know what you have decided to do.  That’s not an ultimatum.  

And it doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that.  You can simply tell your affair partner what you’ve decided and why, and if they are non-negotiably still married, they don’t really have any room to negotiate with what you’re saying.  Now, they may TRY to negotiate with you anyway!  They can do that, and they very well might.  They may say things like, “Well, what if I moved out within the next month, or what if I filed for divorce within the next month, can you just give me one more month?”  Or they might say something like, “But there’s so much great stuff here between us and you know I’m going to leave my marriage eventually!”

But no matter what they say, you don’t have to participate in the negotiation!  You can simply stick to your decision.  The problem, for a lot of people, is that when someone begs them to reconsider breaking up with them, they feel bad.  And they then think they have to make their affair partner feel better.  And wanting to make your affair partner feel better isn’t the worst impulse in the world, but if you want to end the relationship, THAT is your first priority.  Not trying to make your affair partner feel better.

The second question concerns HOW you break up with your affair partner – do you do it in person?  Is it okay to do it by phone or Facetime or Zoom or whatever?  Or is it okay to do it by email or text?  What’s the best way, or what’s the most appropriate way?

So again, the first rule of breaking up with someone is that if you want to break up with someone, THAT has to be your first priority.  I keep repeating this because it’s important.

But beyond meeting that very important criterion, you get to decide what’s best for you in terms of how you execute your breakup.  There isn’t any one best way.  If it’s reasonably easy for you to see your affair partner in person, and you WANT to break up with them in person, then by all means, do that.  Unless of course you don’t think you’re actually going to be able to execute your plan.  Often, not always, but often enough, affair relationships contain a potent combination of scarcity and abundance.  When you see your affair partner, you may have an AMAZING time, and that is kind of like all of the abundance in the universe showering down upon you.  But those good times may be scarce, or hard to come by.  So if you manage to get some time with your affair partner, you may just want to enjoy your time with them!  You may not really WANT to break up with them – you simply may not want to be in an affair relationship anymore.  And if that’s where you’re at, you might have a really hard time actually getting the job done when you see them in person, and thus, if you actually want to accomplish your breakup, it might be best to not do it in person.  And that might seem cold to you.  You might not really want to do that.  And it’s totally fair to not want to do that, but if you want to get the job done, the question is, what do you need to do to get the job done?

I am all in favor of breaking up with someone in as classy and considerate of a manner as possible.  I’m all in favor of you having a long goodbye with your affair partner, if you want to have that.  You could go on a breakup trip, and make a week out of it, if you wanted to.  If that helps you get the job done, I love that for you.  But if the only way you can manage to tell someone it’s over is to send them an email, well, do what you need to do.  And even if you are sure this will hurt your person, and even if you feel really bad about that, that’s the way it goes sometimes.  Sometimes the only way to get a job done is not very well.  And that might be sad, but it doesn’t have to be a tragedy of epic proportions.  Don’t let trying to make your breakup perfect interfere with actually executing your breakup, and moving forward in your life. 

As for the third question about post-breakup processing, and how much of that you do – or don’t do – with your affair partner, I want to suggest that if you want to successfully execute and follow through on your breakup, you probably want to err on the side of ruthlessness.  You probably want to err on the side of doing less post-breakup processing rather than more.  I’m not saying you have to do, like, a drive-by breakup where you say to your affair partner, “Okay, I’ve decided that it’s over, and I’m never going to talk to you again, so bye!”  And then run off or hang up the phone or whatever.  You don’t have to do that.  But in order for the relationship to actually end, you’re going to have to start doing things differently – and that may mean NOT talking about things that you would ordinarily be inclined to talk about with them.  You and your affair partner may be in the habit of sharing EVERYTHING with each other, and so it might seem ONLY NATURAL to talk at great length about how you’re each feeling about your breakup.  And doing some of this might be okay for you – but at a certain point, you’ve got to ask yourself: are your actions helping you complete your breakup and move forward?  Or are they serving to continue your relationship with your affair partner?  You’ve gotta be honest with yourself about this.

