Normalize therapy.

The Anxious-Avoidant Trap: Why One of You Reaches and the Other Goes Quiet

Mon, 21 Sep 2026 12:00:30 +0000

For couples where one of you keeps reaching and the other keeps shutting down, this episode goes underneath the pursue-withdraw pattern to the two attachment fears driving it, "I will be abandoned" and "I will never be enough," and explains why the partner who looks calm is often the most flooded person in the room. By the end you will know why "just calm down" fails the anxious partner, and the two-part agreement (a named return time, a lowered reach) that actually interrupts the cycle. Free consultation with our couples team: https://therapevo.com/couples-counseling/?utm_source=podcast

I Ended the Affair. Why Isn't That Enough?

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 15:43:45 +0000

For the person who ended the affair and cannot understand why their partner is still devastated, and for the partner watching that relief from inside the worst week of their life. By the end you will understand why ending an affair stops the harm but does not treat it, why "I ended it" cannot land as reassurance, and what the repair actually asks over the next months. https://therapevo.com/help-for-the-betrayer/?utm_source=podcast

When You Find the Money: Financial Infidelity After Sexual Betrayal

Mon, 14 Sep 2026 12:00:40 +0000

For the betrayed partner who found the hidden card, the cash withdrawals, or the monthly transfer, and was surprised by how much the money part hurt. Caleb and Verlynda explain why financial infidelity inside sexual betrayal sets off a second alarm in your nervous system, what the secret spending usually contains, why caring about the money is grief and not greed, and how the financial disclosure belongs inside the recovery work rather than with an accountant. Learn more at https://therapevo.com/healing-for-the-betrayed/?utm_source=podcast

Lonely in Marriage: Why You Can Share a Bed and Still Feel Alone

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 22:18:20 +0000

If you have ever sat next to someone you love and felt completely alone, this episode is for you. Verlynda and Caleb unpack why loneliness inside a committed relationship is usually a signal about emotional accessibility rather than evidence that you are too needy, what is actually happening when a couple has no conflict at all, and the one sentence that reaches a partner when a complaint will not. https://therapevo.com/couples-counseling/?utm_source=podcast

Betrayal Trauma or PTSD? Why You Can't Just Get Over It

Mon, 07 Sep 2026 12:00:16 +0000

If you have the flashbacks and the hypervigilance and the sleep that will not come, and someone has told you it is time to move on, this episode is for you. Caleb and Verlynda walk through why betrayal produces the full symptom picture of post-traumatic stress but usually falls outside the diagnostic manual's definition of a qualifying trauma, what the research actually found, and the correction most couples never get: your partner stopping does not stop your trauma. They finish with what kind of help fits and in what order. https://therapevo.com/trauma-therapy/trauma-therapy-for-ptsd/?utm_source=podcast

Why the Betrayer Shuts Down: The Shame Collapse Behind the Silence

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 12:00:34 +0000

If you have gone completely blank while your partner asked questions about what you did, this episode is for you. Caleb and Verlynda break down what is actually happening in your nervous system in that moment, why toxic shame collapses you while guilt moves you toward repair, and what your silence lands as on the other side of the room. You will also get three concrete things to do in the moment so you can stay present, plus the difference between a real pause and stonewalling. https://therapevo.com/help-for-the-betrayer/?utm_source=podcast

When Porn Talks Back: AI Companions, Deepfakes, and Why Interactive Porn Hooks Harder

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 21:56:02 +0000

AI porn is not one thing: it is four, and the kinds that talk back reach deeper than video ever could. Caleb and Verlynda explain why AI companions hook the attachment system, what partners feel when they discover a chat thread that reads like an affair, and what real help looks like. Start with a free consultation: https://therapevo.com/porn-addiction/?utm_source=podcast

Narcissist or Sex Addict? How a Therapist Reads the Pattern Behind Betrayal

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 12:00:08 +0000

If everyone keeps telling you your partner is a narcissist but part of you wonders if this is addiction, this episode is for you. Caleb and Verlynda walk through the two engines that can drive identical betrayal, the five questions a therapist sits with instead of armchair-diagnosing, and why recovery over time is the only honest answer. Learn more or book a free consultation: https://therapevo.com/trauma-therapy/narcissistic-abuse-recovery/?utm_source=podcast

What Does My Husband's Porn Type Say About Me? Healing the Body-Image Wound of Betrayal

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 16:30:40 +0000

For the betrayed partner who saw exactly what kind of porn their husband was watching, and hasn't felt at home in their own body since. Caleb and Verlynda explain why his porn type reflects conditioning rather than a verdict on you, what to do with the impossible comparison, and how to heal the body-image wound of betrayal trauma without carrying his recovery. https://therapevo.com/healing-for-the-betrayed/?utm_source=podcast

Meeting the Needs Porn Was Meeting: How to Rebuild Real Connection in Recovery

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 16:28:49 +0000

If you know why you watch porn but your needs still feel unmet, this episode is the "now what." Caleb and Verlynda walk through how to actually meet the connection, comfort, and validation needs porn was faking, with a concrete roadmap for rebuilding real relationships over time. For the person who's tired of white-knuckling recovery and wants the long game that lasts. https://therapevo.com/porn-addiction/?utm_source=podcast

Why Does Porn Escalate? Tolerance, Arousal Templates, and the Way Back Down

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 16:31:52 +0000

If your porn tastes have intensified over time, even into content that disturbs you, this episode explains the mechanism behind the drift: tolerance, novelty, and your arousal template. Certified sex addiction therapist Caleb Simonyi-Gindele unpacks why the gap between what you watch and what you'd want in real life is so common, why the shame compounds, and how the drift can be reversed at the right level of intervention. Free consultation: https://therapevo.com/porn-addiction/?utm_source=podcast

Intrusive Images During Sex After Betrayal: How to Stay Present Instead of Powering Through

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 12:00:16 +0000

If trauma images interrupt intimacy since the betrayal, this episode is for you. Verlynda explains why the freeze, lost arousal, and dissociation are your body's protection, and walks through five somatic pacing tools for staying present on your own timeline, plus a direct word for the partner who betrayed. Support from a betrayal trauma specialist: https://therapevo.com/healing-for-the-betrayed/?utm_source=podcast

A Relapse Is Not a Reset: Why Counting Days Sets You Up to Binge

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 12:00:21 +0000

If one slip keeps turning into a three-day binge, the problem may not be your willpower. It may be your day counter. This episode is for anyone in porn addiction recovery who has stared at the "reset to Day 0" button: we cover why a relapse cannot erase your brain's progress, the researched reason broken streaks trigger binges, and the three moves that turn a relapse into fuel for more resilient sobriety. https://therapevo.com/porn-addiction/?utm_source=podcast

Surviving Infidelity When Your Partner Won't Do the Recovery Work

Mon, 27 Jul 2026 12:00:06 +0000

You have waited one year, or three, or seven, and the person who broke your trust still isn't really doing the recovery work. This episode is a discernment framework for the betrayed partner: how to tell real recovery from performed recovery on a calendar, what the research says about kids and high-conflict homes, and how to build the power to choose when finances keep you stuck. Get support at https://therapevo.com/healing-for-the-betrayed/?utm_source=podcast

How to Stop Thinking About Porn: The White Bear Effect and Urge Surfing

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 12:00:34 +0000

If trying not to think about porn has only made the urges louder, this episode is for you. Caleb, a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist, explains why willpower fails by design, what actually happens in your brain during the 27 minutes an average urge lasts, and the four-move urge surfing skill that works instead. By the end you'll know exactly what to do the next time a wave hits. https://therapevo.com/porn-addiction/?utm_source=podcast

The Repair Most Couples Skip: How to Reconnect After a Fight

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 12:00:11 +0000

If your fights technically end but the distance lingers for hours or days, this episode is for you. Caleb and Verlynda unpack why repair, not the absence of conflict, is what actually keeps a marriage close, how to calm a flooded nervous system before you talk, and what a real apology sounds like versus the hollow "you're right, I'm sorry." Start here: https://therapevo.com/couples-counseling/?utm_source=podcast

Should I Stay or Leave After an Affair? Why You Don't Have to Decide Yet

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 12:00:21 +0000

If you just found out about an affair and everyone is asking you whether you'll stay or go, this episode is the permission you may not know you need. Caleb and Verlynda explain why a decision made in the first raw weeks is unreliable, what a structured pause actually looks like, and the full range of options that live between staying exactly as you were and ending it today. This is not a push to stay or to leave, but a way to protect your right to choose well. Learn more at https://therapevo.com/infidelity-recovery-for-couples/?utm_source=podcast

Why Am I Attracted to Certain Porn? Reading the Wound Underneath

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 12:00:11 +0000

If you have ever wondered why one specific kind of porn pulls you in when you scroll past everything else, this episode is for you. Caleb and Verlynda unpack the idea of your arousal template, why porn so often becomes a way to medicate an old wound rather than a simple matter of sex drive, and why understanding the why does more than white-knuckling ever will. There is also a direct, compassionate word for betrayed partners. Whether you are a man or a woman, this one is worth your time. https://therapevo.com/porn-addiction/?utm_source=podcast

Hysterical Bonding: Why You Want Him More After Betrayal

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 12:00:47 +0000

If you discovered a betrayal and found yourself wanting your partner more instead of less, this episode is for you. We unpack what hysterical bonding is, why your nervous system reaches for the very person who hurt you, and the crash in desire that often follows months later, so you can stop treating your own response as the problem. Start here for support: https://therapevo.com/healing-for-the-betrayed/?utm_source=podcast

Why Discovering Betrayal Feels Like You're Going Crazy

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 12:00:53 +0000

In the first days after discovering a partner's betrayal, the disorientation can feel like losing your mind, and your nervous system has a clinical reason for doing exactly what it's doing. Caleb and Verlynda walk through what reality rupture is, why every past memory is suddenly suspect, and four practical conditions that help your nervous system reorient against the truth. https://therapevo.com/healing-for-the-betrayed/?utm_source=podcast

The Year-Two Wall in Betrayal Trauma Recovery: Why You Still Feel Dead Inside

Mon, 29 Jun 2026 12:00:22 +0000

Eighteen months in, your partner is sober, transparent, and doing the work. And you still feel like a stranger in your own life. In this episode we name what we call the year-two wall in betrayal trauma recovery, why your nervous system is on its own timeline regardless of your partner's behavior, and the two reasons most partners get stuck at this phase, which is almost always both at once. Practical, clinically grounded, and the conversation almost nobody else is having. https://therapevo.com/contact-us/?utm_source=podcast

Restitution After Betrayal: The Repair Work an Apology Cannot Do

Sat, 27 Jun 2026 20:41:13 +0000

You apologized. You meant it every time. And it still isn't reaching your partner. In this episode, we walk through restitution after betrayal: the named clinical work that creates the conditions for repair, structured around three components and an honest look at the multi-year arc. For the partner who caused the harm and wants to do the work seriously, the prescription is here. https://therapevo.com/help-for-the-betrayer/?utm_source=podcast

Porn Induced Erectile Dysfunction (PIED): Recovery Beyond Abstinence

Sat, 27 Jun 2026 20:27:52 +0000

You quit porn three months ago and you still can't function with your wife. In this episode, Caleb and Verlynda walk through what's actually happening in your brain, what the flatline is, and the recovery pathway most men in the abstinence-only forums never hear about. https://therapevo.com/contact-us/?utm_source=podcast

Is Your Spouse Using Therapy Language to Gaslight You? The Five Patterns of Weaponized Therapy Speak

Mon, 15 Jun 2026 12:00:42 +0000

Three to nine months into your spouse's recovery, the language of healing can start to sound like a weapon. He says he is dysregulated. He talks about boundaries. And every conversation about what he did ends with you being the one who needs to do more work. In this episode, we walk through the five most common patterns of weaponized therapy speak, why DARVO with a clinical vocabulary is harder to name than ordinary gaslighting, and what to actually do when you hear it. https://therapevo.com/healing-for-the-betrayed/?utm_source=podcast

Why You Hate Your Porn Use But Still Can't Stop

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 12:00:43 +0000

If you have promised yourself again and again that this would be the last time and ended up back in the same place, this episode is for you. Caleb walks through why hating your porn use is not the same as being able to stop, why self-disgust often fuels the cycle rather than interrupting it, and what actually starts to make the loop lose its grip. For more on this and to book a free 20-minute consult, visit https://therapevo.com/porn-addiction/?utm_source=podcast.

Why the Betrayer Keeps Hurting Their Partner During Recovery

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 12:00:14 +0000

If you've stopped acting out, started doing the repair work, and your partner still ends up hurt by the conversations you thought you handled well, this episode names what's actually going on. Caleb and Verlynda walk through the empathic stress paradox, the three shame patterns that re-injure your partner during active recovery, and why individual therapy on shame is often the missing piece. https://therapevo.com/help-for-the-betrayer/?utm_source=podcast

Trickle Truth and Why Recovery Keeps Restarting

Mon, 25 May 2026 12:25:04 +0000

If you've been wondering why your betrayal trauma recovery seems to restart every time your partner discloses something new, your nervous system isn't broken. It's reading new evidence of past deception as a current threat, exactly as it's built to. In this episode we walk through what's actually happening in your body, why more information doesn't bring the calm it seems like it should, and what complete honesty actually means in this season. https://therapevo.com/healing-for-the-betrayed/?utm_source=podcast

My Spouse Won't Go to Couples Therapy: What to Do When Only One of You Is Ready

Thu, 21 May 2026 12:00:43 +0000

When one partner wants couples therapy and the other won't come, most advice says wait. Clinically, that's a mistake. Caleb and Verlynda walk through what individual work toward a marriage actually looks like when only one of you is ready, why it isn't a venting subscription about your spouse, and what happens when your spouse finally walks in. Learn more at https://therapevo.com/couples-counseling/?utm_source=podcast

Why Your Body Remembers the Betrayal (And 3 Polyvagal Resets That Actually Help)

Mon, 18 May 2026 12:00:18 +0000

If you are a year or more past his disclosure and your body is still having reactions that don't feel like you, this episode is for you. Verlynda walks you through the three nervous system states polyvagal theory names, why talk alone plateaus, and three specific resets you can use the next time a trigger hits. Learn more at https://therapevo.com/healing-for-the-betrayed/?utm_source=podcast.

Is Covenant Eyes Enough for Porn Addiction Recovery?

Thu, 14 May 2026 12:00:27 +0000

You installed Covenant Eyes because you wanted out. For a few weeks, maybe a few months, the screenshots and the reports made it feel like something was finally changing. The frequency dropped. The late-night slide into the phone got harder. And then something odd happened. The behavior slowed, but the pull didn’t. The fantasy kept running. The ogling kept happening. You started wondering, quietly at first, is Covenant Eyes enough for porn addiction, or is there something it was never going to touch? https://youtu.be/BRX1DdvO9xk If you’re asking that question, I want to say something up front. Covenant Eyes is not the problem. In my clinical work with men and women caught in pornography addiction, I’ve seen accountability software do real, legitimate work. It creates friction. It interrupts the automatic pattern. It gives you a moment of pause before the next click. And in the earliest, most volatile stage of trying to stop, that pause has protected marriages, jobs, and faith lives. But the question you’re sitting with is the right one. The software is a fence. A good fence. It is not, by itself, recovery. And if the fence has been up for a year or three and the addiction is still running on the inside of your head, you are not doing Covenant Eyes wrong. You are running into the one thing a fence cannot do. What Covenant Eyes Actually Does Well Before I name the limits, I want to honor what the tool is for. Covenant Eyes and similar products (Accountable2You, Ever Accountable, Canopy, Bark, and others) were built around a legitimate insight: the internet made pornography private, instant, and always available, which stripped away a lot of the old friction that used to slow people down. So the tool reintroduces friction. It puts eyes on the screen. It notifies someone you’ve asked to walk with you. When someone is not fully committed to stopping yet, the visibility alone can still change behavior. For people already in recovery, it removes the easy slip at 1 a.m. when willpower is always weakest. For parents, it does legitimate work keeping early exposure out of a ten-year-old’s phone. None of that is small. I routinely encourage clients to keep accountability software installed through the full length of their recovery work. I do not think of it as a temporary measure you graduate from. I think of it as a fence that stays on the property. The question is never whether to have the fence. The question is what to do about why you keep walking up to it. The Pattern I See in Session Many clients who sit down in my office with Covenant Eyes already running on their phone have some version of the same story. The software is working. The behavior has slowed. Real white-knuckle sobriety is happening, sometimes for months. And yet they are not better. They are often worse. This is where accountability software alone stops being enough for porn addiction, and where the real clinical work begins. If you recognize yourself in any of what follows, you are not failing at Covenant Eyes. You are running into its natural limits. The behavior stops but the fantasy doesn’t This is the most common one. The blocker catches the websites. It cannot stop the scenes already stored in your mind. Clients describe replaying pornography they watched years ago. They describe noticing someone at the grocery store and running a scene in their head on the drive home. The tool stopped the screen. The regulation strategy moved inside the skull, where no software will ever reach. You are finding workarounds, or thinking about them Many clients I sit with tell me they either find a way around the blocker or spend a lot of energy thinking about how to. A second device. An incognito window on a friend’s laptop. A business trip. A forgotten tablet in a drawer. This is not because the person is uniquely dishonest. It is because the underlying drive has not been addressed, so the nervous system keeps sending the signal, and the signal eventually finds a route. The accountability report has become routine The report still goes out. The partner or friend still sees it. The conversations, if they are happening, have become mechanical. Both people are going through the motions of accountability while the actual problem goes unaddressed. The fence is up. Nobody is talking about why the climber keeps coming back. The shame is worse than it used to be This one is counterintuitive. Over months and years, the shame can quietly intensify rather than relax. Because the behavior slowed but the interior state didn’t change, you now have proof, every week, that the thing inside you is still there. The report is no longer reassuring. It has become a scoreboard for a game you aren’t actually winning. Each of these is a sign, not of tool failure, but of something the tool was never designed to treat. What Porn Has Been Regulating All Along Here is the clinical truth almost no porn recovery product wants to say out loud: pornography use, for most people who come to me, is not fundamentally about sex. It is about regulation. Pornography is one of the most efficient nervous-system regulators available. It provides a quick dopamine shift, a shutdown of anxious activation, a brief experience of control when life feels out of control, and a counterfeit sense of connection when attachment is scarce. The brain was not designed to find that cocktail in a phone. When it does, it learns that pathway quickly, and it returns to it under specific conditions: loneliness, stress, shame, conflict, rejection, boredom, unresolved pain. Our clinical experience backs this up. A 2024 study in Archives of Sexual Behavior of over 1,000 adults found that attachment insecurity, both anxious and avoidant, predicts compulsive sexual behavior and problematic pornography use, and that emotion regulation difficulties mediate that relationship. In plain English: if a person struggles to feel safely connected, and if they lack the internal tools to regulate hard emotions, pornography becomes an increasingly strong pull. The porn use is downstream. The attachment and regulation deficits are upstream. We see the same pattern in other data. A 2022 study in the Journal of Sexual Medicine identified difficulties in emotion regulation and loneliness as the strongest independent predictors of problematic pornography use. Not moral failure. Not a willpower defect. A specific, describable clinical pattern that treatment can actually address. Researcher Jay Stringer, studying nearly 4,000 people with unwanted sexual behavior, concluded that the behavior is never random. It is always pointing, like a signpost, toward something underneath: early attachment wounds, unmet needs for validation, unresolved trauma, sustained loneliness, chronic self-contempt. Now ask yourself what a blocker can do with any of that. It can stop the screen. It cannot repair an attachment rupture. It cannot metabolize a childhood wound. It cannot teach a nervous system to regulate something other than a dopamine hit. It was never supposed to. Why Accountability Without Interior Work Can Amplify the Shame Cycle I want to name one more dynamic carefully, because it is often misunderstood. Surveillance without clinical work can quietly turn up the shame dial over time. In a violent or coercive relationship, we would say something entirely different about monitoring. We are speaking here about a marriage or a friendship where safety is not the issue, and both people are trying, in good faith, to help. Here is the mechanism. Accountability software is built to make behavior visible. When the interior driver of that behavior is attachment rupture, trauma, or shame itself, making the behavior more visible without addressing the driver can create a feedback loop. The person sees, every week, a report of what their interior life just did. If the interior life has not changed, the report becomes proof that they are what they fear they are. A 2018 meta-analysis in Archives of Sexual Behavior found that moral incongruence, the distress of believing one thing and behaving another way, is one of the strongest predictors of self-perceived pornography addiction and the shame that attaches to it. More recent research links this shame spiral to worse outcomes, including depression, suicidal ideation, and increased likelihood of the relationship ending over the porn use itself. This does not mean Covenant Eyes is dangerous. It means visibility exposes whatever is underneath, and without care, that exposure can turn into shame. Shame is one of the most reliable fuels for the next relapse. You did not install Covenant Eyes to build a shame generator. If it has become one, the tool is not broken. The tool is missing its partner. How to Use the Fence the Way It Was Meant to Be Used Let me give you the frame I use with clients, because it changes how the tool works inside the therapy. Covenant Eyes is a fence. It is a good fence. Its job is not to make you holy. Its job is to slow you down long enough to ask a specific question when you feel the pull: why am I trying to climb over this right now? Not: why did I fail. Not: how do I hide better. Just: what am I actually reaching for, underneath the behavior, in this specific moment? If you are pulled toward the fence after a fight with your spouse, the answer might be about attachment threat. If it’s after a shame spike at work, it’s probably about self-worth and regulation. If it’s after a long stretch of loneliness, the driver is right there in the name. The fence doesn’t answer the question for you. It just buys you three seconds, a minute sometimes, to ask it. That pause is the tool’s real gift. Everything else follows from whether you use that gift. Almost every client I have seen move from managing the behavior to genuinely recovering does two things at once. They keep Covenant Eyes on....

How to Be a Safe Man: 7 Markers, Seven Counterfeits, and Why Your Words Aren't Landing

Mon, 11 May 2026 12:00:04 +0000

You can learn every phrase. "I hear you." "That makes sense." "I'm not going to get defensive right now." And your partner's body can still be on guard when you walk into the room. https://youtu.be/s_NhBOl_QWE That gap, between the words you've practiced and what her nervous system reads off of you, is the whole problem. A viral Instagram carousel from @threepercent.co named this recently with seven markers of a safe man, and it circulated widely because women recognized the pattern in their own relationships. We want to take those markers seriously, put some clinical weight behind them, and be honest about what they actually ask of a man who wants to be genuinely safe rather than just convincingly safe. We've watched guys take the language home from session and deliver it almost perfectly. It doesn't land the same. Their partners come back the next week still not breathing easier, and they don't know why. It's because safety is not something you say. It's something she feels in her body. Safety Lives in the Body, Not in the Script Here's what most men miss: safety isn't a decision your partner makes with her thinking mind. It's an assessment her nervous system runs continuously, below her conscious awareness. Stephen Porges, the neuroscientist who developed polyvagal theory, calls this neuroception. Porges describes safety as a state that emerges when the nervous system detects cues of genuine connection rather than threat, and those cues are largely physiological before they're verbal. In practical terms: her body is scanning for congruence. Your tone, your breathing, the micro-expressions you don't know you're making, the quality of your attention, the tension in your jaw. Those signals land before your words do. If the signals say "I am here, I am with you, I can handle this moment" and your words say the same thing, her system can start to settle. If the signals and the words disagree, her body believes the signals. Every time. This is why rehearsed responses fail. A man who has memorized "I'm going to listen without getting defensive" while holding a jaw like a closed fist and a voice pitched two notes too high is telling his partner two different things at once. Her nervous system picks the more honest message. The partners we sit with are rarely confused about whether their husband is saying nice things. They're trying to make sense of why they still don't feel calm in the same room with him. Safe Is Not the Same as Nice A lot of men conflate being a safe man with being a nice man. They are not the same thing, and the difference matters. Nice is a surface posture. A nice man is easy to be around. He doesn't start fights. He smooths things over. He's well liked. He might also be conflict-avoidant, image-managing, quietly resentful, and deeply invested in being seen as one of the good ones. None of that is necessarily wrong. But none of it is safety. Safe is structural. A safe man holds a steady internal state under pressure. He stays present in hard conversations without collapsing or escalating. He tells the truth even when the truth is awkward. He can be disagreed with without retaliating in a hundred small ways over the next three days. You can lean your weight on a safe man and the floor doesn't give. Nice men often can't hold that. Nice men often fold or freeze, then make the relationship pay for it later. Partners of nice men describe a particular kind of loneliness: "He never does anything wrong, but I still can't exhale." The guys we sit with who are furthest from safe are often the ones most convinced they're the good ones. Being nice was their whole strategy for avoiding becoming their fathers. It's not enough. The 7 Markers of a Safe Man (and Their Counterfeits) Every marker below has a counterfeit version that looks similar from the outside and reads completely different inside her body. If you're wondering whether you're the real version or the convincing imitation, there's a good chance her body has been picking up the difference for a long time. 1. He Regulates Himself Before He Engages The real version: he notices he's activated, slows down, breathes, and comes back to the conversation from a steadier place. He can tolerate his own discomfort long enough to stay available to her. The counterfeit: he's "calm," which means he's detached, withdrawn, or smug. He uses his composure as a weapon. The message is "I'm fine. You're the emotional one." Her body reads that as abandonment, not regulation. Regulation is not the absence of feeling. It's the capacity to feel it and stay connected at the same time. 2. He Doesn't Weaponize What She's Told Him The real version: when she's trusted him with something vulnerable, he treats it as sacred. He doesn't bring it up in the middle of an argument to win. The counterfeit: ammunition collection disguised as good listening. He seems to be taking it all in. Three weeks later, her words are coming back at her in a fight. Her nervous system files that away: what she shares with him may not actually be safe. If she's ever said to you "I can't believe you just used that against me," take it seriously. That moment costs more trust than most men realize. 3. He's Genuinely Curious About Her Inner World The real version: he asks, and he actually wants to know. He doesn't interrupt the answer. He doesn't correct her interpretation of her own experience. He treats her inner life as its own country that he's visiting, not a disorder he's diagnosing. The counterfeit: explaining her to herself. "You're not really angry. You're tired." "You're overthinking this." Esther Perel has written about the pull, in every couple, toward one partner defining reality for the other. In the safe version, both people keep the right to name their own experience. 4. He Tells the Truth, Especially About Himself The real version: he says the hard thing when it needs to be said, including about his own mistakes, his own patterns, and his own fears. His partner doesn't have to be a detective to know what's going on with him. The counterfeit: strategic disclosure. He tells her what's useful for her to know. He shades the truth to protect his image. He says "I'm fine" about things he is demonstrably not fine about. She can feel the curation. Living with it is exhausting. 5. He Owns Impact Before He Defends Intent The real version: when she tells him something he did hurt, his first move is to understand the impact. He lets it land before he explains himself. The counterfeit: "I didn't mean to" as a conversation closer. His intent becomes the whole subject. He makes her manage his guilt about the thing that hurt her. She ends up comforting him about her own wound, which is disorienting and, over time, crazy-making. John Gottman's research has shown for decades that defensiveness is one of the most reliable predictors of relational breakdown. Owning impact is the antidote. 6. He Stays Connected Through Disagreement The real version: he can disagree with her and still feel close to her. He doesn't need her to be wrong in order to be with him. The counterfeit: stonewalling dressed up as "keeping the peace." He goes quiet. He walks away. He comes back hours later as if nothing happened. Her body knows something did happen. Repeated over years, this is one of the most corrosive patterns in a marriage. 7. He Does His Own Work The real version: he's in therapy, in a men's group, reading the books, doing the journaling, talking to a mentor, actually changing. His growth is his responsibility, not her project. The counterfeit: he outsources his healing to her patience. She becomes the therapist, the accountability partner, the explainer. She carries the cognitive and emotional labor of his change. Murray Bowen's work on differentiation of self gives us a clear frame for why this pattern is so costly: when an adult fuses his wellbeing with his partner's responses, satisfaction tends to drop for both people, not just for her. A man who does his own work creates the space for his partner to exist as a person rather than a resource. Why Defensiveness Is the Quiet Killer If we had to name the single pattern that undoes the most relationships we sit with, it would not be an explosive one. It would be defensiveness. And defensiveness is almost always self-protection. That's the reframe that cracks things open for a lot of men. Defensiveness feels, from the inside, like a reasonable response to unfair attack. From the outside, from inside her body, it lands as "he's protecting himself from me." Self-protection does not make your partner calmer. It activates her more. The shift is from protecting yourself to protecting the bond. Early in our marriage, if Caleb was stressed about something, he wouldn't bring it to Verlynda. He told himself he didn't want to burden her. He thought that was care. What he was actually doing was protecting his own feelings of inadequacy, or shame about a mistake, or the discomfort of not knowing how to solve something. The version of Caleb she got in those moments was a wall. She knew she was being blocked, and the wall felt far less safe to her than whatever mess he was hiding. That's the paradox. Self-protection in a marriage almost always reduces safety for your partner, because what she registers is not your fine language about "giving you space to handle it." She registers the closed door. There's a harder layer underneath this for some men. If you grew up inside patriarchal or misogynistic messaging, some of your baseline scripts about masculinity, emotional expression, authority in a relationship, or what women "really want" are running in the background. You don't need to be ashamed of having inherited them. You do need to actually examine them. This has to come from a real re-examination of your values, your assumptions, and the way you move through the world....

The 72-Hour Porn Addiction Relapse Protocol: What Both Partners Need to Do Right Now

Thu, 07 May 2026 13:11:05 +0000

He told you. Or you found out. Either way, you're standing in the same room and it feels like the ground just opened up underneath you. https://youtu.be/EZTw3clH99g If you're dealing with a porn addiction relapse right now, whether you're the one who slipped or the partner who just learned about it, the next 72 hours matter more than you think. Not because this moment defines your entire recovery, but because what you both do right now will determine whether this setback becomes useful data or the beginning of the end. This article is a protocol. Not a lecture, not a pep talk. A step-by-step guide for couples who want to survive a relapse without burning down everything they've been building. We'll walk through what both of you need to do, what to avoid, and why this moment, handled well, can actually make your recovery stronger than it was before. But before any of that, we need to answer a question most people skip entirely. Wait: Is This Actually a Relapse? The word "relapse" gets used loosely, and that's a problem. Because what you call this moment changes everything about how you respond to it. In Alcoholics Anonymous, there's a concept called the "dry drunk." A dry drunk is someone who has stopped drinking but hasn't actually engaged in recovery. They're white-knuckling it. No meetings, no sponsor, no internal work. They're sober in the narrowest technical sense, but the patterns of thinking and relating that fueled the addiction are completely intact. When a dry drunk picks up a drink again, that's not a relapse. That's a continuation of the same addiction with a gap in the middle. The Dry Drunk Pattern in Porn Addiction The same pattern shows up in porn addiction recovery, and it's more common than most people realize. Some men stop viewing pornography for weeks or months, and their partners believe recovery is working. But nothing has actually changed underneath. There's no therapeutic work, no accountability structure, no honest self-examination. The person has simply extended the period between acting out sessions. When they use pornography again, the spouse experiences it as a devastating relapse. But clinically, this isn't a relapse in recovery. This is an active addiction running at a lower frequency. That distinction matters. It matters for the person using pornography, because it tells them the truth about where they actually are. And it matters for the partner, because the response to a relapse in genuine recovery looks very different from the response to discovering that recovery was never happening in the first place. The Three-Circle Framework: Naming What Happened In CSAT (Certified Sex Addiction Therapist) treatment, we use the three-circle worksheet to help individuals define their own boundaries with precision. The inner circle (red) contains the behaviors that constitute a full relapse: the specific sexual behaviors the person has committed to abstaining from. The middle circle (yellow) contains the warning signs and boundary behaviors, the slippery slope: lingering on social media, searching for triggering content, isolating. These are slips. The outer circle (green) contains healthy recovery behaviors. A slip is a yellow-circle moment. It's a warning sign that something in the recovery plan needs attention. A relapse is a red inner-circle event. Both require a response, but the severity, the clinical meaning, and the conversation with your partner are different. If you and your therapist haven't built a three-circle plan yet, that's the first conversation to have after you finish reading this. Why You Can Only Relapse If You're Actually in Recovery This is the reframe most couples miss, and it's the one that changes the emotional temperature of the room. You cannot relapse from something you were never recovering from. The word "relapse" only applies when a person has been actively engaged in recovery: working with a therapist or group, building accountability, doing the internal work of understanding their triggers and patterns. When someone in that process stumbles, it's a setback within a genuine effort. It is not a return to square one. Relapses are to be expected in recovery. That is not an excuse to have them. But it is a clinical reality that reshapes how both partners can think about what just happened. If he relapsed, it means he was actually in recovery. If she slipped, it means she had built something real enough to slip from. The addiction didn't win. The recovery hit a complication. The Neural Reset Fallacy One of the most damaging beliefs couples carry into a relapse is the idea that one slip erases months of brain healing. It doesn't. Neuroscience research on addiction recovery consistently shows that the neural pathways built during sustained recovery, the strengthened prefrontal cortex, the reduced reactivity in the reward system, do not vanish after a single episode. A 2019 review published in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews found that recovery-related brain changes are cumulative, and while a relapse can temporarily reactivate old pathways, it does not eliminate the structural gains made during abstinence. Your brain keeps the progress. The work you put in is still there. What a relapse reveals is not that recovery failed, but that there's a specific vulnerability in the recovery plan that needs to be addressed. The 72-Hour Relapse Protocol The first three days after a relapse are the highest-risk window for both the person in recovery and the relationship. Emotions are raw. Fear is running the show. This is when couples make the decisions they regret most: ultimatums, moving out, ending therapy, or on the other side, minimizing, lying about the scope, or retreating into silence. What follows is a protocol. It won't make the pain disappear, but it will keep both of you from making this moment worse than it already is. For the Person in Recovery: Disclose, Don't Hide If you have a disclosure agreement with your partner, honor it. That means telling them within 24 hours. Not waiting for them to find out. Not testing whether they'll notice. Not telling yourself you'll mention it at the next therapy session. The problem we see most often in clinical practice is not the relapse itself. It's the delay. When a person waits days or weeks to disclose, or when the partner discovers it on their own, the betrayal of the concealment often causes more damage than the relapse. The partner's internal narrative shifts from "he slipped" to "he's been lying to me again." Here is the reframe worth sitting with: proactive disclosure is one of the only moments in early recovery where you can actively earn trust. When you come to your partner before being caught, you are demonstrating that honoring the relationship matters more to you than protecting yourself from shame. That doesn't obligate your partner to feel better about it right away. But it changes what kind of moment this is. It shifts the story from "I was caught again" to "he came to me." That distinction is not small. It's one of the most concrete, visible acts of vulnerability available in recovery, and over time, these moments are what rebuild trust. After disclosure, do two things immediately. First, run a HALT-B audit. HALT-B stands for Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired, Bored. These five states are the most common entry points for a slip. Before you do anything else, identify which one (or which combination) was present in the hours leading up to the relapse. This isn't about making excuses. It's about identifying the gap in your recovery plan. For example, if the HALT-B audit shows "Bored" every time a slip happens, the data tells you something important: the recovery plan isn't missing willpower. It's missing meaningful engagement, connection, or structure in the hours where idle time becomes dangerous. That's a solvable problem. And you would never have identified it without treating the relapse as information. Second, journal the emotional lead-up. Write down what you were feeling in the hours before the relapse. Not what happened, but what you were feeling. Were you anxious? Resentful? Disconnected from your partner? Overwhelmed at work? This becomes clinical data. Bring it to your next session and let your therapist help you trace the thread. Every relapse that gets worked through this way makes the recovery more watertight, because it reveals the areas that haven't been addressed deeply enough yet. For the Partner: Feel Everything, Decide Nothing Your pain is real and it deserves to be felt. But the first 24 to 48 hours after learning about a relapse are not the time to make permanent decisions. This is the Power of the Pause. When the nervous system is in fight, flight, or freeze mode, the prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain responsible for rational decision-making, is significantly impaired. The urge to act immediately, to move out, to end the marriage, to call his mother, to check his phone, is not wisdom. It's survival response. Those urges make sense. They are your body trying to protect you. But acting on them in this window often creates consequences that outlast the crisis. The rule: no big decisions for 24 to 48 hours. If you've already built a boundaries plan with your therapist, now is the time to refer back to it. A prepared list of options is far more reliable than a plan made from panic. If you haven't built one yet, that becomes the next priority after this crisis stabilizes. When you're ready to talk (not in the first hour, not when you're still shaking), use the Softened Startup. This is a technique drawn from the Gottman method, and it follows a simple structure: Observation, then Feeling, then Need. It might sound robotic at first, and you might have to say it through tears or gritted teeth, but try to move from "You lied again" to "I am terrified right now because I feel like the ground has shif

Porn Addiction in Women: Breaking the Silence on the Invisible Struggle

Mon, 04 May 2026 12:00:18 +0000

You've probably never told anyone. https://youtu.be/jOWTi9qscTo Not your best friend. Not your partner. Definitely not your therapist. Because every article you've found about pornography addiction was written for someone else. Every recovery group is 90% men. Every cautionary story starts with "he." And somewhere along the way, you quietly concluded that whatever is happening to you must make you some kind of anomaly. A freak. A woman who broke the rules of what women are supposed to struggle with. You're not a freak. And you are not alone. Porn addiction in women is real, it is increasing, and the silence around it has far less to do with how many women struggle and far more to do with a culture that never built a category for your experience. If you've been searching for something that finally names what you're going through, this article is for you. You're Not Alone. You've Just Been Invisible. If you've listened to Normalize therapy. for a while, you may have noticed that most of our pornography content has been written for and about men. That's a gap worth naming, because that silence is part of what compounds the shame for women who struggle. Here's what the numbers actually show. A 2024 Barna study found that 44% of women view pornography at least occasionally, up from 39% just eight years earlier. By the end of 2024, nearly 4 in 10 users on the largest pornography platform in the world were female. A 2019 German research study found that approximately 3% of women in their sample experienced what researchers classified as problematic pornography use, with emotional avoidance as a primary predictor. These aren't small, fringe numbers. And they've been climbing for over a decade. When we ran an informal poll of our audience fifteen years ago, roughly 10% of women said they'd viewed pornography in the previous month. Five years later, that number was 30%. The research has been catching up to what many women already knew in private: this isn't a "male problem." It's a human one. And the longer we pretend otherwise, the longer women suffer without support. Why Women Use Pornography (And What the Research Actually Says) There's a common assumption that men use pornography for the visual stimulation and women use it for emotional reasons. The truth is more complicated, and more important to understand. A large-scale 2020 study published in Psychology of Addictive Behaviors examined pornography use motivations across multiple samples totaling over 2,600 participants. The researchers found that men scored higher than women on nearly every motivation, including stress relief, emotional distraction, and boredom avoidance. The assumption that women use pornography for emotional reasons while men use it for the visual experience is not what the data shows. Both groups use it to regulate how they feel, and men do so at higher rates by self-report. What tends to differ, in our clinical experience, is the self-awareness women bring when they seek help: they have often already named the loneliness or the anxiety that drives the pattern. Many men arrive at that understanding later in recovery. For women, knowing exactly why you're doing something and still being unable to stop creates its own particular kind of anguish. The Erotica Gateway It's also worth naming that for many women, the entry point isn't a video. It's a story. Explicit novels, fan fiction, audio erotica, series like Fifty Shades of Grey. These feel safer, more socially acceptable, and easier to dismiss as "just reading." But the neurological pathway is the same. The dopamine cycle doesn't distinguish between a screen and a page. And because narrative pornography carries less cultural stigma, many women are further along in a compulsive pattern before they recognize it as one. Not Escape. Survival. A 2024 narrative review in Current Addiction Reports confirmed what clinicians have observed for years: pornography is frequently used to regulate unpleasant emotional states or to cope with stressful life events. While it may provide temporary relief, the researchers found that difficulties in emotion regulation and dysfunctional coping strategies are significant risk factors for pornography use becoming problematic. For some women, this coping function runs even deeper. When pornography use is rooted in past sexual trauma, it can serve as a dissociative survival mechanism: a way to experience something adjacent to intimacy without the vulnerability or the risk of being hurt again. This is the fawn response at work. The part of you that learned to manage threat by accommodating found a way to experience connection that felt controllable. That's not a moral failure. That's a nervous system doing what it was designed to do in the face of unbearable circumstances. The Double Shame: Why This Hits Women Differently Every person who struggles with compulsive pornography use carries shame. But women carry a second layer that most men never encounter. To understand why, it helps to hear it in the words of women who have lived it. Throughout this article, we've drawn on the voices of women who've shared their experiences in public online support communities. Their words describe something clinical language rarely captures. One woman described it this way: "I feel ruined, dirty. I can't help but think I'm a bad person. It feels like whatever good acts I do in real life don't matter because of the things I've sought pleasure in." That shame isn't proportional to the behavior. It's totalizing. It attaches to her entire identity, not just the pattern she wants to change. You can read more about why the shame and relapse cycle feeds itself — and what breaks it. This compound shame has specific roots, and naming them is part of loosening their grip. The "Visual Myth" We are culturally conditioned to believe women are relational and men are visual. When a woman finds herself compulsively drawn to visual sexual content, she doesn't just feel guilty about the behavior. She feels like she's failed a fundamental standard of what it means to be female. The research doesn't support this binary, but the cultural messaging is powerful enough to make a woman feel like something is neurologically wrong with her before she ever considers that she might simply be human. The Madonna-Whore Dichotomy, Internalized In many cultural and religious contexts, a woman is either the virtuous wife and mother or the promiscuous outsider. There is rarely a category for "the virtuous woman who struggles with compulsion." Without that middle ground, a woman's brain is left to sort her into one of two boxes. And the one it chooses is almost always the cruel one. The Absence of Mirrors Because the vast majority of recovery resources, support groups, and clinical language around pornography addiction have been written by men for men, women don't see themselves in the solution. One woman wrote: "I feel like a total freak because every space for this is 90% men." That absence of reflection reinforces the lie that she is an anomaly. It's not that women don't exist in this struggle. It's that no one built a room with their name on the door. Trauma as a Silent Driver For women whose pornography use is connected to past sexual abuse, sexual violence, or the damaging effects of growing up in environments shaped by patriarchal control, the shame becomes recursive. She's using a "shameful" tool to manage unbearable pain, and each use confirms the internal narrative that she is beyond help. A 2024 systematic review on the intersection of interpersonal trauma, shame, and substance use found robust associations across varied populations: increased shame is consistently linked to greater compulsive behavior among survivors of interpersonal violence. The cycle feeds itself until someone intervenes with compassion rather than judgment. What Porn Addiction Actually Looks Like in Women One reason women struggle longer in silence is that the most commonly discussed warning sign of pornography addiction, erectile dysfunction, simply doesn't apply to them. As one woman observed in a public online support community: "It's very easy for women to ignore these things since the signs of overstimulation and sexual dysfunction are only obvious in men." Without that visible "canary in the coal mine," the pattern can entrench itself for years before a woman recognizes what's happening. Here are the signs that matter, and the clinical reasons behind each one. You keep going back despite wanting to stop This is the core marker. Not frequency. Not content type. The defining feature of compulsive pornography use is repeated failure to stop despite consistent effort and genuine desire to quit. A 2023 qualitative study of women with self-identified problematic pornography use found that every participant reported wanting to stop but being unable to, despite repeated and sustained attempts. You use pornography to manage emotions, not just for pleasure If you notice a pattern where you reach for pornography when you're lonely, anxious, bored, or emotionally overwhelmed rather than when you're simply aroused, the behavior has shifted from recreational to regulatory. This is one of the strongest predictors of problematic use across all genders. You feel worse afterward, not better The temporary relief gives way to shame, self-disgust, or emotional numbness. Over time, the gap between the relief and the crash gets shorter. You need more to feel less. It's changing how you see yourself Self-objectification is a particular risk for women. If consuming pornography is distorting how you view your own body, your worth, or your desirability, or if you find yourself performing sexuality in ways that feel disconnected from your own desire, the pattern is doing more than occupying your time. It's reshaping your self-concept. You're hiding it in ways that feel familiar ...

Is Watching Porn Cheating? What the Research Says About Betrayal, Fidelity, and Harm

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 12:00:24 +0000

If you've asked this question, you've probably already lived the argument. You brought it up, and it got dismissed. "It's just porn." "You're being unrealistic." "Every guy does this." And somewhere in the middle of that conversation, the focus shifted from what happened to you, to whether you even had the right to call it what it felt like. https://youtu.be/y7cws2if73k Is watching porn cheating? The honest answer is that it depends on how you define fidelity, and that the definitional debate is often exactly where the conversation gets weaponized against the person who was hurt. This article won't tell you what to call it. What it will do is give you the research, the clinical picture, and a clear framework for understanding what pornography use actually does to a relationship. You can decide what you want to call it after that. The Debate Gets Used Against You There is a particular kind of conversation that happens when a partner brings up pornography use. The person who was hurt asks a legitimate question. The person who used it offers a technical defense. And the conversation moves from "what happened and how do we address it" to "can you even prove this is a real problem." The Language of Minimizing In our practice, we hear the same phrases repeatedly from partners who use pornography. "It's not like I slept with anyone." "You're the only one I'm with in real life." "It doesn't mean anything." "Every guy does this." Each of those statements may be technically true. Each of them also redirects attention away from the actual question, which is: what has this done to us? This is what we call minimizing language. It isn't always calculated or deliberate. Sometimes the person saying it genuinely believes it. But the effect is the same. The focus moves from the harm to the definition, and the partner who was hurt is left carrying the burden of proof. What You Are Actually Asking Most partners who bring this question into our office aren't asking for a verdict. They're asking whether their own pain makes sense. They've been told, explicitly or implicitly, that their response is excessive. They want to know if there's a legitimate basis for what they're feeling. There is. And the research is clear about why. What the Research Actually Shows The evidence on pornography's impact on relationships has grown substantially over the past two decades. What it consistently shows is that regular pornography use is not neutral for the people in a committed relationship, or for the relationship itself. How It Changes the Way Partners See Each Other A 2016 study by Rasmussen documented something researchers call contrast effects, meaning the brain begins comparing a real partner unfavorably to the people in pornography, which progressively erodes satisfaction with the actual relationship. The person using pornography may not be making these comparisons consciously. But the neural pattern is being built regardless, and it shows up in reduced desire and increasing dissatisfaction with the actual relationship. This isn't a moral claim. It's a neurological one. The brain responds to repeated visual stimulation by recalibrating its expectations. A real partner, with a real body and a real life, tends to lose that comparison. What It Does to Her A 2012 study by Stewart and Szymanski found that a partner's pornography use predicted lower relationship quality and lower self-esteem in female partners. Critically, the research showed that self-esteem was mediated, meaning it was the pathway through which pornography use damaged the relationship, not just a side effect. Her sense of herself as desirable, valuable, and enough was being eroded, and that erosion was the mechanism through which the relationship deteriorated. Crawford and colleagues, in a 2023 grounded theory study (a qualitative research method where patterns emerge directly from participants' own words rather than from a predetermined hypothesis), interviewed women whose partners had used pornography. What they found was that these women described the experience using language nearly identical to how people describe discovering a physical affair: betrayal, rupture of trust, and a fundamental questioning of the entire relationship. The Attachment Injury Underneath Research by Zitzman and Butler (2009) tracked what happened to relationships over time when pornography use was present. What they found was a progression they described as an attachment fault line. A fault line is a fracture in the relational foundation. Left unaddressed, it develops into a rift (a significant break in the emotional bond) and eventually estrangement (full emotional withdrawal from the relationship). These aren't just evocative terms. They describe measurable stages in a relational process. Why This Feels Like Betrayal Even Without a Physical Act Intimate partnership is built on emotional availability, responsiveness, and the sense that your partner is orienting toward you. What pornography use often does, even when kept entirely secret, is create a competing source of sexual arousal that bypasses the actual partner. The betrayed partner often senses this before they have language for it. A feeling that something is off. A distance they can't explain. A sense that their partner is physically present but somewhere else entirely. When they eventually discover the pornography use, they frequently describe it as confirmation of what they already knew, not as new information. That felt sense of absence is real. And it precedes the discovery. For more on how this kind of betrayal registers neurologically and physiologically, how betrayal trauma impacts the brain and body goes deeper on the physical experience of discovering a partner's hidden behavior. The Secrecy Factor One of the clearest indicators that a behavior has crossed a relational boundary is that it requires concealment to continue. If pornography use were genuinely neutral for a relationship, it wouldn't need to be hidden from a partner. Most pornography use in committed relationships involves exactly that: deleted browser history, use during times when a partner won't notice, active denial if asked directly. The secrecy isn't incidental. It reflects an awareness, however suppressed, that the partner would not consent to the behavior if they knew about it. That awareness matters, because it means one person has been making unilateral decisions about the terms of the relationship. What Fidelity Actually Requires This is where the definitional question is worth engaging directly. Fidelity, in its classical sense, doesn't mean physical exclusivity alone. It means loyalty, trustworthiness, and the consistent prioritization of the relationship. The Ogling Question There is a meaningful distinction between noticing that someone is attractive and choosing to pursue that attraction. A committed person can find other people attractive. That's not a failure of fidelity. What changes the relational calculus is intentionality: seeking out content for the purpose of sexual arousal, returning to it repeatedly, and keeping that behavior hidden from a partner. The question we sometimes put to couples in our office is this: Is your sexual attention something your partner would recognize as theirs? Or has a significant portion of it moved somewhere else? That question tends to cut through the definitional debate fairly quickly. What Partners Consistently Name as the Loss When we sit with betrayed partners, what they grieve isn't usually an abstract principle. They grieve specific things: the feeling that they were enough. The assumption that their partner's desire was oriented toward them. The belief that what they had was exclusive, even if the specific terms were never formally negotiated. These are legitimate relational expectations in a committed partnership. Their loss is a genuine injury, regardless of what we decide to call the cause. For the Man Who Is Watching If you've read this far and you're the one who has been using pornography, this section isn't written to condemn you. We work with men in this situation regularly, and what we see is that this behavior rarely started as an act of disregard for a partner. It usually started much earlier, often in adolescence, as a way to manage stress or loneliness or boredom, before any partner existed to be hurt by it. But you're not in adolescence now. Seeing the Full Picture The research above describes, with some precision, what your use is doing to your partner. The contrast effects quietly reshaping how you perceive her. The self-esteem pathway through which she is being harmed. The attachment fault line opening underneath your relationship, whether you can see it or not. Most men who come into our office didn't think it was doing that. They had operated on the assumption that what happened on a screen had nothing to do with what happened in the relationship. That assumption, the research is clear, is wrong. And now that you can see it more clearly, the question worth sitting with is this: knowing the pain this is causing her, what would you do to actually protect her? Not just to stop a behavior, but to become someone she can feel safe with again? What Protection Actually Looks Like Stopping the behavior is necessary. It isn't sufficient. Genuine recovery means developing the capacity to be with the internal states that pornography was previously managing: stress, loneliness, boredom, emotional discomfort. That capacity can be built. It's the actual work of recovery, and it changes not just the behavior but the person behind it. Pornography use tends to narrow emotional range over time. Recovery tends to expand it. The expanded capacity for presence, attunement, and genuine connection is what healthy intimacy actually requires. And it's available to you, even if it doesn't feel that way right now. ...

