Straight Talk On Relationships

HAVE YOU CHOSEN TO STAY WHILE YOUR PARTNER CONTINUES TO HAVE AN AFFAIR? IF SO, IT’S TIME TO LOOK AT THAT DECISION

It may be surprising to know that many people decide to stay in their marriages while their partner’s openly having an affair.  There are many reasons for this including:

• Fear of being alone
• Believing that if they stay and do everything right their partner will come to his/her senses and decide to end the affair
• Lack of resources and finances
• A desperate longing to be loved

If you are making this same choice, I want you to do so while being conscious of the repercussions of that decision.  In the short run this decision might feel good--you get to put off a sudden end to the marriage, you still get a part of your partner, and as long as your partner stays you feel somewhat loved. 

The problem happens…in the long run.

STAND BY YOUR MAN…TO DO OR NOT TO DO: SHOULD GOVERNOR ELIOT SPITZER’S WIFE BE STANDING BY HER MAN…LITERALLY?

Another one bites the dust; it seems as though the politicians in this country are dropping like flies.  Whether it’s a heterosexual affair with an intern, a gay affair with another man, or string of sexual indiscretions with prostitutes, things are heating up in the political world. 

Unfortunately it is not only the offending individuals who are paying the price.

The ripple effect of these betrayals is enormous, touching the lives of the spouses, children, colleagues, employees, and our entire political system.  The spouses are devastated, the children ridiculed and teased, employees are forced to clean out their offices while the next political target comes in, and the faith in our Nations’ political system is shaken once again.

The behavior of one, impacts the lives of many... 

AFFAIRS AND HONESTY…to a point

In response to my last post a couple people have written to me regarding the ideal degree of disclosure in affairs. I want to thank those voices for reminding me to clarify my message.

My last post was regarding a very specific aspect of affairs and disclosure: your partner finds out there is someone else you are interested in, knows something is going on, and asks if you and this other person have been sexual. I believe in honesty when asked this question.

What I’ve found is many people answer this question by lying. They deny that there was any sex yet they admit to having feelings for the person. Some people become so adamant they didn’t have sex that they begin to turn it on their partner and accuse them of not trusting them. This is off.

If you are trying to heal your relationship, I don’t believe you can do that starting with a lie. Your partner will begin to feel crazy, s/he will be plagued with doubt because her/his gut is saying one thing yet you’re saying something else, and you will feel forced to keep up this lie for the remainder of your marriage. If it comes out later, you often will have a much more difficult time healing from it than if you were just honest from the beginning.

That said… Frank wrote:
“I think it totally depends on the level of detail. I have had three affairs in my twenty plus years of marriage. When my wife learned of this, she obsessed over every little detail. It made little difference in telling her, it didn't resolve the pain she felt. Nor did it help us to move forward. In fact, I think hearing the tiny bits of where we met, what we discussed, what we did, etc only made it worse. I advise both of you to decide early on if you wish to work through this to pick an appropriate level of detail.”

AFFAIRS…NOW THAT YOU’RE CAUGHT DO YOU TELL THE TRUTH?

I’ve worked with many couples over the years impacted by affairs. Inevitably the partner who was cheated on wants to know all the details; in particular, they want to know if their partner had sex with this person.

So what’s the right answer? Do you tell your partner you did and run the risk of him/her ending the relationship or do you lie and hope like hell you never get caught? First, let me just say this is not an easy decision to make; I understand the fear surrounding telling the truth. And…I believe telling the truth is the best avenue. Pulling a Bill Clinton, as history has shown, can often back fire and lead to a much rougher road in the end.

If you had an affair, and you truly want to work things out with your spouse/significant other, then I believe honesty is the best policy. Being honest about what really went on allows you to focus on repairing the relationship without having to keep up a lie. It allows you to start fresh with integrity.

RELATIONSHIP TRUISM: TRUST CAN TAKE A MOMENT TO BREAK AND A LIFETIME TO GET BACK

One of the most common things I see in my work with couples is a breach of trust. This breach can take the form of an affair, a hidden addiction, repetitive lies, misrepresentations of the facts (over and over again), broken promises etc. The fact that this occurs frequently may not be a surprise to anyone; people make mistakes and do things they regret all the time. As long as we are not repeating the same mistakes and are doing our best to repair them, then it’s just part of being human.

What is surprising to me however, is the expectation by the offending partner, that as soon as s/he apologizes, everything should go back to normal. This is crazy…especially if the damage s/he did was big (i.e. affair, addiction, repetitive lies and broken promises). In some cases, there isn’t even an apology and the offending partner feels entitled to forgiveness. This is even crazier!

The reality is: Trust can take a moment to break and a lifetime to get back.

The length of the road is largely determined by the offending partner and how s/he goes about repairing the damage done. If you do everything right, it may take only a couple years. If you don’t do everything right, you’re looking at a very long road.

ARE YOU HONEST IN YOUR RELATIONSHIPS? IS DISHONESTY REALLY THAT HARMFUL?

People lie to one another all the time in relationships. One partner has an affair and swears up and down that nothing is going on. Another person promises that s/he quit smoking weeks ago, then their partner finds they have been sneaking cigarettes daily. Johnny tells Susan he doesn’t smoke pot anymore; when Susan leaves the house he gets high with a friend. Steve swears to Jodi that he hasn’t looked at porn in months; the next day she catches him on a porn site.

