Was it an Affair? Maggie’s Story

Imagine breaking a bone, but having the doctor set it incorrectly. Ultimately, that bone will need to be rebroken and set properly in a way that promotes healing. That’s what it was like for me when my husband, my pastor and a good friend accused me of having an affair with my Christian counselor when, in fact, it was abuse.

I began counseling via an online ministry that offered free sessions to work through pain that came as a result of some issues in my marriage. I could not have fathomed that over the course of a year, that counselor would repeatedly betray my trust, ultimately professing his love for me as he sexualized our online professional/client relationship.

When my husband discovered what was happening, it was traumatic for both of us, and the months that followed got even worse. I was confused. The only language I had to describe what happened was “adultery” or “an affair.” I was not familiar with issues of power imbalance, abusive relational systems, and consent. I was not aware of red-flag behaviors like boundary crossing, manipulation, grooming, and transference/countertransference. As a result, I did what I was told and took on the identity of an unfaithful wife who had cheated on her husband with her counselor. 

Early on, at my husband’s insistence and in agreement with my pastor, I made a phone call to my counselor’s wife and confessed and apologized for having an inappropriate relationship with her husband: confessions of love, phone calls, and sexting. I told her that I was sorry for all of it.  Traumatic memories of this phone call still present themselves to me as intrusive thoughts almost two years later. 

A few weeks later, we began an online affair recovery program, which cemented my identity as an unfaithful wife. Unfortunately, this program did not acknowledge that anything had happened to me. It wrongly assumed that I had been an equal player in the “affair” and required that I take an equal amount of blame for what had happened as the counselor who abused me.

It demanded that I focus on my husband’s trauma, since I was supposedly the one who caused it; that I acknowledge that I had purposefully” acted out” and behaved selfishly. It encouraged me to see myself with narcissistic tendencies. All of this misapplication ultimately caused me to betray myself and wrongly question my own integrity.

During the program, our group included one sex addict, one person who’d cheated on their spouse with multiple partners for over 15 years, a woman who’d had an affair with her coworker and another who was a chronic flirter who had engaged in multiple emotional affairs over 20 years. 

When we shared our stories, not one person – not even the trained leader – identified that the “relationship” I’d had with my counselor was abusive! That omission was neglectful and harmful. Instead, I was treated like a woman with loose boundaries who had purposefully gone behind her husband’s back and had an affair with a male friend or co-worker.  

I was encouraged to humble myself and accept responsibility for what I’d done, which I did. I even swallowed the pain of my husband’s past neglect, from which I had only begun to recover, so that I could focus on his trauma. I made deep sacrifices, which I can now see were incredibly damaging to me.  

 During the program, I had weekly exercises to complete. One assignment had me write a list of 40 things that my “affair had cost my husband” (like sleep, loss of self-esteem, no longer being able to enjoy certain TV shows and music etc.), and read them to the group. It was a hard exercise for all, but incredibly inappropriate for me. Yes, the abuse by my counselor had cost my  husband a lot, but it wasn’t me who needed to take accountability for those losses.

For another exercise, I was asked to create a relapse plan that would help keep me from “re-offending” again. Even though I had not yet come to understand that it was abuse, I had a real problem with this exercise. I instinctively knew that I had not done anything to my counselor. I’d gone to him for support. I’d put trust in him due to his credentials and Christian faith. I’d been vulnerable with him and shared my struggles. It was he who exploited natural, human needs in me. I asked my husband, “Why the hell isn’t my counselor being asked to create a relapse plan?”

Most days, I chalked up my attitude to pride and rebellion of a sinful woman: Of course it was difficult for me to admit how selfish I’d been and how I’d made the choice to cheat on my husband with my counselor. Of course, I was ashamed of what I’d done. That must be why I am feeling this way. Now I know that my feelings were a reflection of reality: I was a victim being blamed for someone else’s abuse.

These affair recovery sessions became increasingly difficult for me to attend and it’s not like it was the only thing I was dealing with.

During this time, we were both a complete emotional mess. In fact, it’s not possible to explain with words the horrible environment we were living in, plagued by triggers, intrusive thoughts, fear, fighting, and sleeplessness. At the same time, that I was trying to save my marriage and navigate the mess we were living in, I was also grieving the loss of my counselor in my life and felt guilt and confusion over that.  I now know that this bond occurs in exploitive relationships.  It is called a Trauma Bond.

The first light showed up about 4 months after we’d completed the affair recovery program. I discovered two websites with content that resonated with me: Therapy Exploitation Link Line and The Hope of Survivors. I spoke with mentors from both organizations by email and phone and gradually came to the understanding that I had not had an affair, I had been abused.

Now that I had the necessary vocabulary, I googled more about grooming, manipulation, abuse of power etc. I documented every website, quote, book and piece of information that I found.

This newfound understanding would change the trajectory of my healing journey, but would also complicate it. I presented my case to my husband via a long letter in which I retold my story using the framework of abuse. I used quotes and bits and pieces of articles that I’d read as well as emails from my mentors. My explanation did not go over well. Sadly, once the affair narrative is introduced – and in our case the months of affair recovery brainwashing – it’s hard to lose it.

I was beginning to advocate for myself and to reject the false narrative that I had chosen to have an affair, but this new narrative interrupted my husband’s healing journey. Now he had to take everything that I had “done” and reframe it under the umbrella of abuse, meaning that something had been “done” to me. He struggled.

His lack of validation of my experience, which was crucial to my healing, was incredibly difficult for me. I fought against seeing him as the enemy who was keeping me stuck in a lie.

The chaos and confusion of our lives was in no way remedied by the new knowledge  that it was abuse. The arms of the affair narrative had so deeply and complexly woven themselves into our story that they had left their mark on every aspect of our lives and marriage. Sadly, untangling them completely has proven to be impossible even two years later.

The conflict over those next months increased as I silenced an internal desire to have my husband defend my honor and cradle me in his arms offering me comforting words that acknowledged that I’d been betrayed and used by my counselor. No one had done that yet.

For the first time, I was aware that – unlike what affair recovery had taught us: my husband and I were both victims of abuse, and it was the counselor who had violated our marriage. We were two victims flailing around in deep water trying desperately not to sink by grasping onto each other for support. Both at risk of drowning. That’s what it felt like for months.

If we had understood that it was abuse, from the very beginning, we might have taken more of a team approach to healing: my husband and I, the victims of my Christian counselor’s abuse, both supporting each other as we healed from the same abuse which had impacted each of us differently.

I still would have offered up my phone and passwords, let my husband know where I was during the day and answered all his questions, but I would have done it for a different reason: because I loved him and wanted to help him navigate through the mess that my counselor had created, not because I was the cause of the mess.

The affair narrative, especially as it was perpetuated by affair recovery, stole from me. It stole my chance to be seen, heard, loved, embraced and comforted from something horrible that had been done to me. It became a secondary abuse that in many ways was more traumatic and damaging to me than the initial abuse itself.

For me, trying to recover from infidelity when I had not had an affair, was exactly like having a broken bone set incorrectly. Just like the patient, who has her leg put in a cast, uses crutches and is careful not to put weight on it, I too followed the instructions of the professionals in the affair recovery arena with the promise that it would “fix” whatever in me was so wrong that I had had an affair with my counsellor.

However, it wasn’t until I understood the reality of the abuse I’d endured that I was able to begin to heal in a way that made sense according to what had happened to me. And just like having to break a bone again to reset it correctly, the process of reframing the narrative of my story, from “affair” to abuse, was incredibly painful and it continues to be more difficult to overcome than the initial abuse by my counselor.