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Yesterday I wrote about how some men want to minimize and not talk about their affairs (whether emotional or physical). As a real-life example, I give you John Edwards.

Last night Edwards, the ex-senator and former presidential candidate, finally admitted to having had an affair, after denying it for months.  This pretty much shatters his carefully-cultivated image of the loyal husband standing by his wife while she battles incurable cancer.

I noticed several interesting things in the television interview that Edwards gave and in the written statement that he released. All of them seem like attempts to minimize the damage.

• The timing was no accident. Fewer people pay attention to news on Friday evenings since it’s the beginning of the weekend. Also, a lot of people were tuned into the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. Finally, Russia’s invasion of Georgia was another distraction.
• The words affair and cheating were never used. He spoke of having had “a liason” and making “a serious error in judgment.” (You think?)
• He said that his had been “99 percent honest” while denying the affair for the past year or so. That’s just laughable.
• But he did say somthing that I find very credible: “in the course of several campaigns, I started to believe that I was special and became increasingly egocentric and narcissistic.” Ah, narcissism, one of my favorite topics. Remember that narcissists believe that they are special and that the rules don’t apply to them. Yeah, that fits here. 

When I work with a couple who are recovering from the husband’s emotional affair, I almost always notice a striking difference between how the man wants to deal with the problem as opposed to how the woman wants to deal with it. The husband, having been caught and/or admitted to the affair, has apologized to his wife and wants to move on right away and put the affair in the past. The wife, on the other hand, says “not so fast, buster.” (OK, she doesn’t actually say that, but that’s what she’s thinking.)

Typically after a few counseling sessions in which the affair is discussed, the husband begins to get frustrated and wonder why we still need to talk about it. After all, he has apologized, right? He feels bad about it, it won’t happen again, etc., etc. What else does he need to do? I have to say to him (sometimes more than once per session) that his wife is not over what happened, that it’s going to take some time for her to recover, and that he needs to trust the counseling process.

So why is it that the man is so anxious to put the affair in the rear-view mirror and move on? Because men are problem-solvers by nature? Yes. Because men don’t like to talk about emotions as much as women do? Of course. But I believe the chief reason is defensive: the husband feels terrible about what he did and it’s painful for him to think about it, let alone talk about it.

Yes, these sessions are difficult for the husband. His wife is crying and talking about how betrayed she feels. My job is to help the husband be empathetic. He needs to understand what is wife is going through and to know how she feels. Ultimately, my goal is for the husband to absolutely convince his wife that he understands what she is going through. Then the healing can begin.

You can now easily and comfortably read this blog (and the rest of the site too) on your mobile phone! The web server will detect browsers that are running on cell phones and will serve condensed pages without any images. This means that web pages will load quickly despite the relatively slow connection speeds that cell phones have. Also, you won’t have to do any painful left-right scrolling.  Give it a try!  Go to http://eastbaycouples.com/blog on your mobile phone. If you have any trouble please let me know and I’ll fix it ASAP.

As I’ve written about before, probably more than half of the couples I meet with tell me that they have communication problems. Following are some questions that I ask to try to clarify exactly what the problem is. Ask yourself these questions!

1. Can you tell your partner about things that are bothering you? Or do you keep those things to yourself because you don’t want to upset your partner? People who don’t talk about hurts can build up resentment.
2. Do you feel “heard” by your partner? Does he/she respect your opinion and consider your point of view?
3. Can you ask for partner for things that you want? Or are you afraid of being turned down or punished in some way?
4. When you are partner disagree about something, do one (or both) of you refuse to talk about it? In other words, does one of you “withdraw” as a defense against possible conflict?
5. Do you wish your partner were more willing to talk to you? Are you lonely and wanting deeper conversations?
6. Does your partner always know how you feel? He/she will only know if you are feel free to talk about your feelings! (See #1)

As I’m sure you are aware, most marriage counseling takes place with both the husband and the wife present. However, over the past year or so I have had a handful of cases in which only one spouse attended counseling because the other spouse refused to come. In almost every case, remarkable progress was made in the marriage as a result of the one spouse’s counseling experience.

