Clearly affairs and there sorry fallout sell newspapers. In Adelaide, the decision by Mel Gibson’s wife to apply for divorce on account of his reputed infidelity has made front page headlines. This is possibly because their relationship is reported to have begun in this city but the fascination with the topic is broader than this. For therapists the private disclosure of an affair by one person where a couple has attended for marital therapy leaves the practitioner with a particularly difficult clinical and ethical dilemma. Should one urge the errant party to disclose to their partner or is it better to ‘leave well alone’ particularly as we know the distress that such a revelation will no doubt have?

This is the subject addressed by Butler, Harper and Seedall in their paper ‘Facilitated Disclosure versus Clinical Accommodation of Infidelity Secrets: An Early Pivot Point in Couple Therapy’, published in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy January 2009, Vol. 35, No. 1, 125–143. According to an American National survey of marital and family therapists, 96% stated that they would maintain a confidentially disclosed infidelity secret. These authors suggest that the issue needs to be more fully explored and that the ethical question be addressed by using theoretical concepts of attachment and intimacy in a decision to facilitate disclosure as opposed to agreeing to support secrecy. In particular they argue that the infidelity itself ‘represents a fundamental contradiction to one’s confidence in the partner “being for” the other in their couple relationship. Instead infidelity looks like one’s partner “being for” himself or herself or another, in opposition to one’s own well being and expectations. Further, the secret keeping is an obstruction to both parties attachment intimacy with the secreted parts of the self representing a disconnection resulting in a relationship that is a ‘staged façade of intimacy rather than a real-life enactment of intimacy’. They argue that neither attachment intimacy nor attachment security can be achieved by maintaining the secret and that while disclosure will also devastate it allows the possibility for the ‘healing ordeal’ that secrecy does not.

This is a complex  paper and requires attention in it’s reading but it is well worth the effort and by the end it is hard to disagree with the authors contention that ‘facilitating disclosure of infidelity, although difficult and demanding represents the most ethical action and offers the best prospect for a renewed and vital intimate attachment relationship.’