The fourth question was, how can I ensure that my affair partner and I stay friends if I end the affair?  People often tell me, my affair partner is my best friend, and I cannot imagine NOT having them in my life at all.  It’s not uncommon for affair partners to develop a super close, super tight, super unique bond.  And this bond may have many facets to it.  Some of it may be about sex and physical connection, some of it may be about romantic love, some of it may be about friendship, some of it may be about a shared love of something specific, some of it may be an intellectual connection, and some of it may defy description in any known language.  In your affair partner, you may feel like you have found your alien twin, or the perfect counterpart that you never thought could possibly exist.  And the idea of letting this uniquely precious bond with this uniquely precious human being go may seem like a terrible idea.

So, it may seem like a great idea to try to figure out a way to stay friends with your affair partner, even if you end the affair part of your relationship.  But attempting to figure this out may become a real impediment to going through the process of breaking up with them, even when you know you really want to do that.  You want to end the torment of the affair, but you don’t want to lose your affair partner as a person – and that can seem like an unsolvable problem, so you don’t end the affair, but the torment of the affair continues.

Here's the thing, people.  If your priority is to end your affair relationship, there may not be any way to do that without risking the loss of the person who is currently your affair partner forever.  And that might seem terrible, but I promise this actually is not the end of the world.  I know it might SEEM like the end of the world, and that’s legitimate, but just because something seems like the end of the world doesn’t that it actually is.  If you want to effectively break up with your affair partner, you have to be willing to relinquish your connection with them.  And it might be VERY worth it for you to do that, even if it is really, really, really sad to do that – at least for a while.

And it might turn out that you and your affair partner – or former affair partner – CAN be friends later on down the line.  That might work out okay, or even better than okay.  But trying to ensure that you and your affair partner stay friends before, during, or immediately after you break up with them is putting the cart before the horse.

The feelings of loss you experience when you end your relationship with your affair partner may be profound.  But there are times when it’s better to end a relationship and deal with our feelings of loss than it is to keep a relationship going.  Yes, the pain of losing someone with whom you’ve shared a really beautiful connection may be intense.  But on the whole, dealing with that pain and moving through that pain might be a net win – vs. keeping the relationship going and dealing with whatever you don’t like about that.

Question number five: how do you deal with breaking up with your affair partner if you work with them?

A lot of people get REALLY stuck on this question.  A lot of people are sure that if they break up with their affair partner who they also work with in some capacity, it’s going to be really, really difficult and unpleasant… and then people start to turn that into a reason why they actually shouldn’t break up with their affair partner.

If you think that breaking up with your affair partner who you work with in some capacity is going to be really, really difficult, I want you to get clear on exactly why you think it’s going to be difficult, or exactly what you think will be difficult.

When you get clear on what specifically you anticipate will be hard, then you can actually come up with ways of dealing with your specific concerns.  When you allow your concerns to remain really vague and nebulous, they can easily seem really overwhelming – and they remain unsolvable.  On the other hand, if you can identify your precise concerns, you can then come up with a plan for how you will address those concerns.

Here are the general points I urge you to keep in mind if you’re breaking up with your affair partner who you have some sort of working relationship with.

First and foremost, you probably want to invest time and energy into executing the breakup as well as you can.  And if you have no idea what that means, let’s work together.  My self-guided course, You’re Not the Only One, contains videos of me teaching you how to execute a “good breakup,” and contains assignments that will help you prepare for the specifics of your breakup.  And of course, if we work together one-on-one, I can give you personalized attention as you prepare for your breakup.  I think it’s always worth it to invest your time and energy and care into breaking up with someone as well as possible, but when you work with the person you’re breaking up with, this can be an especially wise investment.  In some cases, it ends up being a VERY wise investment indeed.  

When you’re breaking up with your affair partner who you work with, you can be both really kind and really firm about conveying what you have decided.  If you want to end your relationship – or at least, the affair part of your relationship – you can tell your affair partner that in a very definite, but very loving way.  You can also let them know that you want to have a productive, cordial professional relationship with them going forward.  And, you can also tell them what boundaries you plan to stick to, going forward.  For instance, if you are in the habit of getting on the phone with them to talk about work, and then talking about work for ten minutes but talking about other things for another 45 minutes, you might decide that you’re going to limit conversations to work-related matters going forward.  And you might want to let your soon-to-be-ex affair partner know this ahead of time.  But before you can tell your affair partner what your boundaries are, you have to DECIDE what your boundaries are.  And if you don’t know what your boundaries are, let’s work together and I’ll help you decide.

