A Marriage Therapist's Blog
Thoughts on Marriage Counseling
Posts Tagged ‘emotional affair’
In working with couples who have recovered from infidelity, I’ve pieced together the thought process that gets people into and out of affairs. I’ve written the following from the perspective of a man, but it wouldn’t be too much different for a woman. By the way, this thinking (except for the parts about sex) applies to emotional affairs as well as physical ones.
- Excitement. “Wow! An attractive woman likes me! Yes! Even though I’m [insert age here] I’m still in good shape and attractive. I’ve still ‘got it’! This is going to be great. I haven’t felt this much excitement in my life for a long time. We’re going to have a lot of fun and I’m going to be happier now. My girlfriend understands me, unlike my wife, who hasn’t understood me for years. I just have to be careful so that my wife will never find out about it. Actually the sneaking around part adds to the excitement!”
- Boredom. “This is starting to become monotonous. And it’s getting harder to sneak out of work and then to make excuses at home. My wife is asking why we aren’t intimate anymore, and at the same time the sex with my girlfriend is boring now. That excitement I felt a few months ago is gone. And my girlfriend is starting to annoy me; she wants to know where this ‘relationship’ is going.”
- Reality. “Maybe my wife isn’t really the problem, because things weren’t any better with my girlfriend. Maybe I have some issues of my own that I should look at. Maybe it’s true that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side of the fence. I’ve cut things off with my girlfriend, but my wife is very suspicious because of some e-mails that she found. I wonder if I should come clean with her or if it’s better to keep denying everything. I really hope my wife doesn’t leave me.”
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.
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:
- “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)
- “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)
- “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?
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.
I figure that I lot of people must be curious about what a marriage therapy session is like. The marriage therapy scenes in television and movies never seem very authentic to me, with the possible exception of the HBO series Tell Me You Love Me. So I decided to write a script of a sample therapy session for you to read. Please know that this is not the transcript of an actual therapy session. This is a fictional session; it is the product of my imagination. I would never violate a client’s privacy!
This is a first session, so I have not met with the couple before. My goals in the first session are: (1) to build an alliance between myself and the clients by showing that they can trust me and that I understand their feelings, and (2) to begin to understand what issues are facing the couple and causing them to be in conflict.
So here we go…
Therapist: Welcome.
Husband: Thanks.
Therapist: So tell me a little about yourselves. How long have you guys been together?
Wife: Together for eleven years, and we’ve been married almost eight years.
Husband: Our anniversary is next month.
Therapist: I see. Did you live together before you got married?
Wife: Yes, for a while…a little over a year, I guess.
Husband: And we had another roommate too! It was an interesting situation.
Therapist: Wow! That must have been tricky at times!
Both: (laughter)
Therapist: Do you guys have kids?
Wife: Yeah. Two.
Therapist: Tell me a little about them.
Wife: We have a boy who is six. He just started kindergarten. And we have a daughter who is almost four.
Husband: I’ll say right off the bat that my wife is a great mom.
Therapist: That must mean a lot to you. You appreciate that about her a lot.
Husband: That’s true. She’s really good with the kids. I don’t have nearly the patience with them that she does.
Wife: It’s easy. They’re good kids. We’re really lucky.
Therapist: And is this the first marriage for both you?
Husband: Yes, for me it is. For both of us, actually.
Wife: Yeah.
Therapist: OK. Well, what brings you into my office? How can I help?
Wife: (to husband) Do you want to go first?
Husband: (to wife) No, you go ahead.
Wife: OK. Well, starting about six months ago I guess, I just started to feel distant from him, like something had changed. I didn’t know why. I knew I loved him as much as I ever did. I thought we were a happy family. But we just weren’t connected, you know? I worried about it all the time. And I would ask him what was wrong. Please tell me what is wrong. But he always said that he was fine, don’t worry about it.
Therapist: I can understand why you would be worried. You feared that something bad had happened to your relationship, something you didn’t even know about.
Wife: Exactly. And then after a while I started to wonder if there was someone else. He swore there wasn’t, but I didn’t know if I believed him. So one day I checked his emails. He had forgotten to sign out before he left for a doctor appointment. And then I saw all the emails from this woman that he works with. Someone who I had met at the office Christmas party, and I thought she seemed nice. I had no clue that she was talking to my husband behind my back. They were emailing each other, like, five times a day. And I read all the emails that he had sent to her, talking about how he wasn’t happy with me but felt like he had to stay because of the kids. (starts to cry)
Therapist: That must have felt like such a betrayal. And I can see that while you’re sitting here now, thinking about that day, it still hurts.
Wife: (still crying) I was furious. I had always trusted him. So now I find out that he’s got something going on with another woman. And then I realized, to add insult to injury, he’d been lying about it, denying it when I asked him. I felt like such a fool.
OK. That ends part 1. More to come in our next episode.
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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