There are many different ways to lie: blatant lies, subtle lies of omission, (don’t ask, don’t tell, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas”), “tricky truths,” half truths, mis-representations, and on and on. Our culture feeds on lies. Our highest officials blatantly lie to us all the time: (“Read my lips—I will not raise taxes,” “I did not have sex with that woman,” “There are weapons of mass destruction…”). The lies are endless and happen all the time to all kinds of people.

Each example, I have no doubt, would have a different explanation for the lie. One lie is to protect a spouse from pain, another is to protect a country from terrorism, another is to protect a person from losing his job and his family from losing his income, and another is to protect someone perhaps from a hate crime. All are lies, no matter how we explain them.

So why do we tell them?

The lies are unending in part because as long as nobody ever finds out about it, there’s no problem. You see, the seductive thing about lies is they can keep people out of trouble. Lies can hold off a fight, reduce the level of anger and disappointment between partners, protect someone’s feelings, stave off intense pain, stop a conflict, save a job, and can even, on occasion, save marriages--if they’re never found out.

“I WASN’T GETTING MY NEEDS MET IN MY MARRIAGE SO I GOT THEM MET OUTSIDE IT”: IS AN AFFAIR EVER JUSTIFIED?

After working with countless couples impacted by affairs, I’d like to clear up a common misunderstanding. The notion that it’s okay to go outside of your marriage to get your emotional and sexual needs met because they’re not getting met in the marriage…is a crazy notion. Put another way, there is no excuse, justification, or rationalization to have an affair.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the state of a marriage used as an excuse for having an affair. Often both partners buy into this excuse; the person being cheated on says they knew their partner hadn’t been happy for a while and the person who cheated, says they’ve been miserable for a long time and nothing seemed to change.

It’s not uncommon for affairs to serve as a long overdue wake-up call for couples. Upon discovery of the affair, all of a sudden the two people, who were so miserable together prior to the affair, are now working their butts off to create the relationship they never had.

Too bad they deprived themselves of this opportunity prior to bringing a third person into their relationship and bed.

EMOTIONAL AFFAIRS: “We’re just friends” is a dangerous line in relationships

The concept of the emotional affair seems to be getting more and more attention of late. I was just reading an article at USAToday.com by Karen S. Peterson (You may be interested reading it yourself at: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2003-01-08-workplace-usat_x.htm) about this very phenomenon.

Emotional affairs have been prevalent in several of the couples I’ve worked with over the years. More often than not, one partner begins to question a particular relationship the other partner is having with someone else and inevitably I will hear some variation of the response, “We’re just friends.” I still find myself surprised by how often I hear this line.

It’s not at all uncommon for this line to be followed up with some type of attempt to reassure the partner that s/he has nothing to worry about either because they don’t find that person “remotely attractive”, the other person’s married, or they will swear they would never do anything to harm this relationship. (Does this sound at all familiar to those of you who have been cheated on already?)

Just like sexual affairs, emotional affairs start with two people connecting more frequently with one another through jokes, e-mails, and conversations. As they begin to feel more comfortable with one another, they increase their level of conversations. Gradually they begin to have deeper conversations--co-commiserating about bad days/marriages/events etc.

THE UNDERBELLY OF AFFAIRS AND JEALOUSY: Can anyone relate to Astronaut Lisa Nowak’s feelings?

The closing line of act III of William Congreve's The Mourning Bride is:
Heav'n has no rage like love to hatred turn'd
Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn'd.

The more familiar quote derived from this is, "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned". I would change this to, “Hell hath no fury like a woman or a man scorned”…but let’s not quibble.

Either way, I’m sure many people can relate to this idea. In fact, I’m betting that many people reading this quote are shaking their heads thinking, “Isn’t that the truth!”

I wonder how many people can relate to the feelings Astronaut Lisa Nowak may have had that led her to do such an extreme act. She traveled miles and miles, in a diaper no less, to confront a woman she thought was in competition with her for another man’s affections. She’s married with children, yet she risked it all to confront this woman (perhaps to kidnap and murder too?). What the h*ll was she thinking? The truth is, she wasn’t thinking, she was reacting.

I hear from people all the time wanting to do something hurtful to the person their partner had an affair with. In fact, it is not uncommon for murders to occur between “loved ones” as a result of jealousy and affairs. Murder--isn’t that extreme? Well, of course it is, and when a person is “scorned” it feels extreme to them.

THE ROAD TO MANY HURTFUL CH0ICES IS OFTEN PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS: Relationship turmoil

My son accidentally stepped on his sister’s foot the other day and when she yelped “OUCH!” my son replied, “WHAT?! It’s not like I meant to do it.” I explained that his intention had nothing to do with how much it hurt. I also let him know that he needed to apologize for the pain it caused even though it was an accident.

This incident led me to thinking about how often adults do this. Adults will often use their intentions as a way of minimizing the impact of what they do. Some examples of this include:

• “Well, it’s not like I intended to have an affair; it just happened.”
• “I didn’t mean to hurt you, I was just angry and I blurted it out.”
• “It’s not like I meant to embarrass you in front of your colleagues. I didn’t realize they were
behind me.”

Your intentions are irrelevant when your behavior causes pain. It doesn’t matter if you intended to have an affair, the fact is you did…and it caused a tremendous amount of pain. The fact that you lost your temper and called your wife a b*tch or your husband a son of a b*tch doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt or it wasn’t out of line and disrespectful. It was. Own it. Take responsibility for your actions whole-heartedly, without excusing them due to your intentions.