In addition to not getting clear on what they want their boundaries to look like going forward, a lot of people also forget how boundaries work.  Boundaries are about US and OUR behavior – and how we respond to other people’s behavior.  Boundaries are not about telling other people what they have to do, and expecting that they’re actually going to do it and then getting mad when they don’t.  If you tell your affair partner, okay, our affair is over, and we’re going to keep our conversations limited to professional matters from here on out, they may not follow your instructions.  They may call you to talk about work, and then start telling you how much they miss you.  And if that happens, it’s your job to say, “Okay, I understand that there are some things that you want to tell me, but I’m not available to talk to you about non-work related matters” and then get off the phone.  Or get off the chat.  Or get out of their office, or whatever.

If you want to keep your job, and your affair partner wants to keep their job, and you are willing to be respectful of your ex-affair partner AND hold firm to your boundaries, that will go a long way towards creating the kind of situation you want to create.  If you are breaking up with an affair partner who you work with, I urge you to get really, really committed to taking responsibility for everything that you have the power to control within your situation.  There will certainly be things that you don’t have the power to control, but if you focus on what you CAN take responsibility for, that will help a lot.

Now, is digesting the sadness or whatever feelings you feel about the affair being over when you work with your ex-affair partner uniquely hard?  It certainly can be.  When you are grieving the end of a secret affair, it’s ALWAYS a great idea to give yourself some dedicated time and space to grieve.  But this may be extra-important if you work with your ex-affair partner in some capacity, and extra-extra important if you work closely with them.  Seeing them, and creating distance in your relationship, may be sad and hard and weird.  Give yourself dedicated time and space to feel those feelings.  If you, for example, give yourself half an hour of private time a day in which you can scream and cry and wail and yell and do whatever you need to do as you feel the feelings, you will be less likely to start crying in the middle of a business meeting.  If you give your feelings an outlet, you’ll be less likely to find them demanding an outlet at the worst possible moments. 

SCENARIO TWO:

Now let’s talk about the second scenario.  In this scenario, you are married, or in a committed relationship, but your affair partner is not.  You’ve been telling your affair partner that you plan to leave your marriage, or your committed relationship – and your affair partner has believed you, and is expecting that you’re on the brink of becoming fully available to be in a relationship with them.  But then, something happens on your end.  Maybe you decided that you actually don’t want to pursue an above-board relationship with your affair partner.  Maybe that has something to do with them and only with them – for instance, maybe you just woke up one morning and decided you didn’t want to share a life with them anymore.  Or maybe you took steps to leave your spouse, and your spouse totally surprised you with their response to your attempt to break up with them, and you came to the conclusion that you didn’t want to leave your marriage after all.  Or maybe it was something else entirely, but for some reason, you changed your mind, your plans have changed, and now you’re about to break up with your affair partner right when you were on the brink of running off into the sunset with them.

Here are some of the common questions folks in this position ask me:

ONE: How do I explain my change of heart to my affair partner?  If I go from telling them one thing to telling them the complete opposite, what can I say that will help them understand?

TWO: If I break up with my affair partner, they’re going to think that I was stringing them along the whole time.  How can I convince them that I wasn’t?

THREE: How can I effectively apologize to my affair partner for changing my mind?

FOUR: Is it possible for me to try and be friends with my affair partner?  I’m really going to miss them, even if I’m the one ending the relationship.

FIVE: If they get really mad at me, and threaten to tell my spouse about our affair, how should I handle that?

The first question actually contains two very different questions.  How can you explain your change of heart to your affair partner, or what do you actually want to say to your affair partner about your change of mind is one question.  And this is a question worth taking seriously!  If you have, up until very recently, been planning to leave your spouse to be with the person you are now breaking up with, you may want to give them some pretty specific insights into your sudden change of heart.  If you’ve changed your mind about your marriage, you may want to tell them that – and you may want to get into some specifics.  If you’ve changed your mind about THEM, you may want to tell them that, and you may want to get into some specifics.

Now, there’s an irony at play here that we need to be aware of.  On the one hand, it is totally reasonable for your affair partner to want know why you’re breaking up with them, and it is, in my opinion, reasonable and appropriate for you to give them some information on what changed.  But here’s the rub.  No matter what you tell them, no matter how much you tell them, they may not understand your decision.  Or they may not like it, and they may see that as equivalent to not understanding it.  And there may not be anything you can do about that.  So by all means, give your affair partner an honest explanation as to what happened with you, or why you had a sudden change of heart.  Do your best to give them an explanation that you think will make sense to them.  But also bear in mind that there’s a chance that nothing you say will make sense to them.