What Porn Actually Does to Your Brain: The Neuroscience of Compulsive Use

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 12:00:20 +0000

You've probably had the thought at some point: why is this so hard to stop? https://youtu.be/x1ZnC41N-eM Not because you haven't tried. Not because you don't care. But there's something willpower alone doesn't seem to touch, and if you've ever wondered whether that something is happening in your brain, you're asking exactly the right question. The porn effects on the brain are real, documented, and not a reflection of your character. They are the result of a biological system doing precisely what it was designed to do -- just under conditions it was never designed to handle. Understanding what's actually happening is not just interesting. It changes how you approach recovery. What Pornography Actually Does to the Brain Your brain runs two systems that are central to this conversation. The first is the mesolimbic dopamine pathway, a deeply wired reward circuit designed to motivate you toward things that matter: nourishment, connection, intimacy. The second is the prefrontal cortex, the brain's executive control center, which helps you evaluate choices, delay gratification, and regulate your drives. In healthy sexual experience within a committed relationship, both systems work together. The reward pathway motivates; the prefrontal cortex integrates. You feel desire and can also choose, wait, and be present with another person. Pornography disrupts this balance. Not because it activates the reward system -- that's exactly what it's supposed to do -- but because of how intensely it activates it. The hyper-stimulation is the problem. And over time, that imbalance produces measurable changes in the brain that most people were never told about. Designed for Intimacy, Exploited by Pornography: The Mesolimbic Dopamine Pathway The mesolimbic dopamine pathway is a circuit that runs from a small structure in the midbrain called the ventral tegmental area to the nucleus accumbens, the brain's core reward center. When you encounter something rewarding, this pathway fires dopamine -- a surge of motivation and satisfaction that tells the brain: this matters, do it again. This system was designed for the deep rewards of real life. Food that sustains you. Connection with people who know you. Sexual intimacy with a committed partner. In that relational context, the mesolimbic pathway does something meaningful: it reinforces bonding, deepens satisfaction, and keeps you oriented toward your partner over time. The dopamine response to sex within a healthy relationship is calibrated, sustainable, and relational. Pornography activates this same pathway, but at an intensity that no real-world experience can match or sustain. The constant novelty, the visual hyper-stimulation, the absence of relational complexity or cost -- these features flood the dopamine system in ways your brain was simply not designed to process. Gary Wilson, who compiled extensive neurological research at YourBrainOnPorn.com, describes this as a supernormal stimulus: something so far outside the natural range that the system begins to miscalibrate in response to it. Research published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology found that men seeking treatment for problematic pornography use showed increased activation in the ventral striatum -- the core of the mesolimbic pathway -- specifically in response to pornographic cues. This pattern mirrors the cue reactivity documented in substance addiction. The pathway designed for intimacy is being trained on something that mimics intimacy while systematically exceeding it. In a healthy relationship, your brain gets a calibrated reward. With pornography, it gets a flood. That distinction matters, and it sets up everything that comes next. Pathways in the Wilderness: How the Brain Gets Hooked Think of the brain's neural pathways like trails through the wilderness. One animal moves through the underbrush. Another comes along, notices the knocked-down grass, and follows the same line. A few more animals do the same. Within weeks there's a worn path. Eventually it becomes a well-traveled trail -- the obvious route, the one the brain defaults to without much deliberation. This is how neural pathways form. As Donald Hebb's foundational work on synaptic plasticity showed, neurons that fire together wire together. Every time a behavior is repeated, the neural pathway associated with it becomes more defined, more automatic, and easier to activate. This is not a character flaw. It is how learning works at the cellular level. With pornography, the mesolimbic dopamine pathway described above is the trail being worn. Each session deepens it. Over time, escalation isn't a deliberate choice -- it's a neurological consequence. The brain, calibrated to a certain level of stimulation, gradually requires more novelty and intensity to produce the same dopamine response. This is tolerance, the same mechanism at work when you stop tasting the salt in food you eat every day. And here is where this connects directly to what happens next: as the trail through the wilderness deepens and widens, it begins to route around a critical checkpoint. That checkpoint is the prefrontal cortex. The more trafficked the pornography pathway becomes, the less say that checkpoint gets. The trail stops passing through it and starts going around it. When the Braking System Stops Working The prefrontal cortex is the brain's braking system -- the region responsible for decision-making, impulse control, the ability to pause and choose rather than simply react. In healthy sexual experience within a committed relationship, this system is actively engaged. It is what makes intimacy genuinely relational: the capacity to be present with another person, to integrate desire with values, to choose your partner again rather than just responding to stimulus. With compulsive pornography use, this braking system progressively weakens. Neurologists call this hypofrontality: a reduction in the prefrontal cortex's functional capacity that results from repeatedly routing behavior through the reward pathway rather than through executive control. The trail has worn so deep that it no longer passes through the checkpoint. It goes around it. A 2022 systematic review of 28 neuroimaging studies documented that frequent pornography use is associated with measurable decreases in gray matter in the prefrontal cortex -- the tissue essential for self-regulation and impulse control. The same review found heightened activation in the nucleus accumbens during pornographic stimulation: the accelerator getting louder as the brakes get progressively softer. This is why "just deciding to stop" becomes increasingly difficult over time. It is not a measure of your seriousness or your character. The neurological system responsible for making that decision has been structurally impaired. You are not broken. But something in the brain's architecture has shifted, and understanding that accurately is the beginning of addressing it effectively. Is Porn's Effect on the Brain Permanent? Recovery Changes the Answer This is the question I hear most often in my work with clients, and the answer matters: no, the effects are not permanent. But here is the important clarification: recovery is not the same as abstinence. Abstinence is stopping. Recovery is actively rebuilding. Return to the wilderness analogy for a moment. Placing an obstacle at the entrance to the old trail helps -- the foot traffic slows, and the undergrowth begins to reclaim it. Research supports this directly. A 2022 review of longitudinal neuroimaging studies found that structural and functional brain recovery occurs with sustained abstinence and treatment, with documented improvements particularly in the prefrontal cortical regions that were most affected by compulsive use. The braking system can be rebuilt. But the deeper work in recovery is not just letting the old trail grow over. It is walking a new one. The same principle that created the problem -- neurons that fire together wire together -- works in new directions as well. When you consistently choose differently, invest in genuine relational connection, develop new patterns for managing stress and emotion, and engage in the work of therapy, you are not simply avoiding an old pathway. You are laying down a new one. This is what porn addiction counseling is actually designed to do: not just interrupt the behavior, but redirect the neurology underneath it. In my clinical experience, the clients who make the most lasting progress are not the ones who simply stopped. They are the ones who replaced. They built something: accountability structures, honest relationships, the slow and sometimes unglamorous work of rewiring through repeated choices made in the right direction. For those who want to explore the neuroscience of this process in more depth, Gary Wilson's work at YourBrainOnPorn.com provides an extensive, research-grounded look at how the brain changes with recovery. The brain that learned one set of patterns can learn another. That is not wishful thinking. That is neuroplasticity. A Self-Reflection Checklist: Is My Behavior Compulsive? The following questions are not a clinical diagnosis. They are a thinking tool -- a way to bring honest clarity to a pattern that is easy to minimize. Consider them carefully. Do you find yourself using pornography more frequently, or for longer, than you intended? Have you tried to cut back and found it harder than expected? Do you notice a declining response -- needing more intense or novel content to feel the same effect? Is your use affecting your relationship with your partner, your sense of self, or your sexual functioning with a real person? Do you feel distracted, preoccupied, or pulled toward pornography at times when you genuinely don't want to be? Do you find that pornography use affects your mood during or after viewing in ways that

The Boundary Blueprint: How Self-Protection Creates the Conditions for His Recovery

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 13:15:28 +0000

Every time you fly, a flight attendant gives the same instruction: put on your own oxygen mask before assisting others. Not because your life matters more. Because a person who has passed out from lack of oxygen cannot help anyone. https://youtu.be/dI96DuqwXbg You have been holding your breath for a long time. If you've been living in the wake of a pornography addiction, there's a good chance you've been managing, monitoring, absorbing, and waiting — all while running low on the thing you need most: your own sense of safety, dignity, and emotional ground. Boundaries are how you put the mask on. And this article is the practical guide for how to do that. But first, a definition. Because the word "boundary" gets used in ways that create as much confusion as clarity. What Is a Boundary (and What Isn't) A boundary is not a threat. It is not a punishment. It is not an attempt to control what another person does. Here is how we explain it to clients, and we use this language consistently: a boundary is the loving terms on which I am willing to engage with you. Read that again slowly. Loving. Terms. Engagement. It is loving because it comes from a place of genuine care — for yourself, and for the relationship. It is terms because it describes the conditions under which you can show up with your whole self, rather than a hollowed-out, braced version of yourself. And it is about engagement because it governs how you participate in this relationship, not how he must behave. This is fundamentally different from a rule, and the difference matters. A rule is an attempt to control another person's behavior: "You are not allowed to have your phone in the bathroom." A boundary is a plan for your own safety and participation: "If there is a breach of digital transparency, I will spend the weekend at my sister's to protect my peace." One is about him. The other is about you. It's also different from an ultimatum, and we want to say something about why we're careful with those. Ultimatums typically place the consequences on the person delivering them: "If you don't stop, I will leave." That kind of statement is very difficult to enforce, and when it isn't enforced, it erodes your own credibility with yourself. It also doesn't work the way people hope. Behavioral compliance — him stopping because you threatened to leave — is not recovery. It is performance. Real recovery comes from an internal shift in him, not from external pressure. We've covered the fuller picture of what boundaries are and aren't in an earlier episode if you want more on this distinction. The goal of a boundary is not to change him. It is to protect your ability to stay present, grounded, and whole — regardless of what he does. Does Setting Boundaries Help a Porn Addict Recover? This is a fair question, and the honest answer is: often yes, but not in the way most people expect. The mechanism isn't that the boundary forces him to change. It's that when you stop absorbing the consequences of his choices, those consequences start landing where they belong — with him. This is the core insight behind the CRAFT model (Community Reinforcement and Family Training), developed by Dr. Robert J. Meyers. Research on CRAFT consistently shows that when partners disengage from the enabling and absorbing patterns that inadvertently protect an addict from his own consequences, the rate of the addict seeking treatment increases significantly — around 64-74% in clinical studies, compared to traditional confrontation and intervention approaches. What CRAFT describes as a "relational vacuum" is worth understanding. When a partner is managing, monitoring, nagging, pleading, and policing, the addict exists inside a relational system that has organized itself around his dysfunction. Her anxiety, her emotional labor, her constant engagement with the problem — all of it provides a kind of relational cushion that keeps him from feeling the full weight of what his behavior is doing. When she sets firm boundaries and begins genuinely investing in her own life and recovery, that cushion is removed. The weight lands. The vacuum that forms in the space where her absorbing used to be is one of the most powerful motivators for an addict to seek genuine help. None of this is guaranteed. Boundaries are worth setting for your own sake regardless of whether they move him. But it is worth knowing that the research supports what feels counterintuitive: pulling back from managing him, and investing in protecting yourself, is often more effective at creating the conditions for change than anything you could say or threaten. What Are Examples of Healthy Boundaries for Porn Addiction? The most important feature of a well-formed boundary is that it describes what you will do — not what he must do. It is written in the first person. It is specific and observable. And rather than locking you into a single fixed consequence, it articulates a range of options available to you, so that you're not forced to either follow through on something extreme or back down entirely. Here is what that looks like in practice: On digital transparency: "If there is a breach of our agreed-upon digital transparency — cleared history, disabled accountability software, undisclosed devices — I will withdraw from intimate conversation for at least 24 hours to emotionally reorient. I may also reach out to my support person during that time." On active recovery participation: "While you are not actively participating in a recovery program — meeting with a therapist, attending a group, or working with an accountability partner — I am not able to engage in planning our shared future, including financial decisions, vacations, or long-term commitments." On pornography use: "If you choose to use pornography again, I will consider my options, which may include: asking you to move to the guest room, asking you to move out of the home temporarily, or other steps to be determined by me based on the circumstances. The duration and shape of my response will be my decision, based on what I need at that time." Notice what that last example does. It doesn't say "if you use porn again, I will leave." It says: I have options. I will use my judgment. You will feel the natural weight of your choice, and I will decide — from a grounded place — what I need in response. You are not locked into a single consequence, and you are not making a promise you may not be ready to keep. On emotional safety in conversation: "If conversations about the addiction become circular, escalate to blame or minimization, or leave me feeling more destabilized than I started, I will end the conversation and return to it at a later time, with support present if needed." On shared healing work: "While couples counselling is not part of our recovery plan, I will not be able to discuss reconciliation or deepened commitment in this relationship. My willingness to work on us depends on both of us actively working on ourselves." 5 Steps to Setting Your First Boundary This framework draws on principles used in CSAT (Certified Sex Addiction Therapist) training and in CRAFT-informed partner recovery work. It is designed to help you move from the idea of a boundary to an actual one you can hold. Get grounded first. You cannot set a durable boundary from an activated, triggered state. The boundary that comes out of the middle of an argument, or from the peak of anxiety at 2am, is likely to be either too extreme to hold or too vague to mean anything. Before you set a boundary, give yourself time to access your grounded self: the quieter, more settled internal state that has access to your actual values and needs, rather than just your current pain. Breathwork, sleep, a conversation with a trusted support person, or time with a therapist can all help you get there. Identify what you actually need. Ask yourself: what does emotional safety require for me to stay genuinely present in this relationship right now? Not what you want him to do — what do you need in order to function, to sleep, to parent, to maintain your dignity? Connect that need to a core value. "I need to know he is actively in recovery" connects to the value of honesty and real investment. "I need not to be gaslit when I ask direct questions" connects to the value of reality and respect. A boundary rooted in your values is far more durable than one rooted only in fear. Distinguish the boundary from a rule. Run your draft through this filter: does it tell him what he must do, or does it describe what you will do? "You must attend therapy every week" is a rule. "While therapy is not part of your recovery, I will not be able to discuss the long-term future of this relationship" is a boundary. That shift matters practically, because you can only control and enforce what belongs to you. Build in options, not just one consequence. Rather than locking yourself into a single predetermined response, articulate a range. "If X happens, I will consider the following options: A, B, or C, with the specifics determined by me based on what I need at that time." This is not vagueness — it is honesty about the fact that context matters and that you will respond to what is actually happening, not to a script written in a moment that may not reflect your circumstances when the boundary is tested. It also prevents the common trap of stating a consequence you can't enforce, backing down when tested, and losing ground with yourself. Communicate it clearly and prepare to hold it. Setting a boundary out loud, especially for the first time, often feels shaky. Your voice may not be steady. You may have practiced the words and still find them harder to say than to think. That's normal. The shaky voice of setting a boundary is not a sign that you're doing it wrong — it's a sign that you're doing something that matters to your future self....

He's a Good Man, But a Porn Addict: How to Recover When You Choose to Stay

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 12:00:18 +0000

Two things can be true at once. He is a good man, and he has been lying to you for years. He is a devoted father, and he has been carrying a secret that has shaped your intimacy, your self-image, and your sense of reality. He is the person you chose, and he has caused you real harm. https://youtu.be/QzKfkXREilI If you've chosen to stay, or if you're still trying to decide, you're not living in denial. You're living inside a complexity that most people outside your situation won't fully understand. And you deserve a recovery strategy built for exactly where you are. Is It Okay to Stay With a Husband Who Has a Porn Addiction? Yes. With clarity, not just hope. That's the most important thing we want to say upfront. Staying is not weakness. It is not codependency by definition. It is not automatically a mistake. Staying can be the considered, courageous decision of a person who loves someone and is willing to do the work — provided that "the work" includes her work, not only his. But "staying and waiting" and "staying and recovering" are not the same thing. The first is passive, exhausting, and ultimately corrosive to the person doing the waiting. The second is active, anchored in your own values and your own boundaries, and it gives both of you the best possible chance — whether the relationship ultimately survives or not. The distinction between those two ways of staying is what this article is about. The "Good Man" Split: How to Hold Two Truths at Once Something we hear often from partners in this situation: "If he were a monster, this would be easier." But he's not a monster. He's the man who makes you laugh, who shows up for your kids, who remembers your coffee order and apologizes when he's wrong. He has genuinely good parts: loving, present, admirable parts. And he has another part, a hidden, compartmentalized part that was acting out, lying, and protecting the addiction at your expense. Both of these things are true. That's exactly why it's so disorienting. One thing that helps clients hold this is learning to use the word "and" instead of "but." Not "he's a good man, but he did this to me," as though one truth cancels the other. He's a good man, and he did this to me. Both real. Not in conflict. We sometimes use parts language in therapy for exactly this: the lovable, devoted, good parts of him coexisted with an addict part that was partitioned away from the rest of his life. This is one of the features of addiction — the ability to compartmentalize the secret life so thoroughly that even the person living it learns not to connect the pieces. It doesn't excuse what he did. But it does explain how a fundamentally decent person can sustain a secret for years. We've covered compartmentalization in depth in a recent episode — it's worth watching if you want to understand the mechanism. Here's what we want to be careful about: the "good" can become a reason not to fully reckon with the harm. We see partners who cycle back to "but he's such a good man" every time they get close to naming how deeply they've been hurt. This is understandable. It's also a form of emotional bypass, using the positive to avoid the full weight of the negative. We want you to hold the whole picture. His good parts, and the real impact of his addict part. Both, without using one to silence the other. The Shame of Staying (and Why It Doesn't Belong to You) There is a particular kind of isolation that comes with choosing to stay. It's one thing to carry the weight of his secret. It's another to carry the weight of people who don't understand your decision, or don't respect it. Maybe someone in your life has told you, plainly or implicitly, that staying makes you weak. Or naive. Or a doormat. Maybe you've read comments on online forums, or talked to a friend who left her own difficult marriage, and heard: "A strong woman would leave." We want to say something back to that directly: sometimes it takes more courage to stay than to leave. Leaving is clear. It has a script. People know how to respond to it. Staying thoughtfully, with open eyes, inside all the complexity, is harder to explain and harder to hold. It doesn't fit the narrative, and that can leave you isolated in a way that adds another layer to an already heavy situation. Here's something else worth noticing: the people who most urgently tell you to leave are sometimes speaking from their own experience. Their advice may reflect what they would do, or have done, more than what is right for you. That doesn't mean their care for you isn't real. It means their counsel may not fit your situation. The people in your inner circle right now should be people who will support you regardless of what you decide: to stay, to leave, or to stay undecided while you figure things out. Those who can't offer that kind of support may need to be held at some distance while you do this work. You can come back to those relationships later. Right now, your energy needs to go toward healing, not toward managing other people's reactions to your choices. Your decision about your relationship belongs to you. It doesn't belong to your sister, your best friend, or an internet forum. Dating vs. Marriage: The Decision Doesn't Weigh the Same We work with partners across the full spectrum of relationship length and legal status: people who've been dating six months, people in long-term common-law relationships, people twenty-five years into a marriage. For those earlier in a relationship, the practical exit is simpler in some ways. There are no shared assets to divide, no custody schedule to negotiate, no decades of intertwined history to unpack. We want to be honest about that. At the same time, we want to name something that doesn't always get said: the emotional cost is real regardless of timeline. If you've invested two or three years, or even one, into a person and a future you were building toward, the pain of that interrupted dream is genuine. It deserves to be treated as such, not minimized because you weren't married. There is also the sunk cost pull worth examining: the sense that having already invested a significant stretch of your life, you can't afford to lose what you've put in. That pull is real, and it can keep people in situations longer than is healthy. It's worth looking at honestly, ideally with support. We want to mention briefly, and gently, that some of the pull to stay in earlier relationships can come from a specific kind of bond that forms in high-stress, high-intimacy situations involving betrayal. We've covered trauma bonding in a recent episode, and if that concept resonates with where you are, it's worth exploring further. The bond you feel can be real and still be shaped by trauma in ways that aren't entirely serving you. For those in long-term marriages, the layers are different. There are practical realities: shared finances, children, decades of history built together. There is the sheer weight of all those years. Ending a marriage of twenty or thirty years is, quite simply, one of the more heart-rending things a human being can face, and "just leave" is not a simple answer. Staying in a long marriage is a valid path. It requires something more specific than hope, though. It requires a plan for your own recovery, your own boundaries, and your own sanity, regardless of where his recovery lands. What Is the CRAFT Approach for Porn Addiction Partners? Most of the conventional advice available to partners of addicts comes down to three options: wait and see, issue an ultimatum, or leave. What's largely missing is a fourth path that is research-backed, empowering, and built specifically for people who love someone with an addiction and don't know what to do with that love. That path draws on CRAFT: Community Reinforcement and Family Training. The name is worth unpacking, because it tells you something about the approach. "Community Reinforcement" comes from a behavioral framework called Community Reinforcement Approach (CRA), developed originally for substance addiction treatment. The underlying premise is that addiction thrives when it offers the most accessible source of reward and relief in a person's life. CRA works by systematically building up the competing rewards in that person's community: healthy relationships, meaningful work, enjoyable activities, physical wellbeing. When those competing sources of reward become genuinely available and satisfying, the addiction has more to compete against. The "community" around the addict, including his partner and family, is treated as a powerful therapeutic resource, not just a victim of his behavior. "Family Training" is the partner-facing component. It provides practical skills for how to communicate with an addicted loved one from a grounded rather than reactive place, how to allow natural consequences to occur without interfering, how to positively reinforce recovery-oriented behavior when it appears, and how to invest in your own life and wellbeing as a central part of the process. CRAFT was developed by Dr. Robert J. Meyers at the University of New Mexico. Research on the approach, including studies published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, found that it helped engage the addicted family member in treatment in approximately 64-74% of cases, compared to roughly 13% for Al-Anon-style approaches and 30% for traditional intervention models. Dr. Meyers' book Get Your Loved One Sober is the most accessible guide to the approach for family members and partners. The central shift CRAFT teaches is from passive recovery to active recovery. And that distinction is worth sitting with. Passive Recovery vs. Active Recovery: What's the Difference? Passive recovery is what most partners fall into by default. It's not a conscious choice. It's what happens when the addiction takes over the center of the relationship and your life beg

The Pornography Gaslight: Why Your Gut Is Right (Even When He Says You're Wrong)

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 12:00:17 +0000

You know what you saw on his phone. You confronted him about it. But by the end of the conversation you were the one confused and wondering why you needed to apologize. That's not a failure of memory. There is a name for what just happened to you. https://youtu.be/t0Mq3HlBu7c Gaslighting in porn addiction is a pattern of psychological tactics used — sometimes deliberately, sometimes without full awareness — to protect an active addiction by making the partner doubt her own perceptions, memory, and judgment. It sounds like: "That's not what happened." "You're overreacting." "I can't believe you don't trust me." And it works, for a while, because the person saying it is someone you loved and believed, and because doubt is easier to live with than the thing you're afraid is true. If you've been told you're paranoid, oversensitive, or "too focused on this," this article is for you. Your gut is not broken. It's been trained to detect something real. And learning to trust it again — not his confession, not the evidence on his phone, but your own grounded inner knowing — is not a side task in your recovery. It is the work. What Are Common Signs of Gaslighting in Porn Addiction? Gaslighting in the context of porn addiction usually follows a recognizable pattern. When confronted, he denies. When you push back, he turns it around. And by the end of the conversation, you're somehow the one apologizing — for snooping, for not trusting him, for bringing it up again, for making him feel accused when he's "trying so hard." Researchers and clinicians who study relational abuse call this dynamic DARVO: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. It was first named by psychologist Dr. Jennifer Freyd, and while it's often associated with abusive relationships, it appears commonly in addiction contexts too — including in relationships where the person is not fundamentally abusive but is protecting a habit they're not ready to give up. Common signs of gaslighting in porn addiction include: He contradicts what you clearly saw, heard, or found, insisting your memory is wrong Your emotional reaction becomes the central problem, not what caused it He accuses you of being controlling, paranoid, or mentally unstable when you raise concerns He gives explanations that technically make sense but leave the knot in your stomach untouched You leave conversations feeling confused about what's real, even when you walked in feeling certain Over time, you start fact-checking your own memories before you speak The Gaslighting Script vs. The Truth These are the specific lines we hear most often from partners describing what they were told. You may recognize some of them. What He Said What's Actually True "It was just a pop-up. Malware. I didn't click anything." Unsolicited pop-ups don't generate saved browsing histories, repeated site visits, or subscription charges. The technical claim almost never holds up to basic scrutiny, which is why it's paired with pressure not to scrutinize. "You're being old-fashioned. Every man watches porn — this is completely normal." Frequency and type of use matter clinically. So does secrecy, and so does impact on the relationship. "Everyone does it" is a minimizing tactic that deflects from the specific behaviour and its specific effects on you. "If you were more available / adventurous / interested in sex, I wouldn't need this." Pornography use precedes and causes decreased partner desire in many cases, not the reverse. Placing responsibility for his behaviour on your adequacy is one of the most damaging scripts in the DARVO playbook, and it has no clinical basis. "You're imagining things. You have a terrible memory. You're losing it." Directly attacking the reliability of your perception is a defining feature of gaslighting. If you're being told, consistently, that your observations are wrong and your memory is faulty, pay attention to that pattern — not just the individual incidents. Why Does Gaslighting Feel Like Physical Pain? Because it is. Or at least, the body experiences it as a physical event, not just a cognitive one. You may know this feeling already. There's a sudden coldness in your chest mid-conversation, before your mind has finished processing what he just said. A buzzing in your ears when the explanation starts — the one that's technically plausible and somehow still wrong. The sinking knot that settles in your stomach after a confrontation where he turned it all back on you, and you're left holding the weight of both his denial and your own doubt. This is your nervous system detecting what researchers call a breach in the relational field. Long before your conscious mind has caught up, your body has already registered the mismatch: what he's telling you and what your accumulated experience of him is telling you don't match. The body is faster than cognition. It knows first. The problem is that after months or years of being told your perceptions are wrong, many partners stop trusting those physical signals. They learn to override the coldness in the chest. They explain away the knot. They defer to his verbal account over their own physiological data. And the result is a deep, disorienting kind of cognitive dissonance in the relationship — holding two realities at once, neither of which you can fully commit to. This is not a character flaw. It's what chronic gaslighting does to a nervous system that has been taught to distrust itself. Gaslighting, Addiction, and Abuse: Understanding the Difference We want to be careful here, because this matters. Gaslighting and DARVO tactics are well-documented in abusive relationships. But they also appear regularly in addiction — in men who are not abusers, who do not intend to harm, and who would be genuinely horrified if they understood the full effect of what they were doing. The presence of these tactics in your relationship does not automatically mean you are in an abusive relationship. And it also doesn't mean you're not. You may not know for some time. Here's what we do know clinically: when an addict moves into genuine, well-established sobriety and recovery, the gaslighting and deflecting tend to fade. The tactics existed to protect the addiction. When the addiction is no longer being protected, the need for the tactics diminishes. This is one of the things to watch for as recovery unfolds — not just whether the acting out stops, but whether the hiding strategies stop too. There's also an important distinction in how the gaslighting operates in the first place. For some men, it's deliberate: a calculated choice to protect access to the addiction at the partner's expense. For others — often men who grew up in households where the truth wasn't safe to tell — the denial and deflection are almost reflexive. They learned early that honesty cost too much, and the pattern became automatic. That doesn't make it less damaging. But it does mean that for those men, getting completely honest requires more than willingness. It requires rewiring a lifelong survival response. Therapy helps. It takes work. What we hope to see — and what we help couples work toward in recovery-focused therapy — is a specific kind of radical honesty. Not just "I stopped watching porn." But: "Here's what I was doing to hide it. Here's how I deflected when you asked. Here's the specific thing I said to make you doubt yourself." When an addict is willing to tell on himself in that way, it sends a profound safety signal to his partner. It says: I am not protecting this anymore. Not the behaviour and not the tactics I used to cover it. That moment, when it comes, feels different. Partners know it. The body knows it. The Recovery Reframe: "I Know What I Know" Here is what we want to offer you, and we want to say it clearly. The goal is not to get him to confess. The goal is not to find the evidence that will finally make him admit it. We understand why that feels like the goal — because confession seems like it would give you solid ground to stand on. But what we see in practice is that confession alone doesn't do that. Partners who receive a full, tearful confession often tell us: "I felt relief for about a day. And then the knot was back." What actually creates solid ground is something different. It's learning to distinguish between two kinds of internal responses: the activated, triggered nervous system response — racing thoughts, urgency, spiraling, the desperate need for proof right now — and the grounded, bodily sense of knowing. They feel different. The grounded response is quieter. It's rooted in the body rather than spinning in the head. It has access to the accumulated wisdom of everything you've experienced and learned. What matters, in the end, is not his confession. What matters is your grounded, bodily response to whatever he says. When you've developed that grounded awareness — when you've learned to trust the quiet signal over the activated spiral — you will know whether his words ring true or ring hollow. And you won't need his validation to tell you. For partners with a Christian faith, this often connects to something deeper: learning to quiet the noise of the anxious mind and listen for a steadier source of guidance. Many clients describe this as a spiritual practice as much as a psychological one, and we honour that. Rebuilding your trust in your own intuition is not a side project. It is your primary recovery work. What Does Stepping Out of the Gaslight Actually Look Like? Practically, it starts with recognition. Once you can name what's happening in your body during a gaslighting interaction — the sudden coldness, the buzzing, the way the knot arrives before the thought does — you can start to treat that signal as data rather than anxiety to be suppressed. It also means making a deliberate internal shift: his willingne

The Porn Detective Trap: Why Checking His Phone Won't Give You Peace

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 12:00:31 +0000

You know the ritual by now. You wait until he's in the shower. Or maybe you've gotten past that stage and you just pick up his phone while he's in the same room, watching his face as you do it. The buzz starts before you've even unlocked the screen. Your breathing goes shallow. There's a knot somewhere in your chest or your stomach that doesn't loosen, whether you find something or you don't. https://youtu.be/-M4eLb6FHYU You've been doing this for weeks. Maybe months. Maybe longer than you want to say out loud. If you're searching for signs your husband is still using porn, here is what we want you to know before anything else: the checking is not the problem. It's a signal. It's telling you that something in you doesn't feel safe, and that your nervous system is working overtime trying to find the ground. Whether he's currently acting out or not, you are dealing with a real and serious injury. And the way out of the detective trap isn't willpower. It's understanding what the trap is actually made of. What You're Doing Makes Complete Sense Let's say this clearly: checking his browser history, his bank statements, his app downloads, the storage on his phone — this is not paranoia. It's not some character flaw. It's a logical, predictable response to having the floor yanked out from under you. When you discovered his pornography use, your brain received a threat signal. Something that was supposed to be safe turned out to be dangerous. And since then, your nervous system has been doing exactly what nervous systems are designed to do: scan for danger. Look for evidence. Try to figure out where the ground is. Checking is how you've been trying to find the ground. We also want to name something honestly: depending on where your husband is in his own process, the checking may be catching real things. When some men are discovered, they don't get help — they just get more careful. The browsing goes further underground. The histories get cleared more reliably. The secrecy becomes more sophisticated, not less. If that's your situation, your instincts are not wrong. The alarm bells are ringing because there's still something to alarm about. Others are in a genuinely different place. They're white-knuckling their way through it, or they've gotten some real sobriety. But they make a misguided decision: they think if they can hide the difficulty of their struggle from you, they'll spare you pain. So they minimize. They say "I'm fine, I'm working on it." They get vague when you ask direct questions. To a partner who has already been lied to, vague reassurance and active deception feel identical. Because in a meaningful way, they are. And so your gut keeps firing, and you keep checking. The Physical Toll of Hyper-vigilance There's a reason we call it "fight or flight." It's a physical state, not just a mental one. And if you've been in detective mode for months, your body has been running a low-grade version of that physical emergency response almost without stopping. You may recognize some of this in yourself: The buzzing or ringing sensation that starts the moment you pick up his phone Shallow chest breathing that you don't notice until it's been going on for an hour A heart rate that jumps before you've even opened anything The knot in your stomach that's there before you're fully awake and still there when you can't fall asleep The hyperawareness of where he is, what he's doing, and how long he's been on his phone What makes this particularly cruel is that the knot doesn't go away even when you don't find anything. Clean browser history, nothing suspicious on the credit card, no new apps. You put the phone down, and within the hour the low-level hum is back. Because you're not just responding to evidence. You're responding to a nervous system that has been trained to expect danger. What this costs women over months and years is not a small thing. We see partners running on four or five hours of broken sleep, night after night. We've had clients whose doctors are puzzled by new autoimmune symptoms or chronic inflammatory conditions that arrived after discovery and won't resolve. Women who have made mistakes at work, missed things with their kids, stopped doing the things that used to bring them life. The hypervigilance of betrayal trauma is a real medical and psychological event. It is not drama. It is not insecurity. It is what happens to a body that has been in red alert for too long. Why the Gut Feeling Won't Go Away Here's something we want to say that we think matters, even though it's uncomfortable. At some point in this process, many partners hit a wall. They're in the middle of checking something, and they realize they genuinely can't tell: am I reacting to a real signal, or is this a trauma response to something innocent? The knot in my stomach when I pick up his phone — is it because something is actually wrong, or is it because my body learned to brace itself and hasn't stopped? This is one of the most disorienting features of chronic betrayal trauma. The alarm system that was once calibrated to real danger becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish from a nervous system that's been rewired by repeated exposure to threat. You've been deceived. Your read on the situation has been wrong before, in both directions. And now your body's own signals — the ones that are supposed to be trustworthy — feel like they might be unreliable too. We'll say something here that we think is important: we ourselves, as trained therapists, often cannot definitively answer from the outside which situation a partner is in. Is this hypervigilance tracking something real? Or is it a trauma response to an environment that's now actually safe? Without direct clinical assessment of both people, more information, and time, the honest answer is often: we can't tell either. You are not failing at something you should be able to figure out on your own. The uncertainty is real. And it's a feature of this injury, not a reflection of your judgment. This is part of why the checking tends to escalate rather than resolve. It can't give you what you're looking for. It can give you data. But certainty — the actual felt sense that you are safe — checking cannot provide that, regardless of what you find. Why Finding Proof Won't Fix This This is the pivot point that almost nothing written on this topic ever reaches: finding proof gives you data, but it does not give you peace. We say that without minimizing the value of truth. Truth matters enormously. Honesty is the only foundation real recovery can be built on. But think carefully about what you're actually looking for when you pick up his phone at midnight. You're not just looking for information. You're looking for your nervous system to settle. You're looking for the anxiety to stop. You're looking for the ground. Here is what we see in practice, time and again: facts don't regulate nervous systems. Feelings do. A partner who confirms her husband has been sober for six months doesn't automatically feel safe. And a partner who confirms he relapsed last week doesn't necessarily feel more anxious than she did before she looked — because some part of her already knew. The nervous system doesn't respond to information the way a spreadsheet does. It responds to emotional experience, to felt safety, to the quality of connection and attunement in the relationship. Data feeds the mind. Healing the nervous system is a different kind of work entirely. There's a second thing worth saying here, specifically for partners whose husbands are still in active addiction. We have never seen evidence work as the thing that drives a pornography addict into treatment. Confronting someone with browser history, screenshots, bank statements — it may produce confession. It may produce shame. It may produce promises. But it does not produce recovery. Recovery comes from somewhere inside the addict, from a genuine reckoning with what his behaviour is costing him and a real desire to change. Your detective work can force a confrontation. It cannot create his motivation to get well. That can only come from him. What this means is that there are really two separate questions. The first is: what is he doing? The second — and this one belongs entirely to you — is: what are you going to do regardless of what he is doing? Moving From "How Do I Catch Him?" to "How Do I Protect My Peace?" This shift is not resignation. It is not deciding that his recovery doesn't matter or that you'll quietly accept whatever comes. It's recognizing what you actually have power over and choosing to invest your energy there. We want to say something clearly here: we know that professional support isn't equally accessible to everyone. Some of you are reading this without insurance, or with coverage that doesn't come close to covering the cost of ongoing therapy. Some of you are in jurisdictions where the laws around who can provide care across borders limit your options. That's a real barrier, and we don't want to write as though "just go to therapy" is a simple answer. So let's talk about what healing can look like at different levels of access. If you can work with a therapist who specializes in betrayal trauma, that's the most direct route to helping your nervous system begin to regulate. Not because the external situation has resolved, but because you're building something internally that doesn't depend entirely on what he does next. Betrayal trauma therapy done well is different from general infidelity counselling. It targets the specific injury of repeated deception by someone you were intimate with, and it works. If that's not accessible right now, there are real alternatives that do genuine work: Books like Betrayal Bond by Patrick Carnes or Your Sexually Addicted Spouse by Barbara Steffens give you a clinical framework for unders

Are You Married to a Roommate? How to Reconnect

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 12:00:39 +0000

You can describe everything that happened this week and feel nothing in particular. You handled the schedules, had the right conversations about the right things, kept the household going. Your marriage is functional. Maybe even impressive from the outside. https://youtu.be/hy67Ip0vtfg But somewhere along the way, you stopped knowing what your spouse is actually carrying. Not the logistics. The real stuff. What's worrying them at 2 a.m. What they're quietly hoping for. What's been hard that they haven't named out loud yet. That's emotional intimacy in marriage, and it's the first thing that slips when couples get good at running their life together. If your conversations have been 90% logistical for longer than you can remember, this article is for you. Not for couples in crisis. For couples who are stable, functional, and quietly hungry for more connection than they're getting. What Roommate Syndrome Actually Is (and Isn't) Roommate syndrome describes a marriage that functions smoothly on the surface but has lost the emotional closeness that makes partnership feel alive. You share a bed, a mortgage, and a calendar. You just stopped sharing your inner world. Here's the reframe that matters: the couples who drift into this pattern are often the ones who are best at being married in the logistical sense. The very competence that keeps your household running is what allowed the emotional drift to go unnoticed. You were too good at handling life to notice what you weren't making time for. In our practice, the couples who struggle most with emotional distance aren't the ones who've had dramatic conflicts. They're the ones where both partners describe the relationship as "fine." That word does a lot of work. It holds everything that's not quite wrong enough to address and not quite right enough to feel good about. The Gottman Institute, after observing thousands of couples over four decades, found something worth sitting with: most couples weren't fighting about specific topics like finances or parenting. They were fighting about a failure to connect emotionally, and many didn't even recognize that's what was happening. They were experiencing loneliness and lack of intimacy in marriage in a relationship that looked fine from the outside. Roommate syndrome isn't a sign that your marriage is broken. It's a sign that life got busy and connection got deprioritized. That's actually important to hear, because the path forward isn't dramatic intervention. It's intentional redirection. What Emotional Intimacy Actually Requires Emotional intimacy is the psychological bond built on mutual understanding, trust, and the freedom to be vulnerable without bracing for judgment. It's knowing that your partner accepts the full picture of you, and that you can share what's actually going on without editing yourself first. True intimacy in marriage means knowing your spouse's current reality, not just their old stories. It means knowing what's keeping them up at night right now, not what they used to worry about three years ago. When couples stop updating that picture of each other, they end up relating to who their spouse was instead of who they actually are. The Love Maps Strategy: Updating Your Emotional GPS John Gottman introduced the concept of "Love Maps" to describe the part of your brain where you store your partner's inner world. Their current worries. Their evolving dreams. What they're hoping for right now. The small stresses and private joys of their daily life. In roommate mode, Love Maps become dangerously outdated. You may know your spouse's work schedule but not what's wearing them down this week. You might remember what they wanted five years ago but have no idea what they're hoping for now. This gap creates a painful irony: you share a life but feel like strangers in it. Signs Your Love Map Needs Updating Ask yourself honestly: Do you know what your spouse is currently worried about at work? Can you name the top two or three things stressing them out this week? What's something they're genuinely looking forward to right now? What's a small thing that would make their day better today? If you're guessing or drawing blanks, your map needs work. This isn't a character flaw. It's what happens when two people focus on running a household rather than staying genuinely curious about each other. Another sign: you catch yourself saying things like "You've changed" or "I don't understand you anymore." What's actually happened is that your map stayed static while your partner kept evolving, as people do. You're not relating to them. You're relating to who you remember them being. The Curiosity Approach Rebuilding emotional intimacy starts with genuine curiosity about who your spouse is today, not who they were when you got married. Intentionally cultivating that curiosity means choosing to keep discovering each other instead of relating to an outdated version of them. The shift is small but significant. Instead of "I know you hate your job," try "What's been the hardest part of work lately?" Instead of "You never want to try new things," try "Is there something you've been wanting to do that we haven't made time for?" These aren't therapy techniques. They're just what it looks like to stay interested in your own spouse. The goal is approaching these conversations as someone who genuinely wants to understand your partner's experience, not as someone trying to fix problems or move through the conversation efficiently. Listen to understand. Not to respond, not to reassure, not to solve. Building an Updated Picture Daily You don't have to have big conversations to keep your Love Map current. Small, consistent practices work: Ask one genuine question about their inner experience each day, not their schedule Notice what brings them joy or stress and actually remember it Share something about your own inner world without being prompted This ongoing curiosity builds the foundation for deeper emotional intimacy over time. It's also one of the most effective ways to keep the romance alive in your marriage. When you genuinely know your partner's current reality, you can support them in ways that feel meaningful instead of generic. Micro-Connections: The Daily Practices That Actually Move Things Stop waiting for a vacation or a big date night to fix your marriage. Rebuilding emotional intimacy happens through consistent small moments, not occasional grand gestures. Think about it this way: a two-week vacation represents 14 days out of 365. If you're emotionally disconnected the other 351 days, no resort can repair that. But thirty seconds of genuine connection every day? That compounds into something real. The 30-Second Hug Physical and emotional intimacy are not separate tracks. When you feel emotionally connected to your spouse, you naturally want physical closeness, and that physical closeness strengthens the emotional bond in return. Intentional physical affection is one of the simplest ways to start moving that cycle in the right direction. The practice is simple: hold your spouse in a full embrace for 30 seconds without talking. Do this daily, ideally during natural transitions. When you wake up. When one of you comes home. Before bed. Thirty seconds feels surprisingly long when you're used to quick side hugs. That's the point. This extended physical connection communicates presence in a way that words can't replicate. You're saying, without any words: I'm here, you matter, we're in this together. The Stress-Reducing Conversation Set aside 20 minutes at the end of the day for what Gottman researchers call a "Stress-Reducing Conversation." This isn't a time to problem-solve or discuss household logistics. It's dedicated time for emotional connection. The format is straightforward: take turns sharing what's on your mind, what happened today, how you're feeling. The listening partner's only job is to understand, not to fix. Ask follow-up questions that show genuine curiosity. Offer empathy, not solutions. The most common mistake here is moving to problem-solving too quickly. Your spouse shares that they felt undervalued at work, and you immediately suggest a plan. What they needed was for you to say: "That sounds really painful. Tell me more about what happened." The solution can come later. The understanding has to come first. Weekly Connection Practices Day Practice What It Does Monday Ask "What are you most dreading this week?" Updates your emotional map Tuesday 30-second hug before leaving for work Physical affection reset Wednesday Share one thing you genuinely appreciate about your spouse Builds trust through gratitude Thursday Stress-Reducing Conversation (20 minutes) Deep emotional check-in Friday Ask "What would make this weekend feel restful for you?" Shows curiosity about their needs, not just logistics Saturday Device-free activity together (at least one hour) Quality time without distraction Sunday Share one hope or worry for the coming week Practices vulnerability in a low-stakes way Moving from Safe Talk to Real Talk Rebuilding emotional intimacy requires what we might call a vulnerability risk: the willingness to share more than feels comfortable. Safe talk sounds like: "Work was fine." Real talk sounds like: "I felt invisible in my meeting today and I can't shake it." Safe talk sounds like: "I'm tired." Real talk sounds like: "I'm worried I'm not being the parent I want to be, and it's exhausting to keep up." Real talk feels harder because it opens you to the possibility of being dismissed or misunderstood. Those fears are valid. They're also exactly why emotional safety has to come first. You can't demand vulnerability from someone who doesn't yet feel safe being vulnerable with you....

9 Science-Based Exercises to Transform Your Relationship Communication

Mon, 06 Apr 2026 12:00:54 +0000

Introduction You start a conversation about the weekend, and five minutes later, you’re both shouting about something that happened three years ago. Sound familiar? This pattern—where simple discussions spiral into destructive arguments—affects millions of romantic relationships, leaving romantic partners feeling defeated, distant, and deeply misunderstood. https://youtu.be/tP6Ck9zv5-0 Communication exercises for couples are structured techniques designed to create emotional safety and foster deeper connection between partners. These exercises promote better understanding and enhance communication by encouraging partners to listen actively and express themselves clearly. Unlike generic advice about “using I-statements,” these evidence-based approaches teach emotional attunement—the ability to sense and respond to your partner’s emotional state in ways that build trust rather than trigger defensiveness. This guide covers 9 proven exercises that go beyond surface-level tips to address the root causes of communication breakdowns in relationships. This content serves committed couples who feel disconnected, unheard, or trapped in destructive communication patterns. Whether you’ve been together for two years or twenty, these techniques apply to anyone ready to transform how they communicate effectively with their partner. The core insight: Communication exercises help couples create a “Safe Base” where conversations become bridges rather than battlefields. When partners feel heard and emotionally safe, the brain’s threat response deactivates, making genuine understanding biologically possible. By implementing these exercises for couples, you will gain: Emotional safety that allows honest, vulnerable conversation Validation skills that defuse tension without requiring agreement Conflict de-escalation techniques backed by decades of research Deeper emotional intimacy through structured connection rituals Long-term relationship satisfaction built on mutual respect and understanding Structured communication exercises promote empathy, active listening, and repair, which are essential for healthy dialogue. Good communication is a key factor in relationship satisfaction and can significantly improve relationships and strengthen relationships over time. Regular practice of communication exercises can transform these techniques into natural habits that strengthen relationships. Effective listening skills require conscious effort and practice, significantly impacting relationship satisfaction and mental health. Understanding Emotional Attunement in Relationships Emotional attunement forms the foundation of all healthy relationships. It describes the capacity to perceive and respond appropriately to your partner’s emotional state—recognizing when they need support, space, or simply acknowledgment. Without attunement, even well-intentioned communication attempts fall flat because they miss what your partner actually needs in that moment. When emotional safety is threatened, the brain’s limbic system activates fight-or-flight responses. This neurological hijacking floods the body with cortisol and adrenaline, effectively shutting down the prefrontal cortex—the brain region responsible for empathy, problem-solving, and rational thought. In this state, listening becomes biologically impossible. Your partner isn’t choosing to be defensive; their brain is protecting them from perceived danger. Common communication mistakes that trigger this defensive response include criticism disguised as feedback, contempt expressed through eye-rolling or sarcasm, stonewalling through withdrawal, and dismissing your partner’s concerns as overreactions. Each of these signals threat rather than safety. The Science of Safe Communication Research shows that the first three minutes of any conversation typically determine its entire trajectory. A “harsh startup”—beginning with criticism, blame, or accusation—activates your partner’s amygdala, triggering a defensive response that can persist throughout the interaction. Once this neural cascade begins, productive dialogue becomes nearly impossible. Couples communicate most effectively when they stay focused on one issue at a time and model healthy dialogue, which helps prevent overwhelm and supports constructive conversations. Gottman Method research tracking over 3,000 couples revealed that relationship “masters” use softened startups 96% of the time, while couples heading toward separation use them essentially never. This single behavioral difference predicts relationship outcomes with remarkable accuracy because it determines whether conversations begin from a foundation of safety or threat. The neurological basis explains why your partner seems unreachable during heated moments. When one partner feels attacked, their brain diverts blood flow away from rational processing centers toward survival systems. Their heart rate increases, stress hormones surge, and the capacity for empathy temporarily disappears. Understanding this biological reality helps couples recognize that defensive reactions aren’t personal attacks—they’re involuntary protective responses. Validation vs. Agreement: A Critical Distinction Here’s an insight that transforms relationships: validation and agreement are completely different things. Validation acknowledges your partner’s emotional reality without endorsing their interpretation of facts. Agreement means you concur with their perspective. You can fully validate without agreeing at all. Consider this example: “I can see you’re feeling overwhelmed and hurt right now (validation), even though I don’t think I caused this situation (no agreement required).” This response honors your partner’s emotional experience while maintaining your own perspective. It creates safety without requiring you to accept blame or abandon your position. Why does validation work so powerfully? Studies indicate that validated partners are 50% more likely to de-escalate and engage productively. Neurologically, validation signals safety to the limbic system, lowering heart rates by an average of 10-15 beats per minute during conflict. When partners feel heard, their defensive posture relaxes, making genuine dialogue possible. This distinction matters because many couples avoid validation, fearing it means conceding ground. Understanding that you can validate feelings while disagreeing with conclusions removes this barrier and opens pathways to deeper understanding. Validation also allows couples to connect on a deeper level, fostering more meaningful communication. Foundation Exercises: Building Your Safe Base Before tackling specific conflicts or difficult conversations, couples must establish emotional safety through regular practice of foundational communication skills. Couples communication exercises are practical tools to improve dialogue and reduce barriers, helping partners foster understanding and emotional connection. These exercises create the secure attachment that allows vulnerability and honest expression, reflecting fundamental principles of good marriage communication. Think of them as building the container that can hold challenging content. A foundational couples communication exercise is the love maps activity, which involves asking open-ended questions to learn about a partner’s current world—such as their hopes, stresses, and recent experiences. Another effective foundational exercise is shared journaling, where partners alternate entries about their relationship experiences and appreciations, deepening mutual understanding and connection. 1. The Softened Startup Technique The softened startup technique instructs partners to lead with a neutral observation paired with a clear need rather than criticism or judgment. Research from the Gottman Institute demonstrates this approach reduces defensiveness by 85% by avoiding what researchers call the “Four Horsemen”—criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling—that predict relationship failure with 93% accuracy. This technique helps couples exchange thoughts and feelings in a productive manner, reducing defensiveness and promoting understanding. The formula: Observation + Feeling + Need Instead of: “You never help with household chores. I have to do everything around here.” Try: “The kitchen has dishes piling up (observation), and I’m feeling overwhelmed (feeling). I need some help tonight so we can both relax later (need).” The first version triggers defensive responses because it contains criticism (“you never”), mind-reading (“I have to do everything”), and implied character judgment. The second version describes reality without blame and makes a clear request that invites cooperation. Practice exercise: Start with neutral topics before applying this to charged issues. Take turns describing minor inconveniences using the observation-feeling-need format. Notice how differently your partner responds compared to when you lead with frustration or accusation. 2. Recognizing and Responding to Bids for Connection Bids for connection—a cornerstone concept in relationship communication exercises—refer to subtle attempts at interaction. A sigh, a casual comment about a news story, a brief physical touch, or simply saying “look at this”—these small moments are actually invitations for emotional connection. Research on 130 couples revealed that partners who “turn toward” bids (responding positively) 86% of the time report relationship satisfaction five times higher than those responding positively only 33% of the time. Turning toward builds what researchers call an “emotional bank account” that buffers relationships against stress. Turning away (ignoring) or against (responding with irritation) steadily depletes this account. Three responses to bids: Turning toward: “That’s interesting—tell me more” (engagement) ...