I think that an individual who begins marriage counseling without his/her spouse in attendance shows true dedication and commitment. I would have expected that more often it would be the wife who would begin counseling alone, but in my experience it’s been about equally split between husbands and wives.

So how does it work? Obviously, I only get a firsthand report from one person. However, I also strive to figure out how the absent spouse feels about things. I do this by asking the attending individual what the absent spouse says (which would be counsidered inadmissable hearsay evidence in a court!) and then inferring what emotions are in play.

At this point I can begin making concrete suggestions to the attending individual regarding what he/she can do to make immediate improvements to the relationship.

The real payoff is when the absent spouse, impressed by the changes that the other person has made, begins to attend counseling.

I was recently interviewed for the “Workin’ It” website. I’m reposting the interview here:

1. What are the five most common problems that motivate couples to attend marriage counseling?

Here are the top five, but not in any particular order:

Blended family issues. This occurs most often when one of the spouses has been married before and has kids from that marriage. If the kids are at least 10 or so, there can be trouble between them and the stepparent which then becomes trouble in the marriage.

An Affair. One spouse has been caught or has admitted to cheating. This is devastating, of course, and sometimes ends the marriage. But some couples want to work through it, and so they come to counseling.

Porn addiction. This is becoming a bigger issue due to the easy availability of pornography on the Internet. Some men become addicted to porn. They sometimes can hide it for a while, but eventually the problem surfaces.

Stage-of-life crisis. I see this more often in women than in men, believe it or not. The most common case is that of a woman who was a stay-at-home mom but who has something of an identity crisis when the youngest child leaves home. She frequently makes some significant life changes at this point and may re-evaluate whether or not she wants to stay married.

Communication problems. Many couples don’t know how to express their feelings to each other in a healthy way. At one extreme, they may argue constantly. At the other extreme, both people keep their feelings to themselves. Neither option is good.

2. Is it sometimes obvious to you after a session or two that the couple you’re treating would be better off apart?

Yes. For example, if I find out that the husband is physically abusing his wife or is extremely controlling of her and that he is not willing to try to change, then I think it’s better for the wife to leave him. I spent a year working as an intern counselor at a domestic violence shelter, so I am quite familiar with this pattern of behavior on the man’s part. Sometimes the man will claim that he had ‘no choice’ but to hit his wife because she ‘provoked’ him. Or I might find out that the wife has to let her husband know where she is at all times and that she is not ‘allowed’ to go certain places or see her friends. These are all red flags to me.

3. What problems do you sometimes see that can’t be solved through the counseling process?

Occasionally I will get a couple where one spouse has announced that he/she wants out of the marriage. The other spouse doesn’t want the marriage to end and has convinced the unhappy partner to attend counseling in an attempt to patch things up before agreeing to separation or divorce. Unfortunately, by this time it is usually too late to fix things because the unhappy spouse has been unsatisfied for years and already has one foot out the door. This is a case in which the couple should have begun counseling several years earlier.

4. Do couples have to be married to engage your services?

No. I see unmarried couples as well as married ones. This includes young couples who are planning to be married as well as older couples who have no plans to marry. Although many relationship problems are common to both married and unmarried couples, I have noticed that unmarried couples are more likely to have “trust issues.” They suspect that their partner is cheating on them and so will be spying on them by reading their email, checking their phone, looking at their MySpace page, etc. A lot of times people with trust issues have been cheated on in previous relationships so it’s not hard to understand why they fear that it will happen again.

5. Do you occasionally get couples with very minor problems that can be worked out quickly, but simply need an intermediary?

Yes. A couple may be generally happy and satisfied with their relationship but be stuck on one particular issue. It might be something to do with job choice, a financial decision, or a major decision involving children. When this happens they may come to me for a few sessions just to have an impartial third party engender a healthy discussion and point out options that may not have been considered.

6. Do you find that people are often surprised by what is said by their partners during a counseling session?

Yes, this happens sometimes. For example, sometimes a person will ’save’ an issue for the next counseling session rather than bringing it up at home. This is because he/she feels safer discussing the issue with me in the room; I won’t let the discussion get nasty or out of control.