The second question is closely related to the first question.  How can you convince your affair partner that you weren’t stringing them along the whole time?  How can you get them to understand that you really were sincere about leaving your committed relationship, and you thought that that was exactly what you were in the process of doing – until, all of a sudden, things changed? 

The short answer is, you may not be able to convince them of this.  You can tell them the truth of your experience, you can tell them how sincere you were about pursuing a relationship with them, you can tell them how surprised you were by your own change of heart.  And in many situations, I think that sharing these kinds of sentiments can be a really good thing to do.  But that doesn’t mean you’re going to convince your affair partner that you weren’t stringing them along the whole time.  If they think that you were, you may not be able to relieve them of this idea.  But you can say your piece, and perhaps with time, they’ll see things differently.  

My opinion is that in a lot of situations in life, it’s worth it to say the things that it’s important to you to say, even if the person you’re talking to doesn’t immediately receive what you’re saying in the way you’d like them to.  There may come a day when they look back on what you said and appreciate it deeply.

And of course, this is very much related to the third question that so often comes up, which is, how can I apologize to my affair partner for changing my mind?  What people often mean when they ask this question is, how can I get my affair partner to FORGIVE ME for changing my mind?  How can I apologize in way that will make them feel better, because what I really want is for them to feel better so they’ll forgive me, and then I won’t have to feel like a jerk anymore.  

The apologizing part can be pretty straightforward.  You can say something to the effect of, I am so sorry that my desires and my plans changed in a way that I never could have anticipated.  I am so sorry for promising you things that it turns out I’m not going to deliver on.  I’m sure the way you’re feeling right now feels terrible, and I am so sorry for being the occasion of that.  You might not want to use that exact language, but the point is, you can take responsibility for your actions and indicate how sorry you are without making excuses or beating around the bush.

The harder part, for a lot of folks, is seeing that their apology may not make their ex-affair partner feel better.  Their apology may not inspire their ex-affair partner to forgive them.  Their apology may not get them any points for being a good person.  And thus, they may be stuck feeling bad about what they’ve done, and they may not like that.  And of course, as I’ve talked about many times on this podcast, we can learn to relate to our discomfort more skillfully, so that it doesn’t feel quite so bad, but even so, we may end up feeling some pretty uncomfortable stuff in this kind of a situation.  And there may not be any getting around that.  That’s part of the human experience, folks.

The answer to the fourth question is very similar to the answer I gave to that same question earlier in the episode, when I was talking about the other example scenario.  Yes, it MIGHT be possible for you to be friends with your ex-affair partner, but figuring out how to do that is NOT your first order of business.  If you’re breaking up with someone who does not want to be broken up with, telling them that you’re ending your relationship, but you want to be friends with them probably isn’t going to go over too well.  Is it POSSIBLE that the two of you could be friends someday?  Maybe!  But don’t put the cart before the horse.  If you truly want to be friends with them in the future, the best thing you may be able to do right now is to break up with them in as classy of a manner as possible.  And then if the option for a friendship presents itself later, deal with it when that time comes. 

The fifth question was, if my affair partner gets really mad at me when I break up with them, and they threaten to tell my spouse about our affair, how should I handle that?

Okay.  It’s important to acknowledge a few key things here.

First of all, it’s important to remember that your affair partner may have NO INTENTIONS of telling your spouse or doing anything along those lines.  Just because this is something that does happen sometimes does not mean that it is something that will happen to you.  If you’re worried that this might happen, you might be worrying for nothing.

That said, sometimes angry ex-affair partners DO tell their ex-affair partner’s spouse about the affair.  For better or worse, this is one of the occupational hazards of having an affair.  And if you’ve already had the affair, and that can’t be undone, and if your ex-affair partner goes ahead and tells your spouse about it, then that’s the reality that you have to deal with.  But for today’s purposes, we’re going to talk a little bit about prevention.

One of the reasons why people do things like tell their ex-affair partner’s spouse that they had an affair with them is because they are extremely angry and hurt.  And one of the reasons why people sometimes feel angry and hurt is because they’ve been broken up with in a manner that seems incredibly insensitive. 