The Mental Load Trap: Why "Helping" Is Hurting Your Marriage

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 12:00:44 +0000

Introduction Mental load in marriage creates resentment when one partner carries the weight of anticipating, planning, and managing every aspect of household and family life while the other remains in a “helper” role. This resentment affects millions of marriages, and if you’re experiencing it, your anger is a legitimate response to an unfair partnership structure—not a character flaw. https://youtu.be/LTW0tE1Srf4 Emotional labor refers to the invisible effort that partners undertake to keep their families running smoothly. This article addresses the cognitive labor imbalance that leaves many women feeling like they’re operating as a “married single parent” despite having a spouse present. Women often carry a disproportionate share of the mental load in relationships, which can leave them feeling overwhelmed and resentful. The focus here is not on scheduling tips or chore charts. Instead, we examine the emotional and relational impact of inequity and provide a framework for restructuring partnership at a fundamental level. This content is for couples ready to move beyond surface solutions toward genuine systemic change. Direct answer: Mental load resentment occurs when one spouse becomes the household CEO and COO—responsible for conceiving, planning, and monitoring all family needs—while the other partner acts as an employee who waits for direction. The resulting exhaustion and feeling of being overwhelmed and unseen creates resentment that signals a structural matter in the marriage, not a personal failing in either partner. What you’ll gain from this article: Understanding why resentment develops as a valid emotional response to inequity Recognition that mental load is not “invisible work”—it’s entirely visible to the person performing it The critical difference between equality (50/50 task division) and equity (100/100 effort and ownership) A framework for shifting from “helping” to complete ownership of family domains Clarity on when professional support becomes necessary to restructure partnership safely Understanding Mental Load in Marriage The mental load includes anticipating needs, scheduling and planning, decision-making, and emotional labor in your marriage. It is made up of cognitive, managerial, emotional, and anticipatory components. The mental load represents a full-time job that demands constant attention, mental space, and focus throughout the day, and the hidden costs of ongoing marriage problems often show up in health, work, and family functioning. Mental load encompasses anticipating, planning, remembering, and scheduling, acting as the project manager of the home. It includes the cognitive labor of anticipating family needs, identifying solutions, making decisions, and monitoring progress—activities that extend far beyond the physical execution of household tasks. This is not invisible work. It is entirely visible and exhausting to the person performing it, even when their partner fails to recognize its existence. All the stuff involved in household management—like organizing schedules, delegating chores, and keeping track of what needs to be done—can create friction and resentment if not shared or acknowledged. Playing to each person's strengths and using organizational strategies can help reduce tension and increase productivity in managing these responsibilities. The Cognitive Labor Reality The mental load means tracking which children need permission slips signed, remembering that the house is running low on toilet paper, anticipating that your mother-in-law’s birthday requires a gift purchased two weeks in advance, and knowing that your daughter’s friend group has shifted and she needs emotional support this week. This cognitive tracking never stops. There is no moment when the household management job ends and personal time begins. Women often report feeling stressed out and resentful when they manage the majority of household responsibilities, and they rarely get to experience marriage as a source of stress relief rather than another demand. Research demonstrates that this labor is linked to worse mental health outcomes for the person carrying it. A spouse’s mental health problems can further complicate this dynamic, amplifying tension and misunderstanding. Women’s sleep is more frequently disturbed by child-related concerns and partners’ employment issues, while men’s sleep disruption relates primarily to their own work concerns. The stress of never being “off duty” creates measurable physical health consequences—not because women are less resilient, but because the cognitive burden is genuinely heavier. Women are often expected not to forget important details or societal expectations, which adds to the pressure and mental load they experience. The Manager vs. Helper Dynamic In most marriages, one partner becomes the household manager—the only person who holds the complete picture of family needs. The other partner operates as an employee, waiting for task assignments rather than taking proactive responsibility. This dynamic often develops along traditional gender role lines, and patterns like maternal gatekeeping and assumptions about a husband’s role at home can unintentionally keep fathers in a passive, “helper” position. The manager tracks the family calendar, knows when the kids need new shoes, remembers which child has which dietary restriction, and anticipates seasonal transitions (winter coats, school supplies, holiday planning). The helper performs specific tasks when directed but doesn’t carry the cognitive weight of knowing what needs to happen and when. Women often feel unsupported and uncared for by their partners when they carry the mental load alone. This isn’t about one partner being “naturally organized” and the other being “more relaxed.” That framing naturalizes an inequitable distribution and makes it appear unchangeable. In reality, the manager role is learned behavior, not personality—and the helper role is often a comfortable position that provides partnership benefits without partnership costs. Establishing a fair deal—mutual agreements or compromises—can help ensure responsibilities are divided more equitably and both partners share the mental load. When “Helping” Becomes Part of the Problem Here’s what many women find maddening: when a spouse asks “How can I help?” it sounds like partnership but actually increases the mental load. That question keeps the wife in the manager role, requiring her to assess what needs doing, determine what’s appropriate to delegate, provide instructions, and monitor completion. The “helper” receives credit for willingness to assist while avoiding the invisible work of conception and planning. Women often report feeling resentful when they perceive an unfair division of labor at home, especially after having children. Consider the example of a high-achieving professional—let’s call her Emma—who manages complex projects at her job with precision and authority. She comes home and manages the entire family’s social calendar, medical appointments, school requirements, and household logistics. Her husband asks “What do you need me to do?” and genuinely believes he’s being helpful. But Emma must now shift from her own work to perform another job: task manager for her spouse. She’s carrying two full-time cognitive positions, and the “help” actually adds a third: supervision. The last thing Emma needs is another person to manage. What she needs is a partner who owns outcomes completely and is willing to act—taking initiative, communicating openly, and proactively sharing the mental load rather than waiting to be told what to do. Why Mental Load Creates Legitimate Resentment Resentment in marriage is not something to suppress or “work on letting go.” When one partner carries disproportionate mental load while the other remains oblivious to the burden, resentment functions as an emotional alarm system. It signals that a partnership agreement has been broken—that the marriage is not operating as a team but as a hierarchy with one unpaid household manager and one comfortable beneficiary, a pattern that contributes directly to the hidden costs of marriage problems. The Fairness Factor Research across 32 different-sex couples found that the female partner completed more total cognitive labor than her husband in 81% of cases. Women perform significantly more anticipation and monitoring work—the “prep work” that precedes any visible task. Men often participate in final decisions without contributing the research, option identification, or problem-framing that makes decisions possible. This means many women feel like they’re doing the job of two people while their spouse receives credit for participating in the comfortable, visible portions of family life. The husband who shows up at the school play feels like an involved dad. The wife who remembered to mark the calendar, arrange childcare for the other kids, coordinate departure time, and ensure the right clothes were clean feels like the only person actually running this family. When you feel like a married single parent despite having a spouse present, your frustration isn’t wrong—it’s accurate. The Exhaustion Cycle The permanence of mental load distinguishes it from physical tasks. A specific chore has a beginning, middle, and completion point. Cognitive labor is characterized by continuous, never-ending responsibility. The mental work of not forgetting important information—your child’s allergy, your spouse’s work schedule, the family’s social commitments—runs constantly in the background. This permanence affects physical health through disrupted sleep, chronic stress, and the physiological consequences of never fully relaxing. It affects mental health through emotional exhaustion and the sense that you’re drowning while your partner floats comfortably....

Breaking the Dance of Disconnection: Understanding Your Marriage Cycle

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 12:00:02 +0000

Introduction The negative interaction cycle in marriage is the invisible force keeping you trapped in the same painful conflict over and over—even when you both desperately want things to change. If you feel stuck in repetitive arguments that escalate from nothing, sensing emotional distance despite genuinely loving your partner, you’re experiencing what emotionally focused therapy calls the “dance of disconnection.” https://youtu.be/U4uXpwofSiQ This article covers the EFT approach to understanding and breaking negative cycles in marriage. We’re not offering quick communication fixes or better chore charts. Instead, we’re exploring the deeper emotional architecture beneath your conflicts—the attachment needs, vulnerable feelings, and protective behaviors driving the pursuer-distancer pattern that affects over 80% of couples in distress. This content is for married couples who feel trapped in the same fights, who know they are stuck in unhealthy patterns despite their commitment to one another, and who are ready to understand why unhealthy conflict keeps happening. Here’s the shift that changes everything: Your partner is not the enemy. The cycle is the enemy. When you stop blaming each other and start tackling the pattern together, healing becomes possible. By the end of this article, you will: Recognize the “Protest Polka” and how it operates in your marriage Understand the difference between primary and secondary emotions in conflict Identify your specific role in your couple’s negative cycle Learn EFT-based steps to create positive change and restore emotional connection Know when and how to seek specialized couples therapy support Understanding the Negative Interaction Cycle in Marriage A negative cycle is a repeated pattern of interaction that leaves partners in a rough emotional and relational state. These cycles are unconscious dances where each partner’s protective moves trigger the other’s deepest fears. It’s not about who started it or who is “more wrong”—it’s a self-perpetuating system that takes on a life of its own, creating emotional distance even when both partners want closeness. Negative cycles often begin with small triggers that escalate into larger conflicts. Negative cycles in relationships often stem from unmet attachment needs and emotional vulnerabilities. When partners do not feel secure or valued, their emotional responses and protective behaviors can create and reinforce these negative patterns. Attachment theory, the foundation of emotionally focused therapy, explains why these patterns hold such power. When your sense of emotional safety feels threatened—when you wonder “Do I matter to you?” or “Am I enough?”—your nervous system activates survival-level responses. These responses made sense earlier in life. Past experiences, such as childhood or earlier relationships, can shape your current emotional triggers and patterns, making it harder to break free from negative cycles. In your marriage, they can create a vicious cycle. It’s important to remember that these negative interaction cycles are a human experience—every couple is susceptible to them because of our universal human attachment needs. The Cycle as a Self-Perpetuating System Picture an infinity loop where Partner A’s behavior triggers Partner B, whose response triggers Partner A, around and around with increasing intensity. This cyclical causality means both partners genuinely feel like they’re just reacting to what the other did first. And they’re both right—and both wrong. Let’s look at an example to illustrate how negative cycles operate. When Sarah raises her voice about the dishes left in the sink, she’s reacting to Mark’s silence from earlier. When Mark retreats to the garage, he’s reacting to Sarah’s tone. Each person experiences themselves as responding, not initiating. Couples often misinterpret each other's actions and intentions, which can perpetuate the negative cycle. This is why arguments about “who started it” never resolve anything—the cycle has no beginning. The real issue isn’t the dishes, the tone, or even the specific words spoken. The triggering event activates something deeper: unmet attachment needs. When emotional connection feels uncertain, our protective behaviors emerge automatically, faster than conscious thought. Primary vs Secondary Emotions in the Cycle Understanding this distinction is the first step toward breaking free from negative patterns. Here, we will explain why it’s important to distinguish between primary and secondary emotions—so you can better understand the underlying dynamics of the negative interaction cycle in marriage. Secondary emotions are the ones on the surface—the reactions your partner sees and responds to. Anger, criticism, defensiveness, withdrawal, eye-rolling, the sharp edge in your voice. These are protective behaviors designed to manage the pain underneath. Primary emotions are the raw, vulnerable feelings driving everything: fear of abandonment, terror of being inadequate, deep sadness over lost connection, shame about not being enough, loneliness even while sitting next to your partner. Here’s what makes negative cycles so persistent: fights happen at the secondary level, but healing requires accessing primary emotions. When you’re caught in the dance, you’re both reacting to each other’s protective surfaces rather than connecting with the hurt beneath. Both partners in a negative cycle often feel misunderstood and disconnected from each other. The Protest Polka: How Couples Get Stuck in Pursuing and Withdrawing The “Protest Polka” is the most common negative cycle pattern in marriage, affecting roughly 80% of distressed couples. The Pursuer-Distancer dynamic is a common negative cycle where one partner seeks closeness while the other withdraws, mirroring the demand–withdraw cycle seen in many distressed marriages.. It’s a rhythmic, escalating interplay where one partner’s pursuit for connection triggers the other’s withdrawal for self-protection, creating a feedback loop that intensifies over time. Let's continue to unpack the interaction between Sarah and Mark to understand this "dance" as it unfolds between them. The Pursuer’s Experience Sarah is the pursuer in this cycle. Her pursuit—the criticism, the raised voice, the following Mark into the garage—isn’t about control or nagging. It’s protest. It is a desperate attempt to reconnect and restore the deeper fear of, "Do I matter to you?" Her secondary emotions are what Mark sees: frustration, criticism, demanding, escalating volume. Sometimes words come out that she regrets later. Her primary emotions are what she feels inside: fear of abandonment, the pain of feeling unimportant, grief over the loss of emotional connection they used to have, terror that she’s losing him without knowing why. But the key is her attachment need, the question burning beneath it all: “Do I matter to you? When I reach for you, will you be there?” When the distancer retreats, the pursuer’s worst fears feel confirmed. So she reaches harder, protests louder, hoping something will finally break through. The cycle intensifies. She is increasing her pursuit intensity because Mark is so important to her. The Withdrawer’s Experience Mark is the withdrawer. His withdrawal—the silence, retreating to the garage, the flat facial expression—isn’t apathy or laziness. It’s protection. An attempt to preserve the relationship from further damage. It's like he's driven by the thought, if I can just calm this down enough and not say anything stupid, then maybe this will blow over and we'll be OK again. Of course, Sarah doesn't see that. She sees his secondary emotions and the behaviors that flow from them: numbness, shutdown, appearing indifferent, walls going up. Sometimes it looks like he doesn’t care at all. But his primary emotions are what’s actually happening: fear of failure, feeling overwhelmed by the intensity of Sarah’s distress, deep inadequacy for not knowing how to fix this, and shame that he never seems to be enough no matter what he does. His attachment need, the question he can’t voice and probably isn't aware of (but is driving this) is: “Am I enough for you? Can I ever make you happy, or will I always fall short?” When the pursuer escalates, the distancer feels overwhelmed. So he retreats further, trying to calm things down, hoping space will help. Hi increases his withdrawing to avoid escalating into the conflict that he fears will finally cause him to lose the most precious person in his life. Instead of calming things, the cycle intensifies. How the Dance Escalates This is where the vicious cycle gains power. The more Sarah pursues, the more Mark withdraws. The more Mark withdraws, the more Sarah pursues. Each partner’s protective behavior confirms the other’s deepest fears: Sarah’s criticism confirms Mark’s fear that he’s inadequate Mark’s withdrawal confirms Sarah’s fear that she doesn’t matter Both feel hurt, both feel misunderstood, both feel stuck Neither one are intentionally acting to confirm those deep fears The pattern repeats across different topics—dishes, intimacy, parenting decisions, time spent on phones. The content changes. The cycle stays the same. To break the negative interaction cycle in marriage, each partner must consciously act—taking deliberate steps to name emotions, communicate needs, or reach out for support—rather than simply reacting automatically. Clinical Insight: In emotionally focused therapy sessions, therapists help couples identify this exact dance in real-time. They slow the interaction down, moment by moment, helping each partner see how their moves affect each other. Often, couples realize for the first time that their partner’s hurtful behavior comes from the same place of pain and fear as their own. This quickly leads to softening between the spouses....

Rebuilding Intimacy After Porn Addiction: A Complete Guide for Couples

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 12:00:45 +0000

Pornography addiction creates a specific kind of pain in marriage—one where partners feel invisible even during physical closeness, where trust has been shattered by secrecy, and where the bedroom becomes a place of anxiety rather than connection. The emotional devastation of infidelity, whether through physical or sexual betrayal, can deeply impact trust and attachment, compounding the challenges couples face. If you’re struggling with this reality, rebuilding intimacy is possible, but it requires understanding the distinct phases of recovery and committing to a process that prioritizes presence over performance. https://youtu.be/86_yXoCmulQ This guide focuses specifically on restoring physical intimacy within marriage where one partner is recovering from porn addiction both are ready to begin the careful work of reconnecting physically and emotionally. This matters because many addicts who achieve sobriety from pornography still find they and their partner are stuck: the addiction has stopped, but genuine intimacy remains elusive. The core answer: Rebuilding intimacy after porn addiction requires moving from sexual sobriety (choosing abstinence to break addiction cycles) to sexual health (gradual re-humanization of physical connection) through structured exercises that keep both partners present in their bodies rather than drifting to digital fantasies or traumatic imagery. Reconnecting after porn addiction requires a multifaceted approach focused on rebuilding safety, trust, and genuine emotional closeness. By working through this guide, you will gain: Clear understanding of the difference between sexual sobriety and sexual health Practical tools for the recovering partner to stay present during intimacy Strategies for the betrayed partner to address comparison anxiety and betrayal trauma Step-by-step Sensate Focus exercises for rebuilding touch without pressure Communication techniques that create emotional safety for physical reconnection Both partners must be accountable and take responsibility for their roles in the recovery process, fostering mutual support and growth as you rebuild intimacy together. Understanding Sexual Recovery in Marriage Sexual recovery in marriage operates in two distinct phases that many couples conflate, leading to frustration and relapse: sobriety and health. Understanding this distinction provides the framework for the entire healing process and helps both partners recognize where they are in the journey. The recovery process requires shared responsibility, with both partners being accountable for their roles in rebuilding intimacy and trust. Emotional support, open communication, and mutual reciprocity are essential for maintaining recovery and fostering growth within the relationship. Couples therapy is often recommended to support this process. Sexual Sobriety: The Foundation Phase Sexual sobriety refers to complete abstinence from pornography, masturbation, and often orgasm outside of marital intimacy. This phase exists to reset neural pathways that have been hijacked by the addiction cycle and to break the escalation pattern where increasingly explicit content was required for arousal. For the individual in recovery, this phase interrupts the dopamine-driven habit that prioritized novelty and control over genuine connection. Or, as we often like to say, that prioritized intensity over intimacy. For the marriage, sexual sobriety establishes safety—the betrayed partner needs evidence that their spouse can maintain boundaries before vulnerability becomes possible again. This abstinence period typically lasts 30 to 90 days and will often include abstinence from marital sex as well. Research from recovery programs indicates that 60% of those recovering from sexual addiction maintain sobriety when their partner is actively involved in the process, compared to significantly lower rates for solo efforts. The goal isn’t punishment but recalibration—allowing the brain’s reward system to normalize so that real-life connection can once again produce genuine arousal. Part of the recalibration serves to help the addict's brain and nervous system to realize that it actually can survive without orgasm for a good period of time. Sexual Health: The Restoration Phase Sexual health represents the gradual return to intimate connection based on presence, mutuality, and emotional safety. Unlike sobriety’s abstinence focus, sexual health emphasizes what you’re building toward: sex as a mutual, embodied, emotionally rich exchange that honors your spouse’s uniqueness. This is where the re-humanization of sexuality occurs. Porn addiction trains the brain to view sex through a lens of objectification, instant gratification, and scripted scenarios. The person using pornography controlled every variable—what they watched, when, and how. Real intimacy offers none of this control, which is precisely what makes it valuable and why it initially feels inadequate to a brain conditioned by pixels. The transition from sobriety to health requires addressing both partners’ internal motivation and readiness. Rushing this transition could result in relapse or retraumatization. Many couples find that couples therapy during this phase helps navigate the timing and provides safe space to talk about what is required for continued growth. Before moving to sexual health, however, one critical element must be addressed (assuming the addict has established sobriety): the betrayed partner’s trauma response to the addiction. Addressing Partner Fears and Comparison Anxiety The betrayed partner in a marriage affected by pornography addiction carries wounds that don’t disappear simply because the behavior has stopped. Honest communication about these fears and targeted strategies for addressing them create the emotional foundation necessary for restoring intimacy. Understanding “Screen Comparison” Trauma Partners of those with porn addiction frequently develop intense anxiety about their bodies, sexual performance, and desirability. This isn’t insecurity or jealousy—it’s a logical response to discovering that their spouse sought sexual fulfillment through images of other people’s bodies. The fear manifests in specific ways: “Will my husband think of those images when we’re together?” “How can my body compete with what he’s seen?” “Does she wish I looked different?” These questions create a state of hypervigilance that makes physical intimacy feel threatening rather than connecting. This, of course, is very counterproductive to sexual arousal and enjoyment. Many women and men in this situation report that intimacy itself triggers traumatic imagery—they visualize the pornography their spouse consumed, even though they’ve never seen it. This intrusive experience mirrors PTSD symptoms, with research indicating that approximately 40% of betrayed partners experience persistent intrusive thoughts long after disclosure. Understanding this as betrayal trauma rather than shaming the addict for moral failure or the betrayed spouse for oversensitivity helps both partners approach recovery with compassion. Tools for Partner Healing The betrayed partner needs grounding techniques to stay present in their own body during intimacy rather than spiraling into comparison or traumatic imagery. Physical grounding during intimacy: Focus on your own sensations—what you feel in your skin, not what you imagine your partner is thinking Use breath as an anchor, taking slow inhales and exhales to stay in the present moment If triggered, ask to pause and then work together to regulate your nervous system Cognitive reframing between intimate moments: Journal specific relational strengths that exist in your marriage and that no screen interaction could replicate Remind yourself that pixels cannot offer history, conversation, or the life you’ve built together Work with a therapist on processing the negative feelings and anger that surface during recovery The recovering partner plays an active role in partner healing through consistent validation. This means regularly expressing specific and honoring appreciation for their spouse’s person and physicality without waiting to be asked, maintaining eye contact during intimacy to affirm presence, and creating opportunities for open conversation about how the process is progressing. Creating a Fantasy-Free Zone Marital intimacy during recovery requires explicit boundaries around mental activity, not just physical behavior. For the recovering partner, this means developing tools to redirect attention when mental triggers arise. The brain doesn’t forget pornographic imagery immediately—recovery involves building new neural pathways rather than erasing old patterns. When addictive fantasy surfaces during intimacy: Immediately redirect focus to a physical sensation—the texture of your spouse’s skin, their temperature Verbally check in with your partner (“I’m here with you”) Open your eyes and establish eye contact to anchor yourself in the real relationship If the intrusion persists, acknowledge it honestly rather than pretending it didn’t happen For both partners, establishing what constitutes the “fantasy-free zone” provides clear expectations. This typically includes no pornography use, no fantasy about anyone other than your spouse, and immediate disclosure if either occurs. The goal isn’t perfection but transparency that allows trust to rebuild incrementally. These emotional and psychological tools create the safety necessary for the practical exercises that follow. Practical Steps for Rebuilding Physical Intimacy The gradual approach to restoring physical intimacy prioritizes emotional safety and present-moment connection over sexual performance. This process requires patience, as dopamine baselines typically take 3-6 months to normalize after sustained pornography use,...

The Complete Guide to Formal Disclosure for Pornography Addiction: Ending Trickle-Truth and Rebuilding Reality

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 12:00:04 +0000

Formal disclosure for pornography addiction is a structured, therapist-guided process where the addicted partner provides a complete, truthful account of their pornography use and related behaviors to their betrayed partner. This clinical intervention aims to end secrecy, establish shared reality, and create the foundation for relational healing—all without causing additional trauma through graphic or unnecessary details. https://youtu.be/SVV6L7gUnF4 It is essential to work with professionals, such as therapists or counselors, during the disclosure and recovery process. Professionals provide guidance, support, and accountability, helping both partners navigate the complexities of addiction and betrayal trauma. This article covers creating and using a comprehensive disclosure checklist specifically for pornography addiction. While many resources address sex addiction broadly, this guide focuses exclusively on the narrower but deeply painful reality of digital betrayal through compulsive pornography consumption. The target audience includes couples navigating addiction and betrayal trauma, betrayed partners seeking complete truth, recovering addicts preparing for therapeutic disclosure, and therapists guiding the process. We also recognize that in many cases, informal disclosure will suffice. If the couple is able to overcome the relational injury and connect on the basis of renewed trust and authentic intimacy, then this formal step is not needed. However, other couples will discover that a formal disclosure for pornography addiction sets a new baseline for truth in the relationship recovery process and this can be a cornerstone for renewed investment into the relationship. A formal disclosure checklist should include: a timeline of pornography use, financial expenditures on paid content, secret accounts and burner profiles, escalation patterns over time, and locations where consumption occurred—all described factually and categorically rather than with graphic details that serve no healing purpose. By the end of this guide, you will understand: What information belongs in a disclosure (and what doesn’t) How to protect against trickle-truth that resets the trauma clock The critical role of separate therapists for each partner Practical steps for facilitating genuine recovery and partner healing Understanding Formal Disclosure for Pornography Addiction Formal disclosure is a guided therapeutic process that stands apart from spontaneous confessions, casual admissions, or the devastating pattern of revealing information piece by piece. It represents a one-time, comprehensive revelation prepared with professional oversight to restore emotional safety and dignity to the betrayed partner. In the context of pornography addiction, this process has been adapted from broader betrayal trauma models developed by experts like Patrick Carnes in the 1990s and 2000s who developed a high-structured process for sex addiction recovery. The recovery process also involves understanding the stages of addiction recovery and managing expectations about progress, as setbacks are a normal part of healing. Why Formal Disclosure Matters The most critical function of formal disclosure is eliminating trickle-truth—the incremental revealing of addiction details over time. When partners receive information in fragments, each new revelation resets the trauma clock, prolonging hypervigilance and eroding any sense of safety being rebuilt. Research from community forums indicates that 78% of betrayed partners cite trickle-truth as their primary barrier to reconciliation. Formal disclosure provides the complete picture necessary for informed decisions about the relationship’s future. Without full information, partners cannot genuinely consent to staying or evaluate whether real change is possible. This process creates the accountability and transparency foundation essential for any meaningful recovery process. The process of formal disclosure is the first step to rebuild trust. The alternative—continued deception or partial honesty—mimics the original betrayal and makes genuine healing impossible. Partners report that the lies surrounding pornography addiction often cause more harm than the behavior itself, which is why structured truth-telling becomes the necessary starting point for rebuilding trust. Without full disclosure, partners may feel as though they are living in the dark, leading to ongoing anxiety, fact-finding efforts, and an inability to trust. The Role of Specialized Therapists Effective formal disclosure requires separate therapists working with each partner. It is essential to seek guidance from professionals, such as Certified Sex Addiction Therapists (CSAT), during the disclosure process to ensure safety and support for both individuals. The recovering porn addict works exclusively with their own therapist—ideally a CSAT or someone supervised by a CSAT—to draft the disclosure document. This professional ensures the addict has achieved adequate sobriety (typically 90+ days) and helps them prepare a complete, appropriately detailed document. The betrayed partner simultaneously engages a different therapist specializing in betrayal trauma and partner healing. These therapists are specially trained to guide partners through the recovery process, providing a trauma-informed approach that addresses the unique emotional fallout experienced by partners of porn addicts. This separation prevents codependency dynamics, untangles trauma bonding, protects against manipulation, and allows each person to process their experience without compromise. The partner’s therapist prepares them for receiving the disclosure and creates a safety plan for the immediate aftermath. Our therapists help both partners in a relationship navigate the complexities of recovery from porn addiction, hold the porn addict accountable for their actions, and provide guidance on the stages of recovery and managing expectations. We understand pornography addiction and recognize its unique digital dimensions—the secret browser histories, incognito modes, burner accounts, and financial deception that characterize modern pornography compulsion. This specialized knowledge ensures the disclosure covers all relevant territory without veering into traumatic imagery that serves no therapeutic purpose. Signs and Symptoms of Pornography Addiction Pornography addiction, sometimes referred to as compulsive sexual behavior or porn addiction, is more than just frequent viewing of explicit material—it’s a pattern of sexual behavior that begins to disrupt a person’s well being, daily life, and relationships. While some people may watch porn occasionally without significant consequences, addiction develops when use becomes excessive, secretive, and difficult to control, leading to real harm for both the individual and those around them. Common signs and symptoms of pornography addiction include: Loss of control: Repeated unsuccessful attempts to cut back or stop watching porn, even when wanting to quit. Escalation: Needing to view more extreme or novel content over time to achieve the same effect, or spending increasing amounts of time on pornography. Preoccupation: Persistent thoughts about pornography or sexual behavior that interfere with work, school, or personal responsibilities. Neglecting responsibilities: Skipping important tasks, social events, or family time in order to watch porn. Relationship problems: Increased secrecy, lying, or withdrawal from a partner, as well as decreased real life intimacy or sexual dysfunction (like porn-induced erectile dysfunction, PIED). Emotional distress: Feelings of shame, guilt, anxiety, or depression related to pornography use, often leading to further isolation. Negative impact on well being: Sleep disturbances, loss of interest in other activities, and a decline in overall quality of life. Continued use despite consequences: Persisting in the behavior even after experiencing negative effects on relationships, work, or self worth. These symptoms can gradually erode trust, create emotional distance, and cause significant harm to both the person struggling with addiction and their loved ones. Recognizing the signs of pornography addiction is a crucial first step toward seeking help, setting healthy boundaries, and beginning the recovery process. If you or someone you care about is experiencing these challenges, reach out to us or consider joining a support group that can provide the guidance and support needed to start healing. Information for Agency vs. Traumatic Imagery: What to Include and Avoid The strategic distinction between helpful information and retraumatizing details determines whether disclosure supports healing or causes additional harm. Understanding this boundary is essential for every person involved in the process. Information for agency empowers the betrayed partner to understand what happened, make informed decisions, and begin processing the reality of the addiction. Traumatic imagery replays addiction content in the partner’s mind, triggering PTSD-like responses and embedding fresh visual scars that complicate the healing process rather than supporting it. Information for Agency (What to Include) The sexual timeline forms the core of effective disclosure, capturing the ebb and flow of pornography consumption, masturbation, and fantasy over months or years. This timeline should be plotted chronologically to show escalation patterns—for example, starting with occasional viewing in 2018, progressing to daily sessions by 2020, peaking during stress periods like job loss, and showing any attempts at recovery. It should show the problem starting before the relationship began (as is almost always the case) to help the betrayed partner understand that the problematic pornography consumption is not their fault,...

Forgiveness vs. Healing: The Neurobiology of Betrayal Trauma

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 12:00:01 +0000

Forgiveness and healing betrayal trauma are not the same process—and confusing them keeps betrayed partners stuck in pain, wondering why they still feel triggered despite genuinely wanting to move forward. The distinction matters because your brain processes betrayal as a survival threat, and no amount of willpower or spiritual intention can override neurobiology. https://youtu.be/Q40fUWq0pYk The initial discovery of betrayal often leads to shock, disbelief, and emotional dysregulation characterized by intense emotional turmoil. Betrayal trauma can disrupt your entire sense of life and reality, making it difficult to reconnect with relationships or see the bigger picture beyond the pain. This article is for individuals experiencing betrayal trauma who feel pressured to forgive quickly, or who have already offered forgiveness yet continue to struggle with intense feelings, triggers, and emotional dysregulation. We’ll explore why healing must come before forgiveness, what’s actually happening in your brain, and how to honor your own pace on this personal journey. Here’s the direct answer: Healing must precede genuine forgiveness because the amygdala doesn’t have a “forgiveness button.” Betrayal trauma rewires your nervous system, and recovery requires bottom-up healing—addressing survival responses before rational thoughts about forgiveness can take root. By the end of this article, you will: Understand why forgiveness doesn’t stop triggered reactions Recognize where you are in the healing process Learn why premature forgiveness often backfires Discover the stages of authentic trauma recovery Know when and how forgiveness becomes possible—not mandatory Understanding Betrayal Trauma vs Forgiveness Betrayal trauma is a neurobiological response to a profound violation of safety and trust within a relationship. When someone you deeply trusted—your partner, a family member, or another close person—commits an intentional act of betrayal, your brain registers it as a survival threat. This isn’t weakness or overreaction; it’s biology. It is a hard-wired response to your safe environment being shattered by another person's actions. Explicit Definitions and Distinctions It’s crucial to distinguish between forgiveness and healing: Forgiveness is often directed toward the perpetrator, while healing is directed inward to restore oneself. Forgiveness represents an intentional choice and emotional shift regarding the betrayer, while healing is a gradual journey centered on the survivor's recovery from a relational wound. Healing is the comprehensive process of addressing emotional, psychological, and physical trauma and rebuilding trust in oneself. Put another way, healing addresses the biological rewiring of the brain, while forgiveness addresses the grudge. The distinction between trauma and the decision to forgive is crucial: one is what happened to your nervous system, and the other is a personal choice you can eventually make. Forgiveness does not mean condoning or excusing bad behavior, nor does it remove the responsibility of the person who committed the betrayal to be accountable for their actions. They operate on completely different timelines and require different interventions. What Betrayal Trauma Does to Your Brain When betrayal occurs, your amygdala—the brain’s threat-detection center—activates your fight-flight-freeze response. This is automatic and operates below conscious awareness. Your brain shifts into survival mode, flooding your system with stress hormones and creating hypervigilance to prevent future harm. Trauma memories are stored differently than regular memories. Instead of being processed and filed away as “past events,” they remain fragmented and easily triggered. A song, a location, a certain tone of voice—any sensory reminder can activate the trauma response so it feels as if the betrayal is reoccurring right now. This explains why rational thoughts like “I should forgive” or “That was six months ago” don’t stop the emotional and physical reactions. Your brain is doing exactly what it’s designed to do: protect you from a threat. The problem is it believes the threat is still present even long after the acting-out behaviors have stopped. Understanding this reality is the first step toward self-compassion in your healing journey. What Forgiveness Actually Is (And Isn’t) Forgiveness is an internal, unilateral process of releasing resentment and anger for your own well being. It’s a personal choice and emotional exchange that can free you from the festering pain of victimhood. When it emerges authentically—in its own time—genuine forgiveness has been linked to lower stress, reduced depression, and improved emotional regulation. An important part of the healing process is self forgiveness, which involves letting go of guilt, resentment, or shame you may hold against yourself for being blindsided by the betrayal. This gradual process is essential for emotional healing and moving forward after infidelity or other kinds of betrayal. We do assert that forgiveness is important, but we also recognize it has limitations. Here’s what forgiveness does not do: Heal trauma: Forgiving doesn’t reset your nervous system or stop triggers Restore trust: Rebuilding trust requires observable change from the person who betrayed you Erase consequences: The wrongdoer remains responsible for their actions Require reconciliation: You can forgive someone while maintaining clear boundaries or ending the relationship Mean condoning: Forgiveness involves honest reckoning with the hurt caused, not minimizing it Mean forgetting: Forgiveness is not about forgetting the betrayal. Free the other person: Forgiveness is about freeing yourself from resentment and pain, reclaiming your power and control over your emotional life. Forgiveness and accountability coexist. Choosing to release resentment doesn’t mean pretending the betrayal didn’t happen or that consequences shouldn’t follow. The words we use in our internal dialogue—how we talk to ourselves about forgiveness and healing—play a powerful role in shaping our emotional state and personal growth. The Bottom-Up Healing Framework Healing from betrayal trauma must address the brain from the bottom up—starting with survival responses before working toward rational thought and decisions like forgiveness. A key component of this healing framework is the use of emotional regulation techniques to manage intense emotions and regain a sense of control after betrayal. This is the fundamental principle that explains why “just forgive and move on” fails so spectacularly. Think of it like a broken bone: forgiving the person who tripped you doesn’t instantly set the bone, eliminate pain, or restore function. You need medical intervention, time, and rehabilitation. Your nervous system works the same way after betrayal. The forgiveness decision exists at the top of your brain (prefrontal cortex), but the trauma lives in the bottom (brainstem and limbic system). Healing must proceed upward. Stage 1: Safety and Stabilization Before any forgiveness work can happen, your nervous system needs to feel safe. The first stage of healing from betrayal trauma focuses on creating a sense of safety and stability. This stage emphasizes regulating your body’s stress response and establishing both physical and emotional safety to lay the foundation for recovery. During stabilization, you’re learning to: Recognize when you’re triggered and what activates your stress response Use grounding techniques to return to the present moment Create a safe environment where you can process emotions without judgment Build routines that support your mental health Establish clear boundaries that are crucial for creating a safe environment for healing Practice open communication to foster honesty and emotional safety between partners Attempting to forgive during this stage is like trying to run on a broken leg. It’s not only ineffective—it can cause additional harm. Your brain cannot process forgiveness while it’s still in survival mode. Stage 2: Processing and Integration Once your nervous system has stabilized, the real healing work begins. Trauma memories need to be processed through your body and emotions—not just talked about intellectually. This is where grief and mourning become essential. You’re grieving real losses: the partner you thought you had, the relationship you believed in, the future you’d imagined, the sense of safety you’d taken for granted. The process of mourning after betrayal involves recognizing both tangible and intangible losses, such as the loss of trust and shared values. It’s important to: Acknowledge and validate the intense feelings that arise during this time—including sadness, which is a valid and enduring part of the healing process. Recognize that these intangible losses are profound, and mourning them is a vital part of moving forward. Rushing to forgive during this stage interrupts necessary processing. Research shows that people who try to forgive before emotional processing is complete often get stuck in cycles of rumination rather than liberation. The pain doesn’t disappear—it goes underground and resurfaces as resentment, mistrust, or emotional numbness. Stage 3: Reconnection and Growth In this stage, something shifts. Having processed the trauma and mourned the losses, you begin to reconnect—with yourself, with hope, and with the possibility of a future that includes peace rather than constant pain. This is also a time to reconnect with relationships and the broader world, recognizing that while bad things happen, the world and life itself are not inherently bad. Broadening your perspective in this way is crucial for moving forward and finding post-traumatic growth. Key aspects of this stage include: ...

The Psychology of Secret Lives: How Porn Addicts Use Compartmentalization

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 12:00:02 +0000

Introduction Porn addicts compartmentalize by constructing invisible mental barriers that separate their addiction from every other aspect of their life—creating two distinct realities that never touch. Many porn addicts live a life of compartmentalization, presenting a respected image on the outside while harboring a shameful secret on the inside. Compartmentalization allows porn addicts to engage in their addictive behaviors while appearing normal to others. If you’ve recently discovered your partner’s porn use or sexual betrayal, you’re likely struggling to reconcile the person you thought you knew with the stranger who maintained this secret life. Realizing the impact of this compartmentalization is crucial for both addicts and their partners, as it marks the first step toward understanding and healing. Understanding how this psychological splitting works won’t erase your pain, but it can help you make sense of what feels incomprehensible. https://youtu.be/iQk54D9F68A This article explains the psychology behind compartmentalization in porn addiction, how it differs from normal mental organization, and what the recovery process requires. We will also explain the reasons behind compartmentalization and its effects on both addicts and their relationships. It’s written primarily for betrayed partners navigating the aftermath of discovery, though addicts seeking to understand their own behavior will also find clarity here. We’ll examine both the addict’s internal fog and your shattered reality—because both experiences are real, even when they seem impossible to reconcile. The core answer: Sex and porn addicts compartmentalize through a defense mechanism called psychological splitting, which creates separate mental “boxes” that allow them to maintain two contradictory realities simultaneously—one where they love you genuinely, and one where they engage in behaviors that betray everything that love should mean. This pattern of secrecy and denial is similar to what is seen in a drug addict, where the individual maintains a facade of normalcy while hiding their addiction. By the end of this article, you will understand: The psychological mechanics of splitting and how it operates in pornography addiction How to recognize the signs of compartmentalization you may have missed Why your addicted partner could genuinely love you while living a double life The de-compartmentalization process required for authentic recovery Actionable next steps for both partners and addicts Understanding Compartmentalization in Addiction Compartmentalization is a defense mechanism where the brain divides thoughts, emotions, and behaviors into isolated mental containers that don’t communicate with each other. In its healthy form, this ability allows a surgeon to perform a difficult operation without being overwhelmed by concern, or a parent to set aside work stress to be present with their children. The brain temporarily walls off certain concerns so we can function. In addiction, this normal mechanism becomes pathological. Rather than temporarily setting aside emotions to complete a task, the porn addict permanently separates their addictive behaviors from their moral identity, relationships, and consequences. They don’t consciously decide to do this—the brain constructs these walls automatically to avoid the unbearable cognitive dissonance of holding contradictory truths simultaneously. Compartmentalization is how addicts psychologically deal with their conflicting behaviors and emotions, allowing them to maintain destructive actions while appearing normal in other areas of life. This is how your husband can teach your children about honesty while maintaining elaborate deception. How he can hold you tenderly at night while watching videos that objectify women during the day. The compartments don’t touch. At this point, addicts separate different aspects of their lives into distinct points or boxes—such as family, work, and sexual acting out—so that each area feels disconnected from the others. Men who engage in sexual betrayal are often adept at compartmentalizing their behavior to avoid guilt. In his experience, these aren’t contradictions because they exist in entirely different mental spaces. The “Secret Life” Box Inside one compartment lives everything related to the addiction: the porn use, the masturbation, the searching, the hiding, the shame that surfaces briefly before being shoved back down. This box is where the porn addict lives out their secret life, operating with its own set of rules, its own logic, and its own reality. When the addict enters this space—which can happen in seconds through a trigger or cue—they access a different version of themselves. The porn addict doesn’t experience this compartment as connected to you, the marriage, or the children. Within this box, those relationships feel distant, almost theoretical. The behavior feels victimless because the consequences exist in another compartment entirely. This is how addicts convince themselves that watching porn doesn’t qualify as cheating—because in the isolated reality of that box, you aren't fully visible. Compartmentalization allows porn addicts to engage in their addictive behaviors while appearing normal in other aspects of their lives. An internal fog clouds everything within this compartment. Rationalization becomes effortless: “It’s just a video.” “I’m not hurting anyone.” “This is my private life.” “Every guy does this.” The fog isn’t a conscious lie—it’s a genuine perceptual distortion that makes the behavior feel acceptable, even normal, in the moment. Porn addicts can appear normal and high functioning for years while secretly indulging in their addictive behaviors. The rules and logic of this box are shaped by addiction, which distorts perception and enables ongoing secrecy. The “Family Life” Box The other compartment contains authentic love, genuine commitment, real care for you as his wife and for his family. This isn’t performance or manipulation—the emotions your partner expressed in this space were real. He accessed genuine tenderness, authentic connection, and sincere desire to be a good husband and father. This is perhaps the hardest truth for betrayed partners to accept: both versions of your husband are real. The person who held your hand through difficult times wasn’t fake. The love wasn’t manufactured. But it existed in a compartment that had little awareness of the secret life running parallel to it. Often, partners try to listen and understand how this separation is possible, struggling to make sense of the emotional fragmentation and betrayal they feel. Many addicts report feeling like two completely different people. When they’re in the family life box, the addiction feels like something that happened to someone else—a distant memory that doesn’t connect to their current experience. This complete disconnect allows them to function normally, maintain employment, parent effectively, and love genuinely—all while the addiction continues in its separate container. Pornography is often used to escape stress, loneliness, or emotional pain, with the behavior treated as a necessary, isolated escape and is best addressed with online counseling and therapy for porn addiction. This understanding doesn’t excuse the behavior. It explains why you couldn’t see it, why he seemed sincere, and why the discovery feels like learning your partner has a secret twin. The shame cycle leads to intense shame and regret, which is often followed by a renewed urge to use pornography as a way to escape those painful feelings. The Psychology of Splitting Splitting operates at both neurological and psychological levels, hijacking the brain’s executive functioning in ways that most people find difficult to fully understand. Porn addiction, like a drug addict’s struggle with substance abuse, alters brain chemistry and neural pathways. The prefrontal cortex—responsible for moral reasoning, consequence evaluation, and impulse control—becomes compromised during addiction cycles. Because the behavior is isolated from their daily life, the brain needs increasingly intense, novel content to achieve the same dopamine hit, causing the behavior to bleed into other life areas. When the brain is neurologically dysregulated by compulsive sexual behavior, decision-making doesn’t function normally. The addict isn’t making a rational choice to prioritize pornography over the marriage. The addiction has created a pathway that bypasses rational thought entirely, creating what researchers identify as a kind of perseveration—an inability to shift attention away from the addictive stimulus. Pornography can temporarily increase sexual interest, but over time, it diminishes genuine desire for one’s spouse and negatively impacts emotional and relational intimacy. This neurological reality coexists with psychological self-deception. The brain protects itself from the unbearable truth that “I am someone who does this” by simply refusing to integrate that knowledge. The addict brainwashes themselves into believing the behavior is separate from who they really are. The Addict’s Internal Fog The mental fog that surrounds active addiction functions like radiation—invisible but contaminating everything it touches. Addictions, including sex and porn addiction, tend to escalate over time, and addicts describe this experience as a haze that descends during triggers and acting out, muffling consequences, numbing emotions, and distorting reality into something bearable. Within this fog, rationalization operates automatically. Minimization requires no effort: “It’s not that bad.” “I can stop whenever I want.” “At least I’m not having an actual affair.” The addict isn’t consciously constructing these arguments—the fog generates them instantly to protect the compartmentalization. Denial isn’t simply lying....

The World Is Not Your Browser: Overcoming Scanning and Objectification

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 12:00:37 +0000

Introduction Scanning, ogling, and objectification are behaviors that continue the patterns of porn addiction in the real world. They impact your relationship, your partner’s sense of safety and trust, and even the well-being of the women around you. Recognizing the harm these behaviors cause is a crucial step on your recovery journey. Scanning, ogling, and objectification are a real problem with serious consequences for relationships and society, as they can indicate deeper issues related to addiction and compulsivity. https://youtu.be/xI2VrAU44vo If you’re reading this, you already know these behaviors need to stop, and you want to change. Sexual objectification—reducing women to their bodies or body parts for sexual interest—plays a major role in these patterns. Sexual objectification of women is rampant in our culture and is likely getting worse. This article offers practical guidance and support to help you interrupt these patterns and rebuild healthier ways of relating. By reading this article, you will gain: Clear understanding of the difference between noticing and lusting Practical bouncing eyes techniques to interrupt scanning patterns Humanization exercises that rebuild healthy perception Strategies for partner communication and trust rebuilding Tools for navigating high-risk environments during recovery Understanding Scanning and Objectification in Recovery Context Explicit Definitions: Scanning is the intentional act of seeking visual sexual stimulation and validation from real people in your environment. In the context of pornography addiction, scanning refers to actively searching for and visually cataloging attractive individuals or body parts, often in public spaces, to fuel sexual arousal. Scanning, objectification, and ogling in pornography fuel pornography addiction by conditioning the brain for constant novel sexual stimulation and reinforcing a dopamine-driven loop of compulsion. Ogling is the act of staring at someone in a way that is overtly sexual or lingering, often focusing on specific body parts. Ogling goes beyond a passing glance and involves a prolonged, deliberate gaze that objectifies the person being looked at. Objectification in pornography reduces human beings to mere sexual purposes or body parts, leading to compulsive behaviors and distorted views on sexuality. This means seeing someone not as a whole person, but as an object for sexual gratification, which can deeply affect both the viewer and the person being viewed. Scanning is the intentional act of seeking visual sexual stimulation and validation from real people in your environment. When an addict finds themselves mentally cataloging attractive women, checking out body parts, or seeking eye contact, it reflects the same addictive patterns that drove their pornography use. These sexual behaviors are part of the addiction pattern, reinforcing compulsive habits and making recovery more challenging. This differs from neutral noticing of beauty in everyday life. Most men notice when someone is attractive—this is a natural part of human perception. The key is what happens next: whether the recognition stays neutral or shifts into sexual objectification. Sexual objectification goes beyond simple appreciation; it involves viewing women primarily as objects for sexual interest, often influenced by societal and media messages. This can twist men's views of women, disregarding their inner qualities in favor of physical appearance. Understanding this distinction helps avoid confusion and supports genuine recovery. The challenge isn’t noticing a woman's beauty—it’s how you respond to that noticing. The Validation-Seeking Component Porn addicts often seek eye contact or other signs of validation to temporarily soothe feelings of low self-esteem. This need for validation is often tied to sexual desire, as the addict seeks affirmation of their attractiveness or worth. When a woman acknowledges their presence, it triggers a dopamine release similar to what porn provided. For some addicts, seeking validation can even become a substitute for masturbation or other sexual behaviors. During abstinence from porn, this need for validation can increase, leading the brain to redirect cravings toward real people. This is part of the addiction cycle, and recognizing it helps you approach these urges with compassion and intentionality. It's important to note that porn addiction can also lead to low sex drive and decreased interest in sex with a partner. Objectification vs. Appreciation Appreciating beauty means briefly recognizing that someone is attractive without engaging in fantasy or mentally cataloging body parts. Objectification happens when intent, duration, and mental engagement extend beyond this neutral recognition, focusing on physical features that attract sexual interest and reducing a person to those features. Key factors to consider: Intent: Are you passively receiving information or actively seeking stimulation? Duration: Does your gaze move on naturally or linger? Mental engagement: Are you simply noticing, or constructing fantasies? For example, noticing a coworker’s outfit is appreciation. Letting your eyes linger and imagining how it would feel to be in their position—reduced to body parts and judged solely on sexual interest—is objectification. Imagine how dehumanizing it would feel to be seen only as the sum of your parts, with your desires and feelings ignored. The first respects the person’s humanity; the second reduces them to an object. Partners often sense this difference intuitively, and understanding it can support honest conversations and healing. Types of Scanning Behaviors in Recovery Scanning behaviors exist on a spectrum, from obvious ogling to subtle attention-seeking that may not feel like acting out but still fuel the addiction. Scanning often involves looking at other women, which can negatively impact romantic relationships and perpetuate objectification. Ogling is a common behavior among sex addicts and can provide a direct trigger to relapse. It's wrong to minimize or justify these behaviors, as doing so overlooks their harmful effects. Recognizing these patterns supports effective intervention. Visual Scanning in Public Spaces This includes checking out women in everyday environments like stores, workplaces, or social settings, often by visually scanning and evaluating a woman's body. The eyes actively seek and catalog attractive women, building a “mental database” that feeds fantasies and potential relapse. These images are stored and recycled, extending the impact beyond the moment. Prolonged staring or ogling can feel invasive to those on the receiving end, affecting real people with their own lives and dignity. Sexual objectification can also prevent men from having a thriving, mutually supportive relationship with women. Digital Scanning Beyond Porn Recovery may involve shifting from explicit porn to related behaviors like scrolling social media for provocative images or browsing dating apps without intent to connect. As porn increases, especially during recent years, these digital scanning behaviors have become more common and can maintain addiction by activating the same reward pathways. High-frequency consumption of pornography reduces gray matter volume in the right caudate and weakens functional connectivity in the prefrontal cortex, highlighting the neurological impact of these habits. Being mindful of these digital habits is important, as they can serve as gateways back to full pornography use. Attention-Seeking Behaviors Some porn addicts find themselves seeking eye contact, compliments, or validation from women as a way to regulate emotions and self-esteem. For a husband struggling with porn addiction, these attention-seeking behaviors can negatively impact marital relationships and intimacy. Friendly interactions or positioning to be noticed become ways to receive temporary relief from feelings of inadequacy. Partners of porn addicts often experience feelings of betrayal and insecurity due to their partner's compulsive behaviors. These behaviors often stem from deeper attachment and self-worth challenges, which require compassionate attention alongside behavioral changes. The Impact of Porn on Sex Drive and Relationships If you're watching porn, it might feel like a harmless way to explore your curiosity or enhance your sexual excitement, but we understand that for many people like yourself, it can create a profound and challenging impact on both your sex drive and your relationships. When you find yourself caught in patterns of compulsive porn use, your brain's reward system begins to shift, making it increasingly difficult for you to find genuine satisfaction in real-life intimate experiences. Over time, as you continue frequent porn use, you may notice your sex drive diminishing, as your brain becomes less responsive to natural sexual connection and increasingly seeks the intense stimulation that pornography provides. One of the most distressing consequences you might face in this journey is porn-induced erectile dysfunction. If you're struggling with this, you're not alone—many people find themselves unable to achieve or maintain an erection with their real partner, even though they experience no difficulty during solo sexual activity while watching porn. This disconnect can feel confusing and deeply troubling for you, creating frustration that affects both you and your partner. The compulsive patterns that often develop alongside porn dependency can create a cycle where your sexual experiences become focused primarily on release rather than the genuine connection and intimacy you truly desire. As your relationship with pornography intensifies, you may find yourself becoming more drawn to these digital experiences than to your actual intimate life with your partner....