7. What general advice can you give to couples who want a long, successful partnership?

Try to see things from one another’s points of view. I’ve written about this recently on my blog. It sounds easy, but in fact it’s not easy at all and requires some concentration. If you can put yourself in your spouse’s shoes and feel things as if you were in his/her position, you go a long way toward being able to understand him/her. When both spouses understand each other at this level, conflict goes way down.

The sad fact is that many couples will argue just for the sake of trying to convince each other of who is right and who is wrong. They completely gloss over the hurt feelings that caused the argument to begin in the first place. They should really be talking about the hurt feelings and not who is right and who is wrong.

8. How many jobs have you held in your life?

Fast food worker, warehouse clerk, landscaper, radio station engineer, electrical engineer and therapist. I guess that’s six.

Imagine a husband sitting down to the family’s computer. He notices that his wife forgot to log out of her email account before she left for work that morning. Unable to resist the temptation, he looks at some of her email, and finds a message sent to her from one of her male co-workers. The message is inappropriate in that the co-worker says that he thinks the woman is “hot.” Naturally, this gets the husband’s attention, and he calls wife to ask her about it. What does he say? Here are three possibilities:

1. “This email really bothers me. Is there something going on between you and this guy? I hope not. I love you and I don’t want anything to threaten our marriage.” (Secure attachment)
2. “How could you do this to me? I thought you loved me! Now it’s all over. I knew that I couldn’t trust you. I should have started checking up on you a long time ago.” (Anxious attachment)
3. “Fine. Whatever. I hope you have fun with him. I don’t want to talk about this any more. I’ll be at the gym when you get home.” (Avoidant attachment)

Which of these three possibilities is most likely to get a full and honest response from the wife?

Rick,

I didn’t begin this letter with “Dear Rick” because you aren’t dear to me right now. Far from it. So for now “Rick” will have to do. It’s hard for me to even think about your name, let alone say it out loud.

There is no way that you will ever comprehend the magnitude of what you have done to me. The devastation is total. Everything that I married you for, hoped for in you, believed about you, KNEW about you is gone. All of it. There is nothing left. Where do I go from here, Rick? What do you expect me to do?

So even though I don’t believe that you will ever really get how I feel, I’m going to try to explain it anyway. My therapist says it will be cathartic for me to write this letter.

Remember the night you asked me to marry you? I do. I thought it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I’ve always been a dreamer. When I was a little girl I dreamt about the day a man would propose to me. I imagined what it would be like. And then it actually happened. I was the happiest girl in the world. I started to dream about our perfect wedding.

Remember when we talked about what name I would use after we were married? You told me that I should keep my maiden name because it’s my dad’s name and I am so proud of him. You were right. I am so proud of him. But I was marrying YOU and I decided to take your name so that it could be one more thing that we would share. I wanted us to share everything. Rick, I didn’t want to have my world and you have your world. I just wanted us to have OUR world. You could say that I left my family behind and invested my whole life and future in you. EVERYTHING. In YOU, Rick.

Then we had the perfect wedding and started our life together. I was still a dreamer, only now my dreams turned to us having kids, buying our first house, even growing old together.

Those dreams are shattered now. My whole life and future have been ripped away from me over the last few days.

How could you do this, Rick? I put my WHOLE LIFE into this. Everything I did, every thought I had, was about US. I thought you were doing the same for me and that you felt the same way about us. And all the time you were deceiving me. I feel so stupid now for falling for your lies. I cannot believe that you had a secret life that I wasn’t a part of. It’s hard for me to see how I could ever get back to how I used to feel about you or to ever trust you again.

Here’s the part that I don’t understand: I still love you. And that really puts me in such an awful place. I love a man who has treated me like dirt. Where do we go from here, Rick?

This is the hardest letter I’ve ever had to write.

Becky

Note: this is not really a letter from a betrayed spouse. I would never violate a client’s confidentiality. This letter is merely the product of my imagination.

We’ve all heard of a man having a “mid-life crisis” during which he does things like buy a sports car and try to look and act younger in an (ultimately futile) effort to stave off feeling like an old man. This happens to middle-aged men all the time, but lately there is a new phenomenon that affects women who are in mid-life: the Walkaway Wife Syndrome. I have been seeing more of this recently in my marriage counseling practice.

Walkaway Wives usually initiate divorce within a year or two of the youngest child’s graduation from high school, when the home has become an “empty nest.”

