A Marriage Therapist's Blog
Thoughts on Marriage Counseling
Archive for the ‘Specific Problems’ Category
Over the weekend my wife and I watched the movie Fireproof, a Christian-oriented drama about a thirty-something firefighter, Caleb, whose marriage is in crisis for several reasons, not the least of which is that he is hooked on internet porn and his wife knows it. Caleb and his wife, Catherine, come very close to divorcing, but reconcile at the end of the movie after Caleb gets his act together, cuts out the porn, and starts treating his wife better. (I hope I haven’t spoiled it for anyone who hasn’t seen the film yet - but of course you know the movie has to have a happy ending!)
In addition to his porn problem, Caleb is portrayed as self-centered and a hothead who typically handles his anger by going outside and kicking the trash cans around while screaming his frustrations. Catherine, on the other hand, is trying to be a good wife but is constantly hurt by what her husband says and does.
In a nutshell, the marriage is saved when Caleb takes his wise father’s advice to follow the instructions in a book called The Love Dare, which gives specific details about how to treat your spouse. By doing what The Love Dare says to do, Caleb is transformed from a selfish jerk into a thoughtful and loving husband.
The skeptical among us would wonder if the movie is a cleverly-disguised advertisement for the book (available on Amazon.com!). But I digress.
The advice in The Love Dare is very concrete and behavioral. It’s a 40-day program with a specific instruction for each day. On Day 1 the advice is not to say anything negative to your spouse, and on Day 2 the instruction is to do a surprise nice thing for your spouse (such as buying flowers). This is good advice, and I don’t know any marriage therapist who would argue with it.
Where I have a big problem with the The Love Dare is on Day 23. On that day the instruction is to remove any addictions or influences that are troubling the relationship. Caleb realizes that he is addicted to internet porn so on Day 23 he takes the family’s computer outside and literally demolishes it with a aluminum baseball bat.
This guy needs an anger management class. But again I digress.
Porn is not mentioned after this point in the film, so the viewer infers that Caleb conquered his porn addiction on that single day.
I’m here to tell you that people don’t conquer addictions in a day. Overcoming compulsive behavior is a long process. Addictions such as porn, alcohol, and drugs take a lot of time and effort to defeat - think years, not days.
- Trumpet Vines
- Photo © 2009 Jay Slupesky
As I mentioned in my previous post, marital satisfaction tends to go down after the arrival of the first child if the pregnancy was not planned or, if it was planned, if one (or both) both parents were not in agreement about having a baby or were not enthusiastic about it. Put another way, couples who planned their pregnancy and where both spouses were excited about it can maintain or even increase their satisfaction after the baby arrives.
Parenthood sometimes causes a couple to revert to the “traditional” gender roles because the woman quits her job to stay home with her child. Some couples are quite comfortable with the traditional roles, but for others it can be a source of stress. The man way resent his wife for not contributing to the family’s income, and the woman may resent her husband for not helping with housework and childcare. Hopefully, the couple had decided well in advance whether the woman would stay home or would continue working, and had planned accordingly.
As of January, 2009, material from this website has been plagiarized four times. Each of the offenders was found by the the program “Copyscape,” which I highly recommend. All four offenders removed the copied material after I took action. Here’s a brief blow-by-blow:
- A marriage & family therapist (MFT) in San Francisco took large amounts of material from my home page and used it verbatim as the “couples therapy” page on his website. Copyscape detected this on December 2, 2007. I emailed the offender, who replied within a few hours and apologized. The plagiarized material was removed from his website as of December 8, 2007.
- A MFT couple with offices in Santa Rosa and Petaluma, California, took 174 words from my home page and wove it into the main page of their site. Copyscape detected this on December 7, 2007. I emailed the offenders, who did not reply to me. After waiting 48 hours, I contacted their web hosting company and asked that either the plagiarizers be required to remove the copied material from their website, or, failing that, that the hosting company remove the site from the Web. This is my right under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). I received a reply from the hosting company saying that would investigate. As of December 12, the copied material had been removed from the other site. Update: on December 17, I received an emailed apology from the offenders.
- On June 21, 2008, Copyscape reported that a blog called Family Marriage Counseling : 11 Stubborn Barriers had copied my post Has Your Marriage Therapist Even Been in Therapy? in its entirety. The blog owner’s email address was nowhere to be found on the blogsite, so I had no way to contact him/her. Therefore, I fired off a DMCA complaint by fax to Blogger, the blog hosting site (which is owned by Google). I heard from the Blogger legal department after a couple of days; they said they would look into it. As of June 25, 2008, my work has been removed from the other blog.