Is It High Sex Drive or Something Else?

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 13:00:36 +0000

Introduction If pornography addiction were simply about having a high sex drive, you wouldn’t find yourself reaching for it when you’re exhausted after a long workday, when you’re feeling lonely on a Friday night, or when stress from work has you wound tight. The pattern reveals something important: you aren’t just “horny.” You are trying to regulate your internal state. https://youtu.be/eOP0kjHTCZE This distinction matters because it changes everything about how we approach recovery from problematic pornography use. This content is for anyone who has tried willpower-based approaches and failed, who feels shame about their pornography consumption despite wanting to stop, or who suspects there’s something deeper driving their compulsive sexual behavior. Understanding porn as an affect regulation tool—not merely hypersexual behavior—opens pathways to genuine healing that blocking software and accountability apps alone cannot provide. Here’s the direct answer: Pornography addiction is fundamentally a maladaptive coping mechanism the brain employs to manage emotional distress, not just an expression of high libido. Research consistently shows that emotion regulation difficulties fully mediate the relationship between negative emotional states and problematic pornography use, meaning the underlying issue is how you handle uncomfortable emotions, not how much sexual desire you have. By reading this article, you will: Understand why traditional “just stop” approaches fail and what actually drives compulsive behavior Learn the HALT framework for identifying your immediate emotional triggers Recognize how deeper attachment wounds and trauma create vulnerability to addictive behaviors Discover why building new emotion regulation strategies is essential for lasting recovery Find a compassionate path forward that addresses root causes rather than symptoms Understanding Affect Regulation Affect regulation refers to your brain’s capacity to identify, tolerate, and modulate emotional experiences—particularly intense or aversive ones. In everyday life, this means being able to sit with frustration without exploding, process sadness without spiraling or burying it, and manage anxiety without needing to escape. When this system works well, you can navigate negative emotions without being overwhelmed or needing external substances or behaviors to cope. When Healthy Regulation Goes Wrong: Addictive Behaviors For many people, healthy emotional regulation skills never fully developed in childhood. When caregivers were emotionally unavailable, inconsistent, or unable to model how to manage big feelings, children don’t learn how to soothe themselves in healthy ways. The brain, being remarkably adaptive, then seeks alternative solutions. This is where the brain’s reward system becomes relevant. Pornography delivers rapid dopamine surges that temporarily numb discomfort with remarkable efficiency. The brain essentially finds a “super-stimulus” solution to an internal regulation problem—it works, at least in the short term, which is exactly why it becomes so compelling. The Maladaptive Coping Cycle and Emotional Dysregulation When you use pornography to escape negative feelings, something powerful happens neurologically. The temporary relief from emotional distress creates a reinforcement cycle: stress activates your avoidance response, porn provides dopamine-driven calm, and this neural pathway strengthens with each repetition. Over time, this creates tolerance—you need more or escalating content to achieve the same regulatory effect. Meanwhile, the brain's reward circuits become sensitized to pornographic cues and desensitized to natural rewards like healthy intimacy and and other adaptive coping strategies. This sensitization of the brain's reward circuits is why problematic pornography consumption feels increasingly compulsive: you’re not choosing to use porn so much as your brain is defaulting to a learned regulation strategy. Understanding this cycle helps explain why willpower fails: removing the coping mechanism without addressing the underlying dysregulation leaves you with no way to manage the emotional distress that drove the behavior in the first place. The Brain’s Reward System and Porn Addiction Understanding the brain’s reward system is essential to grasp why porn addiction—and other behavioral addictions—can feel so powerful and difficult to break. At its core, the brain’s reward system is designed to reinforce behaviors that promote survival and well-being by releasing dopamine, a neurotransmitter that creates feelings of pleasure and motivation. However, when it comes to compulsive sexual behaviors and problematic pornography consumption, this system can be hijacked by the constant novelty and intensity of sexual stimuli found online. With repeated exposure to highly stimulating pornographic material, the brain’s reward circuits become overactivated. This leads to a surge in dopamine far beyond what’s experienced with natural rewards like socializing, hobbies, or even real-life intimacy. Over time, the brain adapts by reducing the number of dopamine receptors and increasing the threshold needed to feel pleasure. This means that everyday life can start to feel dull or unfulfilling, while cravings for pornography become more intense and harder to resist. This cycle is at the heart of what makes compulsive sexual behavior disorder (CSBD) so challenging. Individuals may find themselves using porn not just for sexual arousal, but as a way to cope with emotional distress, negative emotions, or even boredom. The Problematic Pornography Consumption Scale (PPCS) is one tool clinicians use to assess the severity of these behaviors, looking at how often and how long someone uses porn, as well as the negative consequences it brings—such as relationship strain, financial issues, or emotional dysregulation. Impulse control becomes compromised as the brain’s reward system prioritizes the immediate relief or escape that porn provides over long-term well-being. This is where negative reinforcement mechanisms come into play: using porn to avoid or numb negative feelings like stress, anxiety, or sadness. While this may offer short-term relief, it reinforces the behavior, making it more likely to recur whenever emotional discomfort arises. Addressing porn addiction, therefore, requires more than just willpower or blocking access. Effective emotion regulation strategies—such as mindfulness, cognitive behavioral therapy, and building healthier coping mechanisms—are crucial for breaking the cycle. These approaches help individuals manage negative emotions, improve impulse control, and find new ways to experience pleasure and connection in everyday life. Ultimately, understanding the psychological and neurobiological underpinnings of porn addiction empowers individuals to seek out treatments that address both the behavior and the underlying mental health issues. By focusing on emotional regulation and developing adaptive coping strategies, it’s possible to reduce the negative consequences of problematic pornography use and move toward lasting recovery and improved mental health. The Surface Level: HALT and Daily Triggers The HALT model provides a practical framework for identifying the immediate triggers that make you vulnerable to pornography use. HALT stands for Hungry, Angry, Lonely, and Tired—four common physiological and emotional states that create conditions ripe for seeking quick relief through the brain’s reward circuitry. Hungry - Physical Depletion When blood sugar crashes or physical needs go unmet, your prefrontal cortex—the part of your brain responsible for impulse control and rational decision-making—functions less effectively. This creates vulnerability to seeking quick dopamine fixes. Physical depletion lowers your capacity for emotional responses that require energy and self-control. Your brain, seeking efficiency, defaults to the fastest available solution for feeling better. Pornography, with its immediate reward, becomes an attractive and easily accessible option when your regulatory resources are depleted. Angry - Stress and Frustration Work stress, relationship conflicts, financial pressures, and daily frustrations all create emotional tension that demands release. Exposure to negative stimuli, such as emotionally aversive events or images, can heighten emotional responses and increase vulnerability to problematic pornography use. Many people describe porn as a “pressure release valve”—a way to discharge anger and negative affect without confrontation or consequences. Research using the Problematic Pornography Consumption Scale and related measures consistently shows that stress-induced mood regulation is a primary motive for problematic online pornography use. The behavior serves as an escape from emotional distress, temporarily disconnecting you from the source of frustration while flooding your system with pleasure chemicals. Lonely - Social and Emotional Isolation Loneliness represents one of the most potent triggers for problematic pornography use. Studies examining the relationship between loneliness and PPU found that emotion regulation difficulties fully mediate this connection—meaning loneliness drives problematic use specifically through impaired ability to handle the emotional discomfort of being alone. Pornography creates an illusion of connection and intimacy without the vulnerability that real relationships require. For someone experiencing negative emotional stimuli from isolation, porn temporarily fills the void of human connection while paradoxically reinforcing the isolation that drives the behavior. Tired - Mental and Emotional Exhaustion Decision fatigue and burnout create particularly fertile ground for compulsive behavior. When you’re mentally exhausted, the prefrontal cortex’s capacity for impulse contr

When the Past Shows Up: Navigating Betrayal Trauma Triggers After Infidelity

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 13:00:43 +0000

Introduction A phone buzzes on the nightstand. The betrayed partner’s chest tightens, their heart pounds, and suddenly they’re flooded with the same panic they felt on discovery day—even though it’s just a work notification. The betraying partner sees the fear in their eyes and feels crushing shame, which triggers their own defensive response: “It’s just my boss. Why are you always so paranoid?” Within seconds, both partners are drowning in pain neither intended to cause. https://youtu.be/7ruRND-mrcM This article addresses the trigger-induced conflicts that derail recovery after infidelity—whether emotional affairs, physical betrayal, or compulsive sexual behavior including pornography addiction. Betrayal trauma can also result from broken trust by a close friend, not just a romantic partner. When trust is broken, it leaves deep emotional scars and can significantly impact self-esteem, making it harder to feel secure in oneself and the relationship. Fears of future betrayals are common and can influence the healing process, as the mind tries to protect itself from being hurt again. The content is designed for couples in early to mid-recovery phases who find themselves caught in escalating cycles whenever betrayal trauma triggers surface. Understanding these dynamics matters because without intervention, these cycles erode the foundation couples need to rebuild trust and move toward healing. Navigating triggers requires recognizing they are legitimate trauma responses for the betrayed partner and shame triggers for the betraying partner, with specific de-escalation techniques that interrupt the destructive cycle before it spirals. By the end of this article, you will understand: Why triggers are neurological alarm systems, not jealousy or manipulation How the betraying partner’s shame response compounds the betrayed partner’s pain The specific cycle that escalates conflict and how to interrupt it Communication scripts that create emotional safety during trigger episodes When and how to seek professional support for deeper healing work Understanding Betrayal Trauma Triggers Betrayal trauma triggers are neurological alarm systems that activate when the brain detects reminders of the original infidelity. These reminders—a song, a location, a physical sensation, a time of day—cause the nervous system to respond as if the betrayal is happening again in this moment. Research shows that 43% of betrayed partners continue experiencing these trauma triggers for more than two years, making them a normal part of the healing process rather than a sign of failure. Emotional triggers can be powerful reminders of the original betrayal and are distinct from ordinary emotional responses, often requiring specific attention in therapy and emotional processing. The critical distinction: triggers are fundamentally different from ordinary relationship jealousy or insecurity. Jealousy involves concern about potential future threats. Triggers involve the brain’s threat detection system responding to past trauma as though it’s present danger. This difference matters because treating triggers as jealousy dismisses the betrayed partner’s legitimate neurobiological response and prevents the couple from addressing the actual problem. Betrayal trauma can also be compounded by other traumas, which may further impact a person's sense of safety and self-worth. The emotional landscape of betrayal trauma is particularly complex, with survivors frequently oscillating between feelings of vulnerability, anger, and profound sadness. It’s Not Jealousy, It’s Trauma (For the Betrayed Partner) When a trigger activates, the panic, rage, or emotional numbness you experience is a legitimate trauma response—not evidence that you’re “being difficult” or “can’t let go.” Your brain encoded the betrayal along with every sensory detail present during discovery: the time of day, the physical sensations in your body, specific words or sounds. Now, when you encounter something resembling those details, your nervous system perceives a threat and floods your body with stress hormones. Brain imaging research confirms that social pain—including relationship betrayal—activates the same neural regions as physical injury. The anterior cingulate cortex and insula, areas that process physical pain, show similar activation patterns during experiences of betrayal. Your emotional pain is neurologically real. The racing heart, the intrusive thoughts, the difficulty breathing, the overwhelming anxiety—these are somatic responses to perceived threat, not character flaws or overreactions. This is why clinicians often describe severe post-infidelity symptoms using the framework of post traumatic stress disorder. You may experience hypervigilance (constantly scanning for signs of danger), difficulty with emotional regulation, flashbacks to discovery day, and raw emotions that feel overwhelming and disproportionate to the present moment. These experiences reflect how trauma rewires the brain’s threat detection system, making you exquisitely sensitive to anything associated with the original betrayal. Survivors may find themselves living in a constant state of hypervigilance or emotional alertness, as their minds and bodies remain on guard as a protective response to further hurt. Understanding this allows self compassion: you are not broken. Your brain is doing exactly what it was designed to do—protect you from threats. The problem is that the threat detection system cannot distinguish between actual, current danger and reminders of past danger. The loss of trust from betrayal trauma can loom large, making current (or future) relationships feel daunting and often leading to a fear of intimacy and vulnerability. The Shame Shield Response (For the Betraying Partner) When you witness your partner’s pain during a trigger episode, you likely experience overwhelming shame. This shame—the recognition that you caused this profound sense of suffering—triggers your own fight/flight/freeze response. You may find yourself becoming defensive (“I’ve told you nothing is happening”), withdrawing (“I can’t deal with this right now”), minimizing (“That was months ago”), or even counter-attacking (“You’re never going to trust me, are you?”). This defensive reaction is what we call the “Shame Shield.” It’s not malice. It’s not evidence that you don’t care. It’s your nervous system’s attempt to protect you from the intense emotions that arise when confronted with the damage you caused. The shame feels unbearable, so your brain seeks escape. However—and this is crucial—the Shame Shield compounds your partner’s pain. That self-protective reflex can actually harm them. How, you ask? When they’re triggered and you withdraw or defend, they experience your response as abandonment or rejection. The person who was once their safe space is now both the source of their trauma and unavailable to help them through it. This escalates their distress, which intensifies your shame, which strengthens your defensive response. See the cycle? Understanding this cycle is the first step toward breaking it. The connection between these two trauma responses—your partner’s trigger activation and your shame-based defense—creates the destructive cycle that this article will teach you to interrupt. Common Signs of Betrayal Trauma Triggers Recognizing the common signs of betrayal trauma triggers is a crucial step in the healing process. These trauma triggers can show up in both emotional and physical ways, often catching the betrayed partner off guard. Common signs include: Sudden anxiety, anger, or fear Physical sensations (racing heart, nausea, headaches, muscle tension) Emotional numbness Intrusive thoughts Hypervigilance Difficulty relaxing or sleeping Identifying these common signs of betrayal trauma triggers allows individuals to develop effective coping strategies and seek proper support. By understanding how trauma and betrayal manifest in both body and mind, betrayed partners can take proactive steps toward healing, emotional regulation, and ultimately, reclaiming their sense of safety and self-worth. The Destructive Cycle: How Triggers Escalate Conflict Most couples who experience post-betrayal conflict aren’t fighting about the trigger itself. They’re caught in a predictable escalation pattern where each partner’s pain response activates the other’s, creating a spiral that can take hours or days to resolve—and leaves both feeling more wounded than before. Step 1: The Trigger Occurs Common triggers include: Phone notifications Anniversaries (including “D-day”—discovery day) Locations associated with the affair Physical intimacy Movies or TV showing infidelity themes Encountering the betraying partner’s colleagues or friends who knew about the affair Ordinary words or phrases that carry painful associations When a trigger activates, the betrayed partner may experience: racing heart, shallow breathing, muscle tension, tunnel vision, difficulty concentrating, emotional flooding or emotional numbness, intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, nausea, and a profound sense of danger. These physical sensations and emotional responses occur automatically—the betrayed partner cannot simply “choose” not to react. The emotional pain of betrayal trauma can also manifest in physical symptoms such as headaches, fatigue, or digestive issues. The trauma response window—the time between trigger activation and peak intensity—can be seconds. This is why triggers often seem to “come out of nowhere” and why the betrayed partner’s reaction may seem disproportionate to the triggering event. Their nervous system is responding to the original betrayal, not the present moment. Step 2: Pain Expression Meets Shame Shield When the trigger activates in their nervous system, the betrayed partner expresses their distress—often throu

Sobriety vs. Recovery: Why Counting Days is Not Enough

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 13:00:56 +0000

Introduction You’ve made it thirty days without pornography. Maybe sixty. Perhaps you’ve even crossed the ninety-day threshold that so many recovery communities celebrate. Yet despite the streak on your counter app, something still feels wrong. The irritability hasn’t lifted. Your partner still seems distant, guarded. And that familiar pull toward acting out behaviors hasn’t disappeared—it’s just coiled tighter, waiting. https://youtu.be/NexPQjSUkVc This experience is far more common than most addicts realize. Many men find themselves trapped in what we call white knuckle sobriety: abstaining from pornography through sheer willpower while the underlying emotional pain that drove the addiction in the first place remains untouched. Just as someone might abstain from alcohol but still struggle with the underlying issues of addiction, stopping pornography use is only the first step. This article addresses individuals experiencing this frustrating cycle, partners who feel unsafe despite their loved one’s abstinence, and anyone seeking to understand why staying sober isn’t the same as getting well. The direct answer: Sobriety in porn addiction means cessation of acting out behaviors—no pornography, no compulsive sexual behaviors, counting the days clean. Recovery, however, involves a complete transformation: healing attachment wounds, developing emotional regulation, rebuilding integrity, and addressing the root causes of compulsive behavior. Sobriety stops the “what.” Recovery heals the “why.” By the end of this article, you will understand: The clinical distinction between sexual sobriety and true recovery Why white knuckling eventually fails—and the signs you’re doing it Why your partner may still feel unsafe even during your sober periods The path from mere sobriety to lasting freedom and relationship healing Recovery is not just about achieving a specific result; it’s about embracing the idea that this is an ongoing journey and a shift in mindset, focused on continual growth and learning. Understanding Sobriety vs. Recovery in Porn Addiction The confusion between these two concepts causes immense suffering for people struggling with sexual addiction and their partners. When we conflate stopping a behavior with healing from it, we set ourselves up for cycles of relapse, shame, and relationship rupture. Understanding this distinction isn’t academic—it’s the foundation of a new life. Key Definitions: Sobriety, White Knuckling, and Recovery Sobriety: Sobriety is the cessation of a behavior, often measured in days or weeks without acting out. White knuckle sobriety: White knuckle sobriety refers to staying sober by forcefully resisting urges without addressing the root causes of addiction. Recovery: Recovery from porn addiction requires a focus on emotional healing and developing healthier coping mechanisms. Genuine recovery is a holistic, long-term process that addresses root causes, emotional health, and lifestyle changes. What is Sobriety in Porn Addiction Sexual sobriety refers to abstinence from specific acting out behaviors. In the context of porn addiction, this typically means no pornography consumption, no compulsive masturbation, and no engagement with other sexual behaviors that violate one’s values or relationship agreements. The “counting days” mentality—tracking time since last use, celebrating sobriety milestones, maintaining a sobriety date—represents a necessary first step. Sobriety addresses the “what” of addictive behavior: the pornography viewing itself. This matters because it allows the brain to begin healing from dopamine dysregulation. Research from Utah State University found that structured treatment achieved a 92 percent reduction in pornography viewing, with participants showing significant improvement in breaking the behavioral cycle. However, sobriety alone does not address why the behavior developed, what emotional needs it was meeting, or what wounds in the person’s sexual history and attachment patterns made them vulnerable to addiction in the first place. What is Recovery in Porn Addiction Real recovery involves holistic transformation across emotional, relational, and behavioral dimensions. It means developing genuine emotional regulation—the capacity to tolerate difficult feelings without acting out. It requires healing attachment wounds that may stretch back to childhood. It demands building integrity: alignment between one’s values, emotions, and actions, particularly within intimate relationships. Embracing the idea that recovery is a journey of ongoing learning and development, rather than a fixed endpoint, is essential to this process. The recovery process addresses the “why” behind sexual addiction. Why did pornography become a coping mechanism? What underlying emotional needs was it meeting? What unmet needs for connection, soothing, or escape drove the compulsive pattern? True recovery means developing healthier ways to meet these needs. Critically, recovery includes the relational dimension that mere sobriety ignores. For partners who have experienced betrayal trauma, watching someone stop a behavior provides only partial safety. True healing in the relationship requires witnessing genuine emotional growth, developing empathy, and validating the partner’s pain—not just behavioral compliance. The Problem with White-Knuckling Sobriety White knuckling describes the experience of forcing abstinence through willpower alone, without addressing the underlying issues driving the addiction. It’s the “cold turkey” approach that relies solely on determination and avoiding temptation. Many individuals initially believe this is what recovery looks like: just stop doing the thing. The reality is quite different. White knuckling typically leads to increasing irritability, emotional numbness, social isolation, and ultimately, relapse. The person may technically be sober, but they’re not well. Partners often describe this state as living with someone who is physically present but emotionally absent—what Alcoholics Anonymous literature calls a “dry drunk.” Signs of White-Knuckling Behavioral Indicators: Constant vigilance against triggers, exhausting mental energy on avoidance Rigid thinking patterns and black-and-white reasoning about sexuality Social isolation and withdrawal from activities that might present temptation Counting days obsessively while feeling no genuine internal change Emotional Symptoms: Persistent irritability, short temper, or emotional volatility Feeling numb, flat, or disconnected from your own emotions Increased anxiety and hypervigilance about potential relapse Shame spirals when intrusive thoughts or urges arise Physical Signs: Chronic tension, particularly in jaw, shoulders, or chest Sleep disruption and fatigue Nervous system dysregulation: feeling constantly on edge or exhausted Relational Patterns: Emotional unavailability to your partner despite behavioral compliance Defensiveness when your partner expresses fear or hurt Expecting credit or trust simply for maintaining sobriety Why White-Knuckling Eventually Fails The fundamental problem with white knuckling is that it treats symptoms while ignoring the disease. Compulsive sexual behavior typically develops as a coping mechanism for emotional pain—whether from trauma, attachment injuries, loneliness, shame, or chronic stress. When someone stops the behavior but doesn’t address these root causes, the underlying pressure doesn’t disappear. It builds. Nervous system science helps explain this: maintaining white knuckle sobriety requires chronic hypervigilance, which keeps the nervous system in a state of threat response. This depletes emotional resources and decision-making capacity over time. When life pressures increase—work stress, relationship conflict, loneliness—the person lacks the internal resources to cope without their primary coping mechanism. Relapse becomes almost inevitable. Most addicts who relapse repeatedly despite genuine effort aren’t failing at willpower. They’re demonstrating that willpower alone cannot heal trauma, regulate a dysregulated nervous system, or meet the attachment needs that pornography was attempting to address. Impact on Partners Partners often report a confusing experience: their loved one has stopped viewing pornography, yet they still feel unsafe in the relationship. Many partners affected by sexual addiction are women, and women often experience unique trauma and require tailored support in their recovery process. This isn’t irrational. Partners with betrayal trauma have learned that their sense of safety cannot depend on behavior alone—they need to see genuine emotional transformation. When someone is white knuckling, partners often sense it. They notice the emotional distance, the irritability, the lack of genuine connection. The person may be sober, but they’re not emotionally available. They may be avoiding temptation, but they’re not doing the work of building healthy relationships or demonstrating empathy for the pain their addiction caused. For partners, witnessing white knuckle sobriety can actually maintain trauma symptoms because the fundamental dynamic hasn’t changed: they’re living with someone whose emotional energy is consumed by managing urges rather than building genuine intimacy. The Path from Sobriety to True Recovery The good news is that the journey from mere sobriety to true recovery is well-mapped. It requires professional support, commitment to self-awareness, and willingness to feel rather than avoid. But it can lead individuals from surface-level sobriety to true healing and wholeness, especially when guided by clinical expertise and one's personal values. Ultimately, this path leads to lasting freedom rather than ongoing struggle. Community plays a crucial role in the recovery process by p

Trauma Bonds: Why You Can’t "Just Leave" (And How to Actually Do It)

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 13:00:25 +0000

Introduction Breaking a trauma bond is not about willpower or “just leaving”—it’s a neurological uncoupling process where your brain’s hijacked reward and attachment systems must be gradually rewired to diminish the intense emotional pull toward your abuser. Trauma bonds are a strong emotional attachment that forms through cycles of abuse and manipulation, making it difficult to recognize the unhealthy nature of the relationship. If you’ve ever wondered why you keep going back despite knowing better, the answer lies in your nervous system, not your character. https://youtu.be/72__B95HvHk This guide covers the biology of trauma bonding, nervous system regulation strategies, safety planning logistics, and gradual detachment methods. Trauma bonding is rooted in power imbalances, manipulation, and dependency, and it is not a healthy relationship or real love. It’s specifically written for survivors who intellectually understand they need to leave (or have already left) but feel physically pulled back to the abusive person. If your body seems to betray your mind’s decisions, this content addresses exactly why that happens and what to do about it. The direct answer: You cannot think your way out of a trauma bond—you must regulate your way out. Trauma bonds are a psychological response to cycles of abuse, often leaving victims feeling trapped in a cycle of manipulation and dependency. Breaking free requires soothing your nervous system first, because when your body is in panic mode, it will seek what feels familiar, even when that familiarity is harmful. By the end of this guide, you will: Understand why trauma bond withdrawal symptoms mirror drug withdrawal Know how to implement no contact safely using a titration approach Master regulation tools for moments when the urge to contact them feels overwhelming Create a comprehensive safety plan protecting both your emotional and physical well being Build “islands of safety” that support lasting freedom from unhealthy relationship dynamics Understanding Trauma Bonds and Your Nervous System A trauma bond is a powerful emotional attachment formed through cycles of abuse and intermittent positive reinforcement. Trauma bonds can form in romantic relationships, but also in friendships, family dynamics, and workplace settings. In romantic relationships, trauma bonding is especially prevalent when emotional or physical abuse is present, often involving cycles of violence and reconciliation. Healthy relationships are characterized by mutual respect, trust, support, open communication, and accountability. In a healthy relationship, both partners feel valued and secure. A trauma bond is not a healthy relationship and is not real love. Unlike healthy relationships built on consistent safety and mutual respect, trauma bonded relationships exploit your survival instincts through unpredictable swings between harm and affection. Trauma bonds are often marked by secrecy, blame-shifting, and cycles of abuse. Your nervous system becomes hijacked—interpreting the abusive person as a source of safety precisely because they occasionally provide relief from the very distress they create. The Neurochemical Reality The intense emotional bond in abusive relationships functions like an addiction. Emotional abuse, including manipulation and gaslighting, plays a central role in the formation of trauma bonds by isolating victims, undermining their perceptions, and fostering deep attachment through a cycle of abuse and positive reinforcement. When your abuser showers you with affection after periods of emotional or physical abuse, your brain releases dopamine—the same neurochemical involved in gambling and substance addiction. This intermittent reinforcement creates stronger attachment than consistent kindness ever could. Research on conditioning shows that unpredictable rewards cement behaviors more powerfully than reliable ones, which explains why the cycle of love bombing followed by cruelty creates such deep emotional attachment. This neurochemical reality is precisely why “just leave” advice fails. Your nervous system has been conditioned to seek the familiar pattern. The abuser’s presence—despite evidence of harm—registers as safety to your dysregulated brain. Understanding this removes self blame from the equation: your difficulty leaving isn’t weakness, it’s biology responding to sophisticated conditioning. Trauma bonds are also linked to attachment theory, which explains how early childhood experiences shape our relationships. The trauma bonding cycle typically includes stages such as love bombing, trust and dependency, criticism, gaslighting, resignation, loss of self, and addiction to the cycle. Why Your Body Betrays Your Mind In a trauma bonded relationship, your fight-flight-freeze responses become chronically activated. Your amygdala—the brain’s fear center—remains on high alert, while your prefrontal cortex—responsible for rational thinking—gets overridden. When you’re in this survival state, you cannot make clear decisions. Your body craves regulation, and tragically, the abuser has become your primary source of nervous system relief through those intermittent positive feelings. This creates a devastating loop: the stress of being apart triggers panic, which your body interprets as evidence that you need the abuser to feel safe again. The victim feels powerless not from lack of intelligence or strength, but because decision-making capacity genuinely diminishes when the nervous system is dysregulated. This is why breaking the bond requires addressing physiology first—and why withdrawal symptoms emerge so intensely when you attempt to leave. The Biology of Withdrawal: Why Breaking Free Hurts The emotional pain of ending a trauma bonded relationship isn’t imagined or exaggerated—it’s a genuine neurochemical withdrawal process. Understanding this biology helps reframe the experience: the agony isn’t evidence that you belong together, it’s evidence that your brain is detoxing from an unhealthy pattern. Physical Withdrawal Symptoms Trauma bond withdrawal symptoms manifest in the body with surprising intensity. Survivors commonly report panic attacks, insomnia, digestive disturbances, chest tightness, and chronic pain flares. Your cortisol levels, elevated during abuse and soothed during reconciliation phases, now swing erratically without the familiar cycle. These physical symptoms typically peak around 2-4 weeks after separation, similar to timelines seen in substance withdrawal. Your body is genuinely recalibrating its stress response systems. Emotional Withdrawal Symptoms The emotional turmoil during this period can feel unbearable. Obsessive thoughts about the abuser consume hours. Intense feelings of longing arise unexpectedly. You may experience emotional numbness alternating with overwhelming grief. Negative thoughts flood in, including self doubt about whether the relationship was really “that bad.” These intense emotional experiences are withdrawal—your brain protesting the absence of its conditioned reward source. The Dopamine Crash Here’s the reframe that changes everything: that overwhelming urge to text them is a dopamine craving, not evidence of love. When you feel desperate to make contact, your brain is essentially asking for a hit—like a gambler pulled toward the slot machine despite knowing the odds. Genuine connection doesn’t require cycles of fear and relief. The intense longing you feel reflects addiction patterns, not the deep sense of partnership that characterizes healthy relationships. Studies show that intermittent reinforcement creates stronger behavioral patterns than consistent reward. This is why the abuser’s unpredictability—terrible one day, wonderful the next—bonded you more intensely than a stable partner ever could have. Recognizing withdrawal for what it is allows you to ride it out rather than interpret it as a signal to return. The “No Contact” Rule: Necessary Detox for Your Nervous System No contact functions as full abstinence from an addictive substance. Without it, even minimal interaction reactivates the neural pathways reinforced by your trauma bonded relationship. Checking their social media, responding to “just one” message, or allowing them to explain themselves provides just enough of a dopamine hit to reset your withdrawal timeline and keep you trapped in emotional addiction. However, abrupt severance isn’t always possible or safe. For some survivors, immediate complete separation can trigger panic responses so severe that they rush back to the familiar abuser. This is where titration—a gradual, stepped approach—becomes essential for sustainable freedom. The Titration Approach: Building Islands of Safety Rather than demanding you break a trauma bond all at once, titration allows you to build small “islands of safety” that gradually expand until the abuser’s pull diminishes. Remove photos and mementos from immediate environment — Clear visual triggers from your daily spaces first, storing items out of sight or with a trusted friend Block on social media and messaging platforms — Eliminate the temptation to check their activity or respond to hoovering attempts Change routines to avoid accidental encounters — Take different routes, shop at different stores, adjust your schedule to minimize overlap Inform trusted friends about your no-contact commitment — Accountability creates external structure when internal resolve wavers Create physical barriers when necessary — New phone numbers, email addresses, or even relocating if resources allow Each step creates distance, allowing your nervous system time to adjust before the next change. This prevents overwhelming your system and triggering the panic that sends you back. When Complete No Contact Isn’t Possible Shared custody, workplace overlap, or family ties may prevent total separation....

Trauma Bonding: The Biology Behind Why You Stay After Betrayal

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 13:00:31 +0000

You know what they did. You can list every lie, every late night, every moment you were gaslit into doubting your own gut. And still your body wakes at 3 a.m. reaching for them. You feel insane. You are not insane. You are caught in a betrayal bond, and what you are experiencing is a documented physiological response that has nothing to do with weakness. A betrayal bond is the neurochemical and emotional attachment that forms to a partner who has shattered your reality through deliberate secrecy, gaslighting, and partial disclosures. The cycle of discovery, false reconciliation, and new betrayal hijacks your dopamine system the same way intermittent reinforcement powers a slot machine. Your brain wasn't designed to process a primary attachment figure who is also the source of ongoing harm, so it builds a bridge across the impossibility. That bridge is the bond. It feels like love because the same hormones are involved, but its mechanics are closer to addiction than to connection. This article focuses on betrayal bonds in the specific context of infidelity and sexual betrayal, not general abusive relationships or narcissistic personality disorder dynamics, though there is real overlap. If you are past the initial shock of discovery and stuck in the agonizing loop of "I know what they did, so why can't I leave?", you are in the right place. The reason matters, because understanding the biology underneath your bond is the first step toward getting solid ground back under your feet. What a Betrayal Bond Actually Is A betrayal bond differs from other trauma bonds through the specific mechanics of secrecy, gaslighting, and reality distortion. While emotional abuse in other contexts often involves overt control or love bombing cycles, betrayal trauma operates through hidden lives. The person sleeping next to you was simultaneously someone else entirely. This creates a unique hell where the abuser is also the person you turn to for comfort. Trauma bonding is often confused with codependency, but the two are not the same thing. Codependency involves an excessive emotional reliance on a partner, typically one who needs support due to illness or addiction. Trauma bonding is rooted in cycles of betrayal and repair, where the bond is formed and re-formed through repeated violations of trust. The bond forms not despite the betrayal but because of it. Your brain, desperate to maintain primary attachment to someone essential for your emotional survival, builds bridges across impossible chasms of cognitive dissonance. For a deeper look at how this trauma reshapes brain chemistry and physiology, our companion guide on how betrayal trauma impacts the brain and body walks through the neurobiological changes in detail. The Reality Gap The Reality Gap is the agony of holding two opposing truths about the same person. The partner who held you last night. The person who was texting their affair partner this morning. These realities cannot coexist, yet they must, because they are both true. Your brain cannot tolerate this dissonance for long. The trauma bond becomes the bridge your mind constructs to connect these two people into one bearable reality. You find yourself making excuses, minimizing, or dissociating because the alternative, holding the full truth, feels like psychological annihilation. This is not denial. This is your brain doing exactly what it was designed to do when attachment and danger come from the same source. Betrayal Blindness as Survival Mechanism Betrayal blindness, a concept developed by researcher Jennifer Freyd, is not naivety or stupidity. It is a survival mechanism. Your brain actively inhibits conscious awareness of betrayal cues to preserve your primary attachment. When you are emotionally dependent on someone for stability, identity, or daily life, especially in long-term marriage or relationships with shared children and resources, your brain calculates that full awareness of betrayal would be catastrophic. So it blocks the red flags. The suspicious phone behavior, the emotional distance, the gut feeling that something was wrong. Your mind dismissed these not because you were foolish, but because seeing them clearly would have required ending the relationship. Research shows betrayal blindness is strongest when dependency is highest, which is why so many betrayed partners say "I knew something was wrong but I couldn't let myself see it." This mechanism protected you once. Now it keeps you bonded to someone who continues to manipulate your reality. The Biology of the Betrayal Bond Your intellectual knowledge that this person hurt you does not override your body's physiological attachment. Understanding why your body still wants them is essential for healing, and for releasing the shame that you "should" be able to just leave. The intense symptoms a betrayal bond produces are often similar to PTSD, and they need to be treated with that level of seriousness, not dismissed as overreaction. Neurochemical Addiction to the Cycle The cycle of discovery, confrontation, partial disclosure, reconciliation, and new discoveries creates a neurochemical rollercoaster that mimics addiction. When your partner shows remorse after you discover another lie, your brain floods with oxytocin (the bonding hormone) and dopamine (the reward chemical). The relief feels like love. The connection feels real. Patrick Carnes, in his book The Betrayal Bond, describes how fear and terror from discovered infidelity paradoxically amplify attachment hormones. Your brain is not malfunctioning. It is responding to intermittent reinforcement, the most powerful conditioning schedule known to psychology. The same mechanism that makes slot machines addictive makes your betrayer feel impossible to leave. This is a physiological response to manipulation, not a character flaw. Studies show 70 to 80 percent of infidelity survivors report addiction-like symptoms including withdrawal, cravings, and intrusive thoughts about their partner. Your symptoms are normal responses to abnormal treatment. The Torture of Trickle Truth Trickle truth, when an unfaithful partner reveals affair details incrementally over weeks or months, is one of the cruelest reinforcers of betrayal bonds. First they admit emotional connection. Weeks later, physical intimacy. Months later, the timeline was longer than disclosed. Each partial truth creates a micro-cycle of devastation and relief. The hope that "this time they told me everything" becomes its own addiction. Each disclosure feels like progress, like honesty, like the relationship might survive. Gratitude floods your system. Then another truth emerges, retraumatizing you while simultaneously reinforcing the bond through the same intermittent reinforcement that powers slot machine psychology. Clinical experience suggests roughly 60 to 70 percent of unfaithful partners engage in trickle truth, prolonging their partner's recovery by 6 to 12 months compared to full disclosure. The betrayal bond strengthens with each cycle, not despite the pain, but because of the unpredictable alternation between hope and devastation. Stress Response System Hijacking Betrayal trauma dysregulates your hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, keeping cortisol chronically elevated. This is not anxiety in the normal sense. This is your body trapped in survival mode, unable to distinguish between past and present danger. Elevated cortisol impairs memory consolidation (which explains the gaps in your recall), disrupts decision-making, and keeps your nervous system cycling between hypervigilance and collapse. When well-meaning friends ask "why don't you just leave?", they don't understand that your brain is essentially offline for major life decisions. The fear response that was designed to protect you from acute threat is now firing continuously, making any change feel like mortal danger. This is why you feel frozen. This is why leaving feels impossible even when staying feels like hell. What Betrayal Bonds Look Like in Real Life Sometimes naming the abstract dynamic isn't enough. You want to know if what you're living is what we're describing. These are composites drawn from what we see clinically, with identifying details changed. If any of them sound like a transcript of your last week, that is information, not coincidence. The midnight check. She has discovered three new lies in the past two months. She knows the pattern. She also opens his location app every time he leaves the house, and the moment the dot shows him at home, her chest releases. She hates that the relief feels so good. The relief is not love. It is the dopamine that follows fear. The "this time he means it" loop. He has promised six times that the disclosure is finally complete. Each promise is followed by months of cautious hope, then a polygraph fail or a new artifact discovered on a hard drive, then devastation, then a new promise. She knows intellectually that the pattern is predictive. She still believes him every time. That is the intermittent reinforcement at work, and it is doing exactly what it does to every nervous system it gets hold of. The good day that erases the year. They have a quiet Saturday. Coffee, a walk, a long talk where he says the right things. By Sunday night she catches herself thinking, "Maybe none of it was as bad as I thought." That is the bond rewriting the file. A single regulated day flooding with bonding hormones can temporarily neutralize months of accumulated evidence. This is not you being naive. It is your brain protecting the attachment. The body that won't agree with the decision. She has signed the separation paperwork. She knows it is right. She also lies awake reaching across the bed for him and crying when she remembers he isn't there. Her conscious mind and her nervous system are not on the same timeline. The mind decides in minutes....

Trauma Bonding: The Biology of Why We Stay

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 16:17:44 +0000

Safety Disclaimer If you are in immediate danger, call 911. Domestic violence is a life-threatening situation. The most dangerous time is often when you attempt to leave—75% of DV murders occur after the victim tries to separate from their abuser. National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233 (SAFE) This resource is available 24/7 with trained advocates who understand trauma bonding and can help you create a safety plan. You are not weak for staying. Biology and psychology create powerful traps that make leaving extremely difficult. Introduction “I’m staying to keep the family together.” We hear this from protective parents every week. And we need you to understand something that changes everything: in a domestic violence home, the “family glue” holding everyone together is not love. It is shared trauma. This article speaks directly to two groups: the protective parent who may feel stuck in an impossible situation due to emotional entrapment within a trauma bond, and the adult child trying to understand why their childhood felt like walking through a minefield while pretending everything was fine. We see the impossible choice you feel you are making every day. https://youtu.be/6v4-NHCQS9E Trauma bonding in domestic violence creates survival attachments that feel like love but are actually fear-based. These bonds form through cycles of abuse and affection, hijacking your brain’s attachment system until the relationship feels impossible to leave—even when you know you should. Trauma bonds are often formed through a combination of emotional manipulation, isolation, and gaslighting by the abuser. This content covers how trauma bonding works within family systems, not just between partners. We’ll examine the biological imperative driving children to bond with scary caregivers, the intermittent reinforcement trapping partners, and the generational patterns that repeat until someone breaks free. By the end, you will understand: Why trauma bonds feel like love but operate like addiction How children develop “fawning” as a survival response to abuse The neurochemical trap of intermittent reinforcement in abusive relationships The critical difference between protecting your children and enabling the cycle Concrete steps to break the generational pattern of domestic abuse Understanding Trauma Bonding in Family Systems Trauma bonding is a strong, unhealthy emotional attachment formed between an abused person and their abuser through cycles of abuse interspersed with affection, kindness, or reconciliation. This creates a psychological dependency that mimics love but stems from survival instincts. In family systems, trauma bonding extends beyond the abusive partner to include children. The power imbalance between parent and child creates fertile ground for dysfunctional attachment—abuse followed by relief, terror followed by tenderness. This intermittent reinforcement makes separation feel impossible because your brain has learned to associate the abuser with both danger and safety. Unlike healthy relationships built on consistent trust and respect, trauma bond relationships rely on fear and relief cycles. During “honeymoon” phases, your brain releases bonding hormones like oxytocin, reinforcing loyalty despite harm. This is not a character flaw. This is neurobiology. The Biological Imperative of Child Attachment Children must bond to their caregivers to survive. This is not optional—it is biological programming that predates conscious thought. When the person responsible for a child’s survival is also the source of terror, the child’s brain faces an impossible equation. The solution? Create a “shared reality” with the abuser. Adopt their version of events. Believe their explanations. This is not weakness; it is the brain’s attempt to reduce stress in an impossible situation. This survival mechanism is called “fawning”—the fourth trauma response alongside fight, flight, and freeze. Fawning involves people-pleasing, hyper-attentiveness to the abuser’s moods, and suppressing your own needs to avoid triggering violence. Children who fawn become expert at reading the room, anticipating rage, and making themselves small or useful to stay safe. Intermittent Reinforcement in Adult Relationships Partners in abusive relationships experience trauma bonding through intermittent reinforcement—the same mechanism that makes slot machines addictive. Abusers use positive reinforcement—such as affection or praise—intermittently to manipulate and maintain control, deepening the trauma bond. Unpredictable rewards create stronger attachment than consistent love. When your abusive partner alternates between cruelty and tenderness, your brain experiences dopamine surges during the “good times” that feel more intense than steady affection ever could. You find yourself chasing those positive feelings, convinced the real relationship is the tender one and the abuse is an aberration. The cycle typically follows a pattern: love bombing, trust-building, criticism and gaslighting, manipulation, addiction, self-loss, and submission. Each phase serves to deepen the trauma bond while eroding your self-esteem and sense of reality through cognitive dissonance. Understanding these biological mechanisms is essential before we examine how they manifest differently in partners versus children. Physical Symptoms of Trauma Bonding Trauma bonding doesn’t just affect your emotions and thoughts—it can take a real toll on your body. Many survivors of abusive relationships experience physical symptoms that are directly linked to the ongoing stress and anxiety of trauma. These can include persistent headaches, chronic fatigue, nausea, changes in appetite, and trouble sleeping. Sometimes, the body’s response to trauma is so strong that it interferes with your ability to function in daily life. These physical symptoms are your body’s way of signaling that something is wrong. The constant cycle of fear, relief, and emotional pain in a trauma bond relationship keeps your nervous system on high alert, making it difficult to relax or feel safe. Over time, this stress can lead to more serious health issues if left unaddressed. Recognizing these physical symptoms is an important step in your recovery. If you notice that your body is reacting to the relationship or the aftermath of leaving, it’s not “all in your head”—it’s a real response to trauma. Seeking help from a mental health professional can make a significant difference. They can help you develop strategies to reduce stress and anxiety, manage physical symptoms, and support your overall mental health as you heal from trauma bonding. Love Bombing and Trauma Bonding Love bombing is a powerful tactic used by abusers to create an intense emotional attachment at the start of a relationship. It often involves overwhelming the victim with affection, compliments, gifts, and promises of a perfect future. These grand gestures and positive feelings can make the relationship feel like a whirlwind romance—until the abuse begins. The reason love bombing is so effective in creating trauma bonds is that it activates the brain’s reward system, flooding you with dopamine and other feel-good chemicals. This rush of positive feelings can make it hard to recognize the warning signs of abuse or to believe that the abuser’s actions are intentional. When the cycle shifts from affection to abuse, survivors often find themselves longing for the return of those early, euphoric days. Abusers use love bombing to manipulate their victims into staying, even after the relationship becomes harmful. The memory of those intense early feelings can keep survivors trapped, hoping the abuser will change and the “real” relationship will return. Recognizing love bombing is a crucial step in breaking free from trauma bonds. If you notice that someone’s affection feels overwhelming, too good to be true, or is quickly followed by controlling or hurtful behavior, it may be a sign of manipulation. Reaching out for support can help you break the cycle and begin to heal. The Partner’s Trap: Why You Stay You are not staying because you are weak. You are staying because your nervous system has been systematically rewired to associate this person with survival itself. The Honeymoon Phase Hook Love bombing creates the initial attachment that makes everything afterward so confusing. Your abusive partner likely began the relationship with intense affection, attention, and promises that felt like finally being seen. This creates a powerful template that your brain returns to again and again, even as the abuse escalates. After episodes of violence or emotional abuse, the “good times” feel exponentially more intense. Your brain, flooded with stress hormones during abuse, experiences a neurochemical flood of relief and bonding chemicals during reconciliation. This is not love—it is your nervous system desperately seeking equilibrium after terror. This pattern creates what therapists call “euphoric recall”—the tendency to remember the intense feelings of the honeymoon phase while minimizing the reality of the abuse. Your brain is not lying to you maliciously; it is trying to cope with an impossible situation. Isolation and Dependency Creation Abusers rarely trap partners through force alone. They strategically isolate you from support systems, create financial dependency, and erode your confidence in your own decision-making through coercive control. By the time you recognize the pattern, you may feel like you have nowhere to go and no one who would believe you. The abuser’s actions have systematically dismantled your independence while gaslighting you about your own perceptions. Self doubt becomes your constant companion. This isolation serves the trauma bond by making the abuser feel like the only person who truly knows you—even as they hurt you

Trauma Bonding: The Chains Keeping You Stuck

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 13:00:48 +0000

If you feel "crazy" for missing someone who hurts you, or "addicted" to a person you know is harmful, you are not broken. Your brain is responding the way brains tend to respond to a very specific pattern of fear and affection. A trauma bond is a powerful emotional attachment that forms between a person being abused and their abuser, built through repeated cycles of harm followed by relief, kindness, or apology. The result is a psychological dependency that feels physically impossible to break, even when you can see clearly that the relationship is hurting you. Safety First: If you are in immediate danger, please contact local emergency services or the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233. https://youtu.be/asszg-U6JB0 This article walks through the neuroscience of trauma bonding, the seven stages that map how these relationships develop, the body and relational signs that you may be in one, and the steps that actually help people break free. We've written it for adults who feel stuck in a relationship they know is unhealthy, and who want to understand why leaving feels so much harder than it should. By the end of this article, you will: Understand the brain science behind your emotional attachment Recognize the 7 stages of trauma bonding Identify the body, relational, and cognitive signs of a trauma bond Know the concrete steps to break free and begin healing What Is a Trauma Bond? A trauma bond is the intense emotional connection that develops between a person experiencing abuse and the person inflicting it. Dr. Patrick Carnes first named this pattern in his 1997 book The Betrayal Bond, describing how cycles of fear and relief misuse the brain's attachment system to trap a person inside an abusive relationship. The most important thing to know up front is this: a trauma bond is a neurobiological survival response, not evidence of weakness, low self-worth, or poor judgment. When you are in danger, your brain is wired to attach to whoever appears to provide safety. In a trauma-bonded relationship, that "safe person" and the source of the threat are the same person. The result is a confusing reality where the one hurting you also feels like the only one who can comfort you. This is why trauma bonds form even in people who are otherwise discerning, capable, and clear-thinking outside the relationship. The brain is doing what brains do. The Neuroscience Behind Trauma Bonds Your brain runs on a system of rewards and threats. In a trauma-bonded relationship, that system gets hijacked through a process called intermittent reinforcement. Here is the mechanism. When abuse occurs, your body floods with stress hormones, especially cortisol and adrenaline. Your nervous system enters survival mode. Then, when the abuser shifts to kindness, an apology, a gift, or even just the absence of abuse, your brain releases dopamine. Dopamine is the same chemical involved in pleasure, reward, and relief. Your nervous system reads the drop in cortisol as "the threat passed," and the dopamine surge feels like love. During those reconciliation phases, your brain also floods with oxytocin, the same bonding hormone that pairs a mother to her infant. Oxytocin strengthens bonding signals in the brain, which can make the attachment feel unusually hard to loosen. Detaching can feel physically painful, almost like skin being torn. The unpredictability is the engine. Because you cannot tell when the kindness will arrive, your brain becomes hyper-attuned to any small signal of warmth. The cycle of chronic stress followed by intermittent reward can condition the nervous system much like a slot machine conditions a gambler, and many of the same brain pathways are involved. This is why willpower alone rarely works. You are not staying because you are weak. You are staying because your nervous system has built a real, biochemical dependency on the relief that follows the harm. We tend to see this most clearly when clients describe feeling "fine" all day, then experiencing intense physical agitation in the evenings when the no-contact gap stretches longer. The body is asking for its dose. Recognizing the trauma bond as a biochemical pattern rather than a character flaw is the first move that makes breaking it possible. From there, the next thing that helps is being able to see the stages it tends to move through. The 7 Stages of Trauma Bonding Trauma bonds do not form overnight. They develop through a fairly predictable sequence of behaviors that gradually expand the abusive person's control while eroding the other person's sense of reality and self-worth. Carnes' framework is often summarized in seven stages. Stage 1: Love Bombing The first stage is overwhelming positive attention. Constant texting, expensive gifts, fast declarations of love, intense focus that makes you feel uniquely chosen and seen. The intensity feels like fate or soulmate-level connection. Love bombing serves a purpose that becomes clear in hindsight. It establishes a "high" that you will later chase when the abuse begins. It also accelerates emotional commitment before you have had time to observe the other person's character under stress. Stage 2: Trust and Dependency Once the emotional attachment is in place, the abusive person begins systematically increasing your dependency on them. This often looks like accelerating commitment (moving in fast, marriage pressure), encouraging financial reliance, gradually isolating you from friends and family, and becoming your primary source of emotional support. The isolation is rarely framed as isolation. It usually arrives disguised as love: "I just want you all to myself." "Your friends don't get us." "Your family is toxic." By the time you notice the social shrinkage, the abuser has become your whole world. Stage 3: Criticism and Devaluation The shift from adoration to criticism is usually gradual. The person who once praised everything begins finding fault with your appearance, decisions, body, ideas, and worth. This stage produces something therapists call cognitive dissonance, the very uncomfortable experience of holding two contradictory beliefs at the same time. You remember the love-bombing phase, so you assume the "real" person is the loving one and the critical version is just a bad day, or stress, or your fault. Because you've become dependent on their approval, you work harder to earn back the affection. You internalize the criticism. You begin to doubt your own self-worth and try to fix yourself to fix the relationship. Stage 4: Gaslighting Gaslighting is systematic reality distortion. The abuser denies events you remember clearly, minimizes your feelings, and reframes situations until you doubt your own memory, perception, and sanity. Phrases like "That never happened," "You're too sensitive," and "You're imagining things" become common. This stage is especially destabilizing because it erodes your ability to trust yourself. Once you cannot trust your own perceptions, you become dependent on the abuser to define what's real. Stage 5: Resignation After repeated cycles of abuse, criticism, and gaslighting, many people enter a state of learned helplessness. You stop pushing back. You stop expressing needs. You focus entirely on managing the abuser's mood to avoid the next conflict. This is not weakness. It is a survival adaptation. When fighting back or leaving feels impossible, the nervous system shifts into submission to minimize danger. It is the same mechanism that any mammal uses when escape is not an option. Stage 6: Loss of Self By this stage, your identity has been almost entirely absorbed into the relationship. You may have lost track of your own preferences, your own goals, what you find funny, what you want for dinner. The person you were before the relationship feels distant or unfamiliar. Your whole sense of self orbits the abuser's needs and moods. Leaving feels not just frightening but unimaginable, because you literally do not know who you would be on the other side of it. Stage 7: Emotional Addiction The final stage is full emotional addiction to the abuse-relief cycle. You recognize the harm clearly, and you still feel unable to leave. The intermittent reinforcement has produced enough neurological conditioning that separation triggers real withdrawal symptoms: anxiety, depression, body pain, intrusive thoughts, and powerful urges to return. This is why people in abusive relationships often leave and come back multiple times. The addiction is real. Breaking it requires more than a decision. Signs You're in a Trauma Bond Trauma bonds can be hard to identify from the inside, partly because the gaslighting stage trains you to doubt the very perceptions that would tip you off. It can help to look at the signs in three groups: what your body is doing, what the relational pattern looks like, and what your thinking has shifted into. Body signs: You feel hypervigilant around them, scanning their face, mood, and tone before you do anything else You experience physical stress responses (tight stomach, racing heart, shallow breathing, nausea) when they enter a room, even when nothing is happening You sleep poorly and feel exhausted in a way that does not match your workload You have headaches, gut issues, or chronic muscle tension without a medical explanation Relational signs: The relationship runs in extreme highs and lows, with very little middle ground You find yourself rationalizing or minimizing harmful behavior, especially to other people who notice it You have become more isolated from friends, family, hobbies, or work over time You walk on eggshells around their moods and find yourself adjusting your behavior to avoid setting them off Cognitive signs: You fixate on their potential ("They could be so good if they just...") more than the actual pattern You believe you are the problem,...

