Unspoken Loss: Men, Infidelity, and Disenfranchised Grief

Unspoken Loss: Men, Infidelity, and Disenfranchised Grief addresses the realities of infidelity with a sharp focus on how men who commit infidelities can experience personal healing. It is the first book to address all three topics of masculinity, infidelity, and disenfranchised grief together. And they must be addressed together for healing for both partners—betrayer and betrayed—to occur. Disenfranchised grief is grief that a person feels cannot be spoken. When grief is not spoken, especially during infidelity recovery, the experience can often be misunderstood by the betrayed partner as resistance to change, lack of compliance with the goals of recovery, anger, or ambivalence. This book helps both partners understand and identify the disenfranchised grief that is often present in infidelity. That's why it can help build a stronger and more effective future for both partners. Sexual and emotional infidelities can happen in good relationships and good relationships can heal from infidelities—if both partners are working on the healing together. Both partners are affected. Both partners are injured. Both partners struggle. However, the journey to healing is different for each partner as they work to heal different emotional wounds—that's what this book details. Successfully healing after infidelity allows for a more secure relationship supported by greater insight, effective communication, and connected intimacy.