Thus, one of the things you can do which may greatly reduce the chance that your affair partner gets it in their head to tell your spouse about your affair is to break up with them as considerately and compassionately as possible.  I’ve talked a little about what that entails today, but I also talk about breakups in other episodes, such as episodes 72, 73, and 118.  Also, I’ve got a whole unit in my self-guided course devoted to helping you prepare for a breakup.  Within the course I help you get ready to break up with someone in a kind, compassionate, and effective manner.  And since most of us have very little experience breaking up with people, investing in good preparation for a breakup can save you a lot of trouble and heartache.  So you may want to enroll in You’re Not the Only One if you want to ensure that you execute your breakup with your affair partner as kindly and respectfully as possible.  A good-enough breakup can go a long way.

Of course, it is also true that even if you break up with your affair partner as sensitively as you possibly can, they could still threaten to tell your spouse about your affair – and they could make good on that threat.  But even though that’s a possibility, I encourage you to take responsibility for what you have the power to control in this situation, instead of worrying about what you cannot control.  You have the power to give your affair partner as good of a breakup as possible.  Focus on that, rather than worrying about what they might or might not do when you break up with them.

Now, if you do as good a job of breaking up with your affair partner as you possibly can, and they still threaten to inform your spouse of your affair, here are three things you can try:

First, you can let your affair partner know that you know they’re upset, and you can tell them you’re sorry to have changed course on them.  That doesn’t mean you retract your decision, but you can acknowledge that things turned out differently than you’d thought they were going to, and you can tell them that you understand how upset they must be about this.  Acknowledging other people’s pain can go a long way towards defusing it.  You don’t have to apologize for making the decision that you did.  But you can acknowledge that your partner really doesn’t like your decision, and you can empathize with their hurt and anger and confusion.  How do we empathize with another person’s hurt and anger and confusion?  Let’s work together, and I’ll teach you.  This is a skill set that most of us haven’t developed, but it is a skill set that we CAN develop.

Second, you can ask your partner to find someone to vent their rage to, rather than contacting your spouse.  I encourage you to empathize with their feelings first.  But if they want to yell and scream and cry for hours upon hours or days upon days, I think it’s reasonable and appropriate for you to suggest they work with a professional.  You can say something like, “I understand how upset you are, and I understand that you really want to act on your feelings.  But could you talk to a professional before you consider contacting my spouse?”  Your affair partner may really need an outlet for their pain – and contacting your spouse might be the only outlet they can think of.  Suggesting an alternative gives them a new option to consider.  

Third, you can simply ask your affair partner not to contact your spouse.  You can’t stop them from doing it, but you can say something like, “Hey, listen, I know this might seem like a great idea to you right now.  But I really hope you won’t do that, and moreover, I’m asking you not to do that.”

If you’re dealing with someone who is completely overwhelmed by emotion and isn’t capable of being reasonable, this may not work.  But it’s entirely possible that you’re dealing with someone who is upset, but is not SO upset that they cannot think clearly.  And they may take your heartfelt requests to heart.  Sometimes all we have to say is, “I would really appreciate it if you wouldn’t do that” for someone to get the message.  Yes, some people fly off the handle.  That happens.  But it’s also true that some people are capable of being reasonable, if you’re able to meet them with compassion.

All right!  If you are planning on breaking up with your affair partner, I encourage you to prepare for the breakup.  Your breakup does not have to be perfect to be effective, but SUPER sloppy, super unintentional breakups can be pretty painful for everyone involved.  And I can help you prepare for your breakup!  Nobody teaches us how to execute breakups!  And even more specifically, nobody teaches us how to break up with our affair partners!  So investing a little time and energy into learning how to do this reasonably well can make the experience of ending your affair a LOT better for you and for your affair partner.

When you enroll in my self-guided course, You’re Not the Only One, you get multiple videos of me teaching you how to prepare for a breakup, and you get assignments that help you apply what I teach you to the specifics of your breakup.  And when we work together one-on-one, I can give you all the personalized attention and support that you need when you’re preparing to end your affair.  Let’s work together so that you can save yourself some suffering and heartache.  Ending a relationship may not be fun, but it also doesn’t have to be an epic trainwreck.  To get started working with me one-on-one, or to enroll in my course, go to my website, mariemurphyphd.com.  I can’t wait to meet you.

Thank you all so much for listening!  Have a great day.  Bye for now.