Betrayal Trauma and the Brain: Symptoms, Science, and Recovery

Mon, 19 Jan 2026 14:00:56 +0000

You haven’t been the same since you found out. You read the texts, or sat through the disclosure, or saw the screen, and something inside you broke that you can’t quite name. People keep telling you to “process it” or “give it time,” and you nod, because what else are you supposed to do. But sleep won’t come. Food has no taste. You replay the same sixty seconds of conversation a hundred times a day, and your body shakes for reasons you can’t explain. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5ssPRmnkbM What you’re experiencing is not weakness. It is not overreaction. The effects of betrayal on the brain are real, measurable, and well-documented, and what’s happening to you is closer to a neurological injury than a bad mood. Understanding that distinction changes everything about what comes next. This article walks through what betrayal trauma actually does to your brain and body, what the symptoms look like, and what genuine recovery requires. We’ve spent years sitting with people in the early weeks after discovery, and the single most stabilizing thing we can offer is this: there is a reason for what you’re feeling, and there is a path through it. What Is Betrayal Trauma? Betrayal trauma was first described by psychologist Dr. Jennifer Freyd in the 1990s. Her research drew a line between general trauma and a specific category: trauma caused by the very person you depended on for safety, attachment, or survival. A car accident is traumatic. A natural disaster is traumatic. But when the source of the harm is the person you trusted to have your back, your brain does something different with it. Freyd’s term for this category is significant. She didn’t call it “infidelity stress” or “relationship distress.” She called it trauma, because the brain processes it as one. The attachment system, which is the part of you wired from infancy to seek closeness with safe others, gets hit at the same time as the threat-detection system. The two are usually opposites. Now they are pointed at the same person. This is why betrayal trauma is so disorienting. Ordinary trauma teaches you to avoid the source. Betrayal trauma asks you to stay in proximity to it, often in the same house, often in the same bed, while every alarm bell in your nervous system is ringing. The Effects of Betrayal on the Brain: What the Neuroscience Shows When your brain registers a betrayal, the threat-response system fires before your conscious mind has caught up. Three regions take the heaviest load. The Amygdala Goes Into Overdrive The amygdala is your brain’s alarm system. After betrayal, it stays switched on. Sometimes for months. A song on the radio, the sight of a phone screen, the wrong cologne in a hallway: any of it can drop you into full-body panic with no warning. Your amygdala has spent the last few weeks tagging ordinary stimuli as dangerous, and now it can’t tell the difference between a memory and a threat. The Prefrontal Cortex Goes Offline The prefrontal cortex is the part of you that reasons, plans, and regulates emotion. Under sustained threat, blood and oxygen get pulled away from it and routed to survival systems. So you can’t think straight. You can’t decide what to make for dinner. You forget what you walked into the kitchen for. Friends say “you don’t seem like yourself,” and they’re right. The part of your brain that runs “yourself” is operating on reduced power. The Hippocampus Can’t File the Memory The hippocampus is what stamps an experience with a time and place so your brain can store it as past. Trauma overwhelms it. The memory gets stored without the “this happened then” tag, which is why intrusive thoughts feel like they’re happening now, every time. Your brain isn’t being dramatic. It hasn’t finished the filing. All of this drives a hormonal cascade. Cortisol and adrenaline stay elevated. The vagus nerve, which connects your brain to your gut, heart, and lungs, registers chronic threat and shifts your body into a sustained sympathetic state. That’s the bridge between brain effects and body symptoms, and it’s why betrayal trauma is never just emotional. Betrayal Trauma Symptoms: What You’re Actually Feeling Betrayal trauma symptoms cluster into four groups: cognitive, emotional, physical, and behavioral. Most people experience some from each category. Reading them in one place often produces the response we hear most often in session: “I thought I was the only one.” Cognitive Symptoms Intrusive thoughts and images that arrive uninvited. Mental replay of the discovery moment. Difficulty concentrating. Forgetfulness. Trouble making small decisions. Hypervigilance, which often shows up as compulsively checking phones, receipts, or location apps. Many people describe a kind of mental static that makes reading or following a conversation almost impossible. Emotional Symptoms Waves of grief, rage, terror, numbness, and sometimes all four in the same hour. A flatness that feels like depression but functions differently. A loss of trust that extends past the partner to the world itself. Shame, often misplaced, often crushing. Many betrayed partners report a particular form of loneliness: the people who would normally comfort them are the people who can’t be told. Physical Symptoms Sleep disruption, particularly waking at 3 or 4 a.m. with a racing mind. Appetite changes, both directions. Chest tightness. Stomach problems. Muscle tension that lodges in the jaw, shoulders, or low back. Headaches. Recurring colds and infections as the immune system takes the hit of sustained cortisol. Some people lose meaningful weight in the first month without trying. Behavioral Symptoms Avoidance of places, songs, or routines. Compulsive information seeking. Withdrawing from friends. Snapping at children. Difficulty being present at work. A sudden inability to tolerate ambiguity, even small ambiguity, because the betrayal taught your nervous system that ambiguity hides danger. If you recognize yourself in this list, what you have is a coherent neurobiological response to a real injury. You are not unstable. You are reacting to something your brain wasn’t designed to absorb. Why Some People Don’t See the Betrayal Coming Jennifer Freyd’s research also produced a concept called betrayal blindness. When the person harming you is also the person you depend on for survival, attachment, or financial stability, your brain can suppress the awareness of harm in order to preserve the relationship. This is not denial in the conscious sense. It is a protective mechanism that keeps the attachment intact when leaving feels impossible. Betrayal blindness is why so many people, looking back, can name a dozen small moments where something felt off. The phone turned face down. The unexplained late nights. The defensiveness when you asked an ordinary question. The brain registered all of it. The brain also filed it where you couldn’t quite reach it, because reaching it would have meant losing the relationship before you were ready to lose it. If you’re now blaming yourself for not seeing what was happening, please take this in: betrayal blindness is a feature of how attachment works, not a flaw in how you do. The same wiring that helps an infant trust a caregiver who isn’t always reliable is the wiring that kept you from seeing what your conscious mind couldn’t yet hold. What We See in Practice In our CSAT-trained work at Therapevo, one pattern shows up almost universally in the first six weeks: clients apologize for their reactions. They apologize for crying. They apologize for asking the same question three times. They apologize for not being able to remember whether they ate lunch. The shame around the response often eclipses the shame around what was done to them. Part of what stabilizes the early weeks is simply naming what’s happening. When someone hears that the brain fog and the 3 a.m. waking and the shaking hands are a documented, expected response to a survival-level threat, something settles. Not all the way. But enough to start. The other thing we see consistently: the people who recover most fully are not the ones who push through fastest. They’re the ones who let the response be what it is, get appropriate support, and resist the cultural pressure to “be okay” before their nervous system has caught up. How Betrayal Trauma Shows Up in the Body Because the vagus nerve runs from the brainstem through the chest and abdomen, sustained nervous-system activation produces real physical pathology. Common physical effects include: Sleep architecture disruption. Even when you do sleep, the deep stages where the body repairs itself are shortened. You can sleep eight hours and still feel exhausted. Digestive distress. The gut has its own dense network of nerves, and chronic threat activation reliably produces nausea, appetite swings, IBS-like symptoms, and food intolerances that weren’t there before. Cardiovascular strain. Elevated resting heart rate, blood pressure changes, and chest tightness are common. Most are reversible once the nervous system stabilizes, but they’re real while they’re happening. Immune suppression. Sustained cortisol blunts immune function. Many betrayed partners catch every bug going around in the first few months. Hormonal disruption. Menstrual cycle changes, libido shifts, and thyroid function changes have all been documented in trauma research. None of these are imagined. None of them mean something is medically wrong with you in a permanent sense. They mean your body is doing exactly what it does under sustained threat, and they typically begin to resolve once safety is reestablished and trauma-informed support is in place. Betrayal Trauma Recovery: What Healing Actually Looks Like Recovery from betrayal trauma is not a straight line, and it is not a checklist. But it does follow a recognizable arc. Most clinicians who work in this area describe three broad phases. Phase One: Stabilization ...

12 Hidden Signs of Childhood Trauma ACEs in Adult Life

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 13:00:40 +0000

Childhood trauma and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) frequently manifest in adult life through patterns so subtle that many people never connect them to their early years. These hidden signs operate beneath conscious awareness, shaping relationships, health, and self-perception in ways that feel entirely normal to those experiencing them—until they recognize the pattern. The prevalence of child childhood trauma is staggering, with millions of children worldwide experiencing adverse events each year. Many children who experience trauma suffer in silence, unable to articulate their pain or seek help from caregivers who may be unaware of the abuse or neglect occurring within the home. This article covers the 12 most overlooked signs that adults who experienced childhood trauma may not recognize as trauma-related. The information serves adults experiencing unexplained life patterns, mental health professionals seeking to identify complex trauma presentations, and family members supporting trauma survivors through their healing journey. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BY7X4505Eow The 12 hidden signs include: chronic emptiness, difficulty with emotional intimacy, hypervigilance in relationships, over-responsibility for others’ emotions, persistent imposter syndrome, inability to identify personal needs, normalized self-criticism, feeling fundamentally flawed, unexplained chronic health issues, extreme sensitivity to criticism, compulsive busyness, and constant alertness or startling easily. By the end of this article, you will: Recognize hidden trauma patterns that may have gone unnoticed for years Understand how childhood adversity creates lasting but treatable effects Know when and how to seek appropriate mental health services administration support Gain clarity on the connection between early childhood experiences and current struggles Understanding Childhood Trauma and ACEs Adverse childhood experiences represent traumatic events occurring before age 18 that disrupt a child’s sense of safety and healthy development. These include physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, physical neglect, emotional neglect, witnessing violence, domestic violence, substance abuse in the household, mental illness in caregivers, parental separation, and having family members who are incarcerated. Childhood trauma becomes “hidden” through the brain’s protective coping mechanisms. When overwhelming experiences occur at a young age, the developing mind employs strategies like dissociation, repression, and normalization to survive. These same protective responses later prevent adults from connecting current difficulties to past events, creating a disconnect between present symptoms and their original trauma. The cumulative effects of trauma can undermine a child's sense of self-worth, identity, and resilience. This can have a profound and lasting impact on a person's life, affecting their overall well-being, mental health, and ability to form healthy relationships. The ACE study, surveying over 17,000 adults, established that negative childhood experiences create measurable, dose-dependent effects on adult functioning. Each additional adverse experience compounds risk for mental health problems, physical health problems, and relationship difficulties—a pattern called biological embedding where early adversity literally alters brain development and stress response systems. How Trauma Hides in Plain Sight Psychological mechanisms protect trauma survivors from overwhelming emotional pain, but these same mechanisms obscure the connection between childhood adversity and adult struggles. Repressed childhood trauma operates through the brain’s capacity to wall off threatening material from conscious access, while dissociative amnesia creates gaps in memory around traumatic experiences. Dissociative episodes can significantly impact an individual's sense of self and reality, making it difficult to connect present-day feelings and behaviors to past trauma. Brain development during traumatic experiences creates lasting but subtle patterns in neural circuitry. The prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and hippocampus develop differently under conditions of chronic stress, creating heightened threat sensitivity and emotional dysregulation that feel like personality traits rather than trauma responses. Adults often describe these patterns as “just how I am” rather than recognizing them as adaptations to childhood adversity. The ACEs Study Foundation The landmark ACE research revealed that at least one ACE affects approximately 61% of adults, while multiple ACEs create compounding health risks. Higher ACE scores correlate directly with increased rates of heart disease, cardiovascular disease, autoimmune disorders, substance abuse, mental health conditions, and reduced life expectancy. This dose-response relationship means that childhood trauma in adults manifests proportionally to the severity and accumulation of early experiences. The research validates what trauma survivors often sense intuitively—that their struggles have roots extending far beyond current circumstances into the formative experiences that shaped their nervous systems. Types of Childhood Trauma If you're reading this, you may be wondering how experiences from your childhood continue to shape your life today. Childhood trauma encompasses a wide spectrum of adverse experiences that can profoundly impact your developing sense of self, your emotional world, and the way you navigate relationships. Understanding these experiences—including physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, and witnessing violence—is the first step on your healing journey. While these traumatic events may have occurred when you were young, please know that their lasting impact doesn't define your future. With the right support and understanding, you can heal, build healthy relationships, and reclaim your peace of mind. Physical abuse involves intentional harm like hitting, kicking, or burning—experiences that may have taught you to associate relationships with fear and unpredictability. If this resonates with your story, you're not alone in carrying both physical and emotional scars. The pain you experienced was real, and so is your capacity to heal from it. Emotional abuse includes name-calling, constant criticism, belittling, or rejection—words and actions that may have eroded your sense of self-worth over time. Perhaps you still hear those critical voices, but with compassionate support, you can learn to quiet them and develop the loving inner voice you deserve. Sexual abuse represents one of the most devastating forms of trauma, potentially leaving you struggling with repressed memories, deep emotional pain, and challenges with trust and intimacy. Your survival shows incredible strength, and healing from these experiences, while challenging, is absolutely possible with specialized care. Neglect—whether your basic needs for food, shelter, medical care, or emotional support weren't met—can be just as damaging as more obvious forms of abuse. If you've carried feelings of emptiness, difficulty understanding your own needs, or a persistent sense that something is fundamentally wrong with you, these feelings make complete sense given what you experienced. You deserved care and attention then, and you deserve healing and support now. Witnessing violence, such as domestic violence or community violence, may have shattered your sense of safety and stability in the world. If you find yourself constantly on guard or struggling with anxiety, depression, or symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), these are natural responses to unnatural circumstances you shouldn't have had to endure. Your adverse childhood experiences, recognized by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) as critical risk factors, may have increased your vulnerability to mental health challenges, substance use struggles, and physical health problems—including chronic pain, autoimmune disorders, and cardiovascular disease. The more adverse experiences you faced, the greater your risk for complex trauma and long-term health consequences. But here's what's equally important to understand: recognizing these connections empowers you to take meaningful steps toward healing and breaking these cycles. Your childhood experiences may have disrupted your ability to form secure, trusting relationships, perhaps leaving you with patterns of anxious or avoidant attachment that make intimacy feel overwhelming or impossible. If you find yourself struggling with trust, emotional connection, or believing you're worthy of love, these challenges stem from what happened to you, not who you are as a person. The beautiful truth is that with the right therapeutic support, you can develop new, healthier patterns of relating to others and to yourself. Evidence-based therapies like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and cognitive processing therapy (CPT) provide safe, supportive environments where you can process your experiences, develop healthy coping strategies, and begin reclaiming your life. Beyond therapy, you can nurture your healing through self-care practices that honor your journey—creative expression that gives voice to your experiences, mindfulness that helps you stay grounded in the present moment, and regular movement that helps your body process and release stored trauma. These aren't just nice additions to your healing toolkit; they're powerful ways to regulate your emotions and transform your relationship with the lingering effects of your past. Remember, healing isn't about forgetting what happened—it's about reducing its power over your present and future. Understanding childhood trauma in all its forms—physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, and witnessing violence—helps you make sense of your adult experiences

Understanding and Calming Hypervigilance: Grounding Techniques for Feeling Safe

Mon, 22 Dec 2025 13:00:48 +0000

Introduction Understanding and calming hypervigilance through grounding techniques for feeling safe involves learning specific strategies that help regulate your nervous system while maintaining necessary environmental awareness. This guide immediately addresses the importance of grounding techniques for feeling safe, ensuring you have practical tools to manage heightened states of alertness. When you’re stuck in a state of constant alertness, traditional relaxation methods often feel impossible or even dangerous, making specialized grounding approaches essential for finding relief. The basics of grounding techniques involve simple, basic mental exercises that help manage anxiety, reduce negative thoughts, and refocus the mind. This guide provides concrete techniques that work specifically for hypervigilant states—those moments when your brain refuses to stop scanning for threats, even in safe environments. At the first mention, hypervigilance (a state of increased alertness where the brain is constantly looking for perceived dangers) is a key concept for understanding why these techniques are necessary. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUBxGhT5fP0 What This Guide Covers You’ll learn evidence-based grounding strategies designed for people whose nervous system stays in high alert mode, practical breathing techniques that calm without creating vulnerability, and daily routines that signal safety to an overactive nervous system that is working hard to detect threats. Specifically, you will discover: How hypervigilance differs from normal alertness and why it persists Nervous system regulation through awareness-maintaining grounding techniques The 5-4-3-2-1 technique adapted for safety-conscious individuals Box breathing methods for calming without vulnerability Building predictable routines that signal safety to your brain Who This Is For This guide is designed for individuals experiencing hypervigilance from trauma, anxiety disorders, PTSD, or chronic stress who need concrete techniques to feel safe in their environment. Whether you’re dealing with constant jumpiness from past trauma or anxiety that keeps you perpetually on edge, you’ll find practical strategies that honor your need for awareness while providing nervous system relief. Fear and feeling anxious are common experiences for people with hypervigilance, and grounding techniques can help manage these emotions and negative thoughts. Why This Matters Hypervigilance keeps your nervous system in constant activation, disrupting sleep, relationships, and daily functioning while creating exhaustion that never seems to resolve. Common symptoms of anxiety include increased heart rate, sweating, and difficulty focusing, and occasionally people experiencing hypervigilance may even develop recurring panic attacks during everyday activities. Grounding techniques offer relief by working with your nervous system’s natural regulation processes rather than against your survival instincts. If you experience persistent hypervigilance or anxiety, consider seeking professional help. Grounding techniques are not a substitute for professional mental health treatment. Next, we’ll explore what hypervigilance is, how it impacts your daily life, and why understanding your nervous system’s role is crucial for effective grounding. Understanding Hypervigilance and Its Impact Hypervigilance is a state of increased alertness where the brain is constantly looking for perceived dangers. This survival mechanism involves your brain’s threat-detection system working overtime, interpreting neutral situations as potentially dangerous and maintaining readiness to respond to perceived threats at any moment. Fear and negative thoughts often drive the brain’s threat-detection system into overdrive, making it difficult to distinguish between real and imagined threats. Unlike normal alertness that you can turn on and off as needed, hypervigilance represents an inability to “power down” your threat detection system. People with hypervigilance tend to develop certain symptoms or behaviors, such as being unable to relax or disconnect from their environment. Your brain stays activated even during activities that should feel relaxing, leading to exhaustion that rest doesn’t seem to fix. The Nervous System in Hypervigilance Your sympathetic nervous system—responsible for fight-or-flight responses—remains chronically activated during hypervigilant states. This means your body produces stress hormones continuously, keeping your heart rate elevated, muscles tense, and mind racing with anxious thoughts about potential dangers. Physical sensations during hypervigilance include jumpiness at unexpected sounds, difficulty concentrating on tasks, muscle tension that won’t release, and feeling overwhelmed by normal environmental stimuli. People in hypervigilant states tend to experience common symptoms of anxiety such as increased heart rate, sweating, and difficulty focusing. Your body maintains this state because your nervous system believes you’re still in danger, even when logic tells you otherwise. Why Traditional Relaxation Techniques May Fall Short Standard advice to “just relax” or “take deep breaths” often fails when you feel constantly unsafe because your threat detection system interprets relaxation as letting your guard down. When feeling anxious, people tend to avoid relaxation techniques that make them feel vulnerable or less aware of their surroundings. Techniques that involve closing your eyes or becoming less aware of your surroundings can actually increase anxiety and make you feel more vulnerable. This explains why you might find meditation difficult or feel more anxious when trying conventional stress management approaches—your nervous system prioritizes survival over calm. Understanding this helps explain why specialized grounding techniques that maintain environmental awareness while providing nervous system relief work better for hypervigilant states. With this understanding of hypervigilance and your nervous system, let’s look at how grounding can offer immediate and long-term relief. Benefits of Grounding Immediate Relief from Anxiety When you're struggling with emotional overwhelm, anxiety, or carrying the weight of past trauma, grounding techniques offer you a proven path to reclaim your inner peace and stability. By gently guiding your attention back to this present moment, these powerful tools help soothe your nervous system and provide you with immediate relief from panic attacks or that crushing sense of anxiety that can feel impossible to escape. Building Long-Term Resilience When you practice grounding strategies consistently, you're giving yourself reliable, expert-backed tools to navigate stress and regain that sense of control that trauma and anxiety can steal from you—even when your world feels like it's spinning out of control. These aren't just crisis interventions—they're life-changing practices you can weave into your daily routine to nurture your overall emotional well-being and build lasting resilience. Over time, grounding helps you develop deeper self-awareness, empowering you to recognize the early warning signs when overwhelm begins to creep in and respond with the effective coping strategies that truly work. Whether you're facing a particularly challenging day at work, navigating a difficult conversation that triggers old wounds, or working through the complex aftermath of trauma, grounding techniques provide you with a reliable anchor to the present moment, helping you reduce emotional distress while building the inner strength and resilience you need to face whatever challenges your healing journey brings. Now that you know the benefits, let’s explore the essential grounding techniques specifically adapted for hypervigilance and how to categorize them for your needs. Essential Grounding Techniques for Hypervigilance Grounding techniques can be categorized into sensory, mental, and physical strategies. Sensory grounding uses your five senses to anchor you in the present moment, mental grounding involves cognitive exercises to redirect your thoughts, and physical grounding focuses on bodily sensations and movements to establish a sense of stability. These categories often overlap and can be combined for a more comprehensive approach, allowing you to tailor your grounding practice to your unique needs and preferences. The basics of grounding techniques often include simple mental exercises, such as reciting familiar facts or basic sequences, to help manage anxiety and refocus your mind. Some grounding techniques use categories to help you choose and organize sensory details or thoughts, making it easier to structure your focus and decision-making. These approaches help shift your focus from internal anxiety and overwhelming thoughts to concrete, observable details in your immediate surroundings. Grounding techniques can create space from distressing feelings in nearly any situation and help control symptoms of trauma by turning your attention away from thoughts, memories, or worries and refocusing on the present moment. Sensory-Based Grounding Methods Visual grounding involves systematically scanning your environment and noting specific details of safe objects around you. Look for things you can see clearly—the texture of fabric on furniture, patterns in wood grain, or the way light hits different surfaces. This technique allows you to practice grounding while maintaining visual awareness of your space. Tactile grounding focuses on physical sensations you can feel right now. Notice the temperature and texture of your clothing against your skin, the feeling of your feet in your shoes, or the texture of objects within reach. You might hold an ice cube and describe how the cold water feels as it melts, or run your fingers along different surfaces to notice varying textures....

Marriage Conflict: What Is Your Fighting Style?

Mon, 08 Dec 2025 13:00:49 +0000

“How couples argue and disagree about issues appears to be more consequential to the success of marriage than what they argue about or how often they experience conflicts.” To reword the above quote taken from an article by Hanzal and Segrin in the Journal of Family Communication, you could simply say “how we fight has far more influence on the future of our marriage, than what we fight about”. Therefore, our fighting style, or how we fight, really matters. Conflict in marriage arises from differences in preferences, backgrounds, and values between partners. Conflict in marriage is a natural and inevitable part of relationships, as two individuals bring together their unique perspectives, habits, and expectations. Before I get into the different styles of fighting, we need to be aware that gender differences make a big difference in our fights. In fact, a husband and a wife will experience the same fight differently. Not just because they have different perspectives, but because they are different genders. You might not be a typical couple, and that’s not necessarily a problem, but the following things, about how most couples operate are good to keep in mind. Studies show women tend to be more negative in conflict and use confrontational behaviors that say “this is all about me”, rather than the marriage. The behaviors include being demanding, hostile, threatening, insulting and insisting that all the change should come from their husband. Research shows that wives tend to use more destructive conflict behaviors than husbands, which can contribute to higher divorce rates. But to generalize men as well for a moment… Men are more likely to avoid. They get scared of the big emotions, so feel safer avoiding them altogether. Withdrawal behaviors, such as keeping quiet or leaving to cool down, especially when used by either husband, are linked to higher divorce rates. Another thing for men to keep in mind is that the less influence a woman feels she has in her marriage, the bigger the artillery she has to use to gain influence, so the more confrontational she will be. Husbands, if you want a happier wife, receive her influence! Remember, both husband and wife have the same end goal of trying to save the marriage, but they come at it from two completely different angles. Couples who engage in a demand-withdraw pattern, where one partner demands and the other spouse withdraws, are at a higher risk for divorce. Not only do they have different perspectives, but conflict behaviors in the early years of marriage can predict divorce rates over a span of 16 years. Some conflicts in marriage are perpetual and rooted in fundamental differences in personality or lifestyle, and unresolvable conflicts are inherent in all relationships because each partner is a unique person with their own reality. Nearly 70% of all marriage conflicts are considered perpetual and essentially unresolvable, but healthy conflict in marriage can lead to growth and deeper intimacy when managed well. Introduction to Conflict If you're reading this, you likely understand that conflict is a natural part of your relationship journey—and yes, that includes your marriage. No matter how deeply you love your spouse, you will face moments when disagreements surface—whether they center on finances, parenting decisions, control dynamics, or simply the overwhelming pressures of daily life. Here's what truly matters: it's not whether conflict happens in your relationship, but how you and your partner navigate these challenges together as a united team. Learning to resolve conflict in a healthy, constructive way represents one of the most transformative skills you can develop for building the strong, loving marriage you deserve. Your marital conflicts often emerge from the beautiful complexity of bringing together two unique individuals—each of you carries distinct opinions, values, and personality traits that make you who you are. The key lies in approaching these differences with genuine mutual respect and a deep willingness to understand not only your own emotional experience, but your partner's inner world as well. Effective conflict resolution begins with developing strong communication skills that will serve your relationship for years to come. This means you'll practice active listening with intention, express your feelings with honesty and vulnerability (while avoiding the destructive patterns of finger-pointing or blame), and together create a safe emotional space where both of you feel truly heard and valued. Relationship expert John Gottman's research demonstrates that couples who invest in truly listening and empathizing with each other experience far greater success in resolving conflicts and actually strengthening their bond through these challenges. It's also essential for you to recognize that some disagreements—what Gottman identifies as "perpetual conflicts"—may never find complete resolution, and that's perfectly normal. Rather than allowing these ongoing issues to create resentment or letting yourselves go to bed carrying anger, you and your partner can work collaboratively to address the deeper underlying concerns and discover constructive pathways forward. By genuinely acknowledging each other's perspectives and functioning as a true partnership, you can prevent minor tensions from escalating into major threats to your relationship's foundation. When you or your spouse feels hurt or misunderstood, addressing those vulnerable feelings with genuine care and shared responsibility becomes absolutely crucial. By avoiding blame and focusing your energy on deep understanding, both of you can feel supported and valued, even during moments of disagreement. Remember, your goal isn't to "win" any argument, but to discover solutions that honor both of your needs while strengthening the intimate connection you share. By making conflict resolution a central priority in your marriage, you're making a profound investment in a relationship that can not only survive life's inevitable challenges but actually emerge stronger and more resilient over time. Whether you're working through a specific difficult situation or simply navigating the everyday complexities of married life, developing the skills to manage conflict with empathy, respect, and open communication will help you build the loving, lasting partnership you both envision for your future together. Anger in Marital Conflict One thing that surprised us in the research for this topic, was that an angry wife has a far greater negative impact on marital satisfaction than an equally angry husband. The Proverb that says ”It is better to live in a desert land than with a quarrelsome and fretful woman” apparently is very true! It's important to remember that hurt feelings in marriage can occur even when neither spouse has done anything wrong, often due to unmet expectations. Wives need to take their anger seriously! Yes, male anger can be more dangerous (and I don't want to minimize that in any ways, but in non-abusive marriages a wife's anger not only lowers their marriage satisfaction but their husband’s as well. The angrier we become (this goes for both husbands and wives but I’m specifically thinking of women), the more tempted we are to use nasty behavior such as demand, withdrawal, contempt, and criticism; all of which are particularly corrosive to marital well-being. Instead, expressing feelings openly and calmly, and acknowledging when you or your spouse feel hurt, can prevent anger from festering and help foster understanding and empathy. When anger has caused hurt, offering a genuine apology is valuable—sincere apologies can help heal wounds and strengthen the bond between partners. Styles Dr. John Gottman identified several marital conflict styles that describe how couples typically handle disagreements. Every marriage has its own particular set of disagreements, often rooted in the unique backgrounds, temperaments, and experiences of the two individuals involved. These differences naturally lead to relationship problems, as couples encounter conflicting desires and expectations. For example, a typical relationship problem might involve disagreements about money, division of chores, or parenting approaches. Couples often find themselves having the same argument repeatedly without resolution, which can lead to feelings of unfair treatment and misunderstanding. It's important to recognize that most unresolvable marriage conflicts involve differences of opinion rather than moral issues, making it possible for couples to agree to disagree and address these challenges constructively. This model of fighting styles is taken from Dr. Gottman’s study in 1993. The first three are functional and work fine. The last two are considered unstable. 1. Avoiders Typical Behaviors Avoiders don’t think they are avoiders but don’t have any specific strategies for resolving conflict. They may wait stuff out or even talk stuff out, but never really go deep with each other. They kind of state their points, reaffirm their common ground and move on after coming up with some ambiguous solution. Impact on Marriage When issues are left unresolved, couples may end up feeling distant and lonely. Often have the same argument repeatedly without resolution, leading to feelings of unfair treatment and misunderstanding. Avoiders tend to shy away from open conversation, which is essential to solve problems and build intimacy. Couples who avoid discussing their differences are less happy over time, particularly women. Tips for Improvement Agree to start opening up to each other and stop bottling up issues in your marriage. Practice active listening and make time for honest conversations. Consider taking a communication and conflict resolution course like Talk To Me 101. Compromise and find solutions that benefit both

Gaslighting Explained: The Ultimate Guide to What It Is, Why It Happens, and How to Stop It

Mon, 24 Nov 2025 13:00:43 +0000

"I’m not crazy... am I?" If you have ever asked yourself this question after a conversation with your partner, you might be trapped in the fog of gaslighting. In this episode, Clinical Director Caleb Simonyi-Gindele and host Verlynda break down one of the most insidious forms of emotional abuse. Gaslighting isn't just lying; it is a systematic dismantling of your reality. We discuss: The Red Flags: How to distinguish between a normal disagreement and calculated manipulation (like the DARVO tactic). The Psychology: Why does someone gaslight? Is it always malicious, or is it sometimes a defense mechanism for their own shame? The Way Out: Practical, compassionate steps to stop arguing with a distorted reality, document the truth, and rebuild trust in your own intuition. You are not imagining things, and you are not alone. Connect with Therapevo: If you are ready to reclaim your reality, our specialized therapists are here to help. 👉 Book a Free 20-Minute Consultation: https://therapevo.com/domestic-abuse-trauma/

Is My Spouse a Sex Addict? Understanding This Massive Challenge and Reclaiming Your Marriage

Mon, 10 Nov 2025 13:00:26 +0000

Discovering that your partner might be struggling with sex addiction can feel overwhelming and frightening. You may be experiencing confusion, deep hurt, or uncertainty about your next steps. If you're asking yourself, "Is my partner a sex addict?" this article is here to provide you with the understanding and clarity you deserve during this difficult time. Sexual addiction, also known as compulsive sexual behavior or hypersexual disorder, is a complex mental health condition that affects many individuals and the people who love them. Recognizing the signs and understanding the true nature of sex addiction becomes a powerful starting point for addressing its impact on your partner, your relationship, and your emotional well-being. Key Points in This Article Understanding Sex Addiction: Sex addiction is a mental health condition rooted in emotional and psychological wounds, characterized by compulsive behaviors similar to other addictions, affecting about 3% to 10% of the population. Distinguishing Sex Addiction from Healthy Sexuality and Porn Addiction: Unlike healthy sexuality, which fosters emotional connection, sex addiction involves secrecy, shame, and behaviors used to avoid difficult emotions, often linked with broader compulsive sexual activities and pornography use. Signs, Symptoms, and Causes of Sex Addiction: Signs include loss of control, preoccupation with sexual thoughts, risky behaviors, and continuation despite negative consequences, often caused by trauma, family background, neurochemical factors, and co-occurring mental health conditions. Treatment and Support Options for Sex Addiction: Effective treatment includes individual, group, and couples therapy, sometimes medication, and support groups like Sex Addicts Anonymous, focusing on managing urges, addressing emotional wounds, and rebuilding trust. Supporting Partners and Moving Toward Recovery: Supporting a partner involves encouraging professional help, honest communication, boundaries, and patience, with recovery being a long-term process that can restore trust and foster emotional healing. What Is Sex Addiction? Sex addiction is a real, tangible challenge rooted in deeper emotional and psychological wounds—not simply a relationship issue or a matter of willpower. It's crucial for you to understand that sex addiction isn't caused by a lack of love or attraction toward you; rather, it stems from underlying psychological struggles that require specialized, professional support. Sex addiction mirrors other addictions, such as substance abuse, involving compulsive behaviors, intense cravings, and difficulty stopping despite devastating consequences. Studies suggest that sex addiction may affect about 3% to 10% of the general population in North America. Additionally, sex addiction occurs more frequently in men than women, with research indicating that for every two to five males with hypersexuality, one woman is affected. This article explores what sex addiction truly is, how it differs from healthy sexuality, the underlying causes, and the proven treatment options available for those ready to reclaim their lives from this condition. Defining Sex Addiction Sex addiction is often misunderstood, creating confusion about what actually constitutes compulsive sexual behavior versus a healthy sexual appetite. It's important for you to understand that sex addiction isn't simply having a high sex drive or enjoying frequent sexual activity with your partner. Healthy sexuality involves intimacy, closeness, and affection that foster emotional growth and deeper connection between you and your partner. In contrast, compulsive sexual behavior is characterized by using sexual acts to avoid difficult emotions, ultimately leading to significant amounts of shame, lies, betrayal and alienation within your relationship. Sex Addiction vs. Porn Addiction Sex addiction is also distinct from porn addiction, though the two can be interconnected. While some individuals struggling with sex addiction may frequently engage in pornography or phone sex, sexual addiction encompasses a much broader range of compulsive sexual behaviors. These behaviors include reckless sexual activity, excessive masturbation, frequent one-night stands, infidelity, paying for sexual services, seeking out strangers for sexual encounters, or involvement with sex workers and strip clubs. Cheating on you as their partner is a behavior that arises from the compulsive nature of sex addiction, creating even deeper wounds in your relationship. Moreover, sex addiction is not synonymous with sex offending, although many sex offenders may also struggle with sexual addiction. Criteria for Sex Addiction Mental health professionals rely on specific criteria to identify this disorder, including: Loss of control over sexual actions and compulsive behaviors despite repeated efforts to stop. Preoccupation with sexual thoughts and fantasies that dominate daily life. Inability to fulfill personal, professional, or relational obligations due to compulsive sexual behavior. Continuation of sexual activities despite devastating consequences such as relationship breakdown, legal problems, or physical and mental health deterioration. Escalation of sexual behaviors to satisfy increasing cravings. Experiencing withdrawal symptoms when unable to engage in sexual acts. For example, your partner may find themselves engaging in inappropriate sexual conduct even when it puts their work and/or personal health at risk or interferes with their daily responsibilities. Sex Addiction Assessments Sex Addiction Screening Test - Revised (SAST-R) This is one of the most widely used screening tools, which has been used in at least eight published, peer-reviewed empirical studies, and is routinely used in practice at several inpatient residential treatment centers, and by certified sex addiction therapists (CSATs) across the United States, and in other countries (Carnes et al., 2012). Originated in 1989, and has been subsequently revised to adjust to homosexual or female populations. In our practice, we use this as part of a larger assessment called the SDI which is a very comprehensive bundle of assessments which form an effective basis for planning treatment of sexual addiction. However, it is freely available on the Internet and is a great tool to use at the start of therapy to begin to understand the severity of your partner's addiction. PATHOS Because the SAST is a little bit long, some folks also developed an assessment called PATHOS. It’s just six questions long and has had a couple of studies done already to establish its validity (Carnes et al, 2012): Do you often find yourself preoccupied with sexual thoughts? (Preoccupied) Do you hide some of your sexual behavior from others? (Ashamed) Have you ever sought help for sexual behavior you did not like? (Treatment) Has anyone been hurt emotionally because of your sexual behavior? (Hurt) Do you feel controlled by your sexual desire? (Out of control) When you have sex, do you feel depressed afterwards? (Sad) If your spouse answers "yes" to 3 or more of those questions, we gently recommend that you reach out to a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist who can walk alongside you on this healing journey. Please remember that this is an informal assessment, and there's always the possibility of false positives or negatives—connecting with a qualified, compassionate clinician will help you gain the clarity and support you deserve for a proper understanding of your situation. We encourage you to approach self-diagnosis with care and kindness toward yourself. For instance, you might consider the example of a 22-year-old who is struggling with pornography—perhaps viewing it once a week. He could easily answer yes to 4, 5, or even 6 of those questions, but labeling him as a sex addict would really overstate and misrepresent the true nature of his challenge and potentially cause unnecessary distress. Many of the young adults we've had the privilege of supporting through pornography concerns find their path to recovery and maintain lasting sobriety after just 10 to 14 counseling sessions. In contrast, someone with a more complex sex addiction typically embarks on a deeper 3 to 5-year therapeutic journey to build the robust foundation of sobriety and healing they deserve. Your journey is unique, and there's hope and specialized care available no matter where you find yourself today. The Addictive Cycle As compulsive sexual behaviors escalate, individuals often experience intense excitement or heightened arousal that reinforces the addictive cycle, making it even harder to break free. This cycle is influenced by the type of dopamine response triggered by different types of sexual stimuli or behaviors, which can further entrench the addiction. These signs and symptoms reflect a serious impulse control disorder that deserves the addict's attention and compassionate care. There are various types of proven therapy available to address sex addiction, and treatment is often tailored to your partner's individual needs and any co-occurring mental health conditions. If you're concerned about your own or your partner's behaviors, take a moment to journal about the patterns you've noticed. This can help you determine whether these behaviors fit the patterns of sex addiction and guide you toward the support you both deserve. Differences Between Addictive and Healthy Sexuality Understanding the contrast between addictive and healthy sexuality can help you gain clarity about whether your partner's sexual behaviors might indicate a serious problem. Characteristics of Addictive Sexuality Addictive sexuality often involves shame, secrecy, and dishonesty, frequently compromising personal values and creating self-destructive patterns. It may rely on fear, reenact childhood abuse,...

Loving a Sexual Abuse Survivor: A Partner’s Practical Guide

Mon, 27 Oct 2025 12:00:30 +0000

Loving a spouse who is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) is a unique and challenging journey. Many partners feel lost, confused, and alone, struggling to understand the trauma's impact on intimacy, trust, and even everyday affection. You want to help, but where do you even begin? In this episode, Caleb sits down with Mary Demuth—author, speaker, and survivor herself—to create a compassionate and practical resource specifically for those partners. Mary shares her powerful story and the moment she felt like a "skinny girl at a sumo wrestling seminar" listening to common church advice on sex. She offers a vulnerable look at how her husband, Patrick, navigated his own valid feelings of rejection and the turning point that helped him become a safe place for her. This episode is packed with wisdom on initiating intimacy safely, encouraging emotional connection without pressure (the "High Dive" analogy), and why healing is a "we" journey, not a "you" problem. Find Mary's work at WeToo.org and in her book, "Not Marked". If your partner's past is affecting your present, our therapists at Therapevo can help. We specialize in couples counseling and trauma-informed care. Book a free, confidential 20-minute consultation today at https://therapevo.com/trauma-therapy/childhood-sexual-abuse-trauma-therapy/

Is Past Trauma Affecting Your Singing Voice?

Mon, 13 Oct 2025 12:00:06 +0000

Expert therapist and vocalist Ron de Jager reveals how unresolved trauma manifests as vocal blocks and performance anxiety—and shares the path to setting your voice free. ### **iTunes Summary / Show Notes** Have you ever felt like your voice is trapped? For many performers, persistent vocal blocks, stage fright, and performance anxiety aren't just technical issues—they're echoes of past trauma held in the body. The very act of singing, which should be joyful, can become a source of profound fear and re-traumatization. In this episode, we're joined by Ron de Jager, a member of the Therapevo team who holds both a Doctorate in Musical Arts and a Masters in Counselling. He explains the powerful and often unspoken connection between trauma and the voice. Drawing on his clinical research, Ron unpacks concepts like "body armoring," the impact of insecure attachment on performers, and why the statement "the body keeps the score" is especially true for singers whose very instrument was the site of a past violation. Most importantly, this conversation offers a message of hope and a clear path toward healing. Discover how specialized, trauma-informed therapy can help you release what's holding you back and finally reclaim the freedom and power in your voice. **Key discussion points include:** * Why a singer's experience of trauma is profoundly different from other musicians. * The physical and emotional ways trauma manifests in a performer's body. * How to differentiate between a technical issue and a trauma response. * The therapeutic process for helping performers heal and find their authentic voice. **Resources Mentioned:** * **Take the first step:** Book a free, confidential 20-minute consultation with the Therapevo team: [https://therapevo.com/consultation](https://www.google.com/search?q=https://therapevo.com/consultation) * **Learn more about Ron de Jager's specialized therapy for performers:** [https://oyf.link/ron](https://www.google.com/search?q=https://oyf.link/ron)

How Do I Know When My Marriage Is Beyond Repair?

