Is there a right way to tell someone you’ve cheated? Married At First Sight’s Adam has proved there’s a wrong way.
Immaturely, Adam blamed being drunk for cheating on his bride Janelle, and clearly he took Jamie Foxx’s lyrics ‘blame it on the alcohol,’ very seriously.
Counsellor and psychotherapist, Julie Sweet, explained that if you’ve cheated, you need to own up to it and lead with honesty: “When’s there’s been a betrayal, it’s imperative there’s not a double betrayal around being dishonest about the affair in the first place,” she explained.
Basically, don’t do what Adam did.
Adam’s response to his indiscretion has been a lesson on what not to do. Instead of apologising, Adam immediately decided to gaslight his bride Janelle.
Forget flowers! Adam went straight to telling Janelle to get over it.
He actually declared that Janelle just needed to move on. “Get over it, move on and don’t be bitter about it,” he proclaimed.
Okay, this isn’t about your team losing the grand final – you cheated, sir.
Why do men always talk in sports metaphors when they’ve behaved as poorly as a rugby player celebrating a big win?
So what’s next? Perhaps a romantic gesture to win Janelle back!
No.
Instead Adam decided to pull out the victim card. During a dinner party where he was getting questioned about his cheating ways, he decided to share the pain his cheating had caused him!
“There’s no one at this table that has taken it harder than myself,” he explained earnestly and then ironically spent the rest of the dinner trying to shrug off his actions.
When that didn’t work. He decided to avoid all responsibility by claiming he wasn’t even in a relationship with Janelle.
“There’s a lot of stuff that happened with Janelle and me at the start of our relationship that none of you know about.
“Things had happened on our honeymoon. Things had been told. It wasn’t a real relationship,” he informed everyone.
So, no one can take this harder … but also no reason for anyone to care because you weren’t even in a relationship?
Got it.
Okay, well maybe he just needed to go through those stages to ultimately confess to Janelle he made a huge mistake!
No!
Adam decided not to show any shame and when Alyssa directly asked him if he’d kissed Claire and then went home and had sex with Janelle, and he said. “One hundred per cent, yes!”
Now you’re being honest? And you weren’t in a relationship with your wife but you were still having sex?
Make it make sense!
Unsurprisingly if you want to repair your relationship after cheating, Sweet would recommend that blaming your partner isn’t the way to reconciliation.
Instead, Sweet recommended a much kinder formula.
“Leading relationship experts Julie and John Gottman of The Gottman Institute talk of a formula to repair a relationship after trust has been broken, or after infidelity has been disclosed that comprises of three steps,” she said.
“The first is atonement. The second is attunement, and the third is attachment.”.
Sweet believes if you own up to your behaviour, the relationship can be salvaged,
“Relationships can recover from infidelity; however, it’s consistent daily work, and I strongly encourage this work to not only be done within the partnership, yet also with the support of an experienced couple’s therapist,” she said.
In Adam and Janelle’s case, there wasn’t much to save because Adam couldn’t acknowledge that he’d even done something wrong. The two called it quit last night, and now Janelle can focus on anything but Adam!