- On December 23, 2008, Copyscape reported that a blog called Ask the Marriage Counselor had copied two of my posts: Those Cheatin’ Hearts and Glass Half Empty? Relationship Trouble Ahead!. The posts were copied word-for-word and in their entirety. Again, I fired off a DMCA complaint by fax to Blogger, the blog hosting site. Once again, Blogger did their job, and as of January 6, 2009, my work has been removed from the other blog.
- “Turning Torso” apartment building, Malmo, Sweden
Snooping on spouses has been taken to the next level. The next lower level, that is. I just started hearing about it recently and this one is downright creepy. Before I get into this devious new method, though, let’s review the common garden-variety spouse-snooping that has been going on for some time. All of it is made possible by modern technology such as the internet and cell phones.
- Who is the the spouse calling and texting? If a cell phone is left unattended, it’s easy to review text messages sent and received as well as check the call logs to see all incoming and outgoing calls. And if the cell phone is not easily accessible (perhaps it’s being carefully guarded), the phone bill, showing all calls made and received, can be checked online on the cell company’s website.
- What is the spouse doing online? If a computer password is easy to guess, of if an account is accidentally left logged on, the suspicious person can read all email sent and received and see all websites visited (unless the computer user intentionally deletes this information).
I want to be clear that I do not recommend spying on your spouse. In other words, don’t try this at home!
OK - I hear you asking - what is the new and scary way that spouses are spying on one another? They’re doing it with the location-reporting features built into the newest cell phones. Verizon calls their service “Chaparone” and according to their website it allows you to “easily locate your family member’s cell phone from your Verizon Wireless phone or your PC - in real time, at any time.” The service will show you on a map where the person is, and it can even give you the street address! In other words, you can be tracked wherever you go. No need to hire a private detective any more.
Sprint cellular offers the same service; they call it “Family Locator.”
Most of Verizon’s and Sprint’s promotion of this service is understandably centered around keeping track of where your children are. But if you read carefully they do make it clear that the service can track any other person who is on your cell phone plan.
So how could a person spy on his spouse this way without the spouse knowing about it? Here’s how. Buy the spouse a new phone (makes a great Christmas gift!) which has the Chaparone capability. Then simply turn on the Chaparone feature before giving the phone to the spouse. Of course, don’t say anything about the Chaparone service. Then start tracking her from your PC or your phone.
You don’t believe people would do this to their spouse? They would and they have.
Again, I do not recommend spying on your spouse. My motivation for writing about this new technology is only to warn people that it exists and could happen to you.
This week I’m in Phoenix, studying treatments for sex addiction at workshop given by the International Institute for Truma and Addiction Profesionals (IITAP). I’ve been interested in sex addiction for a some time, mainly because of the number of men I’ve worked with who had an internet pornography addiction.
This workshop is being led by Dr. Patrick Carnes, who was a pioneer in the research and treatment of sex addiction. His book, Out of the Shadows: Understanding Sexual Addiction, written in 1983, was the groundbreaking book in the field. Also teaching is Dr. Kenneth Adams, who has also written books on the topic.
Sex addiction is an increasing problem in our society, due in large part to the internet. Online, it is easy to access pornography of every variety, find partners for casual anonymous sex, and locate prostitutes. The discovery by a spouse or partner of a secret sex addiction is, of course, very damaging, and often brings couples into marital therapy.
Are you married to a narcissist? Not sure? Some (but not all) of the characteristics of a person with Narcissistic Personality Disorder are:
- Lacks empathy for you and for others. This may surface as an inability to pay attention to you when you are talking.
- Requires excessive admiration from you.
- Exaggerates his or her achievements.
- Takes advantage of you and others.
- Has a sense of entitlement.
That’s not a complete list, nor it is it enough to make a definitive diagnosis, but it should be food for thought. By the way, there are more male narcissists than female ones, so I will use the pronouns “he” and “his” for the rest of this article.
Narcissism is something I am looking for from the very first marriage therapy session. One clue is that the narcissist will typically try to get me to take his side and try to convince me that all (or almost all) of the problems in the marriage are actually attributable to his wife’s shortcomings. He will, of course, fail on both counts: I won’t take his side, nor will I believe that everything is his wife’s fault.
Trying to convince the marriage counselor that everything is the fault of the other person was deemed the fundamental attribution error by John Gottman. I like that terminology. And I have yet to see a case where everything wrong with the relationship was the fault of just one of the spouses.
So, once I realize that one of the spouses is a narcissist, what to do? I have to tell him, right? Well, that news isn’t always well-received by someone who thinks he is special and superior to others, so I have to do some of that professional marriage therapist “stuff” and handle it with kid gloves.
I work hard to increase empathy between the two partners during couples counseling, and clearly that is going to take more time with the narcissist. But I’m up for the challenge.
A Brief History of Plagiarism & Copyright Infrigement of this Website
©2007 - 2010 Jay Slupesky, M.A., MFT. All rights reserved.
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