Mon, 29 Sep 2025 12:00:29 +0000

Feeling like your marriage is broken is an incredibly painful and isolating experience. But does it mean it's truly beyond repair? In this episode, Therapevo's expert therapists, Verlynda and Caleb, provide a comprehensive and compassionate roadmap for couples who feel lost. They break down Dr. John Gottman's "Four Horsemen"—the critical communication patterns that predict divorce—and discuss the non-negotiable situations where safety must be the absolute first priority. Most importantly, this episode is a guide to hope. You will learn the clear signs that your marriage is worth fighting for and hear a detailed breakdown of how Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) helps couples heal deep wounds and rebuild a powerful, lasting connection. If you're looking for clarity and a real, evidence-based path forward, this episode is your first step. ➡️ Ready to find clarity? Therapevo offers specialized, high-quality online couples counseling. Book a FREE, confidential 20-minute consultation to learn more: https://therapevo.com/couples-counseling/

Symptoms of Pornography Withdrawal: A Complete Guide to What to Expect

Mon, 15 Sep 2025 12:00:13 +0000

Key Takeaways Pornography withdrawal can cause both psychological symptoms (anxiety, depression, irritability) and physical symptoms (insomnia, fatigue, headaches), commonly referred to as porn addiction withdrawal symptoms (PAWS). The most common porn withdrawal symptoms include intense cravings, mood swings, difficulty concentrating, and sleep disturbances that typically peak within the first week. Additionally, increased sexual thoughts that are difficult to control and irritability are frequently reported. Withdrawal symptoms occur because regular pornography use alters brain chemistry and dopamine pathways, creating dependency similar to other behavioral addictions. Symptoms usually last anywhere from a few days to several weeks, with severity depending on frequency and duration of previous pornography use. Professional support and healthy coping strategies can help manage withdrawal symptoms and prevent relapse during the recovery process. https://youtu.be/ol8Ypi3v5hk Pornography withdrawal symptoms include anxiety, intense cravings, depression, insomnia, fatigue, and temporary loss of sexual desire — effects that emerge as the brain recalibrates its dopamine pathways after compulsive pornography use. If you’ve made the brave decision to quit porn, you may find yourself experiencing unexpected physical and emotional changes. These withdrawal symptoms are your brain’s natural response to breaking free from a behavioral addiction that has rewired your neural pathways over time. Professional help is often recommended to manage these symptoms and navigate the recovery process successfully. Understanding what to expect during this recovery journey and having a competent addictions counselor walking through it with you can help you navigate the challenges ahead with greater confidence and self-compassion, leading to stronger sobriety. The symptoms of pornography withdrawal are real, well-documented, and temporary. While the experience can feel overwhelming, especially in the first few weeks, recognizing these symptoms as part of your healing process is an important step toward lasting recovery and improved well being. Understanding Pornography Withdrawal Pornography withdrawal happens when someone who has developed a strong porn habit suddenly cuts back or stops using pornography altogether. This change sets off a complex series of neurobiological adjustments as the brain learns to function without the artificial dopamine rush that comes from watching porn. These brain changes are similar to those seen in other addictive behaviors, where compulsive use leads to dependence and then withdrawal symptoms. The intensity of these symptoms often relates directly to the severity of the addiction. When you regularly watch pornography, your brain chemistry—especially the dopamine pathways that govern pleasure, motivation, and reward—undergoes significant shifts. Over time, your brain gets used to these intense dopamine spikes, which can lead to tolerance. This means you might need more stimulating or novel content to feel the same satisfaction as before. This neuroadaptation plays a central role in what makes pornography addictive. Just like other addictive behaviors, repeated pornography use can trigger withdrawal symptoms resembling those experienced in substance addiction. Additionally, changes in libido, including a drop in sexual desire, are common after quitting as the brain recalibrates. The experience of withdrawal shares many features with other behavioral addictions such as gambling or compulsive gaming. However, unlike drug or substance addiction, porn withdrawal generally does not involve severe physical dangers, though it can produce significant psychological symptoms driven by dopamine dependence. While the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) does not currently recognize pornography addiction as a formal diagnosis, compulsive sexual behavior disorder (CSBD) is discussed within the context of behavioral addictions. This highlights the importance of recognizing and understanding these conditions for effective treatment. It’s important to note that not everyone who stops using pornography will face withdrawal symptoms. Those most likely to experience them are individuals who have engaged in compulsive sexual behavior, used pornography daily over long periods, or relied on porn as their main way to manage stress or sexual release. Early evidence suggests that pornography withdrawal shares traits with other behavioral and addictive disorders, underscoring the need for more research and clinical focus. Psychological Symptoms of Pornography Withdrawal The psychological symptoms of pornography withdrawal often emerge within 24-48 hours and represent some of the most challenging aspects of the recovery process. Physical symptoms, such as insomnia and muscle tension, may also accompany these psychological changes. Understanding these mental health changes can help you prepare for what lies ahead. Anxiety and Panic Attacks Many people experience withdrawal symptoms in the form of heightened anxiety and, in some cases, panic attacks. This anxiety often stems from the brain’s struggle to regulate emotions without its usual coping mechanism. The anxiety may feel particularly intense during times when you would normally watch porn, such as when alone and stressed. Depression and Emotional Numbness Depression frequently accompanies porn addiction withdrawal as the brain’s reward system recalibrates. You might experience persistent sadness, feelings of hopelessness, or a condition known as anhedonia – the inability to feel pleasure from activities you once enjoyed. This emotional flatness is temporary but can be particularly distressing during the early recovery period. For other people, withdrawal can actually alleviate symptoms of depression and feelings of numbness. Intense Cravings and Urges Perhaps the most significant or likely withdrawal symptom involves powerful cravings to return to pornography use. These urges can be triggered by stress, boredom, loneliness, or even seemingly unrelated stimuli that your brain has associated with porn consumption. The intensity of these cravings typically peaks in the first week but may continue in waves throughout the recovery journey. Brain Fog and Concentration Difficulties Many individuals report experiencing brain fog – a mental cloudiness that makes it difficult to think clearly, focus on tasks, or remember information. This cognitive impairment can affect work performance, academic achievement, and decision-making abilities. The brain fog typically improves as your neural pathways heal and adapt to natural stimulation levels. Mood Swings and Irritability Emotional volatility is common during pornography withdrawal. You might find yourself experiencing rapid mood swings, becoming easily frustrated, or having angry outbursts over minor triggers. These emotional fluctuations reflect your brain’s efforts to restore emotional equilibrium without artificial stimulation. These mood swings or the irritability may also be revealing the fact that your coping mechanism of choice is no longer available to you and so you will need to learn new ways of tolerating, expressing, and processing difficult emotions. Social Withdrawal and Relationship Challenges The recovery process often involves increased social anxiety and a tendency to withdraw from friends, family, and social situations. This isolation may stem from shame about past behaviors, fear of triggers in social settings, or simply the emotional exhaustion that accompanies withdrawal. Again, for other people the withdrawal may actually have the opposite effect of opening you back up to friendships or social networks you may have been drifting away from. Not everyone's experience is the same! Physical Symptoms of Pornography Withdrawal While pornography addiction is primarily psychological, the physical symptoms during withdrawal can be surprisingly pronounced and uncomfortable. Sleep Disturbances and Insomnia Sleep problems represent one of the most common physical symptoms of porn withdrawal. Many people struggle to fall asleep, experience frequent night wakings, or have vivid dreams related to sexual content. These sleep disturbances occur because pornography often served as a sleep aid, and the brain must now learn alternative ways to wind down. There may also be latent sexual material in your mind and nervous system that will take a while to defuse, sometimes leading to nocturnal emissions (for men). Fatigue and Low Energy Persistent tiredness and low energy levels are frequently reported during the early stages of withdrawal. This fatigue results from the brain’s energy-intensive process of neuroplasticity – literally rewiring itself to function without pornography. The fatigue typically improves as the brain adapts to more sustainable energy patterns. Sexual Dysfunction and Changes in Sexual Desire Paradoxically, many people experience a temporary decrease in sexual desire or erectile dysfunction after quitting pornography. This “flatline” period occurs because the brain is readjusting its response to natural sexual stimuli after years of artificial overstimulation. While concerning, this temporary loss of sex drive typically resolves as the brain heals. Physical Discomfort and Tension Headaches, muscle aches, and general physical tension are common during withdrawal. Some individuals also report restlessness, difficulty sitting still, and an overall sense of physical discomfort. Less commonly, people may experience nausea, sweating, or mild tremors, particularly during the acute withdrawal phase. Changes in Appetite Both increased and decreased appetite can occur during pornography withdrawal. Some people find themselves eating more as they seek alternative sources of dopamine, while others lose interest in food entirely....

Porn Addiction Recovery: How Long Does It Really Take?

Mon, 01 Sep 2025 13:00:52 +0000

Why Porn Addiction Recovery Takes Longer Than You Think If you or someone you love is struggling with compulsive pornography use, you probably want to know one thing: how long is this going to take? It’s a fair question, and it deserves an honest answer. Porn addiction recovery is absolutely possible. We see it in our counseling practice regularly. But lasting recovery is not just about stopping the behavior. It involves rewiring deeply embedded neurological patterns, rebuilding trust in damaged relationships, and developing entirely new ways of managing stress, loneliness, and emotional pain. That process typically unfolds over one to two years or more, though meaningful progress often begins within the first few months of committed treatment with a qualified therapist. The timeline varies significantly depending on how long the addiction has been active, whether underlying trauma or mental health conditions are present, and how strong your support system is. What we can tell you from years of clinical experience is that the people who recover are not the ones who white-knuckle their way through willpower alone. They are the ones who get the right help and stay engaged with the process even when it gets hard. Here is what the recovery timeline actually looks like, what influences it, and what you can do to move through it with greater confidence. How Pornography Rewires Your Brain Understanding the neuroscience behind porn addiction is not just academic. It is one of the most powerful tools for reducing the shame that keeps people stuck. When you understand that your brain has been physically changed by repeated exposure to high-dopamine stimulation, the problem stops feeling like a moral failure and starts looking like what it actually is: a treatable condition. Repeated pornography consumption triggers your brain’s reward system in ways that closely mirror substance addiction. Dopamine floods the same pathways activated by drugs and alcohol, creating a reinforcement cycle that strengthens with every use. Over time, your brain adapts through a process called desensitization. Natural rewards, including intimacy with your partner, become less satisfying. You need more frequent or more intense stimulation to get the same response. What started as pleasure-seeking becomes compulsive behavior performed to avoid discomfort rather than to gain enjoyment. Many of the clients we work with describe emotional numbing, difficulty finding pleasure in ordinary activities, and persistent intrusive cravings. These are not character flaws. They are predictable neurological consequences of chronic high-dopamine exposure. The critical insight, and the source of genuine hope, is that these brain changes are not permanent. The same neuroplasticity that allowed your brain to wire itself around pornography allows it to rewire toward healthier patterns with proper treatment and time. This is where clinical approaches like Certified Sex Addiction Therapy (CSAT) become essential. CSAT-trained therapists understand the specific neurological and relational dynamics of compulsive sexual behavior and can guide the recovery process in ways that general therapy often cannot. Timelines We Typically See in Our Counseling Agency Recovery timelines are not one-size-fits-all, but after years of working with clients across the full spectrum of pornography addiction, we can describe what we typically observe. These ranges reflect real clinical experience, not theoretical estimates. Addiction Severity Treatment Duration Typical Outcomes Mild Addiction 8-12 weekly sessions Significant progress in 2-3 months Moderate Addiction 3-6 months weekly sessions Substantial change and improved control Serious Addiction 6-12 months weekly sessions Major life improvements and stable recovery Very Serious / Sex Addiction 2+ years ongoing support Long-term recovery with maintenance Mild Addiction Recovery (2-3 Months) Clients with less entrenched patterns of compulsive porn use often achieve significant progress in 8 to 12 weekly counseling sessions. These cases typically involve decreased but not completely eliminated control over pornography consumption, with fewer structural life consequences. People in this category may have recognized their problem early and sought help before the addiction severely impacted their relationships or daily functioning. They often respond well to cognitive behavioral therapy and basic coping strategies. Moderate Addiction Recovery (3-6 Months) The majority of clients seeking porn addiction recovery fall into the moderate category. We recommend 3 to 6 months of weekly counseling for substantial change. This period allows for rewiring ingrained habits, developing effective coping strategies, and exploring the emotional triggers and relational patterns that drive the addictive behavior. During this timeframe, we often see clients begin to address underlying mental health issues that contribute to their porn use, such as anxiety, depression, or unprocessed trauma. They also begin rebuilding trust in relationships and developing healthier patterns of intimacy and sexual expression. We frequently use Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) during this phase to help couples reconnect and begin repairing the attachment injuries that pornography use often creates. Serious Addiction Recovery (6-12 Months) For those experiencing severe consequences from their pornography use or compulsive behavior with intrusive thoughts about pornographic material, 6 to 12 months of regular counseling is typical. The recovery process at this level includes managing withdrawal symptoms, emotional volatility, addressing co-occurring mental health disorders, and often couples or family therapy to repair significant relationship damage. Clients in this category may have escalated to more extreme porn content, experienced significant relationship breakdowns, or developed other mental health symptoms alongside their porn addiction. One thing we see consistently at this severity level is that the addiction has become the person’s primary strategy for emotional regulation. They are not just using porn for pleasure. They are using it to manage anxiety, avoid conflict, numb grief, or escape from a life that feels unmanageable. Recovery at this level requires replacing the entire emotional regulation system, not just stopping one behavior. Very Serious Addiction Recovery (2+ Years) In the most severe cases, such as when porn addiction behaviors overlap with other compulsive sexual activities or have continued for many years, 2+ years of counseling is often needed. Recovery becomes a long-term process similar in scope to recovery from substance use disorders. These cases often involve complex trauma histories, multiple addictive behaviors, or severe relationship and life consequences. Recovery requires comprehensive, trauma-informed treatment addressing not just the pornography use but the underlying emotional wounds and life circumstances that fostered its development. We often integrate attachment theory into our work at this level, because the relational deficits that drive the most severe addictions typically have roots in early attachment experiences. Individual Variation Matters It is important to understand that these timelines are averages. Your motivation, life context, access to support, willingness to engage with difficult emotional work, and presence of other mental health conditions all impact the pace of your recovery. Some people move through these stages more quickly. Others need more time. The key is working with qualified mental health professionals, ideally those with CSAT or similar specialized training, who can tailor treatment to your specific needs and circumstances. The Stages of Porn Addiction Recovery Crisis and Decision Stage (0-3 Months) This period typically begins with a moment of recognition, whether from personal distress or a catalyzing external event such as relationship breakdown, discovery by a partner, job consequences, or a health scare. During this stage, you make the crucial commitment to change and begin taking concrete steps to address your pornography addiction. The crisis stage is marked by high motivation but also intense vulnerability. You may experience acute cravings, anxiety, and persistent preoccupation with pornographic material. This is when you need the highest level of therapeutic and social support to maintain your commitment. Common early actions include seeking professional counseling specialized in sexual addiction, installing digital restriction tools to limit access to pornographic content, joining support groups for accountability and peer support, informing trusted friends or family members about your recovery goals, and developing immediate coping strategies for managing cravings. Many people successfully stop watching porn during this initial phase, often within the first month or two. However, achieving sobriety is just the first step. We tell our clients: stopping the behavior is the floor, not the ceiling. The deeper work is what comes next. Shock and Withdrawal Stage (1-8 Months) As your neurochemical system adjusts to the absence of high-frequency pornography-induced dopamine stimulation, you may experience withdrawal symptoms similar to those seen in substance abuse recovery. This is often the most difficult period, and it catches many people off guard. Common withdrawal symptoms include irritability and mood swings, anxiety and restlessness, insomnia and sleep disturbances, fatigue and low energy, loss of interest in previously enjoyed activities, difficulty concentrating, strong cravings for pornographic material, and emotional lability with sudden surges of anger, sadness, or grief. Professional therapy is critical during this stage. A trained therapist provides emotional containment,...

Understanding and Navigating a Controlling Spouse

Mon, 18 Aug 2025 23:18:11 +0000

What if I told you that the people who seem the most controlling are often the ones who feel the most out of control on the inside? This paradox is a profound truth frequently encountered in couple’s counseling. That constant need your spouse might have to check who you’re texting, manage your schedule, or question your spending—it’s almost never really about you. Instead, it’s a coping mechanism, a flawed attempt to manage a storm of anxiety, deep-seated fears, or even past trauma raging inside them. Understanding this distinction is crucial because the behaviors we label as controlling can be complex, and the defining line between a frustrating dynamic and abusive control often comes down to the presence of fear and power. Ask yourself: Does your spouse’s controlling behavior seem to stem from their own internal anxiety or fear? Or does it feel like a deliberate tactic to isolate you and maintain power over you? The core difference lies in your emotional experience—are you feeling frustrated, or are you genuinely afraid of your partner’s reaction? If fear, intimidation, or isolation are present, you may be facing coercive control, a serious form of domestic violence. In such cases, your safety is absolutely paramount, and connecting with resources like the National Domestic Violence Hotline is essential. If you are in danger, it is absolutely necessary to prioritize your safety and seek help immediately. However, if you feel fundamentally safe yet struggle with frustration due to your partner’s need to control, then this article is here to support you in navigating that challenge. https://youtu.be/Ip3HCn9SGP0?si=6D6UwPFC16UrfvHJ Part 1: Introduction – The Frustration is Real When your spouse exhibits controlling behavior, it can feel overwhelming and deeply frustrating. You might find yourself constantly questioned about where you are, who you’re with, or how you spend your time. Perhaps your partner micromanages the family finances down to the last dollar or insists on approving every plan you make with your friends. Sometimes, what initially seem like “helpful suggestions” turn into directives about how you should dress, what you should eat, or even how to parent your children. It's important to remember that a controlling person can take many forms—some may be overtly domineering, while others may use subtle or manipulative tactics. Not all controlling people act the same way. Such controlling behavior can leave you feeling not trusted, infantilized, and filled with resentment. Many individuals have felt isolated, anxious, or powerless in response to a controlling person’s actions. These feelings are real and significant. At the same time, reframing controlling behavior as an attempt by the controlling spouse to manage internal chaos or emotional pain can help you discern how to navigate this problem in your relationship. Recognizing this can help you develop empathy for your partner, even when their behavior feels counterproductive. In this article, we will explore the root causes behind controlling behavior, develop compassion for the spouse who struggles with it, and provide practical tools for the other spouse to respond with strength, understanding, and love. This approach aims to foster a healthier connection within your marriage or relationship. Part 2: The "Why" Behind the "What" – Unpacking the Roots To effectively address controlling behavior, it’s essential to understand what lies beneath it. Typically, it’s not about a desire to dominate but rather a flawed strategy to cope with deep fears and anxieties. Many controlling behaviors are learned from parents or family dynamics, especially when parents themselves were authoritative or maintained strict control within the household. As humans, there is a natural tendency to seek control or security in relationships, which can sometimes lead to unhealthy patterns. Several factors often contribute to a controlling spouse’s behavior, including past traumas or betrayals that happened earlier in life and continue to influence current actions and emotional responses. 1. Anxiety & Fear For many controlling people, control is a way to manage an unpredictable and chaotic internal world. When anxiety is high, predictability feels like safety. A controlling spouse may expect certain behaviors or outcomes from their partner, and when these expectations are unmet, their anxiety can increase, leading to more controlling behaviors. This need to control can manifest as constant criticism, questioning, or even the silent treatment when things don’t go as expected. 2. Unresolved Trauma or Past Betrayal Past traumas or betrayals, whether in the current relationship or earlier in life, can leave a person’s nervous system constantly on alert. For example, a husband whose father was unfaithful might compulsively check his wife’s phone—not out of distrust toward her personally, but out of fear of being blindsided again. This behavior can deeply affect the wife, making her feel distrusted, controlled, and emotionally hurt, undermining her sense of autonomy and respect within the marriage. This trauma-driven controlling behavior is a misguided attempt to protect oneself from future pain. 3. Perfectionism Perfectionism often acts as a defense mechanism against shame or failure. The belief is that if every detail is controlled—from how the house is kept clean to how the family spends money or how a partner manages their tasks—disaster and judgment can be avoided. This can lead to expectations that become unfair within the marriage and family, causing tension and conflict. 4. Low Self-Esteem & Relational Insecurity A core wound such as “I’m not good enough” or “I’m unlovable” can drive controlling behavior. The controlling spouse may fear abandonment and try to keep their partner close by controlling their actions. Ironically, this behavior often pushes the partner away, creating a cycle of insecurity and control. This dynamic can affect the entire family, including children, who may sense the tension and feel unsafe. Wives, in particular, may be especially impacted by controlling dynamics within a marriage, sometimes experiencing challenges related to dependency and loss of identity. Understanding these factors helps clarify that controlling behavior is often less about a desire to dominate and more about a person’s internal struggle with fear, insecurity, and past wounds. Part 3: What to Do – Actionable Steps for Connection If you find yourself on the receiving end of controlling behavior, there are healthy ways to respond that foster connection and reduce conflict. Take time to talk openly with your spouse about how certain actions make you feel, and encourage honest dialogue about control issues. These steps emphasize communication, respect, and boundaries. Suppose you notice a pattern where your partner makes decisions without your input—this could be a sign of control, but it might also be a misunderstanding. In such situations, it's important to make your point clear when discussing boundaries and needs, so both partners understand each other's perspectives. Sometimes, a single moment of honest conversation can lead to a shift in understanding and help both of you move toward a more balanced, interdependent relationship. Interdependence in a relationship allows both spouses to meet each other's needs without feeling controlled, fostering mutual respect and autonomy. Step 1: Get Curious, Not Furious Instead of reacting with anger or defensiveness, try shifting your response to one of curiosity. Ask open, gentle questions that invite your spouse to share their feelings and fears. For example: “I notice you seem worried when I spend money on my own. Can you tell me what fear comes up for you around our finances?” “Help me understand how you feel when I’m out late with my friends.” This approach encourages open conversation and helps you hear the underlying emotions driving their controlling behavior. Step 2: Practice Differentiation Differentiation is the art of staying connected to your partner while maintaining your own sense of self. It means empathizing with their anxiety without taking responsibility for fixing it. You might say: “I hear that you’re scared, and that’s okay. Your fear is yours, and my need for autonomy is mine. Both can exist.” By setting this emotional line, you protect your well-being while honoring your partner’s feelings. Achieving this balance and interdependence can bring a sense of emotional rest and relief to both partners, allowing each person to feel safe and respected. This balance is key to creating respect and safety in the relationship. Step 3: Set Loving Boundaries Boundaries are essential for protecting your peace and are different from ultimatums or punishments. Setting clear, loving boundaries communicates your needs while respecting your partner. Even when married, it is important to maintain personal boundaries and autonomy, as boundaries in marriage should not mean giving up your independence. Examples include: “I love you, and I also need to make plans with my friends without needing to run it by you first. I’ll make sure our shared calendar is updated.” “I’m happy to discuss our shared budget, but I need autonomy over my personal spending allowance without justifying every purchase.” Creating these boundaries helps both partners understand expectations and reduces the feeling of being controlled or micromanaged. Part 4: Conclusion & The Path Forward Moving forward in a relationship with a controlling spouse requires compassion for the underlying reasons behind controlling behaviors and the courage to take action with loving boundaries and differentiation. Successful couples often engage in respectful negotiations rather than demands or sacrifices, creating a foundation of mutual understanding and shared decision-making. ...

What Do I Tell My Wife About My Affair? A Guide to Disclosure and Healing

Mon, 04 Aug 2025 21:47:40 +0000

Disclosing an affair is one of the most critical and challenging conversations a husband can have with his wife. When mishandled, this revelation will certainly extend the healing process and possibly could mean the end of the marriage. However, for those who genuinely want to save their relationship and show as much care to their betrayed partner as possible, there are ways to approach this conversation with clarity, care, and respect. Understanding what to tell your wife about your affair—and how to say it—can make all the difference in whether your marriage survives this painful breach of trust. Infidelity affects about 20-25% of marriages, highlighting how common yet devastating this issue can be. https://youtu.be/nPlogRdjb18?si=YoPnDPSijA9Bcvac The fear of causing pain and facing the consequences of infidelity is very real and understandable. Yet, how the conversation starts is crucial; it should not be about damage control (i.e., mere self-preservation) or minimization. Instead, it must be rooted in honesty, integrity, and a commitment to building a foundation for possible healing. If your goal is to save your marriage, knowing how to communicate the truth about your affair is the first vital step. TLDR; being honest and transparent from the beginning is essential for rebuilding trust and demonstrating genuine remorse. Healing From An Affair Begins With Thoughtful Disclosure The healing process after an affair is never simple, but it is possible with the right approach and mindset. The reality is that both partners will experience a wide range of emotions, from anger and grief to confusion and hope. Recently found research shows that couples who approach this journey with empathy and a willingness to work through difficult issues are more likely to rebuild trust and potentially create a stronger relationship than before. Rebuilding trust takes time (more than you think!) after infidelity, requiring patience and consistent effort from both partners. It’s important to keep your heart open and acknowledge the pain that has been caused, both to yourself and your spouse. Seeking out a counselor who understand betrayal trauma can provide the guidance and structure needed to address the complex issues that arise after infidelity. In some cases, the support of a parent or other close family member can also offer comfort and perspective. Many people struggle with the decision of whether to involve friends and family in the recovery process after infidelity, as it can be both a source of support and a potential complication. Remember: there is no single “right” way to heal. Every couple’s circumstances are unique, and what works for one may not work for another. The key is to remain open, communicate honestly, and be willing to put in the work required to move forward. Healing takes time, but with empathy, the right support, and a commitment to facing reality together, it is possible to start rebuilding your relationship from a new, solid foundation. Preparing for the Infidelity Disclosure Preparing to tell your wife about your affair requires careful thought and planning. The right environment can make a significant difference—choose a time and place where you both feel comfortable and free from distractions, so you are able to be fully present with the fallout. Before the conversation, take time to write down your thoughts and disclosures. This can help you clarify what you want to say and ensure you don’t fall back on lies or excuses when emotions run high. It’s also wise to consider seeking the guidance of a counselor for betraying partners before you start this difficult conversation. A professional can help you prepare, offer advice on how to approach this discussion, and provide support as you work through the aftermath together. Being prepared means not only knowing what you want to disclose, but also being ready to listen to your spouse’s feelings and concerns with empathy and validation. Remember, the goal is not to justify your actions or shift blame, but to take responsibility and start the process of healing. By approaching the conversation with a commitment to honesty, openness, and a willingness to work through the issues, you lay the groundwork for rebuilding trust and moving forward together. The Temptation to Hide Affair Facts, Minimize, or Dishonesty One of the most common and damaging pitfalls when confessing an affair is the temptation to hide facts or minimize the situation. This often leads to “trickle-truthing,” or what we call "staggered disclosure", where information is revealed in pieces over time rather than all at once. While it might seem kinder or safer to disclose details slowly, this approach always causes more harm than good. Each new revelation acts like a fresh emotional betrayal for the betrayed spouse. A wife who experienced this shared her pain: “He has trickle-truthed me endlessly, every iteration of the truth being the ‘final truth’… It sets us back further every time, shatters his credibility even more, and re-traumatizes me.” Staggered disclosures are experienced as re-betrayals. Each new piece of information is another shattering moment for the betrayed spouse. Hiding the truth in this way does not protect the relationship from harm; in fact, it often deepens the wounds. The fear of revealing everything often stems from a deep sense of shame. However, the only way to combat shame is through complete vulnerability, which requires surrendering control over the outcome. Once your wife suspects that you are holding back information, she will always wonder what else you might be hiding. This suspicion makes healing and forgiveness far more difficult. Another betrayed spouse described the destructive impact of staggered disclosure: “First, it was just ‘sexting.’ Then I found out they met for coffee. Months later, I learned it was a full-blown physical affair. Each lie felt like D-Day all over again… The constant lying was more painful than the cheating.” The initial pain caused by infidelity is compounded exponentially when facts are withheld. Therefore, a thoughtfully handled, honest, and complete disclosure is the only path forward if you want to minimize the trauma caused to your wife. Don't Blame or Justify When you confess your affair to your wife, it is essential to avoid blaming her or justifying your actions in any way. While it is true that many affairs happen in marriages that are distressed, emotionally disconnected, or sexless, this is not the time to bring up those issues. Doing so will only add fuel to the fire and deepen her hurt. Trying to convince your wife that your actions were justified will only make her feel more betrayed and intensify her pain. There will be time later—perhaps in couples therapy or through professional help—to explore the many factors that contributed to the breakdown of your relationship. But during the initial conversation, your sole focus should be on taking full ownership of your choice. No matter how difficult your marriage was, you made a deliberate choice to betray your wife and break your marriage vows. That is the best stance to take at this point in your recovery. Avoid using pity or self-loathing as a shield either. Expressing overwhelming guilt or focusing on your own pain can subconsciously shift attention away from your wife’s grief. While that may seem productive, it only delays her healing: her hurt, anger, and devastation must have space in this conversation. What Truth To Disclose About The Affair Building a new foundation of honesty requires that your disclosure be factual, thorough, and free of minimization. The goal is to share all the relevant facts—not to provide a graphic or sensationalized account. Here is what we generally recommend you should tell your wife about your affair: Who the affair partner was, including how you knew her (the other woman). Revealing this information is crucial to avoid creating suspicion towards other individuals in your life. When the affair occurred, including start and end dates. Where and when the affair meetups took place. The nature of the affair—whether it was emotional, physical, or both. How you concealed the affair, owning up to all lies and secrecy. How the affair ended, or if it has not. Offer access to your emails and other digital communications to demonstrate transparency. When answering questions, be prepared to respond honestly to anything your wife asked, no matter how difficult (see What Not to Disclose, below). Your wife may ask you to explain the reasons behind the affair, as she tries to understand why it happened. Be cautious here: most husbands do not know how to provide an explanation without blaming their wife, which is certain to backfire. Inevitably, our experience is that betraying husbands have unrecognized, unmet emotional needs and longings that subconsciously are projected onto the affair partner. But to really articulate those reasons in a thoughtful, non-blaming, responsibility-taking way often takes some good therapy work. You might consider telling your spouse, "I am not sure why. But I will figure it out so that I can become a safe partner for you." When Truth About Your Mistake Is Confessed Well One wife described a disclosure that made recovery possible: “He sat me down and told me the truth—the whole truth—in one go. He didn’t wait for me to find evidence… It was brutal, but it was honest. There were no more secrets waiting around the corner to ambush me. That complete transparency… was the one thing that allowed me to even consider trusting him again.” In her case, she discovered the affair after noticing unusual behavior and finding messages, which made the honesty in his confession even more important. When you disclose, choose your words carefully. The right word or words can make a difference in how your rem

The Truth About Male Desire: Debunking 4 Common Myths

Mon, 28 Jul 2025 12:00:00 +0000

Uncover the surprising truth about male desire. We debunk 4 common myths, revealing how emotional connection and shared history truly fuel men's intimacy.

Uncover Truth: Female Desire Beyond Myths

Mon, 28 Jul 2025 12:00:00 +0000

Beyond myths! Latest research reveals the truth about female sexuality, libido, and desire. Empower your relationships with science-backed insights.

Can Your Brain Recover from Porn Addiction? The Science of Relapse, Shame, and Healing

Wed, 23 Jul 2025 20:11:04 +0000

Yes, your brain can recover from porn addiction. The neurological changes that pornography creates are real, but they are not permanent. The same brain plasticity that allowed the addiction to form in the first place is what makes recovery possible. We work with people every week who are living proof of this. But here is what most articles about porn addiction recovery won't tell you: the problem is almost never willpower. The person who relapses on a Tuesday night after three weeks of sobriety is not weak. Their brain has been systematically rewired to disconnect desire from consequence, and no amount of white-knuckling can overcome a neural pathway that has been reinforced thousands of times. Understanding how that rewiring works, and what actually reverses it, is where real recovery begins. If you are the person caught in this cycle, or the partner trying to understand why someone you love keeps doing something they swore they would stop, this is for you. How Porn Rewires Your Brain: The Neuroscience of Addiction "What Were You Thinking?": The Neural Disconnect This is the question partners ask most often in our office: "What were you thinking?" And the honest, uncomfortable answer is that in the moment of relapse, the person was not thinking. Not in the way you mean. In the grip of compulsive behaviour, the part of the brain that desires pornography becomes profoundly disconnected from the part that sees and weighs the consequences. You can fully commit to stopping when you are calm, clear-headed, and looking your spouse in the eyes. But in the moment of craving, your rational brain is essentially offline. This is not an excuse. It is a neurological reality, and understanding it is the first step toward changing it. The Mesolimbic Dopamine Pathway: Your Brain's "Wanting" Circuit At the core of this disconnect lies the mesolimbic dopamine pathway, often called the brain's "wanting" system. Located in the primitive midbrain and extending to the forebrain, this pathway is responsible for the intense hit associated with addictive behaviours. When you consume pornography, dopamine is released in the nucleus accumbens, creating a powerful reward signal. Over time, your brain becomes less responsive to this dopamine release, requiring more frequent, longer, or more intense exposure to achieve the same effect. This is tolerance, and it is why usage almost always escalates. Critically, your brain also becomes less responsive to natural, healthy rewards: the warmth of a real conversation, the pleasure of a shared meal, the intimacy of being known by another person. We often explain it to clients this way: pornography does not just add something to your brain's reward system. It recalibrates the entire scale. Everything else starts to register as less. The Amygdala, the Hippocampus, and Euphoric Recall The rewiring does not stop with the dopamine pathway. The amygdala, the brain's emotional centre, becomes linked to this circuit, connecting stress and negative emotions with the dopamine release that pornography provides. In practical terms, this means your brain learns to treat pornography as medication for difficult feelings. Then there is the hippocampus, where memories are stored. It plays a key role through what clinicians call euphoric recall: not just remembering the act itself, but the excitement, the anticipation, the perceived discovery. Your brain reconstructs the experience as better than it was and presents it as a solution to whatever discomfort you are feeling right now. It is the brain's way of saying, "Remember how good that felt? You need that again." This is why triggers seem to come out of nowhere. A difficult day at work, a conflict with your spouse, even boredom: your hippocampus has already catalogued these as situations where pornography "helped." The Prefrontal Cortex: When Your Decision-Maker Goes Offline In contrast to these primitive reward circuits is the prefrontal cortex, the front of your brain responsible for higher-level thinking, impulse control, and weighing consequences. This is the part that tells you looking at porn is going to hurt your partner, damage your self-respect, and set your recovery back weeks. In addiction, the prefrontal cortex becomes significantly impaired. The neural pathway between this rational, consequence-aware region and the desire-driven mesolimbic pathway weakens or disconnects entirely. This explains why, in moments of relapse, people consistently report feeling like they "weren't thinking" or "just didn't care anymore." The part of your brain that could tell you to stop is not connected to the part creating the desire. If you are a partner reading this, this may be one of the most important things to understand: the person who relapsed is often telling the truth when they say they don't know why they did it. That is not a deflection. It is a description of a brain in which the warning system has been disconnected from the accelerator. Rebuilding the Connection: How the Brain Heals from Porn Addiction When caught in this cycle, the primitive, desire-driven circuits dominate. Breaking free requires a dual approach. First, it is crucial to deprive the mesolimbic dopamine pathway of its unhealthy source of stimulation. This means abstinence from pornography so your brain can re-attune to normal, healthy pleasures. Research on neuroplasticity consistently shows that the brain can recalibrate its reward system when the artificial stimulus is removed, though this takes time and the timeline varies from person to person. Second, and equally vital, is actively rebuilding the neural pathway between the desire for pornography and the awareness of its real consequences. In porn addiction therapy, we use techniques like brainspotting to help rewire these connections, linking the craving with the real-life fallout in a way that makes consequence awareness more present in the moment of temptation. This is not about shaming yourself into compliance. It is about giving your prefrontal cortex back its voice. A key part of this work is also learning healthy coping mechanisms and developing a deeper understanding of your triggers and attachment patterns. Many of our clients who are working with a certified sex addiction therapist (CSAT) find that this combination of neurological rewiring and emotional insight is what finally makes sobriety sustainable rather than a series of white-knuckle streaks. Shame: The Hidden Engine of Porn Addiction Relapse When the "Painkiller" Becomes the Pain Here is one of the most important clinical reframes we offer clients: shame is not the cure for porn addiction. It is the fuel. Many people try to use shame as a motivator to stop, believing that if they beat themselves up enough, they will finally quit. "If I just hate myself enough for doing this, I'll stop." This strategy feels intuitively right. It is also almost universally counterproductive. Pornography functions as a maladaptive coping mechanism for shame itself. The images present an illusion of desire and validation, acting as a temporary antidote to feelings of worthlessness. Yet after the act, the shame returns, intensified. This creates a vicious cycle: you feel bad, you use porn to temporarily numb the feeling, you feel worse afterwards, and then you use porn again to cope with the increased shame. We see this pattern in our practice constantly. A client will describe weeks of progress followed by a relapse that "came out of nowhere." But when we slow down and trace the emotional sequence, there is almost always a shame trigger: a moment where they felt inadequate, rejected, or fundamentally flawed. The shame did not prevent the relapse. It caused it. Shame also thrives in secrecy, pushing individuals further into isolation and away from the very relationships that could support recovery. This is the painful paradox: the intended "painkiller" becomes the source of escalating pain. Beyond "Just Horny": The Deeper Needs Driving Porn Use Why the "I'm Just Horny" Explanation Falls Apart Often, people rationalize pornography use by saying, "I'm just horny." While sexual arousal is part of the experience, this explanation almost always masks something deeper. The euphoric recall system can trick your brain into labelling uncomfortable feelings as sexual arousal, making you believe that addressing your "horniness" will solve the underlying issue. There is also a cultural script, particularly for men, that equates sex drive with a basic biological need like hunger. "Men need release." But unlike food, which is essential for survival, you will not die without ejaculating. The body has its own mechanisms for managing sexual tension. Believing this myth lowers inhibition and provides a rationalization that keeps the addiction in place. The clinical reframe we offer is this: "I'm just horny" is almost never the whole truth. It is the surface-level story your brain tells because the real story is harder to face. The Valid Longing Underneath What is actually happening beneath the surface is often a deeper, legitimate longing that is going unmet. These longings show up as uncomfortable feelings: loneliness, sadness, anger, boredom, or grief for what is missing in your life. Perhaps it is a longing for genuine connection, for deep friendships, or for a healthy sexual relationship with a partner who truly knows you. When these legitimate emotional needs go unaddressed, pornography steps in as a distorted, short-term solution. It distracts you from the pain of isolation or unmet intimacy, but ultimately leaves you feeling more disconnected than before. It is crucial to understand that these underlying feelings are valid. There is no shame in experiencing loneliness or longing for connection. They are signals from your body and mind, pointing you toward needs that deserve to be met in healthy ways. Desexualizing the Need for Connection ...

End The Cycle: Healing Childhood Trauma

Wed, 23 Jul 2025 19:36:02 +0000

Discover how childhood trauma shapes your adult life. Uncover hidden signs, understand its impact on relationships & career, and find your path to healing.

Why Do I Keep Attracting Toxic People? Flipping the Script on Relationship Patterns

Mon, 14 Jul 2025 13:00:00 +0000

Do you find yourself repeatedly involved with people who leave you feeling drained, confused, or questioning yourself? Have you ever wondered, "Why do I keep attracting toxic people?" If so, you're not alone. This question often places the blame squarely on your shoulders, leading to significant self-blame and shame, especially if you've been harmed repeatedly. But here's the truth: It’s not just about who you passively attract. The real issue lies in how individuals with exploitative, manipulative, or abusive behaviors actively target specific vulnerabilities and even positive characteristics in others. In this article, we'll uncover the psychology behind these toxic relationship patterns. We'll show you how manipulators identify and exploit vulnerabilities, reveal their subtle and overt tactics, and most importantly, provide you with research-backed tools to heal, build resilience, and break free from these cycles for good. This isn't about blaming yourself; it's about understanding the pattern, reclaiming your power, and learning how to choose healthier, happier connections. Shifting the Focus The word "toxic" is frequently used, and in our profession, it generally refers to people who engage in harmful behaviors: exploitation, manipulation, abuse, or general disrespect. If you're experiencing this, we want to shift the focus from the self-blaming question, "Why do I attract toxic people?" The Trap of Self-Blame The question "Why do I keep attracting toxic people?" places the onus entirely on the person who has been harmed. It implies that something is fundamentally wrong with you that draws these individuals in. This perspective can lead to deep shame and a feeling of being inherently flawed, especially if it's a recurring pattern. People struggling with this often ask, "What is wrong with me?"—a truly difficult and painful place to be. New Perspective: They Actively Target Vulnerabilities We want to shift away from the idea of passive attraction to focusing on how exploitative individuals actively target others. They aren't just randomly showing up; they are often consciously or subconsciously seeking out specific traits and vulnerabilities. This means the responsibility for the manipulative or abusive behavior lies solely with the person exhibiting it, not the target. Responsibility: Where It Truly Lies The person who abuses or exploits is the one responsible for those actions. Understanding this is crucial because it takes the burden of blame off the person who has been targeted. While you may have vulnerabilities, the issue is their exploitation by someone else. As counselors, we believe you should be able to have your vulnerabilities, your challenges, your past experiences, and not be taken advantage of. You should be able to heal and exist in the world without fear of exploitation. The Predator Analogy: Understanding the Dynamic Consider a predator analogy. A bunny in a garden, happily eating, might ask, "Why do I attract hawks and coyotes?" This isn't the right question because it implies the bunny is flawed. Bunnies are resilient and vital to the ecosystem. They aren't inherently wrong for being bunnies. A better question for the bunny is, "How can I be safer in this world, given there are predators, and I don't have many defenses?" This shifts the focus from self-blame to understanding the environment and developing strategies for safety and resilience. Similarly, for humans, having vulnerabilities doesn't make you flawed; it makes you human. The focus needs to be on understanding how to navigate relationships safely when exploitative people exist. Vulnerabilities are Not Flaws: They Are Targeted This is a critical point: Vulnerabilities are not personal defects or flaws. They often stem from past experiences like trauma, attachment injuries from early caregiver relationships, or even inherent personality traits like a high degree of empathy. To healthy people, these traits are often seen as positive. But to very unhealthy, exploitative people, they are seen as opportunities. The issue is the exploitation of these vulnerabilities and qualities. Zero vulnerability is not a realistic or healthy goal. We want to empower you to heal, understand what's happening, gain knowledge to protect yourself, and build relationships based on mutual respect and safety. The Vulnerabilities they Exploit Targeting by exploitative individuals is rarely random. They often possess a keen sense for identifying sensitivities or unmet needs in others, seeking specific "targets" that make someone more susceptible to manipulation and control. Targeting is Not Random: Seeking Openings Manipulators are skilled at spotting opportunities. They may look for unmet needs from childhood, like a longing for attention or validation, or sensitivities developed through difficult life experiences. They then use this awareness not to nurture these needs, but to exploit them for their own gain. This targeting aspect is key. Vulnerabilities are Not Weaknesses: Origins and Perspective Again, your vulnerabilities are not weaknesses. They are often psychological patterns or sensitivities from past experiences. Understanding this is part of recognizing the manipulator's tactics, not blaming yourself. For example, someone who grew up with an emotionally unavailable parent might have a deep unmet need for affection. An exploitative person can sense this longing and "love bomb" them, providing overwhelming attention that feels comfortable but is ultimately used for manipulation. Zero vulnerability is not the goal; being safe with your vulnerabilities is. You should be able to have the challenges life has handed you without someone taking advantage. Common Targets: What do Toxic People Consciously or Unconsciously Target? Based on research and clinical experience, here are some common vulnerabilities and traits that exploitative individuals often target: Low Self-Esteem & Weak Boundaries: Individuals with low self-esteem or difficulty setting boundaries are more susceptible to manipulation. They may be less likely to assert their needs or leave harmful situations. Manipulators actively erode their confidence further through criticism and blame, gaining more power. They often test boundaries early with small violations. Insecure Attachment Styles (Anxious/Avoidant) & Fear of Abandonment: Our attachment patterns, shaped by early caregiver relationships, can become vulnerabilities. Anxious Attachment: People with anxious attachment often fear abandonment and crave closeness. A toxic person may use love bombing to create intense dependency, combined with intermittent reinforcement (a cycle of highs and lows) and threats of leaving to keep the person desperate for validation. Avoidant Attachment: People with avoidant attachment are often uncomfortable with intimacy. A toxic person might use superficial charm to draw them in or trigger their fears about closeness. Boundary violations might be harder for avoidant individuals to recognize early. History of Trauma (Childhood Abuse/Neglect, Past Toxic Relationships): A history of trauma impacts one's ability to trust, regulate emotions, and perceive themselves. Dysfunction can make unhealthy dynamics seem "normal," making it harder to spot red flags. Manipulators may see a history of trauma as a sign of vulnerability they can exploit, assuming the person is used to poor treatment or has deep-seated insecurities. Codependency & People-Pleasing: Codependency often involves an excessive reliance on pleasing others or prioritizing their needs. People-pleasers find it difficult to say "no." Exploitative individuals see this as a prime opportunity, making unreasonable demands, inducing guilt, or playing the victim, knowing their target will likely comply. High Empathy: While a wonderful trait, deep empathy can be exploited by those who lack it. Highly empathetic individuals may make excuses for a toxic person's behavior, be susceptible to guilt trips, or feel compelled to "fix" their partner. Their capacity for forgiveness can inadvertently keep them stuck longer. Exploiting Positive Traits ("The Goodness Trap"): Toxic people can even turn your virtues against you. Loyalty, compassion, trust, and a willingness to give the benefit of the doubt—"prosocial values"—are wonderful qualities. But with the wrong person, these become tools for exploitation. Your desire to understand them, your loyalty in staying, or your compassion for their supposed struggles can be leveraged to keep you invested and compliant. These vulnerabilities are often interconnected. For example, a history of trauma might contribute to insecure attachment or low self-esteem, creating multiple points of potential exploitation. The Predator's Playbook: How Vulnerabilities Are Targeted Exploitative behavior isn't just about who they target; it's about how they do it. They have a playbook of tactics designed to erode self-worth, confuse reality, and create dependency. This is an active process involving observation, recognizing cues, and testing boundaries. Active Process: Observation and Testing Toxic individuals are often skilled observers. They watch for signs of vulnerabilities. Once they identify a potential target, they begin testing boundaries. These might be small violations initially, just to see how the person responds. If there's a "gap" or willingness to yield, they see an opening they can widen over time. Common Manipulation Tactics: The Tools of Control Here are some common tactics used by exploitative individuals: Love Bombing: Overwhelming the target with excessive affection, attention, compliments, and grand gestures early on. This makes you feel amazing and is designed to create intense dependency, distracting you from red flags. Gaslighting: A tactic to undermine your reality, memory, and sanity....

Navigating the Storm: Initial Steps After Discovering Partner Betrayal

Fri, 11 Jul 2025 22:07:41 +0000

After betrayal or infidelity, protect your mental health. Learn 7 urgent trauma steps to cope with shock, find support, & start healing now.

Infidelity vs. Sex Addiction: How to Tell the Difference

Mon, 23 Jun 2025 21:34:06 +0000

If you've just discovered something that shattered your trust, one of the first questions you need answered is whether you're dealing with infidelity or sex addiction. The distinction matters more than most people realize, because the two problems look similar on the surface but operate on completely different mechanisms, and the path to healing depends on getting the right answer. When we work with couples navigating this kind of crisis, the clarity that comes from understanding infidelity vs. sex addiction is often the first thing that lets both partners breathe again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgzezDzaPR8 The short answer: infidelity is the breaking of trust through sexual or romantic secrecy. Sex addiction is a pattern of compulsive sexual behavior that the person cannot stop despite wanting to. A person can be unfaithful without being addicted. A person can be sexually addicted without being unfaithful. And yes, a person can be both. What determines the right approach is not the severity of what happened, but the underlying pattern driving it. We approach this subject knowing that you may be the person who was betrayed, or the person who acted out, or both of you reading together during one of the most fragile moments in your relationship. Either way, you deserve honest, clinical clarity rather than vague reassurance. Understanding the Key Differences Between Infidelity and Sex Addiction One of the most common questions we hear is, "How do I know if this is infidelity or addiction?" When a couple is grappling with a recent discovery or disclosure, it can be incredibly challenging to tell the difference. Both involve sexual behavior outside a committed relationship. Both cause immense pain. But their underlying drivers and characteristics differ in ways that change everything about how healing works. What Defines Infidelity At its core, infidelity is sexual activity with someone other than a primary romantic partner or spouse. Today we're focusing specifically on sexual infidelity, not emotional affairs. While emotional affairs are undoubtedly a profound betrayal and cause deep hurt, they do not fall under the clinical definition of sexual infidelity, which specifically involves sexual behaviors. Infidelity can look many different ways. It might be a single, isolated incident, or it could involve multiple extramarital partners, either serially or simultaneously. The complexity increases when an affair partner is also a sex trade worker, or when a long-term secondary relationship or "second family" scenario exists. Even in those severe cases, the behavior can still be classified as infidelity if certain key elements of addiction are absent. What Defines Sex Addiction Sex addiction, in contrast, is characterized by a recurrent failure to resist sexual impulses. The most critical differentiator is the concept of impulse control, or rather, the profound lack of it. This isn't about having sex multiple times with an affair partner. It's about a high level of spontaneity, impulsiveness, and uncontrollability surrounding the sexual activity. The individual feels compelled to act despite a genuine desire to stop. What we often see in practice is that people with sex addiction describe a feeling of being "hijacked" by their own behavior. They make promises to themselves, set boundaries, sometimes even put physical barriers in place, and still find themselves acting out. That cycle of resolve, failure, shame, and repeat is one of the clearest clinical markers that distinguishes addiction from a choice-driven affair. Core Differences That Matter Impulse control is paramount. With sex addiction, there's a profound inability to resist compulsive urges. In infidelity, while there's a choice made to betray, it typically doesn't exhibit the same level of uncontrollability. Escalation over time looks different in each pattern. Infidelity might deepen emotionally, but sex addiction often involves escalation in the intensity, frequency, and risk of sexual behaviors. This can mean progressing from one type of acting out to another, or engaging in increasingly dangerous scenarios. Variety of behaviors is another marker. Sex addiction typically presents a wider range of sexual behaviors compared to a contained affair. While an affair might involve different situations, sex addiction can encompass encounters with paid sex workers, anonymous hookups, voyeurism, exhibitionism, or extensive pornography use, even without a traditional "affair partner." The desire to stop versus the desire to continue is particularly hard for betrayed partners to hear, but it's a key distinction. People struggling with sex addiction often express a persistent, genuine desire to stop their behaviors, experiencing profound remorse and shame after acting out, only to repeat the cycle because of compulsion. Affairs, on the other hand, often involve a persistent desire to continue the relationship with the affair partner, driven by fantasy or an idealized projection of that person. Underlying motivation differs as well. The motivation for an affair is typically emotional and tied to current relationship dynamics or personal unmet needs. Sex addiction is generally driven by deeper attachment wounds and unresolved trauma. While trauma can play a role in someone's propensity for affairs, its severity and direct connection to the compulsive behavior are typically more pronounced in sex addiction. The scope of harm also tells a story. While infidelity causes immense emotional harm primarily to the betrayed partner, sex addiction often brings a wider array of severe consequences to the individual acting out: significant financial loss, sexually transmitted infections, legal issues, or physical danger from risky encounters. An affair, while devastating, often occurs in a comparatively contained scenario. Here's the clinical reframe that surprises many couples: none of this comparison minimizes the pain of infidelity. Whether it's an affair or sex addiction, the betrayal causes real neurobiological trauma. The reason we differentiate is not to rank the severity of pain but to understand the nature of the problem. That understanding is what guides the path to effective healing and recovery. Recognizing the Signs and Symptoms of Sex Addiction Building on those core differences, here are the specific indicators that characterize compulsive sexual behavior. Much of this framework draws from the pioneering work of Patrick Carnes, a foundational figure in sex addiction research and treatment. Lack of impulse control: The individual repeatedly fails to resist impulses to engage in sexual behaviors, even when they genuinely desire to stop. Wider variety, greater risks, longer period: The pattern typically involves diverse sexual behaviors, often escalating in intensity, frequency, and risk (financial, physical, legal, social) over a longer period, sometimes a lifetime. In rare cases, sex addiction can manifest suddenly due to significant physiological changes, such as starting testosterone supplements, leading to unexpected compulsive behaviors. Repeated unsuccessful attempts to stop: Numerous earnest attempts to stop, reduce, or control sexual behavior, only to relapse. This chronic relapsing cycle is a hallmark of addiction. Inordinate time spent: A significant amount of time is dedicated to obtaining sex, engaging in sexual activity, or recovering from sexual experiences. This preoccupation consumes a person's life far beyond what would occur in an affair. Extensive preoccupation: A persistent, consuming preoccupation with sexual behavior, fantasy, or preparatory activities like planning, fantasizing, or seeking opportunities. Continued behavior despite negative consequences: This defines addiction of any kind: continuing the behavior despite clear knowledge of persistent or recurring social, financial, psychological, or physical problems caused by it. Is It a One-Time Affair or a Pattern of Sex Addiction? This question, born from fear and pain, is deeply unsettling when you've just discovered your partner's betrayal. The honest answer is that you don't know for certain at first. But we can offer some clinical guidance to help you understand the probabilities. In many cases, it may be "just" an affair. We use "just" not to minimize the devastating pain, but to differentiate it from the complexity of addiction. Statistically, infidelity is more common than sex addiction. General social surveys indicate that 20 to 25% of married men and 10 to 15% of married women report having sex outside their marriage over their lifetime. Among younger adults in their twenties, women report rates closer to 20%. Some broader definitions, including any sexual interaction that could jeopardize the relationship, push overall rates even higher. Approximately one quarter of all marriages will experience infidelity at some point. Sex addiction, by comparison, is estimated to affect about 10% of the population, and this figure often excludes individuals whose primary compulsive behavior is pornography. Statistically, it's less common to be married to a sex addict than to someone who has committed an act of infidelity. When to Suspect Sex Addiction Consider the possibility of sex addiction if your partner had an extensive history of excessive or compulsive sexual activity prior to your marriage that was never addressed through counseling or recovery work. The affair you've discovered could be a relapse in an ongoing pattern. Also consider it if your partner's sexual history before marriage was never fully disclosed, and upon reviewing it now, you begin to see patterns that suggest compulsivity or excess. Less commonly, significant sudden physiological changes, such as starting testosterone supplements, can coincide with a rapid onset of previously uncharacteristic sexual behaviors. If these factors are not present and there's no other evidence

The Art of Healthy Boundaries

Mon, 16 Jun 2025 13:00:00 +0000

Stop feeling guilty! Learn to set healthy boundaries correctly in relationships & life. Avoid manipulation, handle reactions, and protect yourself.

