A Marriage Therapist's Blog
Thoughts on Marriage Counseling
Posts Tagged ‘cheating’
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.
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.
Some couples who come in for counseling have severe “trust issues.” I see this most often in younger couples who are not married. The couple may not have been together for very long, and most likely were in previous relationships where one or both had experienced a cheating partner.
In the most severe cases, a person may be obsessing over whether or not their partner is cheating, even if there is no evidence or reason to suspect. A nightly checking of the partner’s cell phone to scroll through the text messages, or looking for multiple calls to an unrecognized phone number, or breaking into the partner’s email account to look for any incriminating emails are all things some partners do to convince themselves that no cheating is going on.
There are a couple of questions to address here:
- What can be done when a person is obsessing over his/her partner’s trustworthiness? In this case, traditional treatments for obsessions, such as the “thought stopping” technique, can be valuable. Three simple methods to use are:
- Thought Replacement: when an unwanted thought enters your mind, immediately replace it with a healthy, rational thought. You can only think about one thing at at time, so crowd out the “bad” thought.
- Thought Stopping: when you catch yourself with the unwanted thought, immediately shout Stop! either aloud or only in the mind. Continue to shout Stop! until the unwanted thought ceases.
- Thought Disputing: Challenge the unwanted thoughts that come into your mind, asking: “Is this a rational thought? If not, what is irrational about it? What do I need to do to change this idea?”
- How can I really learn to trust the person I love? (I am assuming, of course, that the person really does deserve your trust, in other words, that they are not cheating.) Trust can be defined as “a measure of belief in the honesty, benevolence and competence of the other party.” How can you expect to spend the rest of your life with someone you will always suspect? Some believe that when you enter into a new relationship, you are starting all over again and can leave the baggage from a previous relationships behind. While that may be possible, it doesn’t always happen. The fact is that when you move onto a new relationship, hurts from the past are still present. Give yourself and your relationship time to build trust. If we have spent enough time with our partner to develop strong feelings for them, trust should be part of that. Do some research on the topic of trust: what does it really mean and how can each of us reach the goal of trusting together?
Trust is a vitally important part of any relationship. If you feel the need to do any of the checking mentioned above, how about trying some of these ways to start trusting your partner?
Recently I’ve been counseling a larger-than-usual number of couples who have issues with lying in their relationship. Yes, that’s right: husbands and wives who lie to one another! I think most people would agree that lying is a sign of dysfunction in the relationship. If you can’t be honest with your life partner, something is very wrong,
Psychologists who study dishonesty say that a person who is lying is undergoing strain just by being dishonest. This stress can usually be measured by skin and heart sensors, as in a lie detector. Besides the stress of telling the lie, it can be mentally tough to continue the deception, as sometimes more lies must be told to cover up the fact of the original lie.
So why do spouses lie to one another? I’ve noticed three reasons:
- To avoid an argument. The dishonest individual is afraid to tell the truth because it is not what the other person wants to hear, and therefore, being honest could result in conflict. What is the solution to this? Learn how to communicate so that you can talk about things you disagree about without arguing. This includes being respectful of your partner’s position even if you disagree with it.
- To defend against low self-esteem. In this case, the dishonest person doesn’t like himself/herself too well, and believes the partner feels the same way (Freud called this defense mechanism projection.) This is hard to accept, of course, so the lying person inflates accomplishments and denies things that would make him/her look bad. The liar wants to convince others that he/she is not so bad after all. What is the solution to this type of lying? Individual work to increase self-esteem.
- To cover up cheating.This is the big one, of course. All kinds of cheating, including physical affairs, emotional affairs, and porn addictions, must be covered up. Solution? Stop cheating on your spouse.
One final thought. When a spouse gets caught lying, he/she sometimes will only confess to as little of the truth as possible, and continue lying about the rest. I see this happen over and over again in marriage counseling, and I have found that it is not a good idea. When the rest of the truth comes out at some point in the future, the damage is just as great as when the original disclosure occurred. It’s best to come clean and admit everything.
I gave u the 411 abt emo affairs in a post lst Oct.
