Dr. Mark Goulston is a former UCLA professor who helps high performing leaders, senior management and sales people reach their full potential using skills he learned training FBI and police hostage negotiators. He is a member of the National Association of Corporate Directors and the Worldwide Association of Business Coaches and writes the weekly Tribune syndicated career advice column, "Solve Anything with Dr. Mark" and columns on leadership for FAST COMPANY and Directors Monthly . He is frequently called upon to share his expertise with regard to contemporary business, national and world news by television, radio and print media including: Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Fortune, Newsweek, Time, Los Angeles Times, ABC/NBC/CBS/Fox/CNN/BBC News, Oprah, and Today. Mark Goulston is the author of Get Out of Your Own Way: Overcoming Self-Defeating Behavior,  Get Out of Your Own Way at Work and PTSD for Dummies. For more information visit: www.markgoulston.com.

Guest Blogger Mark Goulston--

                                                  To err is human,
                                to take full responsibility for it,
                        face and pay all the consequences, divine

We and Eliot Spitzer may never know why he did what he did? It’s unclear if we or Bill Clinton ever figured out why he did what he did.

But what is clear is the “rubbernecking” that this story is causing as if people are watching some roadside disaster. The attraction may be that the exposure of Spitzer’s immoral, not to mention illegal behavior, is causing waves of anxiety
among the not-yet-caught men who are flirting with similar disasters and the women who love them. It has been a bad few days for denial.

I can imagine millions of men who have been cheating on their wives through prostitutes or mistresses or tip toeing into their dens and home offices to lose themselves in the world of pornography, scurrying around to erase phone numbers
and delete computer files and swear to themselves that they will never engage in such behavior again.

I can also imagine these men looking more guilty than usual and raising the suspicions of their wives.

Finally I can imagine volatile confrontations taking place that are finally exposing marital infidelity of one form or another.

If such activities are exposed, can the damage be undone? Once trust is broken by betrayal, can it be regained?

There is a road back, but it takes practicing the 4 R's to respond to the 4 H's you triggered in the other person by betraying their trust.

The 4 R's:

   1. To ease the HURT you need to demonstrate REMORSE to show that you know you damaged something in them, by looking them directly in the eye and admitting you're truly sorry, with no excuses (this is the stumbling block for very
narcissistic people and something Bill Clinton had trouble with during the Monica situation)
  

   2. To respond to the HATE you need to show RESTITUTION and offer a payback for what you took away from them by giving up something that matters to you or letting them verbally punch themselves out at you for making them feel crazy
while you lied to them 

   3. To lower their HESITATION TO TRUST you need to REHABILITATE yourself to let them see a new way of dealing with those situations that caused you to stray and that you actually prefer to your old destructive behavior
  

   4. To get them to stop HOLDING ONTO A GRUDGE, you need to REQUEST FORGIVENESS after practicing those 3 R’s for a minimum of 6 months so they can become a part of your personality

If the other person is still unable to forgive you after that, you are no longer unforgivable (if you haven’t gone beyond betrayal into abuse), they are unforgiving.

It's clear what is in it for you if they forgive you, but what's in it for them? When you earnestly practice the 4 R's above, you enable the person you injured to go from fear and loathing to feeling safe, trusting and even liking you again---and that feeling is called, "euphoria."

*A full explanation of the 4 H’s and 4 R’s and how to use them to rebuild trust is available in The 6 Secrets of a Lasting Relationship: How to Fall in Love Again…and Stay There (Perigee) by Mark Goulston with Philip Goldberg.

What Was Eliot Spitzer Thinking?           More Insight From Mark Goulston