Remember that during the early years of a marriage, the wife is typically the primary caretaker of the relationship. As the years go on, if she is unhappy, and her husband is unresponse to her concerns, she may eventually give up on the relationship and “check out” emotionally. However, she keeps this decision a secret because she wants to hold on until all of the kids have left home.

Then one day, “D-Day” in a way, she tells her husband that she wants a divorce. He is taken by surprise: “I had no idea you were unhappy. Why didn’t you tell me?” In fact, she had told him many times, but eventually gave up because he was unresponsive.

At this point, a lot of men will spring into action in an attempt to save the marriage. He’ll get in shape, losing weight and going to the gym. He’ll start to go church. He’ll read relationship books. He becomes very attentive and responsive to his wife for the first time in years.

Now the wife has a dilemma. Are these changes genuine, and will they last? Or will her husband go back to his old ways once she decides to stay in the marriage?

This is a very delicate time in the relationship, and marriage counseling can help the couple navigate through it.

I ran across an online article entitled Why Marriage Counseling Doesn’t Work Anymore which was, not surprisingly, very critical of marriage counseling. The article made many claims that I think are just plain wrong. Here are a few of them of them, along my comments:

“When you turn to marriage counseling, the focus is on behavior, action and doing.”

Not true, at least not in my office. I practice Emotionally Focused Therapy which goes beneath behavior and gets at lower level emotions in order to make lasting changes in a relationship. Making positive behavioral changes is not a bad thing, but they usually don’t last. When you get at the root of the problem, the chances of the changes “sticking” are greatly improved; satisfaction goes up because each partner feels heard and understood.

“Did you know that most marriage counselors do not believe your marriage is valuable?”

This is an outlandish claim! I believe strongly in the value of marriage, and I’ve never met a marriage counselor who feels otherwise. How could a marriage counselor not believe in the value of marriage? Does a medical doctor not believe that wellness is valuable?

“Many of them [marriage counselors] have already divorced”

Since it’s a fact that 50% of marriages end in divorce, I’m sure there are some divorced marriage counselors out there, but what constitutes many? I’ve never been divorced; my wife and I will celebrate our 30th anniversary in August. Of all the therapists (marriage and otherwise) I am personally acquainted with, I would estimate 15% are divorced. Is that many?

“They [marriage counselors] believe marriage is simply expendable and that the kids will be ok.”

Certainly not. Marriage is worth saving, and the negative effects of divorce on kids are well-documented.

“Many of the couples I’ve worked with over the years who have attended marriage counseling told me that their marriage counselor actually advised them to divorce!”

This probably does happen once in a while. However, in my practice, it is very, very rare for me to advise a couple to divorce. One exception to this would be if there is ongoing violence which a man is refusing to address. Then I might recommend divorce, or at least separation, for the safety of the woman and/or children.

“marriage counselors need to take a good look at their massive failure rate and realize that they’re doing more harm than good.”

Wrong. The Journal of Marital and Family Therapy reported a study where clients of 526 marriage counselors were surveyed; 91.2% of the clients said they were satisfied with the amount of help they received.

“they [marriage counselors] prefer to work with each person individually, instead of as a couple.”

Wrong again. I prefer to work with the couple, because the problem is usually not with one of the individuals. The problem is in the relationship, and both people need to be present to work on that.

“Our marriage counselor took sides and made my spouse angry.”

Marriage counselors usually avoid taking sides because it is counterproductive to long-term counseling success. As I mentioned above, the “client” is the relationship, not one or the other of the individuals. That said, if I feel one partner needs to make a change in a particular area, I’ll say so.

“Counselors throw a wrench into the works of marriage by encouraging you to talk about problems”

How do you solve a problem if you don’t talk about it and address it? Would you ignore a problem at work and not talk about it? It’s important to talk about problems early in therapy. It’s how we get at the underlying emotions. Once we get to that point, however, the focus is off the problems and instead is on solutions and using emotions to heal the relationship.

I think it’s safe to say that a large portion of the people bashing marriage counseling are doing so because they want you to buy their book or CDs on how to fix your marriage. Unfortunately, a lot of these folks are unlicensed and/or underqualified.