How to Tell If You Have PTSD – The Signs You Need to Watch For

Mon, 31 Mar 2025 19:56:32 +0000

12 Leading Symptoms of Complex PTSD: Affiliate link for Dr. van der Kolk's book The Body Keeps the Score: https://amzn.to/41YOT0J 1. Constant feeling of unsafety and hypervigilance. 2. Inability to relax, leading to bodily tension and discomfort with practices like meditation or yoga. 3. Difficulty sleeping, often waking up in high alert. 4. Negative self-image, including feelings of self-hatred and distorted sexuality. 5. Attraction to unavailable partners, while avoiding those who offer warmth. 6. Discomfort with intimacy, finding affectionate people repulsive. 7. Frequent anger outbursts, often driven by deep-seated fear rather than rage. 8. Paranoia, expecting hostility from others and being drawn to negative social media content. 9. Desire for isolation, preferring to be alone due to social anxiety. 10. Subtle suicidal ideation, feeling life is exhausting and unbearable. 11. Rigidity in routines, needing control to avoid perceived chaos. 12. Overworking as a coping mechanism, trying to achieve external success but never feeling safe.

Five Fundamentals of Good Marriage Communication

Wed, 19 Mar 2025 11:00:00 +0000

Have you ever had a conversation with your spouse where you just couldn’t get through to them? You’re trying to explain something, but they’re either not listening or completely misunderstanding you. Or maybe a small miscommunication turned into a bigger argument, leaving you wondering, “What just happened?” Here, we break down the five key fundamentals that make marriage communication strong, clear, and full of love. We talk about how to truly understand each other, create a safe space for honest conversations, and build deeper trust in your relationship. We also give you a few exercises you can do today to strengthen your marriage connection. Whether you’re newly married or have been together for years, these five fundamentals can transform the way you and your spouse communicate. Empathy and Understanding: The Foundation of Connection The first key to strong marriage communication is empathy and understanding. This is the foundation of communication. We like this quote by Montgomery: The goal of quality communication is the achievement and maintenance of interpersonal understanding.[i] In other words, the reason we communicate at all is so we can understand each other. We want to get to a place of understanding and stay in a place of understanding. Let’s take a close look at empathy. What Is Empathy? An easy definition of empathy that we like is this: “When I stand in your shoes and look at the world through your lens, through whatever you’re experiencing… when I put myself in that place…it makes sense that you feel what you do.” When we work with couples, there’s one phrase we use a lot: “It makes sense.” This is a basic affirmation of reality. It’s a way of expressing empathy. It doesn’t mean that you agree with everything they say. It’s understanding: “If I were in your shoes, having walked to this point, I would be reacting the same way; your reaction makes sense.” The 3 Components of Empathy There is a widely accepted conceptualization of empathy that says it has three main components.[ii] They are cognitive, emotional, and motivational. Let’s talk about these. Cognitive empathy: The first is called cognitive empathy, which is just the recognition and understanding of the emotional states of others. So, in my brain, I’m aware that you are having sadness right now because there are tears coming down. Cognitive empathy is that attention and awareness of what your spouse is experiencing. We call that attunement in other kinds of therapy. Emotional empathy: The second component is emotional empathy. This part of empathy is experience sharing. It means that I share your emotion. I still maintain a distinction between myself and you, but I share in what you are experiencing and feeling. Our readers who are empaths sometimes may have to remind themselves that there is that distinction between self and other. So, if you’re upset about something that happened at work, I don’t have to go storming into your office to solve the problem on your behalf. Instead, I get upset alongside you, I see that your reaction makes sense, and I feel the upset, but I know there is a distinction between self and other. Motivational empathy: The third component of empathy is motivational empathy. This is also known as empathic care. Motivational empathy is having feelings of concern for the other and having a willingness to put effort into improving their well-being. If I have empathy for you, it’s motivating me to do something to care for you. Now, sometimes we harp on men a little bit when we do seminars. Sometimes men tend to rush to solutions. That’s motivational empathy, sure, but this problem-solving part is at the back of the list. Men often jump straight to “I’m concerned about you and I want to help you solve this.” But, timing is important with this. Before jumping to solve the problem, it’s important to first join your spouse in the emotional experience, notice, and validate. If you haven’t done the first two, the noticing and validating, it’s actually not empathy. It’s just solution-finding, fixing the problem. Our goal is empathy and understanding; these are fundamental to a strong marriage connection. Practical Takeaway Tip: As we’re thinking about this empathy piece, here is one takeaway: Think about the last time you and your spouse had a disagreement. Did you truly try to understand their point of view? Or were you just waiting for your turn to talk? Try this. The next time you’re having a conversation, just pause and ask yourself, “Do I really understand what they’re saying?” And ask yourself that before responding to your spouse. Do I get it or am I just talking? Really go for that understanding, 100%. Safety: Creating a Judgment-Free Space Now let’s look at our second key component of communication connection. This key component in communication connection is safety. You want to create a judgment-free space in your marriage. A spouse must feel really safe in order to indicate how we really feel. So he or she must be convinced that no harm will come from an expression of their feelings in order to be fully comfortable expressing themselves emotionally. To create safety, you want to send the signal to your spouse that they are safe with their emotions. You send this message when you don’t try to talk them out of their feelings and you don’t dismiss them. You don’t turn or hide away from them. You don’t tell them, “Oh, it’s not a big deal,” or “It’ll be okay.” Because actually, that’s telling them that their feelings aren’t valid. It’s dismissing them instead of understanding them. When they share something with us, we might be uncomfortable, but being with them and letting them feel what they’re feeling and then validating those feelings creates safety. Here are some phrases to watch out for, phrases that signal dismissiveness of your spouse’s feelings. You want to try to avoid these kinds of phrases: It'll all be fine. It’ll all work out. Don’t worry about it. I don’t think you need to be this worked up about it. Phrases that include the word “just”. “You just need to pray about it.” “You just need to relax.” “Just talk to them.” “Just don’t worry about it so much.” While your intentions are good and you mean to encourage your spouse, these phrases signal that you think that what they’re going through is simple or no big deal. So, it’s actually a signal of dismissiveness of their experience. It’s the opposite of noticing and validating their emotions. Even though you mean to help your spouse feel safe and to reassure them that if they “just do this” everything will be okay, your spouse is receiving a signal that they can’t bring these feelings to you. Now you’re probably wondering, what should you do when your spouse shares their feelings, in order to create safety? What can you do to help them feel really safe? The way to un-upset your spouse while also ensuring they feel safe bringing their feelings to you, is to meet them in it, to help them feel seen, to be with them as their companion. When you do this, all of a sudden, this big thing is manageable. So, you want to co-regulate with your spouse. Signal to them, “I’m here with you. I’m feeling this with you. I’m not trying to send this away. I want you to know I’m right beside you with this.” Practical Takeaway Tip: Here’s a practical tip. The next time your spouse shares something personal with you, resist that urge to react and fix it immediately. Instead, just listen and say “I hear you,” “I appreciate you telling me this.” Or say, “I hear you, thanks for sharing this with me.” It’s a small change you can make that makes a huge difference. Acceptance: Love Without Conditions The third key fundamental to strong marriage communication and connection is acceptance. This is basically showing love without putting extra conditions on it. It can be simple phrases that we can communicate by just saying, “I care about what happens to you. I’m concerned about you as a person.” This is not scorning or scolding. It’s communicating in a genuine way, “Hey, I’m worried about you and I want what’s best for you. You and your problems are important to me.” This also includes acceptance around misbehavior. We don’t mean abusive behavior, but when your spouse is struggling, you can communicate, “You’re struggling, and it’s not the shiny side of you, but I love you.” You can say things like, “I’m not fond of what you’re doing right now, but I love you and I know there’s a better version of you in there who wants to do better, who can do better.” Acceptance is having that belief of “There’s something precious in here, and whatever has happened for you right now, it’s not coming out, but I want you to know I’m here. The love is here. You’re safe with me. You’re accepted.” One way to show acceptance in your marriage is to express appreciation and gratitude for your spouse. Even if there is something you’re struggling to appreciate or accept about your spouse right now, you can look for other things that you can appreciate. This sends the signal that you see the whole person, not just this behavior they’re struggling with right now, and you love them and accept who they are. A simple message like, “I love how thoughtful you are,” for example, can make a huge difference. Practical Takeaway Tip: Here’s a practical tip for showing acceptance to your spouse. This week, try this: Instead of pointing out something your spouse could improve, point out something you appreciate about them. Respect: Speaking Kindly, Even When Upset The fourth key for a strong marriage is to show respect, to speak kindly and respectfully, even when you’re upset. This, of course, is easy when we’re getting along, but it’s important to stick to this even when you’re not. In the research, there is this quote: Each spouse must learn to proceed on the fundamental conviction that nothing is so important as to warrant the violation of integrity in

NEWS RELEASE: Life Update for Caleb & Verlynda, plus rebranding and new shows coming!

Wed, 12 Mar 2025 11:00:00 +0000

We discuss our personal experiences, including burnout, career changes, and coping with the pandemic. The episode covers the transition from our old OnlyYouForever brand to the new Therapevo Counselling brand, highlighting the expanded focus on diverse counseling topics and services. We also touch on rebranding the podcast to 'Normalize therapy.' and adding a new YouTube channel. We talk about upcoming content and plans to expand our social media presence and blogging.

Why Is My Spouse So Controlling?

Wed, 08 Jul 2020 11:00:00 +0000

We're here to talk There’s a level of control that occurs in relatively few marriages that we would see as part of an abusive power and control dynamic. But then there’s a lower level of control that doesn’t come from an abusive spouse that can still be frustrating and lead to conflict in the marriage. We’ve talked about the abusive kind of control before, so if you want to learn more about that kind of control feel free to go back to our previous episodes of the podcast to learn more about what that looks like. Today, we’re talking about the annoying kind of controlling. This is not so much about the spouse’s power and dominance as the controlling spouse’s worry, fear, anxiety, and maybe even mental health issues that are driving this behavior. And sometimes the non-controlling spouse may also be acting in ways that prompt this behavior. If you’re listening to this to try to figure out your spouse, you may ask yourself what your role might be and how might you help your spouse feel less of a need to be in control. Where Control Issues Come From 1. Fear Control issues are often rooted in fear. This is the first place to look. If you’re afraid and you want to make it safer, you’re going to want to control the variables. This is quite a common response to fear. Fear can come from a number of different places. One place fear can come from is trauma. When something very frightening or overwhelming happens, it may cause a person to install certain requirements or demands in order to preserve safety. For example, you’ve been in a late night car accident, and you now want to control all of the family travel so that there’s no late-night travel going on and no one is allowed to go out after dark. So now you’ve become “controlling.” You’ve installed requirements or demands on others in order to preserve your sense of safety and well-being, to stop the horror from repeating itself. Another source of control is abandonment (fear of being left alone). If you were left alone at some point as a child or at a point in your marriage, that may result in the kind of controlling behavior where you don’t let your spouse do things on their own or do certain things on their own. You always have to be there, or you always have to do things together. 2. Betrayal Betrayal may also lead to controlling relationships with certain kinds of people in order to prevent re-betrayal. For example, if in your first marriage you were sexually betrayed by your spouse, in your second marriage you may marry a faithful person, but you exert control on them to make sure that that previous betrayal doesn’t re-occur, much to the frustration of your current spouse. That can get difficult because it can cause such distress in your marriage that there’s an emotional separation, or drifting apart that occurs between you. Thus, controlling behavior can lead to further dysfunction. 3. Mental Health Issues Now that we’ve talked about a few fear-related causes of control, we’re going to move on to look at mental health. Some mental health issues can cause controlling behavior. Take personality disorders like Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Someone with BPD may say if you leave, I’ll hurt myself, or I might not be ok somehow (there’s a clinging aspect of BPD that does relate to fear of abandonment, but it is also a mental health condition and the fear piece is a part of that). BPD is something some individuals suffer with, but it is not a common disorder. A more common mental health issue would be anxiety of various forms: generalized anxiety disorder, social phobia (we can’t go out, or we go there and I make you turn around and take me back home), etc. which may manifest as need to control/limit behaviors or activities with others in attempt to reduce the symptoms of anxiety. The other spouse may find themselves saying “why are you always controlling the time that we have to leave. Why can’t we just stay and have a good time. Or, even symptoms of OCD or relational OCD where there is an obsession over the quality of the bond between you.[1] This is not a formally recognized diagnosis in the DSM-5, but it is fairly well documented anecdotally. With relational OCD, there’s an obsession over the quality of the bond between the two of you. One person is always checking up on how things are going, controlling all the things we’re doing together to make sure we’re ok, things are going well, we’re having conversations, etc. The other spouse may feel like “can we not just be together.” Those are experiences in the marriage that are born out of one person’s mental health struggles. 4. Perfectionism Perfectionism is another possible source of control issues. Perfectionistic people may feel the need to do things right or be seen as doing things right, as having that ideal marriage or that ideal family. This is related to a deep, often unacknowledged sense of personal shame, so they need to appear really well before others, and this may extend to their spouse as well. So, there’s a lot of control about how you both appear when you’re in public, what you both behave like when you’re in public, etc.[2] 5. Low self-esteem Low self-esteem is another cause for control issues. One study reported that 35% of controlling people believe they are “nobody’ and have no value unless they are in a relationship.[3] This means that you are drawing a lot of value from being in a marriage to build up your self-esteem that you are a wanted, loveable person. Underneath the low self-esteem, there could be a fear of being useless without their spouse or a fear their spouse will reject them if they express their true feelings. Or there may be a belief that nobody else would love them so will do anything to keep their spouse. 6. Insecurity in your relationship Insecurity in your relationship can also lead to control issues. You may feel insecure in the relationship so that you need to control what your spouse is doing, how they’re doing it, and who they are with. You may push away any alternatives to yourself. This may also be due to spousal bad behavior. If your husband flirts with certain kinds of women, and you don’t want to be around those kinds of women as a result and he thinks you’re controlling, he actually needs to face up to what’s going on for him. This is a situation where a spouse may be controlling things because you (as the husband) can’t reliably demonstrate the security of your marriage bond to her. Research shows that 53% of controlling people indicated they “cling to their relationship as though their life depended on it.”[4] They have a deep concern about not being loved enough, and may feel that they love you more than you love them. Research shows that 54% of controlling people worry about being dumped to the point where their fear keeps them up at night. That fear/insecurity might result in controlling a lot of the things you do together, or making sure that it’s just you guys together all the time because they’re trying to still this uncertainty they are carrying around. If you’re listening to this and your spouse is saying “you’re kind of controlling” and you say “you know I do stay up at night worried about our marriage,” that might be something to explore with a therapist. It may be an attachment issue; maybe you had a parent that was unreliably available and you had to work hard to feel some sense of connection. Now your spouse might be a reliably available person, but you can’t rest on that because of that template that was formed in you early on in your life. You may be wondering how to tell the difference between this kind of worry about your marriage and the idea that you should go with your gut if you suspect your husband of cheating on you (as an example). This is an important distinction to make. To really understand the fear, you have to look at the evidence surrounding the source of your fear. If you’re thinking about the fear when you are in a calm moment and you think, my husband has actually never done anything that would cause me to doubt him. When I really stop and look at the evidence, I realize it’s ok, but I still have this gnawing fear. Then you want to look for evidence in your family of origin. If there’s a ton of evidence in your family of origin and none in your husband’s life then our gut is sending a warning signal, but it’s sending a warning signal based on a past template. If you grew up in a family that was always there for you and there’s clear, ongoing evidence in your husband’s behavior, then the fear is likely telling you that there may be cause for concern. In short, go for your gut, but make sure the source of the data is based on evidence. 7. Unhealthy ideas of love Another reason a spouse might be controlling is having unhealthy ideas of love or what an ideal spouse/marriage looks like. Research shows that 47% of controlling people find themselves drawn to romantic partners who have serious personal, relationship, or psychological issues. So, if you find yourself trying to control your spouse, you might ask yourself if you came to the relationship with the person you are married to with a mentality of trying to fix their problem, or out of some belief that they would be lost without you. Sometimes the word codependency comes up (though this has come into some disfavor in the counselling community). It may be more helpful to consider whether you draw worth from supporting, improving, or caretaking your spouse. That means that you really have to control them because they’re a very broken person and they need a lot of help, and when you help them you feel really good about who you are and your ability to make this world a better place. You’re needed and valuable. So,...

Defining Emotionally Abusive Behavior

Wed, 24 Jun 2020 11:00:00 +0000

This is a subject we’ve wanted to address for some time. We see some irony in the work we do with couples or individuals when it comes to abuse. Often, though not always, people who are in a relationship with a truly abusive person do not realize it. On the other hand, couples who are in high conflict often label the other person as abusive when they are not really an abusive person, although they may relate to abusive tactics from time to time. So, the ‘abuse’ word gets abused sometimes. And other times, when it should be used, it’s not. So, we hope we can provide some clarity today by going through some of these emotionally abusive behaviors. One distinction we want to make right off the bat is that probably all of us at some point in time have resorted to using one or more of the abusive tactics we are going to discuss in this episode. There’s a difference between bad behavior and a more fundamental problem of being an abusive person. The latter is a more characterological issue: it’s a way of seeing one’s intimate partner all the time as someone to be controlled, dominated, manipulated to serve you, as less than you. On the other hand, many of us in conflict may use some abusive tactics — that’s not acceptable either, but it’s nowhere near the scale of severity compared to a spouse who faces a characterologically abusive person every day. It may just be that your marriage is normal, there’s no cycle in that sense, but when you get into conflict, you might use unpredictability or blame. That’s bad too, but not problematic in the same way as abuse. The key distinction between resorting to abusive behavior when in conflict and being in an abusive marriage is that the cycle of abuse is always happening in an abusive marriage. We talk extensively about being in an abusive marriage in episodes 123, 124, and 125. Generally, abusive behavior can be verbal, emotional, and/or physical. Right now, we’re focusing on emotional abuse. Emotional abuse can include verbal assault, dominance, control, isolation, ridicule, or the use of intimate knowledge for degradation. This is the kind of abuse that targets the emotional and psychological well-being of the victim in order to gain power over them. It is often (though not always) a precursor to physical abuse.[1] Some types of physical behavior can be considered emotional abuse in that they involve acts of physical violence although the victim is never physically impacted. Examples include: throwing objects, kicking a wall, shaking a finger or fist at the victim (threateningly), driving recklessly while the victim is in the car, or threatening to destroy objects the victim values.[2] Emotionally Abusive Behavior 1. Gaslighting According to Paige Sweet, gaslighting is "a type of psychological abuse aimed at making victims seem or feel 'crazy,' creating a 'surreal' interpersonal environment (so bad it didn’t seem real) (p. 851).[3] It’s more of a gendered phenomenon that occurs in power-laden intimate relationships where the wife is dependent, not the husband. The husband brings the social and economic capital to the relationship, and so has a degree of power that he can abuse. It promotes the idea that women are overly emotional, irrational and not in control of their emotions. Signs of Gaslighting: Spouses who gaslight will often "flip the script.” That’s the basic tactic: whatever actually happened, they’ll say something else happened. You heard them say XYZ, they’ll deny saying it at all or tell you it was actually ZYX and you must be losing it for not remembering. When there’s not another witness and your spouse is doing this constantly, it erodes your sense of self-trust. There’s lots of lies: about what was said, what actually happened, and who did what. This is usually more subtle, rather than a blatant thing. Another tactic is to use your insecurities against you: you’re worried because he didn’t come home last night? He says that that’s your own foolish paranoia. Rather than being willing to be accountable, the emphasis is placed on what’s wrong with you and why you’re upset over this in order to remove the spotlight from themselves. Another example of gaslighting is a constant challenge of past events. Again, couples in conflict often disagree on details, but this is an extreme, constant rewriting of past history that leaves you bewildered and disorientated. Another example is if your belief that his behavior is wrong is turned around on you and you are being blamed for being too emotional, for having inappropriate thoughts yourself, for being hormonal, or just labeled crazy. One startling thing that studies have shown is that some women preferred physical to psychological abuse, and would sometimes provoke physical violence to avoid being called crazy.[4] In our experience, women coming out of this kind of contact are often very disoriented, it’s like their magnetic compass doesn’t work and just spins on the dial. They don’t know where true north is anymore, or what the facts are, or what’s real, or is it just me? They’re extremely bewildered because this has been such a steady thing. 2. Unpredictability Abusive people may seem to make situations chaotic for no other reason than to keep the other in check and hanging on to them to control what’s happening. The abuser feels like everything is stable for them, but they still cause chaos for their spouse so that they can remain in control of the situation. Other types of unpredictable behavior include: Putting on a drastic mood swing, such as going from being very affectionate to full of rage and breaking things. There may be emotional outbursts that they create that keep you dancing on edge and taking care of them. Starting arguments for seemingly no reason. Self-contradiction, such as making a statement that contradicts the one they just said and acting like there’s something wrong with you for not following. Acting two-faced, such as being charming in public but completely changing the minute they get home.[5] This is an emotional tactic to keep you on edge and ungrounded so that the power and control remain with the person who is acting this way. So, you can see that things that are this severe are not what most people are doing when they’re in conflict. This is a different level and a consistent cycle. 3. Isolation Tactics Isolation tactics are forms of emotional abuse and include such behaviors as restricting a person’s contact with family and friends, or physically confining a person (such as blocking a doorway so that they can’t leave). Isolation aims to undermine the victim’s life and identity outside the relationship and foster a sense of dependency on them.[6] Sometimes, this can happen geographically. But be very cautious about being whisked away in a long-distance relationship and taken to the other side of the country, or somehow compelled to abandon your education or a successful career, or taken away from family and friends. Geographic relocation is one tactic for isolating someone. Sometimes these kinds of things happen in normal marriages, but if that’s happening and these other signs are going on, that’s when you want to be cautious. It doesn’t mean that every time a couple moves it’s because the husband is abusive, but this is a way that an emotionally abusive spouse can isolate their partner from their support network so that they can be controlled. In our organization, we’ve seen this happen to very professional, intelligent women. 4. Criticism and blaming Isolation can also happen as an abusive tactic through turning a person against their support network. Watch for a romantic partner who villainizes your family and friends so that you end up feeling very alone. If you’re trying to see if a relationship is abusive from the outside, remember that you’re looking for a number of signs of abuse. If, for example, you’re trying to determine if your daughter is in an abusive relationship and her spouse is using isolation tactics, or if she’s just cut contact with you, remember that you’re watching for a constellation of behavior, not just one particular sign of abuse. Furthermore, if you are a parent of someone in an abusive relationship, you also don’t want to take over control from the controller. You want to empower your daughter to make wise decisions that are in support of her own personhood. 5. Avoiding Responsibility for Unacceptable Behaviour Extreme manipulators may recruit friends, law officers and court officials, even the victim’s own family to their side, while shifting blame to the victim. They deny the violence or abuse or rationalize it and tend to use such types of defenses: Total outright denial (It never happened. You are just imagining it. You want to hurt me), Alloplastic defense (It was your fault, your behavior provoked me into such reactions, if you didn’t do this, I wouldn’t be so mad). In other episodes, we talked about the fundamental attribution error where if I do something wrong, I’m just a victim of my circumstances, but if you do something wrong there’s something wrong with your character. That to an extreme is the alloplastic defense, which is a tactic for avoiding taking responsibility for your own unacceptable behavior. Altruistic defense (I did it for you, in your best interests! It was your fault). Transformative defense (What I did to you, it was common and accepted behavior).[7] I did this for you in your best interest. I’m taking you away from your family and friends so that you’re going to be a better person, so I can help you. Or, what I did to you, that’s a common and accepted behavior. (E.g. in this part of Canada/America, everyone slaps their wife when they don’t do something, so why are you freaking out? What’s your problem?). ...

How Do I Know When/If I Can Trust My Spouse After Betrayal?

Wed, 10 Jun 2020 11:00:00 +0000

How do I know if I can trust my spouse again? This question represents one of the most profound dilemmas a betrayed spouse will struggle with as they journey towards healing after a significant betrayal. How do I know I’m not going to get hurt again? How do I know I’m not just being a fool to trust him or her? Trust is so easy to break and so hard to build: today we’d like to give you more insight into the dynamics at play in this important struggle. Before we talk about indicators of trustworthiness, we’re going to look at factors that are independent of trustworthiness, or a lack thereof, in your spouse, that affect your ability to trust them again. The Interference of Betrayal Trauma Betrayal often causes symptoms of trauma to appear. Symptoms of betrayal trauma include: Avoidance (possibly even as far as terminating your relationship with your spouse) Hypervigilance (fear response) which can involve scrutinizing all of your spouse’s behaviors, searching, researching, double-checking and interrogating Obsessive questioning, meaning that you continually grill your spouse, and may find it hard to stop Rage (fight response) Numbness (freeze response)[1] Identifying these symptoms isn’t meant to pathologize any of them. It’s just good to be aware of the symptoms so that you can recognize it if you experience betrayal trauma. Sometimes you can spend a lot of emotional and mental space trying to figure out what happened. Gordon, Baucom and Snyder (2005) note "a primary disruption experienced by the injured partner is intrusive, persistent rumination about the event, which can become so overwhelming and uncontrollable that it interferes with both concentration and daily functioning" (p. 1394).[2] If you’re experiencing symptoms of betrayal trauma, the process is entirely inside because of what the betraying spouse has done. The symptoms of betrayal trauma can protect you from reaching out to your spouse again, even if they’ve returned to a trustworthy place. We’re delicately saying that the symptoms of trauma can prevent you from trusting, even if you are in a situation where it would be safe to trust again. Part of the impact of trauma is how it affects trust. Gordon, Baucom, and Snyder (2005) go on to observe: "A major cognitive response associated with the discovery of an affair is the change in beliefs about the partner and relationship; one can no longer trust in his or her partner or feel safe within the relationship" (p. 1394). Trauma affects what you believe about your spouse. Here’s the point: they betrayed you. The betrayal causes trauma. In the ensuing fallout, it is possible that significant cognitive and emotional changes occurred in your spouse so that they are now a trustworthy person. But if your trauma is unresolved and unhealed, the trauma itself will prevent you from seeing, believing and acting on that trustworthiness. We’re not saying all betraying spouses become trustworthy. Yours may not be. But we are saying that yours may now be, but your trauma prevents you from acknowledging this because it’s protecting you. In conjunction with your spouse doing what is necessary to become a changed, trustworthy person, you also need to take care of this trauma that has occurred. For betraying spouses listening, it is not for you to turn on your spouse and say this is your fault/problem. A trustworthy betraying spouse can say “yes, I caused this, and I understand that your healing may not follow the same trajectory or speed as mine and you take all the time you need and I will do what I can to support you and I will do what I can to support you.” If they won’t do this, that is a sign that they’re not really trustworthy because they are still blame shifting. That’s for betrayed spouses to consider as you reflect on yourself. Now, as you reflect on your spouse, we want to give you some warning signs, and some proceed with caution signs. Keep in mind that trust is not a switch that you flip. It is more like a savings account: it needs to be built up steadily over time. Real or perceived betrayals are like sudden, major withdrawals from that account. Warning Signs of Betrayal Now we’re going to take a look at the warning signs of betrayal. To some extent, every betrayed spouse is a bit different in how they respond to the betrayal, but there are also a number of practical things to look for that are indicators that you can trust your spouse again. The delicate part is that there are normal levels of these problems in every marriage. Most married men/women have some level of defensiveness at times, but high levels of these issues do represent major warning signs of betrayal. 1. Pathological Defensiveness It’s normal to be initially defensive after betrayal. A betraying spouse might say, oh it wasn’t that bad, that’s not how it really was. Sometimes this is because of their own shame. They feel horrible about it and they try to turn the dial on that bad-person dial back to zero because it feels horrible to sit in it. This is a sign of defensiveness, but not necessarily of untrustworthiness. While the above are certainly not helpful, they’re not necessarily a sign of betrayal. Defensiveness is a sign of betrayal if the betraying spouse accepts zero responsibility. For example, if he/she says “I went out with my buddies, they started drinking, Bob slipped me a shot of whiskey, and I was unfaithful.” In other situations, there is a total denial in the face of the evidence, saying “no, that didn’t happen.” They may also engage in gaslighting behavior, saying something like “why would someone try to wreck our marriage by saying I’m cheating on you?” as the affair partner is writing to the betrayed partner saying I’m having an affair with your spouse. 2. Blame Shifting If you’re still getting blamed for the circumstances that led to the issue (you weren’t sexy enough, you were too busy, you were off chasing your career, etc.) People who don’t accept responsibility and blame others see themselves as victims of their circumstances. The problem is, if he/she was a victim once, he’ll likely become one again. On the other hand, people who demonstrate agency can accept responsibility and make the necessary changes to create safety in marriage. A spouse who acts like they have the power to control their choices is more trustworthy than one who sees themselves as a victim. A spouse who is willing to say “I made a choice where I disregarded you and I disregarded our marriage and I chose to do this and it was wrong” can accept responsibility and make the changes to create safety in their marriage. They are more trustworthy than a person who is always the victim. This may sound backwards. You might think that it would be harder on your spouse to hear “it was my fault, I made this decision, and I hurt you” yet that’s what they need to hear. And your spouse already knows that, so acknowledging it is not new information, but it shows your spouse that you are willing to take responsibility for your actions. 3. Being Non-committal If your spouse won’t verbally and sincerely commit to repair and restoration that may be a sign that s/he’s still keeping their options open or still considering an affair partner as an alternative. Trust from you is an expression of commitment. It’s a bridge you build towards a fixed point: if your spouse is a moving object, your bridge will fall. Not everyone who comes to couples therapy has come to a place where they’ve let go of the affair partner, and it’s important that they get to a place where they’ve completely stopped their involvement with the affair partner in order to commit to you. You might worry that if your spouse begins to show trustworthy behavior, they’re just doing so to win you back, rather than sincerely. But remember that trust is built by being reliable over time. If a spouse isn’t sincere about wanting to win back your trust, they won’t be able to do the reliable over time part. They’ll douse it on for a period of time and then the bad habits will come back. The exception would be if they’re pathologically insincere. If they can maintain a layer of deception after deception for years and are willing to lead you on a total charade for years, that’s much more serious, but this is not often the case. Most spouses who commit to repair and restoration are sincerely ready to commit to the marriage. 4. Unaddressed Entitlement, Narcissism, Unaccountability or Compulsivity Other reasons not to trust your spouse include some personality disorders, and the denial that often comes with sex addiction. Not all personality disorders lead to affairs, but if you are married to someone with histrionic personality disorder, it will sometimes show up as an over-flaunting of sexuality, which can lead to affairs. Spouses with narcissistic personality disorder may feel they deserve everything the world has to offer including you being a faithful spouse to them while they do whatever other things they want to do. Some unaddressed expressions of bipolar disorder also lead to pursuing affairs. (Note: nearly all people with bipolar disorder are faithful spouses, but some manifestations of bipolar, during the manic phase, include pursuing affairs.) Until the underlying symptoms of these disorders are treated, it’s probably not wise to consider trusting again. Unaccountability is the refusal to accept any form of accountability. Again, betraying spouses often get frustrated by the hypervigilance of the betrayed spouse, (why are you checking my phone, why are you checking my email again etc.), but the refusal to accept any form of responsibility becomes an issue. It’s a normal part of the distress following a betrayal for there to be cross-examination, scrutiny,...

The 5 Pillars of Attachment

Wed, 27 May 2020 11:00:00 +0000

The five pillars of attachment are felt safety, attunement, soothing, expressed delight, and support for becoming one's unique best self. They are the core attachment needs every child requires from a caregiver, and every adult continues to need from a spouse. The framework comes from the seminal attachment textbook Attachment Disturbances in Adults by Daniel P. Brown and David S. Elliott (W. W. Norton, 2016), and it sits underneath everything we do in marriage counseling when a couple is struggling to feel close. Attachment is, in plain language, the science of love. It's the secure emotional bond that forms between two people, first between an infant and a primary caregiver, and later between spouses. Secure attachment makes it easier to build stable relationships where both people have room to grow. The default attachment style you carry into your marriage was largely shaped in those first years of life, and for 68 to 75 percent of people, that childhood style persists into adulthood.[1] Only about 40 percent of adults are securely attached, which is the style most likely to produce a satisfying long-term marriage. Attachment style is not destiny. You can move toward a more secure way of relating, and the five pillars are the practical road map for how. This article walks each pillar through both lenses: how a parent provides it for a child, and how a spouse provides it for a spouse. If your style of relating got built on a shaky foundation, these are the places repair usually has to happen. A Quick Review of Attachment Attachment style isn't a personality trait. It's a learned pattern of how you reach for closeness and what you do when closeness feels uncertain. Most people don't realize their style is doing the work in the background of their marriage, shaping how they fight, how they soothe, how they read silence, and what they assume their spouse meant by a tone of voice. Most people also don't realize their style can shift. That's part of why we keep returning to attachment theory in our writing and in our work with couples: it's one of the few clinical frameworks where understanding the mechanism actually starts to loosen the pattern. What Are the 5 Pillars of Attachment? Brown and Elliott describe the five pillars as the conditions a person must experience in order to develop a secure attachment style. Levine and Heller adapted them for an adult-relationship audience in their book Attached.[2] Both versions agree on the same five pillars: A sense of felt safety A sense of being seen and known (attunement) The experience of felt comfort (soothing) A sense of being valued (expressed delight) A sense of support for being and becoming one's unique best self For each pillar below, we'll start with how a parent provides it for a child, and then walk through how that same pillar shows up between spouses. The same need lives inside the adult who once was that child. 1. A Sense of Felt Safety Parent to Child Safety comes from consistency, reliability, and protection. Consistency and reliability are mostly about predictability. Is the parent present and available in a way the child can count on? If a parent is unpredictably available, the child learns they can never quite be sure, and that uncertainty becomes the seedbed of an anxious attachment style. When a parent consistently responds to the child's emotions, needs, and wants, the child experiences felt safety. If the parent flies off the handle unpredictably, this can produce an attachment injury even when the parent is physically present, because the parent isn't emotionally predictable. No parent is perfect. As long as the parent's response is understandable and predictable most of the time, the child develops a secure baseline. Protection isn't helicopter parenting. Children scrape their knees, fall off bikes, and bump into the world; safety doesn't mean preventing every small pain. Protection means handling adult-sized concerns out of the child's view. A child should not feel responsible for financial instability or a parent's emotional state. And of course, a parent must take serious threats seriously: physical harm, inappropriate sexuality, and emotional abuse and neglect. When protection fails, the child organizes their internal world around that failure. The takeaway becomes: significant others are not safe, I am alone in this world, and I have to protect myself. That belief travels into adulthood and lands in the marriage. Marriage If felt safety wasn't built early, your spouse will likely have a hard time feeling safe with you, even if you've done nothing to threaten them. Your part is to become the kind of spouse with whom opening up is less risky. That means making it possible for your spouse to share deeper emotions, concerns, thoughts, and struggles, and then validating what they share. You let them have their feelings. You tell them their feelings make sense. You listen even when those feelings involve something you might need to change, and you do your best to listen non-defensively. You also build safety when your spouse sees you actively protecting the bond between you. You speak well of them to others. You honor their cautionary requests around situations that could threaten the bond. You proactively disclose flirtatious messages or anything else that could erode trust. Safety in marriage means rigorous honesty and rigorous accountability in the small daily things, not just the big ones. Reliability also matters. Be home when you said you'd be home, or communicate openly when that changes. Be someone your spouse can count on to share the load of household labor or to provide for your family in whatever way you've agreed to. And then there's safety in conflict, which is its own discipline. That means refusing to gaslight, refusing to use intimidation to win, refusing to belittle through name-calling or character attacks. It means staying away from "you always" and "you never," and refusing to dismiss your spouse's concerns as not a big deal. Conflict is rarely pleasant. It can still be safe. 2. A Sense of Being Seen and Known (Attunement) Parent to Child Attachment researchers call the second pillar attunement. Secure parents are carefully attuned to their children. Attunement has three parts: tracking the child's immediate behavior, tracking the child's inner state of mind, and tracking the child's developmental range at any particular moment. An attuned parent responds in real time, adjusts to what the child is showing, and lets the child's signals shape what happens next. The attuned parent will also voice their best estimate of the child's emotions, needs, motivations, and ideas. When a child is crying, the attuned parent works to figure out what's happening, names the cause out loud, and acknowledges the upset. That naming is what trains the child to track their own internal experience. An attuned parent follows the child. They pay close attention when the child is in intense emotion and let the child relax and play when the child is calm. It's possible to be over-attuned (fussing over a child who needs no fussing) and it's possible to be under-attuned (missing the child's distress). Attention isn't agitation. It's just being available to what's actually happening. A lack of attunement to the child's developmental stage often pulls the parent into power struggles, makes the parent more likely to read the child's normal limits as personal failure, and increases the chance the parent will humiliate the child when the child can't reach a goal that wasn't developmentally available to them.[3] Marriage Attunement in marriage is being understood. It's paying close attention to your spouse's state and being willing to take an interest in what's happening for them when they need you. It isn't hypervigilance or surveillance. It's the willingness to stay curious about your spouse, to ask about their inner experience, to take a loving interest in what's actually going on under the surface as you do life together. You won't do this perfectly. The point is whether you make the effort regularly. 3. The Experience of Felt Comfort (Soothing) Parent to Child Consistent parental soothing is what builds a child's capacity for affect regulation. Marian Tolpin observed that "the child's developing internal structures for affect regulation result from the cumulative internalization of repeated soothing and comforting behavior by the parent."[4] In plainer language: when the parent reliably calms the distressed child, the child eventually learns to do that work for themselves. When a child is soothed and experiences felt comfort repeatedly over time, they develop an internal representation of being soothed. They begin to carry that representation inside themselves.[5] As the representation stabilizes, the child needs less external soothing because they can call up the internal version of it on their own. This is how self-regulation actually develops. It isn't a willpower trick. It's a residue. Some parents believe distance toughens the child up. Many of those parents experienced exactly that distance from their own parents. Attachment research points in the opposite direction. The path to a child who can manage their own emotions runs through a parent who consistently helped them manage emotions when they couldn't. Soothing isn't dismissive of the child's experience. It looks like bringing the child close, attuning to what they're feeling, reflecting it back, and staying with them while their nervous system calms. The child eventually realizes things will be okay, even when the cause of the upset (the scrape still stings) hasn't gone away. Marriage The adult who experienced consistent soothing as a child can usually navigate marital distress without their nervous system flooding. Their nervous system has the internal scaffolding to come back down....

How To Balance Parenting and Marriage (Even During a Pandemic)

Wed, 22 Apr 2020 11:00:00 +0000

Did you know that the research shows that marriage takes a hit when you have kids? One author reported in 2005 that an analysis of 90 different research studies showed the drop in marital satisfaction is a shocking 42% larger among the current generation than their predecessors. A more recent study from 2016 showed that 67% of couples reported a decline in relationship happiness for up to three years after the birth of their first child.[1] Those figures are reported in non-pandemic situations. Clearly, parenting does impact marriage for most of us, and parenting during a pandemic presents additional challenges. We want to give you some concrete ways to boost your marriage even while you’re parenting during a pandemic. How to Prioritize Your Marriage Instagram and Facebook don’t tell the full story. While we find ourselves posting photos of some pretty sweet moments with our kids, we need to normalize the fact that parenting is very challenging. It makes life more complex and challenging. And those Instagram moments are few and far between. We don’t want to be negative, but we do want to be real. Parenting is hard work. Recognize the Pressure High expectations mean lots of social pressure to have your kid excel in one area, if not multiple areas: academically, socially, in sports or athletics, with spiritual values, etc. It’s exhausting and consuming.[2] As if this wasn’t challenging enough, the compounding problem is that by the time the kids are all launched, the dad and mom hardly know each other and they’ve endured all this stress with little resolution: divorce can become an appealing option.[3] So how does a couple balance all these demands and not end up in that place? Here are a few ways to help couples find balance. Have a Daily Stress-Reducing Conversation Stress often creates overwhelm and emotional reactivity. Having a stress-reducing conversation involves discussing the day’s frustrations, but separating those frustrations from the relationship. Don’t blame all of your frustrations on the relationship when stress is likely the root cause. That gives you both a chance to vent, gain support, and show empathy for one another.[4] This is very important during isolation too. Spend Time with Just One Another This is good at any time, but extra tough if you have kids at home right now who are normally at school. Be intentional about making the time for one another. This restores or fosters a sense of partnership so it’s not only about parenting but also what exists between you two.[5] Think about ways you can do this on a daily basis (smaller, consistent moments) but also on an intermittent basis (e.g. date nights). This may look a bit different during a pandemic, but try to find creative ways to spend time just with one another even if you can’t do some of the activities you would normally do together. In a pandemic context you likely have more time, but it can be harder to make time just for each other if you are home with your kids, so being intentional about creating time is key to prioritizing time with your spouse. Discuss Division of Labour A University of California, Berkeley study tracked 100 couples from first pregnancy through the child's transition to kindergarten found that the No. 1 source of conflict in the first three years of parenthood is the division of labor. According to psychologist Carolyn Page Cowan, the couples had expected a more 50-50 arrangement than they ended up with. The study also showed that when dad doesn't step up, mom is more likely to report symptoms of depression. "That's not a good recipe for parenting or for the couple's relationship," says Cowan.[6] You need to talk about expectations here. You need to recognize how that has translated (or not) into what actually happens, and what a fair (not necessarily equal) division of labour would look like. It’s all the more important to revisit this during a pandemic with changes in work schedule, conditions, or unemployment. Communicate with Kindness Sometimes we need to recognize that the stress around us does not need to become the stress between us. When you communicate with your spouse, take a deep breath, take the edge of your tone and find a kind way to ask for what you need. Cultivate Friendship Between You Couples who cultivate a friendship during the transition into parenthood report less anger and hostility and feel better equipped to handle challenges.[7] One way of doing this is by asking your partner questions, and keeping up with little details and events in their life.[8] Benefits to Your Kids We’ve touched on this in past episodes, but prioritizing your marriage actually has more benefits for your kids than if you prioritize your kids. Recent research has shown that when the family unit falls apart, so do the kids. Children from broken homes have a higher rate of academic problems, promiscuity, teen pregnancy, alcohol and drug abuse, emotional and behavior problems, violence, suicide, and poverty as adults. The best way to protect your children from these things is to keep your marriage together. Children lose a lot of their sense of security when a marriage breaks down: their world unravels and no amount of baseball, dance, piano lessons or toys can make up for that loss. According to Gary Smalley and Barb Rosberg (n.d.) "To put your marriage on hold for 18 years – or even one year – while you raise children is not only detrimental to your marriage, but it is also devastating to your children."[9] Children need to know that their parents not only love them, but also each other. Their sense of security grows as they see their parents expressing love to one another. This strong bond between you also positions you to be better parents.[10] References [1] April Eldemire, “3 Tips For Couples to Stay Connected After Baby,” 2016, https://www.gottman.com/blog/3-tips-for-couples-to-stay-connected-after-baby/.[2] Lauren Picker, “And Now, the Hard Part. That Sweet Little Thing Is about to Commandeer Your Life. Be Prepared.,” Newsweek 145, no. 17 (2005), https://ezproxy.student.twu.ca/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=mnh&AN=17848053&site=ehost-live&scope=site.[3] Gary Smalley and Barbara Rosberg, “Putting Your Spouse before Your Kids,” n.d.,https://www.focusonthefamily.ca/content/putting-your-spouse-before-your-kids.[4] Eldemire, “3 Tips For Couples to Stay Connected After Baby.”[5] Smalley and Rosberg, “Putting Your Spouse before Your Kids.”[6] Picker, “And Now, the Hard Part. That Sweet Little Thing Is about to Commandeer Your Life. Be Prepared.”[7] Eldemire, “3 Tips For Couples to Stay Connected After Baby.”[8] Eldemire.[9] Smalley and Rosberg, “Putting Your Spouse before Your Kids.”[10] Smalley and Rosberg.

How to Confront Your Husband About His Pornography Addiction

Wed, 08 Apr 2020 11:00:00 +0000

Reasonably often, we get inquiries from a wife whose husband is addicted to pornography and he won’t do anything about it. In this article we want to help you prepare for that first serious confrontation where you have a very deliberate conversation about this problem and how it is impacting you as his wife. Understanding Denial It’s almost inevitable that you are going to run into some level of denial in a conversation like this, so let’s begin by talking about denial. It would be easy to run into this and throw your hands up in the air and give up. However, it is important to understand that denial is a common response to addiction. It is a feature of addiction. And addicts are typically in denial of the negative consequences of their addiction.[1] One important piece to understand is that the part of the brain that craves or desires something has no direct neural connection to the part of the brain that holds the consequence for engaging in what you desire. One relatable example is a second piece of dessert: the idea of that second piece is always significantly more attractive when you’re about to start into it than the experience of it when you’re through it and starting to feel gross. If someone were to stop you before that fork bite and say, “No, you should not do this! You’ll feel gross” your automatic response would be, “Get out of my way or you’ll be wearing this fork! I want it anyway!” Now, that is a somewhat trivial example, but it illustrates the power of denial in addiction to the point where a person can ignore the evidence that their choices are harmful.[2] Nevertheless, it’s still important that the addict is confronted with the consequences of the addiction. We’d just like you to understand that the addict will be in denial and we want to help you prepare so that you can present your evidence, your complaints and concerns in a way that you can motivate him to seek help. Prepare Yourself First As we’ve mentioned in other episodes, we are born-again Christians who are not perfect but are trying to live lives that reflect the values of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. All of that to say, we come at this issue with a moral belief that pornography is not helpful to marriage. We also recognize that we have a lot of listeners who don’t share this belief system and so you’ll approach this issue differently. So, we’re going to offer a range of questions that you should consider as you prepare for this conversation. Depending on your own beliefs and values, some of these questions will be more relevant than others. There are no right or wrong answers to these questions: we just want to think through all that might be going on for you as you approach a confrontation like this with your husband. Consider your motives for having this conversation: What are you hoping to accomplish? Is it to reassure yourself that you are enough? Are you angry and looking to express this? Is it a conviction against his use of pornography? Consider the basis of your objection: Is it moral? Is it based on general beliefs that you have about pornography? Is it the fact that your spouse is lying or hiding to cover it up? Is it other behaviors that come with the addiction, such as gaslighting? Being clear on exactly what you are objecting to will help you make yourself clear to your spouse. Consider the consequences: What impact has his pornography use had on you? What needs and fears are you carrying into this conversation? Pay attention to what your body has been telling you, what your thoughts have been, what you feel in your heart about pornography and describe its impact on you as thoughtfully and precisely as you can. Your husband needs to know the negative effects this has had on you.[3] Know what you are willing to accept and be prepared to state boundaries that you will consider implementing in order to create emotional and relational safety for yourself. Prepare Your Confrontation When we talk about preparing a confrontation: this doesn’t necessarily mean conflict or a fight, although that may happen. But what we’d encourage you to aim for is a serious, thoughtful and deliberate assertion of what this problem means to you, how it is impacting you, and what needs to happen in order for your marriage to be restored. As we go through this section, I want to acknowledge the team over at CovenantEyes — we don’t have any affiliation with them at the moment but their blog is an excellent resource for topics like this and we are drawing on the experience of some of their writers as well as our own clinical experience and training. Plan for a Soft Start Because you are confronting something that is probably very shame-inducing and has been hidden for some time, it’s going to be helpful to plan a soft start to the conversation. This doesn’t mean that you’ll be vague or beat around the bush. It is helpful to be direct and get to the issue quickly. But you also don’t want to launch out of the gate on the attack, since this will only make matters worse. It’s easy to be direct when something like this is hurting you significantly, but you do want to keep your overall goal in mind which means you need your husband to hear what you are saying and have it sink it. Starting the conversation from a place of rage is not going to facilitate that outcome. You might consider starting with a statement that is simple and factual like, “It’s time to talk about your pornography problem and I would like you to listen for a few minutes while I tell you about how it is impacting me. After that you will have a chance to respond, but I really need you to start by hearing and understanding what this is doing to me." Share the Emotional Impact This is very important to do. You’ll want to use your insights and self-awareness from the questions I relayed earlier along with the clarity and insight from the journaling exercises in the bonus content from this show. One aspect of denial in addiction is that the addict has buffered himself from the reality of how his actions are impacting you. He has had to numb himself from this consideration in order to continue with the behaviors: now is the time to carefully burst that bubble of denial with some visceral detail about what it’s like to be in a marriage with pornography present and active. Be careful here to focus on your experience and not to resort to railing on him. Shame is not an effective motivator for change. Helping him become aware of the extent of your pain and the devastation that this is causing you will make him aware of the consequences of his porn use and will do far more to motivate him to change than you cussing him out. Additionally, don’t assume your feelings will be obvious to him. Make it obvious and explicit for him by letting him know what you’re feeling. State Your Boundaries Boundaries help you to establish physical and emotional safety. Whether he is exhibiting remorse or not, if it is safe to do so, you should state your boundaries clearly and simply. We encourage wives to set boundaries that offer them options so that you can enforce the boundary according to the nuances of the situation. An example boundary would be: when you lie to me, I do not feel safe and I cannot trust you. Since I cannot be intimate with someone I cannot trust or feel safe with, when you lie to me, I will consider one or all of the following boundaries until I feel safe again: You will move out of the bedroom immediately I will not have sex with you You will talk to [your therapist, your pastor, your dad, your accountability partner] about the lying If you had a relatively minor incidence of lying you might say, you can stay in the bedroom but we’re not having sex this week. Or if there was a significant cover-up and lying relapse you may choose to implement all three boundaries. There’s no right or wrong with boundaries in the sense of what will fix him. Remember that these boundaries are about what you need in order to feel emotionally and relationally safe, so they will be different from marriage to marriage. Offer Him a Chance to Respond Ideally, this problem will become a gateway to more openness between you. You can start that process even with this conversation by offering him a chance to respond to you. You can invite his participation by asking him questions about his perceived ability to stop, why he uses it, and the impact that he sees it having on you or himself. If you encounter a lot of blaming and find yourself starting to feel traumatized by his responses, it would be best to shut that conversation down and continue it in a safer environment such as with a counselor. Where you can, acknowledge his viewpoints. You want to express some empathy for him, but at the same time it should not turn into a pity party for him about how his difficult childhood led to this situation. For example, you can acknowledge "Yes, your childhood was hard and I cannot imagine what it must have been like. But this is now and you and I need to come to an understanding that these coping mechanisms cannot continue. You need to find a healthier way to cope." It is good to acknowledge his viewpoints and let him know you understand his feelings, but you should not excuse his actions. It may also be good to acknowledge his shame and remind him that the way to beat shame is to bring the darkness out into the light. He needs to talk to someone; he needs to face this problem with someone who will be more neutral and supportive than you can be. After the Conversation These conversations are hard to have. It’s very possible that you’ll come away feeling that parts or all of it may not have gone well. What do you do then? Well,...