FYI emo affairs R strng friendshps btw ppl who R attrctd to 1 another, but who dnt have sex.
4 xampl, a mn & a wmn who mEt ofn 4 lunch & tlk bout dEp issuz (like probs w/ their m8s).
L8ly Ive sEn a nu twist: emo affairs that R done mostly by txt msgs!
Of corz, U can B busted if ur m8 looks at the cell fone bill & sees there R way 2 mnE txt msgs!
We may LOL at this, but plz member that emo affairs R FUBAR b/c ur cheatin on ur m8. 
U shd B spendin ur tym & emos on him or her, not NE1 else. 
B ur m8’s BFF!
C U l8r.
When there has been infidelity in a couple who is in marriage therapy, questions about rigorous honesty and disclosure usually arise. This is because the unfaithful spouse has been keeping secrets and telling lies. In some cases, he (I’ll assume it’s the husband who was unfaithful) may even have been living a double life, sometimes the good husband/father, but at other times the drinking/flirting/sneaking cheater.
Part of the healing process is to restore honesty, openness, and transparency. Confession is part of this. However, hearing the truth can be very painful to the aggrieved spouse. Handling this disclosure process in marriage therapy can be tricky.
I ask the wife how much detail she wants to know. I find that some wives want to know only in general what happened, while others want to know all the details. But by letting her decide how much material will be shared, I am able to give her a small sense of power in this situation in which she may feel powerless and helpless.
If there have been many acts of infidelity, it’s typical for the unfaithful spouse to only admit to as few as he thinks he can get away with revealing. I know this in advance, and I tell him that it will be much better for the health of the relationship if he comes clean right away with everything that he did. Only admitting part of it, then maybe a little more later on, then a little more as necessary, is called staggered disclosure, and it’s much more damaging to the aggrieved spouse, because she is never sure if she has heard everything yet. This makes it more difficult to rebuild trust in the relationship.
The emotional affair is something I’ve been seeing more and more of recently in my marital therapy practice. In fact, the discovery of an emotional affair causes many couples in to begin marriage counseling.
Emotional affairs are more common than sexual affairs. One recent study indicated that 44% of husbands and 57% of wives have had an emotional affair. That’s right: more women than men!
The terminology emotional affair causes confusion among some people. Everyone knows that affairs are bad, and that they involve sex with someone other than the spouse. But what is an emotional affair? Well, in a nutshell, it’s an affair without the sex! Why call it an affair if it doesn’t involve sex? Because it is a romantic relationship with someone else, and because it involves emotional intimacy with the non-spouse.
How can an emotional affair damage a marriage? Let me count the ways:
- It seriously injures the secure feeling of attachment that the uninvolved spouse feels.
- It creates emotional distance between spouses.
- The involved spouse usually shares intimate details (including dissatisfaction) about his/her marriage with the affair partner.
- Time spent with the affair partner may mean less time spent with the uninvolved spouse.
- It typically increases deception and secrecy as the involved spouse tries to hide the affair from the uninvolved spouse.
- Some emotional affairs become full-blown sexual affairs.
When does a friendship cross the line to an emotional affair?
- When you are thinking more about your affair partner than about your spouse.
- When you get jealous while hearing about your affair partner’s love life.
- When you have sexual fantasies about your affair partner, or at least wonder what it would be like to kiss or touch him/her.
- When you hide the extent of the involvement from your spouse.
- When you share intimate details about your marriage with your affair partner.
Why would a man want an emotional affair? Men are more sexually motivated and generally less emotional, so what does a man gain from being in an emotional affair? My theory on this is that the following aspects appeal to some men:
- There is a thrill to be felt because of the danger and secrecy of the illicit meetings.
- Knowing that someone else finds him attractive can boost a man’s sagging self-esteem.
- There is a fantasy that someday the affair will become sexual.
What does a marriage therapist do when presented with an emotional affair? In brief, I work to help the couple understand what was so wrong with their relationship that an outside relationship was even considered, let alone pursued. Then I help the couple to repair those weaknesses.
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