The New Monogamy: Redefining Your Relationship After Infidelity

I am a couples therapist, author and Co-Director of the FACTS (Family and Couples Treatment Service) program, a division of the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy in NYC, where we train family and couples therapists.I recommend it as a self-help aid for couples who experience infidelity. In addition, I put this book on a very short list of essential books for use in training couples therapists to help their clients deal with the aftermath of infidelity. Up until now, the main book I have recommended to couples after an affair—and which I still recommend—has been Janis Abrams Spring’s After the Affair. Both Dr. Spring's and Dr; Nelsons books are excellent. They complement one another. However, Dr. Nelson’s exudes a compassion, and emphasizes a mutuality in the healing process that I find lacking in Dr. Spring’s approach. Janis Abrams Spring’s concept of “earned forgiveness” is a great contribution to the couples therapy field and she deserves to be recognized and praised for it. However, Dr. Spring, emphasizes the resulting polarity-- victim and victimizer—that often becomes entrenched after an affair as a central condition of the healing process. Dr. Nelson does not ignore this polarity but her approach emphasizes compassion, empathy and validation in the healing process. Dr. Nelson’s book also provides much needed step-by-step guidance in helping partners move towards creating a new vision for the relationship that survives the affair. While Dr. Nelson’s approach is down-to-earth and pragmatic, she succeeds in articulating a tone that encourages kindness, and acceptance in the face of the excruciating pain that couples who experience infidelity feel. The book has genuine healing power.

Tammy Nelson addresses a great need in our society through honesty and transparency , transcending traditions and norms. it gives ideas and tools of how to experience real change and growth in a safe and unduly compromising way. lacks inspiration and testimony of the long term benefits ( healing, intimacy ) that come from pushing your edge and taking fantasy in to action. i believe its tailored more for an immediate crisis resolve.

Ive never read a self help book and this book w amazing and just what i needed during a very difficult time. The author really knws what she is talking about. The exercises and dialogues are VERY usueful to my Husband and myself. It has some very great advice even for couples who arent going through infedelity that can only help to strenghten a marriage. I also emailed the author and she emailed me back. She is a very nice person. I would definitly reccomed this book!

This book helped me let go of a lot of resentment I had been harboring for several months after my wife had multiple affairs over the course of 3 months. Theres a lot of good ideas and activities in the book. Although I am open-minded about open marriages and polygamous, I found the amount pertaining to Therese types of relationships a little daunting, as I prefer a traditional closed marriage. Overall, well worth the money, and my have helped renew my marriage.

This is a bold departure from other books on infidelity and takes the stigma out of affair recovery, putting the responsibility fairly back on both partners. Dr. Nelson advocates clear discussions in creating a monogamy definition for each couple and continuous "out-loud" discussions about expectations. Helpful for both the practitioner and the struggling couple, this book combines mindfulness, dialogue, goal-setting and case examples making it a good read and a necessary reference. Thank you!

An absolute must-read if you're navigating a relationship after infidelity. Tammy offers so many tools to help re-build what was torn down (or never built well in the first place).

On All the pages with the exercises written on them the print was very pale and difficult to read. I use these types of books with my patients homework assigents Very disappointing

As an infidelity specialist, I am always anxious to read new books on the subject, as I love to gather resources to recommend to my clients. The author knows her stuff regarding Imago therapy and has a useful format to help couples re-assess their implicit and explicit agreements. However, her frequent references to "polyamorous" and "polysexual" relationships along with "open marriage," seems to validate these as viable alternate lifestyles. She offers one example of a new agreement by a couple: "that once a month, they'd both have a free weekend in what they could do whatever they wanted, including having sexual experiences with others without needing to let the other know. The rest of the month, they would only be with each other." pp. 147, 148. Really? This does not seem like a healthy option for people who are trying to repair their marriages from the disruption of infidelity. If she only used one such example, that would be forgivable. However, I found her frequent offering up of valid ways for couples to agree to some form of unfaithfulness (like only once a month) too far afield for my taste. I felt like her periodic mention of traditional monogamy was in passing as merely one of many agreements a couple could settle upon. While I can appreciate the author's effort to appeal to a very broad readership, her frequent validation of such alternative arrangements would re-injure most if not all of my betrayed clients and justify more creative ways to be unfaithful for straying partners. Unless you are looking for a book to make you feel OK about you or your spouse having more than one lover, I would not recommend this book to people hoping to repair their marriages damaged by infidelity.~Linda J. MacDonald, author, How to Help Your Spouse Heal from Your Affair

Dieses Buch räumt auf mit den alten Formen und Regeln der Monogamie und bleibt dennoch dem Wesen der Verbindlichkeit und Nähe treu. Ich habe es in Englisch gelesen, was gewiss meinem Vertändnis einige Einbußen gefordert hat, dennoch finde ich den gewagten Schritt, Beziehungen ehrlich und offen zu betrachten und sich dem Thema Außenbeziehungen und Treue neu zu stellen als unumgänglich. Wir können die Augen nicht länger verschließen, dass sich in unserer Beziehungslandschaft zuviel geändert hat, als dass wir die alten Regeln noch ganz anwenden könnten, ohne in Konflikte zu geraten, mit unserem inneren moralischen Kodex, den äußeren moralischen Änderungen und dem immer üblicheren und selbstverständlichen Lebens und Beziehungsformen der "Lebensabschnittspartner" unter denen nicht zuletzt unsere Kinder schwer zu leiden haben. Die wenigsten Trennungen verlaufen so harmonisch, dass unsere Kinder erwachsene Bezugspersonen dazu gewinnen. sie leben in der ständigen Anforderung, sich zu entscheiden, zwischen Mutter oder Vater.... dieses Buch gibt vielleicht alternative Ansätze, bevor "Paar" sich zu einer Trennung, als einzig gangbaren Weg entscheidet.Mutig, offen und frei von Verurteilung, zeigt es alternative Wege an, um offene verbindliche Wege zu beschreiten in der es Gleichwürdigkeit für das Paar gibt und Liebe, Respekt und Wertschätzung als wichtigen Boden für eine tiefe Verbindung und Intimität schafft, in der alle Belange zumindest Platz haben dürfen und ausgesprochen werden können, damit gemeinsam ein Weg gefunden werden kann.