707 | Repairing the Marriage Bond: An Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy Approach Following Infidelity

Genesis provides an account of God’s creation of joining a man and a woman in covenantal marriage. This description established a sense of belonging, well-being, and safety for the man and woman through a unifying, secure attachment. While a biblical worldview defines the marriage union as sacred, eternal, and picturesque of Christ’s commitment to His Bride, infidelity shatters it. This traumatic blow to one’s perceived secure attachment often leaves both the offending and non-offending partners dealing with traumatic reactions, including depression, anxiety, hypervigilance, loneliness, shame, and despair. Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT) is an empirically-based treatment that has demonstrated positive outcomes in repairing attachment injury. This presentation will discuss the efficacy of utilizing EFCT as a spiritually integrated psychotherapy treatment for willing Christian couples recovering from infidelity. It will analyze the three stages of EFCT through a biblical lens, describe integrated interventions that are value-driven and structured for working with Christian couples who believe in this biblical worldview, and provide an attachment repair model for a therapist to be both clinically sound and spiritually attentive in recovery work with Christian couples.