Coronavirus and Your Marriage

Wed, 01 Apr 2020 11:00:00 +0000

Well, we live in unprecedented times as many of us are adjusting to a global crisis. We are recording this episode in the middle of the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic, with some of our listeners in cities in full lock-down and others nervously awaiting the community spread of this disease. Certainly, it has created considerable stress and new issues to negotiate. Today, we’d like to help you understand how these kinds of crises impact marriage, but more importantly, how your marriage can help you buffer the storm. How Coronavirus (Or Any Crisis) Affects Marriage We want to start by normalizing what many are experiencing during this time of crisis. This is a very stressful time. Under this kind of stress, all sorts of issues are going to show up: things related to your family of origin, how you wish to feel supported under duress, communication differences, sexuality issues, attachment, and also loss. To start with the loss issue, many people have lost the regular rhythm of their normal routines. You may find yourself no longer gathering with colleagues at work every day. If you had kids in school, you’ve lost your quiet time at home and the routines you were accustomed to. You may have lost the ability to gather with your church community, go to the gym, and head to the grocery store without fear. There is a lot of loss all around us even if the coronavirus is not in our neighbourhood. And if it is? There could be tragic loss as well. All of this comes with a lot of stress, so we’ll start by looking at how stress affects your marriage. Stress Affects Both Spouses Even if you are not personally as stressed, if your spouse is feeling it, it will bleed over into your experience too. Studies have shown that there is more of a correlation in wives experiencing the stress of their husbands than vice versa.[1] So if your husband is stressed, even if you weren’t, you are going to pick up on that and are likely to have an empathic response. It’s just really hard to get through a time like this untouched by what is going on around you. You May Disagree on How to Handle the Pandemic At ordinary times in life, you may disagree about how to handle money or whether to spend holidays with family or away on vacation. Similarly, you can also disagree about how to handle crises like this pandemic.[2] These disagreements could be related to your family of origin. If your respective family of origin handled crises in different ways, your spouse’s approach to handling the current crisis may be much different from yours. For example, you may believe that this is a time to connect (carefully, and with social distancing) and help one another out as much as possible by sharing resources. But your spouse may feel this is a time to stockpile and hunker down and really protect yourselves and your children. Normal disagreements and differences in the way your family of origin styles tend to show up during a time of crisis. You Deal with Stress Differently It may also be that you have very different ways of coping with stress. This will be accentuated right now. One spouse may want to control the situation and take every possible step to ensure safety. That would be more of a doing or busy response — nothing wrong there. But the other spouse may just really need to talk about their fears and anxieties. You can see how it would be easy to have a disconnect: one spouse wondering why the other is not helping with what needs done, and the other just longing to sit down and be able to talk it out. Naturally, if you don’t take time to communicate with one another, the stress of this crisis can make you feel estranged. So, it is important to pay attention to how the pandemic may be affecting each of you differently and how you respond both respond to it.[3] Your Attachment Style Impacts Your Stress Response We have talked about attachment style in past episodes (episode 251-254) and this is relevant when you are under stress as well. If your attachment style is avoidant or dismissive, you will tend to use distancing coping strategies, whether it’s through busyness or really adhering to social distancing, you pull back from other people. In your marriage, this can make it challenging to keep a close connection as a couple.[4] If your attachment style is anxious, you may find yourself very sensitive to your spouse’s availability and getting increasingly upset with his or her distraction in the crisis, leaving you feeling more alone or even a little abandoned. On the other hand, individuals with a secure attachment style are able to demonstrate more efficient problem-focused coping when under stress. For those of you that have worked hard on your marriages and your attachment to one another, this is a time when your marriage really becomes a source of resilience and strength for you. Now, the good news is that, even if our attachment styles weren’t all correct heading into this crisis, we can still leverage what we have and where we are at for the better. For example, if you are more anxious in your style can you channel that energy into preparing for this challenge? Marriage Tips for Managing the Pandemic Crisis We want to give you several tips to help you navigate this time as successfully as possible. 1. Discuss Your Needs How are you doing with asking for what you need during this crisis? Have you offered your spouse the opportunity to talk about how you can better support him or her during this pandemic?[6] 2. Talk About Your Past As previously mentioned, your personal history becomes relevant during times of stress. Did you go through times of crisis when you were a child? How did your family respond? How is that shaping your response to the current crisis? Talking about your past can help you to separate your own assumptions and defaults to consider how your respective histories are influencing your present choices.[7] 3. Discuss Past Struggles You’ve Gone Through Together It can help you review the difficult times that you have navigated before. Reminding yourselves of your resilience and your ability to overcome past hurdles can give you some reassurance and hope that you will need to find your way through this crisis as well.[8] 4. Hire a Counselor Counselors who work with Emotionally Focused Therapy help couples process, validate, and normalize their emotional experiences and find comfort with one another. This empirically supported method of therapy helps clients recognize difficult emotions, make sense of them, and then manage the emotions with a new perspective that includes the support and empathy of your spouse.[9] 5. Communicate More We cannot stress this enough. More stress? Communicate more. If it becomes necessary to not be physically close (e.g., isolating from one another within your home due to symptoms) during this crisis, it will be especially important to increase your communication so you can stay emotionally connected. Sometimes, when anxiety is high, there can be more controlling and criticizing behaviors as worries leak into our interactions. You do need to discuss problems, but you need to be really intentional about constructive communication and support one another.[10] 6. Recognize the Crisis is the Crisis Sometimes, all the stress, disruption and changes can make it feel like your marriage is in crisis when in reality your marriage is just in a crisis. Note the difference between being in crisis and being in a crisis. They may actually feel similar. A crisis like this pandemic can shake your core sense of wellbeing and can make you feel isolated, threatened, neglected and so on. It’s important to note the impact of these external factors so you don’t unnecessarily blame your marriage for the difficult feelings you’re experiencing.[11] 7. Develop Resilience This crisis is an opportunity to develop resilience as a couple. Resilience, described extensively by Walsh (1998), is the “capacity to rebound from adversity strengthened and more resourceful.”[12] Resilience is extremely important during a time of crisis. Crisis can actually help strengthen your marriage as you work together to navigate the challenges it presents.[13] 8. Be a Secure Base One specific way you can develop resilience as a couple is to be a secure base for one another. The negative effects of stress can be buffered if emotional support is perceived as available from “even one reliable source.”[14] If your spouse can rely on you for support that can help relieve the stress of this pandemic.[15] Ask yourself what you are doing to be that person that your spouse can turn to for support, and how you are making yourself available to your spouse. References [1] Mina Westman, Dalia Etzion, and Esti Danon, “Job Insecurity and Crossover of Burnout in Married Couples,” Journal of Organizational Behavior 22, no. 5 (2001): 467–81, https://doi.org/10.1002/job.91.[2] S. H. McDaniel, W. J. Doherty, and J. Hepworth, Couples and Illness (Medical Family Therapy and Integrated Care, 2014), https://doi-org.ezproxy.student.twu.ca/10.1037/14256-008.[3] McDaniel, Doherty, and Hepworth.[4] M. C. Pistole, Amber Roberts, and Marion Chapman, “Attachment, Relationship Maintenance, and Stress in Long Distance and Geographically Close Romantic Relationships,” Grand Valley State University, 2010, https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=counseling_articles.[6] McDaniel, Doherty, and Hepworth, Couples and Illness.[7] McDaniel, Doherty, and Hepworth.[8] McDaniel, Doherty, and Hepworth.[9] McDaniel, Doherty, and Hepworth.[10] {Citation}[11] McDaniel, Doherty, and Hepworth, Couples and Illness.[12] Froma Walsh, Normal Family Processes: Growing Diversity and Complexity (Guilford Press,...

Infidelity Disclosure: What to Include and How to Prepare

Wed, 25 Mar 2020 11:00:00 +0000

If you have decided to disclose an affair to your spouse, you are probably looking for a concrete answer to one question: what do I actually need to tell them? A thoughtful infidelity disclosure covers seven specific elements: the type and extent of the betrayal, who the other person was, where and when the contact happened, how often, whether there are health implications from any sexual contact, the current status of that relationship, and where your spouse might cross paths with the affair partner going forward. The rest of this article walks through each one, when and how to set up the conversation, and what to expect afterward. If you are also trying to figure out what to leave out, read our companion piece on what to avoid when disclosing infidelity. Why a Prepared Disclosure Matters It is reasonable to wonder if anything good can come out of disclosure. A thoughtful, prepared disclosure offers real repair potential. A rushed, careless, or forced one almost never does. Any damage from this conversation should come from the behavior you are disclosing, not from how you deliver the news. That is not a promise about outcome. You can prepare this well and still hear everything your spouse has been carrying, because a full range of emotions from betrayal is part of what has to happen. What a prepared disclosure does offer is a chance that the first moments of your spouse's grief are not also their first moments of re-traumatization at your hands. A careful disclosure can even become a first step of repair, if it validates what your spouse has been sensing for weeks or months and restores their trust in their own perception. Disclosure or Discovery? Discovery is what happens when your spouse finds out on their own. They see a text. A friend lets something slip. An old email surfaces. Discovery takes many forms, and it is usually worse than a prepared disclosure, because it often teaches your spouse that you were never going to tell them. A well-prepared disclosure, even a poorly timed one, at least signals a turn toward honesty. A forced disclosure sits in between. That is the situation where external pressure, such as a looming news story or a threat from the affair partner, forces your hand. Forced disclosures are difficult for obvious reasons, but even then, a thoughtful approach to how you deliver the news still matters. The guidance below is built for the more common shapes of infidelity: an affair has occurred, there is a pornography problem, or there has been a financial betrayal. If what you need to disclose is not a bounded affair but an extensive pattern of sexually acting out over years, that situation is clinically different and calls for a professionally guided therapeutic disclosure rather than the version described here. Our team can help with that more specialized process. Make a Full Disclosure and Avoid Trickle Truth The single most important rule in disclosure is this: tell the whole story the first time. Do not spread the disclosure out over days or weeks in an attempt to soften the blow. Clinicians call that pattern trickle truth, and it is one of the most damaging mistakes we see. Trickle truth usually comes from good intentions. The betraying spouse wants to protect their partner from too much pain at once. What actually happens is that the betrayed spouse just begins to stabilize when another piece of information arrives, which re-shocks the system and installs a new layer of distrust. The accumulated damage of trickle truth is far greater than the damage of a single, complete disclosure. We see the fallout of this constantly in our practice. Because disclosure is hard and your impulse in the moment will be to shorten the conversation, prepare in advance. Write down everything you need to cover. That way, when part of you starts looking for a reason to hold something back, your preparation keeps you honest. What to Include: A 7-Point Disclosure Checklist These are the elements you need to cover in a disclosure. They are specific enough that your spouse can reconstruct the basic shape of what happened, without handing them graphic material that will replay in their mind. Our companion article covers what to avoid including, including excessive sensory detail. 1. The Type and Extent of the Infidelity Name what happened, in basic terms. If the affair was sexual, say so, and describe the extent (for example, "we had oral and vaginal sex" or "it was one sexual encounter over a weekend"). If the affair was emotional, describe what was shared in broad terms (for example, "I shared things with her about our marriage that I should only have shared with you"). Use appropriate, accurate language, not slang, and not vague euphemism either. 2. The Identity of the Affair Partner and How You Know Them Tell your spouse who the affair partner was and how you know them. A co-worker, a neighbor, a college friend, someone you met online. Your spouse needs this so they can orient themselves in the situation. It also helps them understand whether the affair partner is someone who might be in your shared world going forward. 3. Where You Met Share the general setting, not the specific venue. "In a hotel" rather than "at the Marriott on 12th Avenue." "At a work conference" rather than "in a specific hotel room." The general location is enough for your spouse to understand the situation. The specific is the kind of detail that becomes a landmark their mind returns to. 4. When You Met and How Often Share the time frame of the affair and how often the contact happened. "It started about six months ago and we saw each other roughly once a month" is the kind of information that gives your spouse the pattern. This also lets your spouse map the affair onto their own memories of those weeks and months, which is an important part of their processing. 5. Health Implications If the affair involved sexual contact, disclose whether barrier protection was used. This has direct health implications for your spouse if you have been sexually active at home. Your spouse deserves the information, and they should be able to get tested if they choose to. This is non-negotiable. 6. The Current Status of the Relationship Tell your spouse whether the affair is over. If it is, say when and how you ended it. If you have not yet ended it, be honest about that, and be ready for the conversation that follows. If the affair partner is still actively in contact with you or trying to be, your spouse needs to know. 7. Where You Might Cross Paths Going Forward If the affair partner is someone you might unavoidably see in the future, such as a co-worker or a member of the same church community, your spouse needs to know. Surprise encounters after disclosure are particularly destabilizing, because they feel to your spouse like evidence that the affair is not actually over. Name the risk and talk about what you are going to do about it. Choose the Right Time to Disclose Do not stumble into a hasty disclosure. Do not start this conversation when you know you have a fast-approaching deadline, a school concert, or guests arriving in an hour. Give your spouse, and yourself, the space the conversation actually needs. Choose a time when you have at least two or three hours available to sit with your spouse, walk through everything, and answer their questions. Pick a time when your spouse will have some capacity to process afterward. Not right before work, and not right before an evening that ends with guests arriving or an early morning they have to sleep for. Approach the Disclosure with Empathy Psychologist Shirley Glass described the discovery of infidelity as a traumatic event that shatters the basic assumptions of commitment, love, and honesty, and she noted that understanding the story of what happened is part of recovering from that trauma. Your spouse is about to walk through exactly that. Expect a range of strong emotional reactions, possibly stronger than you anticipate. If you find yourself thinking that your spouse is overreacting, that is a cue to stop thinking about your own discomfort and re-focus on what you have actually done to them. Common responses after disclosure include: Intense emotional disruption and feeling completely blindsided. Shock and grief, with cycles of numbing, confusion, anger, and despair. A desire to spend time apart, sometimes for days. A surge of questions, sometimes the same questions asked repeatedly. None of that is overreaction. Most of this is a nervous system in acute shock, and post-infidelity stress is well documented. Your job is not to manage their response. Your job is to be present and honest while they experience it. Offer Support Options Your spouse will need support, and they may not be in a state to organize it themselves in the first days after disclosure. Come to the conversation with a few options prepared, without taking over the choice of who they end up working with. Written resources. Articles, podcasts, and books on betrayal trauma can help your spouse begin to make sense of what they are experiencing. Some spouses lean hard into research early on. Counseling options. Have the names of two or three therapists who work with betrayal trauma, with links to their websites. Fit matters a great deal here, so bring a few solid options and let your spouse choose. A trusted support person or two. Encourage your spouse to reach out to at least one or two friends or family members who will support them and not undermine the possibility of repair. It is common for betrayed spouses to feel too ashamed to tell anyone, so this matters. Support groups. In some areas, support groups exist specifically for spouses working through betrayal. These can be particularly helpful for spouses of sex addicts, where the dynamics are especially isolating. Apologize,...

6 Porn Groups To Help Your Recovery

Wed, 18 Mar 2020 11:00:00 +0000

If you are trying to break a pornography addiction, one of the best things you can do is to find a group that you can join in addition to doing individual counselling. Fortunately, there are a number of great options out there to choose from depending on what is available in your area or whether or not you are looking for something that fits with your faith/beliefs or your goals for sobriety. Today, we are looking at 6 of the largest groups available so that you can make a choice about what might work best for your situation. A number of porn and sex addiction groups came into being in the 1970s, probably in response to the sexual revolution.[1] A number of these groups have been around for a long time and they are well established. But they are not all the same — we’ll try to articulate those differences as we go through so be sure to note what seems to be a good fit for you based on the information we provide about each group. Try to pick a couple because you’ll also want to go on their websites and see if one of them has a group near you. Group 1: Pure Desire Website: https://puredesire.org/ About: Pure Desire Ministries International began in a local church. It was founded by Ted and Diane Roberts. It began as a program to help people with addictions and codependency. Over two decades, they developed a strategy for working with sex addiction that is both Biblically-based, clinically informed, and successful in creating change. In 2007, it became an independent 501c3. It has expanded beyond the church it started in and become internationally known. Their services are available in Canada, the United States, and around the world. Pure Desire is a Christian organization designed to help men, women and young adults recover from sex addiction and intimacy disorders. They have specific groups for men, women, young men, young women, and college-age men. Training: Their counselors also have training through the International Institute for Trauma and Addiction (IITAP) and are licensed as either Certified Sex Addiction Therapists (CSAT) or Pastoral Sex Addiction Professionals (PSAP). In-Person or Online: Pure Desire offers both local and online groups. The local groups are volunteer-led and the online groups are led by a Certified Pure Desire Group Leader. Program: They have groups both for those struggling with addiction and for those struggling with betrayal. It’s difficult to see what the program is for local groups, but their online groups are a 2 hour-long weekly meeting with 1-2 hours of homework a week. It’s a 10-month long commitment in total. Fees: The local, volunteer led groups are free, but the online groups led by one of their leaders are a paid commitment. At the time of this writing, the group for addicts was $490 plus resources (about $60) and the group for betrayed spouses was $290 plus the resources (US Dollars). Strengths/Weaknesses Compared to Other Groups: The founder of Pure Desire, Ted Roberts, was working alongside Pat Carnes when he was doing his research and started writing about sex addiction back in the 90’s. It’s very well-grounded clinically as well as Biblically with a lot of experience helping people recover from porn and sex addiction. Group 2: Celebrate Recovery Websites: https://www.celebraterecovery.com/ (Around the world) https://www.celebraterecovery.ca/ (Canada) About: Celebrate Recovery offers a faith-based 12 step program. They began in 1991 at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California when John Baker wrote a letter to Rick Warren, the senior pastor outlining the vision God had given him for starting Celebrate Recovery. John is still the primary author of the Celebrate Recovery curriculum and materials. Though it has Christian affiliation and a biblical approach to addictions treatment, more than 70% of their members come from outside the church. Celebrate Recovery began with just four Open Share Groups and has expanded to over 14 groups today. 43 people attended the first meeting and now over 27,000 people have gone through the program locally, many of whom now serve in Celebrate Recovery and the church. Celebrate Recovery is the number one outreach ministry at Saddleback Church. There are now 35,000 churches offering these groups around the world. To date, over 5 million people have completed their Step Study program. Celebrate Recovery is growing in other places than churches including recovery houses, rescue missions, universities, and prisons around the world. In August 2004, the organization was announced as California's state-approved substance abuse program for prisons. 1 out of every 3 people who attend one of their programs struggle with drug or alcohol abuse. In-Person or Online: The program is in-person only, and if you go to their website you can look for “Find a Group” on their menus to look for one near you. Here’s a short link to the locator: https://locator.crgroups.info/ They also host an annual ALLTogether rally at Saddleback which are a time of worship, hearing testimonies of recovery, inspiration, and fellowship. Recovery is not a prerequisite and all are welcome. See their website for details. Program: Their groups are for people dealing with hurt, pain or addiction of any kind. They take the 12 steps from Alcoholics Anonymous and add a biblical component to each concept. They also use 8 Recovery Principles that are faith-based principles, which are meant to work alongside the 12 steps to help members work towards recovery. Fees: There is no cost for participating in a group, but there are small fees for resources such as Celebrate Recovery Bibles, Celebrate Recovery Journals, or a Celebrate Recovery Participants’ Guide. Strengths/Weaknesses Compared to Other Groups: They claim a success rate of nearly 85 percent. It should be noted that while it does follow a 12-step program, much like Alcoholics Anonymous, there are no specific guidelines for what individuals who sign up are breaking free from. They don't specialize only in pornography or sexual addiction, so it is not as targeted an approach as some of the other groups on our list. If there’s not a targeted group in your area that is specific to porn and sex addiction, then you would do well to seek out a CR group. Group 3: Sexaholics Anonymous (SA) Website: https://www.sa.org/ About: Alcoholics Anonymous was founded in 1935. Since then, dozens of other forms of 12-step fellowships have been founded, following a similar 12-step program in Simi Valley California. One of these fellowships was Sexaholics Anonymous, which was founded in the 1970s by a man struggling with sex addiction who adapted the Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) program for sex addiction, creating Sexaholics Anonymous. The group is for men and women who share their experience, strength, and hope with one another. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop lusting and to become "sexually sober.” There are a handful of AA spinoffs related to sex or porn addictions or to betrayed spouses and the major differentiator between these groups is often around their definition of sexual sobriety. It’s basically a moral differentiator between the groups. SA's definition of sexual sobriety is to have no form of sex with self or with persons other than one's spouse (if one is married). In SA’s sobriety definition, the term “spouse” refers to one’s partner in a marriage between a man and a woman. For the unmarried sexaholic, sexual sobriety means freedom from sex of any kind. And for all members, sexual sobriety includes progressive victory over lust (Sexaholics Anonymous Manual, 191-192). Sexaholics Anonymous has no affiliation with any religion or organization, but they do talk about a Higher Power, much like AA groups. In-Person or Online: They have in-person conventions at various locations including Sumas Washington, Atlanta Georgia, and Toronto Canada. See website for details. SA meetings can be found in person, by email or by phone. They have in-person groups throughout the USA and Canada. Program: The program is designed specifically for people dealing with sex addiction and porn addiction. There are groups throughout the U.S. Visit their website to find a group near you. Fees: There is no cost for SA membership. The group is self-supporting through member's own contributions. Strengths/Weaknesses Compared to Other Groups: The program is for both genders, but also particularly addresses women and the shame many women experience with sex addiction. A number of women have given testimonies of having found freedom from sexual addiction through SA. Some other groups are more focused on men’s issues. One concern with SA groups is that if you are heterosexual you want to be particularly careful about coed groups, especially if there’s a possibility that someone else in the group could be the kind of person you would have acted out with. That’s a very considerable risk factor that for some people will mean they need to find a male-only or female-only group instead. It’s worth noting that the group has certainly helped many people, and has the benefit of being free and providing a free manual. There are no studies on the effectiveness of the groups. One area of criticism that SA does get targeted for is being more Christian than it claims to be. For example, the group has received harsh criticism from Morty Finklestein, who did a comparison of the different groups. He states that "Sexaholics Anonymous is by far the most rigid, fundamentalist and conservative of all the fellowships. Most of its members, like its founder Roy K. are religious....

Responding to The Rage of Your Betrayed Spouse

Wed, 11 Mar 2020 11:00:00 +0000

If you have betrayed your spouse and disclosed that betrayal to them, one thing you will have become very aware of is the rage that betrayal can cause. In our experience in working with couples, many people who are working through their own infidelity and trying to recover their marriage find that they aren’t sure how to respond to this rage or what to do with it. Today we are going to look at why anger is a normal part of responding to betrayal, where it comes from, and how to best support your spouse in the face of it. Anger Is A Common Reaction to Betrayal When a person is betrayed, there are a lot of potential responses that often come in waves and in varying degrees of intensity. According to researcher MeowLan Chan (2009) "Typical responses to betrayal include: retaliation, reduction in trust, distrust or suspicion, increase in monitoring, negative emotions (e.g., anger, disappointment, frustration), deterioration in the quality or even termination of the relationship, withdrawal of effort and cooperation within the relationship, and demand for more legalistic forms of trust as substitutes for interpersonal trust."[1] These reactions affect both your spouse and your relationship. One of the most prominent negative emotions is anger, or even rage. In all fairness, when anyone is faced with an extreme threat they will often respond with anger. Anger helps a person survive by shifting their focus toward doing the things necessary for survival. Since a marriage is usually grounded on what was seen to be a reliable foundation of trust, when that foundation is shattered by betrayal, this significant breakdown in one’s foundation is often experienced as a threat to survival. Furthermore, anger is a common response to events that seem unfair or to circumstances that set you up to be a victim of the choices of others, especially a situation like a betrayal event.[2] Understanding Trauma and PTSD from Betrayal The severity of a spouse’s response to betrayal can come as a surprise to the betraying spouse. Often, a betraying spouse wants to justify their actions and the way they may have gone against their values with those actions. They do this by denying and minimizing their actions in their mind. As a result, they tend to mentally turn the dial down on what the anticipated consequences will be. Regardless of how much denial is occurring, it does not affect the severity of the impact on the betrayed spouse. Quite often, a betrayal becomes a traumatic event, even causing many of the symptoms of PTSD. Your spouse may experience other negative effects of trauma such as forgetting important parts of the traumatic event, exaggerating negative thoughts about oneself, others, or the world, distorted blame of self or others, detachment or estrangement from others, inability to experience positive emotions, lack of interest in activities, or globally negative experiences of fear, horror, anger, guilt, or shame.[3] This is all due to the trauma that frequently comes with betrayal. It’s such a blow to a person that it becomes a shattering event. Looking at the rage response more specifically, some of the criteria for rage include: Having an experience that exceeds healthy anger. Losing the rational component of brain functioning that enables a person to think clearly and logically. Losing the ability to consider consequences for actions. Even seeking to hurt your spouse in a physical way. It should be noted that these particular features of rage were observed in a study of violent women who experienced rage towards their partner, but not in a betrayal context.[4] However, we hear about betrayed spouses experiencing the same symptoms when they have experienced spousal betrayal. It’s important to note that even when you have been betrayed, it is still not acceptable to resort to physical violence. Yes, it’s also unacceptable to be betrayed, but two wrongs won’t make a right and physical violence won’t help you feel safer. Why Your Spouse Ends up Raging Basically, the reason your spouse experiences rage is because the part of their nervous system that is responsible for calming and stabilizing him or her under stress breaks down under situations of extreme stress. It just cannot keep up with something as severe as betrayal. And in that scenario the part of their brain that helps with social engagement goes offline and they resort to more primitive fight or flight behaviors such as withdrawing or lashing out angrily.[5] In any case, the important thing to remember is that this is a protective function that is active now. In plain English: your betrayed wife is raging at you because she is trying to restore a sense of safety within herself. That safety was torn away by the betrayal. We all need to have a basic sense of safety that the people closest to us are trustworthy and reliable. And when they prove they are not through something like infidelity, our survival systems kick in to try to restore or bring us back to that place of safety. This happens at a very core level within our nervous system. How to Respond and Support Your Spouse 1. During the rage It is helpful if you can keep in mind that your betrayed spouse’s rage is an effort to restore safety that feels as if it has been torn from her (or him), then you will be in a better position to adequately respond to these very intense emotions. If you can, try to hear what your spouse is saying and carefully note the underlying fear. The fear is often not overtly expressed, but it will definitely be there behind the rage. Responding in a reassuring and empathic way to that fear (and avoiding becoming defensive) will often calm the rage because it is showing your spouse that you get it: that you see what is happening for him/her and you are willing to acknowledge that reality. When your spouse understands that you see, acknowledge, and are appropriately responding to their pain, then they can begin to feel safe again. Because all of us carry some faith in humanity that says, “If this person really sees and acknowledges how hurt I am they will do everything in their power to make sure I don’t get hurt more.” That’s what empathy does. Of course, it’s difficult to respond with empathy in the face of rage. You likely won’t get it the first few times. But if you’ve researched this topic and found this episode/article, then you are likely starting to realize that it is much more effective to respond gently to your spouse, rather than meeting their rage with your own anger or defensiveness. On a broader scale, there are a number of other useful strategies to help with your spouse’s betrayal trauma. These efforts will help reduce the amount of anger and rage your spouse feels as well. 2. Recognize That You Are on Different Timelines A betrayal is traumatic. It takes time to heal. It comes with a flood of thoughts and feelings and confusion. Just like you would expect someone to need time to work through grief after the loss of a loved one, so your spouse needs time to work through the loss of the marriage they thought they had. You may be feeling better almost immediately because your confession or disclosure has relieved you of this great burden of shame and secrecy that you’ve been carrying. But your spouse is going to be on a different timeline, so you should not have the expectation that they will feel relief from this as rapidly as you will.[6] Everyone is different, but in some cases, it would not be unreasonable to expect it to take a year or more to fully process through grief and forgiveness after a betrayal. 3. Offer Compassion, Comfort and Care Your spouse’s rage or anger may activate those feelings of shame and guilt that you first experienced with the betrayal. But it’s important to work hard at staying non-defensive and refraining from responding with anger. One common recommendation is to think about responding with compassion, comfort and care.[7] Compassion is just extending the empathy and concern we talked about previously. Comfort is about providing reassurance and care attending to your spouse’s extra needs as they go through this difficult process. As you consistently provide these, it helps your spouse see you again as a source of comfort and safety. 4. What Got You Here Won’t Get You There It can be tempting to try to take your spouse back to the past and to resurrect that in the present. But that won’t work. Recovering from betrayal, especially a significant betrayal, means rebuilding your marriage. You will have to work together to build something new and beautiful, rather than trying to regain what was past. The past is what brought you to a place where betrayal was possible and then it became a reality. A new trust, a new bond, and a new authentic vulnerability will need to be built between you.[8] 5. Encourage Your Spouse to Get Support Quite often, betrayed spouses feel very isolated. If they do reach out to a friend and disclose what has happened, then they bear the shame and stigma of being that poor wife/husband that got cheated on. On the other hand, being alone in your pain is a greater misery than just having the pain. This can leave them caught between a rock and a hard place. Encourage your spouse to reach out to a trustworthy, confidential friend or two, or to family members. Ideally, if you want to save your marriage, these people should be friends of the marriage, and not just someone who is going to give your spouse pity or vilify you. Yes, they will need to provide support for your spouse, but they need to be able to do so with the aim of helping you rebuild your marriage. As well, it is good to help your spouse understand what we have already discussed: that betrayal of

How Self-Compassion Can Help Your Marriage

Wed, 04 Mar 2020 11:00:46 +0000

Compassion is probably something that you find harder to provide for yourself than for others. However, did you know that self-compassion can help your marriage? Yes, we often talk about what you could and should give to your spouse in marriage, but today we want to talk about the need for self-compassion and how beneficial that can be both for yourself and for your marriage. In Western culture, compassion is most commonly thought of as something that should be extended to others. In fact, most of what you will read nowadays about self-compassion finds its roots in Buddhist traditions where compassion to oneself is considered to be as important as one’s compassion to others. At OnlyYouForever, we operate out of a Christian worldview, and we think we can very easily point to a Biblical basis for self-compassion in the second greatest commandment that the Lord Jesus stated: love your neighbor as yourself. That little phrase, “as yourself” is the justification for taking a serious interest in self-compassion because your love for your neighbor (or your spouse!) is going to be based on this. What is Self-Compassion Self-compassion was first defined by psychologist Kristin Neff and she described it as “Kindness toward the self, which entails being gentle, supportive and understanding.”[1] So rather than harshly judging oneself for personal shortcomings, one offers oneself warmth and unconditional acceptance. The reason why this subject is worth addressing is that a growing body of research suggests that self-compassion is strongly associated with psychological health, and less anxiety and depression.[2] As well, Self-compassion is negatively correlated with depression, anxiety, and perfectionism, and is positively correlated with life satisfaction.[3] Research also indicates that self-compassion is associated with better emotional coping skills, greater ability to repair negative emotional states, and generally a more positive state of being.[4] You can imagine how those things can all benefit marriage as well. How Self-Compassion Can Benefit Your Marriage A recent study from 2018 looked at the effects of self-compassion on romantic relationships.[5] The students involved in the study who reported higher levels of self-compassion tended to report having higher quality romantic relationships. Now, one of the limitations of the study was that it was done on young people in romantic relationships who were in undergraduate students in university. Nevertheless, the results are worth considering for anyone in a romantic relationship/marriage. So, why does self-compassion lead to greater satisfaction in relationships? One reason is that people with higher self-compassion are more aware of and able to meet their own needs for kindness and self-comfort. In a distressed marriage, a lot of the focus goes toward figuring out what your spouse needs so this may be a little counterintuitive. But, the ability to balance independence with connectedness, which is being able to observe and respond to your own needs as well as to your spouse’s, is important for healthy relationships. Another reason that individuals with high levels of self-compassion have stronger conflict resolution abilities is that self-compassion gives you more of an ability to see their spouse’s point of view during the disagreement as part of your common humanity rather than a personal hardship that is happening to you. In essence, it means you can love your spouse as yourself while in conflict. That’s a very powerful skill to have when working through conflict.[6] When to Use Self-Compassion Of course, with self-compassion one might simply say “use it everywhere,” but here are a few specific examples to consider. Compassion can be extended toward yourself when suffering occurs through no fault of your own, such as when the external circumstances of life are simply painful or difficult to bear.[7] For example, your company downsizes or your child is bullied at school or you have a parent who is given a difficult diagnosis. Yes, care for the other may be necessary, but what about compassion for your own pain in those circumstances? A more challenging example may be when you suffer as a result of your own mistakes, failures or personal inadequacies. How are you going to take care of yourself when you screw up? Are you able to accept that you made a mistake, and to think about understanding and rectifying it in a calm, engaged way? Coming back to difficult life circumstances: can you show self-compassion in circumstances where you may have previously turned to self-medication? One of the things that self-compassionate people do is they turn inward to offer themselves soothing and comfort. They allow themselves to be moved by their own distress so that they foster a desire to heal and overcome the difficulties they are experiencing.[8] They don’t numb or dissociate from the pain or challenges: they look at them, they look at what they need, and they recognize those needs and then they pursue adaptive (rather than dysfunctional) ways of meeting those needs. How To Practice Self-Compassion We’re going to give you six ways you can practice self-compassion. The first three are the core constructs of self-compassion: Self-kindness vs. self-judgment Common humanity vs. isolation Mindfulness vs. over-identification[9] Practice Self-Kindness Rather than judgment and criticism towards yourself, self-kindness is the tendency to apply a caring and tender attitude toward your difficult circumstances.[10] This could be in respect to something smaller like not getting your physical exercise done for the day: can you view that in a forgiving and kind manner, understanding that tomorrow is a new day? Or do you beat yourself up? Or, if you notice some aspect of your personality that you dislike, can you treat that flaw gently? Really pay attention to the emotional tone of the language that you use toward yourself. Is it kind and supportive? It’s important not to dismiss the small things when you practice self-compassion. When you do fail to meet a personal goal or expectation, rather than attacking and berating yourself for being inadequate: offer yourself warmth and unconditional acceptance. If you do need to change, it’s not canceling the need to change, or making excuses, but kindness actually does a lot more to prepare and enable change than criticism or contempt. Recognize Your Common Humanity It’s important to recognize that it is only human to make mistakes, even to do things that are wrong, and that you are not alone in this.[11] This is not the same as making excuses: the goal is to reduce or remove any sense of isolation. We have to understand that all humans are imperfect and that we all sin, fail and make mistakes. My flawed condition is a shared human condition. The same goes for suffering: my life difficulties are part of the broader human experience. It is comforting to know that I am not alone and possibly even millions of others have experienced what I am experiencing.[12] Where this really helps is in reaching out to others in the midst of our personal struggles[13] so that we don’t feel isolated. Practice Mindfulness When you are in the middle of a struggle — say experiencing distress in your marriage — you can very easily get carried away in the torrent of pain that you are experiencing. And you can get carried away to the point where you over-identify with the problem.[14] Mindfulness just involves stepping back to observe and notice what’s happening. It gives you a little bit of distance and objectivity on your own distress. It’s not dissociation, which is disconnecting from reality. It’s more that you carefully observe it but you just step back from needing to solve or fix or numb. It’s like watching the credits scroll at the end of a movie: just notice what comes up for you. Try not to react to your reactions. Just observe, notice, and let it scroll by. The practice of mindfulness helps people step back from obsessing over negative thoughts or emotions — especially about yourself — which can help you get back to a place of self-compassion. Treat Yourself as You Would Someone Else One thing that some of my clients find helpful is to treat themselves as they would treat a small child in need of their care and compassion. Often, we as adults will say that we don’t know what we need. Well, think of a small child in similar circumstances or with similar feelings: what would you want to do for that child? Inevitably, we know what those good, caring, nurturing things to do would be. Well, can you extend those things to yourself?[15] Give Yourself Permission to Be Imperfect In the Christian world when I am speaking at church, I will sometimes refer to the need to recognize that our sanctification is incomplete. We are not who we want to be, but neither are we who we were. We are in a process of growth. It’s helpful to cultivate a perspective of yourself that sees yourself as in a journey towards wholeness and completeness. The implication is that it is OK for you not to be there yet. This helps us not to lose faith in our potential or ability to heal and to find ourselves a way out of difficult circumstances. In a way, it allows us to note our moments even of laziness or unproductively without having to define ourselves by those moments. Yes, they happened. But it is not all of who I am and I can find my way out of these difficulties.[16] Work with a Supportive Therapist Therapy is an ideal context to have someone coach you through your first steps of self-compassion. We know that our brains have the ability to practice self-compassion or learn new patterns of thinking/behavior,...

How Much Detail to Share When Disclosing Infidelity: 4 Things to Avoid

Wed, 26 Feb 2020 23:00:00 +0000

Disclosing an affair is a terrifying but crucial step toward healing a marriage. This episode provides guidance on how to navigate this difficult conversation with honesty and care. We'll cover the four key things to avoid when revealing infidelity, such as staggered disclosure and blame-shifting, which can cause further trauma. Learn how to take responsibility for your actions, understand the impact of betrayal on your partner, and discover how couples therapy can create a path toward rebuilding trust and moving forward together.

Overwhelmed or Flooded? Here’s How To Calm Down During Conflict

Wed, 19 Feb 2020 11:00:00 +0000

If you ever find yourself feeling overwhelmed during conflict, then this article is for you. We describe the psychological experience of flooding: when you white out or shut down or get hijacked by your own emotions. Usually, this happens during a fight with your spouse and it never helps resolve the issue you’re facing. In this article, we talk about what flooding is and how you can calm yourself down in order to navigate through conflict more successfully. What is Flooding? This is a problem that marriage researchers have been paying attention to since the 1990’s when Dr. Gottman first began describing it. It’s a common experience — typically for the withdrawer in marriage, and, since the husband is most commonly the withdrawer in a pursue-withdraw cycle, it happens the most to men. Of course, there are some wives who experience it too. Gottman defines flooding as "the subjective sense of being overwhelmed by the partner’s negative affect, finding it to be unexpected and intense, and feeling as though one’s information processing is impaired.”[1] In other words, in the face of your intense anger or upset I get overwhelmed and shut down. Flooding is not an emotion in itself. It’s just the experience of becoming overwhelmed and feeling like your thoughts are disorganized and you don’t know how to respond.[2] How to Recognize Flooding The more obvious signs of flooding to watch for are just that sense of being overstimulated, feeling that you are overwhelmed, and mentally disorganized.[3] It will typically prompt a fight or flight response in you so that you will want to either respond with anger or withdraw from the situation. About 80% of husbands will stonewall in this situation[4] which looks like emotional withdrawal (shutting down) and sometimes physical withdrawal (e.g., heading to the garage) as well. The less obvious signs of flooding are much like an intense stress response. These signs may include: increased respiration, an increased heart rate, an increase in blood pressure and perspiration. At the same time, you may notice yourself starting to have very negative or catastrophic thoughts about the relationship, for example thinking that “this is never going to work” or feeling very hopeless. Impact of Flooding It’s also important to notice that flooding may really compel you to want to put a stop to the situation that caused or prompted the flooding. In other words, you’ll want to shut down the argument or end the conflict, almost at any cost. It’s like you are driven to escape the situation.[5] The really difficult thing about flooding is that while it is something that happens to you during conflict (nobody does this intentionally to themselves) it is almost universally interpreted as you doing something to or against them! So, the more withdrawn you get as you feel overwhelmed, the more your spouse is likely to turn up the volume. In actual fact, as a result of the flooding, you may even be unable to hear what your spouse is saying.[6] This inability to hear your spouse is a key part of the cycle that we unpack and unravel with our marriage counseling clients as we help them find new ways to navigate conflict. In this article, we are going to talk about why this happens and how to calm yourself down. Why Do I Flood? You may be wondering, why does this happen to me? Or perhaps it is your spouse that gets flooded and you’re asking yourself, “Why does he do that?” It’s important to be aware of this because as the intensity of conflict increases, you will reach a point where your thinking brain is shut out. The thinking part is the piece that can examine the complexities — the gray areas — of an issue and help you sort it out by considering your spouse’s point of view (the facts at hand, your own emotional state, etc.). You do really have to be on top of your mental and emotional game to navigate some marital conflict. But when you are flooded: you don’t have access to those parts of your brain which makes navigating the conflict effectively impossible. So why does it happen to you? Here are some possible contributing factors: You may be more emotionally sensitive than you realize. While you are probably accused of insensitivity when flooded, it may actually be that you are more sensitive to your spouse’s emotions and so you very easily experience them as threatening or overwhelming.[7] A history of intense anger. If your history includes experiencing intense anger from your spouse or in your family of origin, you may be more vulnerable to flooding. It’s possible that you if you grew up in a family with little to no conflict and your spouse has a volatile or assertive conflict style that this could be overwhelming for you. a history of not experiencing direct anger could be a contributing factor too getting flooded when your partner expresses anger. If your attachment style includes a strong fear of rejection or abandonment, you are more likely to experience flooding.[8] The point here, again, is that flooding is not something you are doing to your spouse. Undoubtedly, it is frustrating for your spouse. And walking away from your spouse with no explanation or suggestion to reconnect is definitely not something that will help your marriage. At the same time, some severely flooded spouses will walk away because they feel if they can just leave and the situation and calm down then the marriage will be OK. That is very sincere, and may not have any negative intentions involved, but ultimately, it’s not going to work either. You will need to find a way to calm yourself, stay engaged, and see the issue through. At the same time, your spouse will need to learn to ask for what they need in ways that do not trigger you and make you feel overwhelmed. It has to be a cooperative effort with shared responsibility. How to Calm Down During Flooding Once you understand what is going on when you experience flooding, the next step is to look at what you can do to help yourself calm down when you experience it. The first thing to do is just to become aware of when you are flooded. Self-awareness is a critical first step because you cannot respond to what you are not aware of. Observe what is happening inside you. You will want to create some distance between yourself and the storm of thoughts and feelings you are experiencing. Even just noting to yourself that you have gotten activated and your body is starting to react is helpful.[9] One good strategy is to prepare ahead of time and mentally store an image of your spouse at his or her best. Picture a moment in time — a snapshot that you can wrap a frame around to keep other negative experiences out of — when you experienced your spouse as loving, generous and well-meaning.[10] When you get flooded and if you need to take a break, you can recall this image to remind yourself of your spouse’s good will towards you. Another image that may be useful is one you can use in the moment when you recognize you are flooded. Just picturing a large complex wheel that is spinning furiously and then you just slowly imagine slowing and slowing that wheel down. As it slows down, remind yourself to be grounded. Feel the chair you’re in, notice the comforts in the room around you of furniture or a blanket you have or a pet, and just observe and let go of some of that fear that has built up inside you as you slow that wheel down. That can be a helpful grounding technique. How To Take A Break Finally, it’s important to give yourself time to calm down. There are helpful and unhelpful ways of taking a break so we want to describe how to do so in a way that is helpful. If you are in conflict with your spouse you may need a 10 to 30 minute break. During the break, try not to think about the fight or what to say to your spouse: if you keep thinking over things you will stay escalated. Remember to do the following things before take a break: Before you separate, be sure to tell your spouse when you are coming back so that they do not feel abandoned or that you are just walking away. They need to know you are committed to resolving the issue with them. During the break, read a book or magazine or do something self-soothing. Exercise can be helpful too: a walk or run or yoga. Take your mind off what is happening so that when you come back to the disagreement you can have a fresh start to the conversation. Hopefully, you can also begin with a softer start to the conversation. This is a great antidote to flooding.[11] For the Other Spouse As a final note for the spouse of the person who gets flooded, it’s really important to recognize that this is not something your spouse is doing to you. It may be difficult to do this if you’ve had to try hard to figure out why it happens and try to make sense of their flooding. If it has frequently felt like you were being shut out, it’s hard to not to take it personally. And it is very hard to get past that feeling of rejection. The flooding really is something that’s happening to them. It is true that you most likely have a part to play in it too. You may not fully realize how intimidating your anger is to your spouse or how much they are afraid of losing you. Perhaps they have coupled their flooding with some bad habits or reactions that are not appropriate or acceptable for conflict. But all of these things are part of the dynamic that happens between you during conflict. The solution does not lie in you preventing or fixing their flooding problem. It lies in changing the entire dynamic between you so that you solve issues as a team, facing the dragon of your negative cycle rather than as opponents in an arena facing one another.This is the work we do with couples in our online counseling agency....

When Your Spouse Is Too Friendly With the Opposite Sex

Wed, 12 Feb 2020 11:00:00 +0000

We're here to talk If you are married, it’s more than likely that you’ve had a discussion with your spouse at some point about a friendship between one of you and someone outside your marriage. So, what about those opposite-sex friendships? Are they healthy or are they dangerous? Should we avoid them at all costs or take them on a case by case basis? How much friendliness with the opposite sex is too much and could land you in trouble? What if the person you’re friends with is 50 years older than you? These are all questions we explore in this article. Recognize the Hazard First of all, we don’t take a hard line on this issue in either direction. We neither tell you to back off and let your spouse be a grown-up and choose his or her friends or insist that there can be no friendships with the opposite sex for either of you. This is a nuanced issue with lots of variables and we want to point you towards a thoughtful, nuanced, self-reflective review of this issue. Hopefully, you do this in a way that prioritizes the sanctity and value of being in a loyal, committed, thriving marriage. It’s important to recognize that we all need to recognize there is a potential hazard in opposite sex friendships. This doesn’t just apply to flirtatious friends; it’s is really true with any friend. If someone is your friend, it is because you are attracted to them: to their personality or characteristics or physical appearance or what they have to offer or how they make you feel. The word “attraction” may make you nervous there: it doesn’t necessarily mean physical attraction or even attraction in a way that is unfaithful to your marriage. It’s natural that we like our friends. You may not be thinking in that direction today, but it is important to acknowledge this as a potential hazard. That doesn’t call us to paranoia or isolation: it should call us toward caution and self-reflection to make sure we keep things in a healthy place. What to Watch For The Potential for More The first issue to be aware of is that there is often the potential for more than a friendship. There are conceivable circumstances under which a friendship could exist with absolutely no sexual attraction or sexual compatibility. In a case like this, having a friendship with someone of the opposite gender presents no problem at all.[1] An example of this is little old ladies from church. You can go to her house for the afternoon, chat, share personal stories, have a cup of tea, pet her cat, and nothing is ever going to happen. At the same time, it’s important to realize that many opposite-sex friendships involve people who—if circumstances were different—might be potential romantic partners. It’s also worth noting that it is common for men to mainly befriend women that they have at least some degree of physical attraction to.[2] In light of this, it can be hard to know how best to handle opposite-sex relationships because another important task for married people is to stop considering alternatives. You don’t want to be moving through life considering potential alternatives to your spouse. But you also have to recognize that if someone is a potential alternative then that friendship has greater risks associated with it. The key difference between these two thoughts is the element of fantasy. Fantasy says, “I wonder what it would be like to be married to him or her?” Or worse, “…To have sex with that person?” This is called considering alternatives, and it erodes your commitment, intimacy, and loyalty towards your spouse. On the other hand, it is possible to realize that someone is attractive or kind or admirable in some way. You need to be conscious of recognizing that there is potential for more (without fantasy or thinking about what that potential might be) and just set a mental boundary for yourself. Warning Sings It’s important to pay attention to the warning signs and not to ignore them. Some warning signs might be: If you find yourself consistently texting with someone of the opposite sex and it’s not strictly confined to necessary communication for work or other responsibilities. If you try to arrange more meetings or “together time” than you need to (e.g., if the friendship started at work). If the friendship is becoming intimate: emotionally or physically (e.g., sharing personal things you don’t usually share with the opposite sex or sitting close together or holding hands).[3] If you find yourself thinking about the other person a lot, even to the point of being distracted when you are with your spouse (obsessing). If you start getting together outside of the context of your initial or primary connection. For example, if you start having coffee with someone you met at the gym. If you find yourself hiding the details of your communication or time spent with the other person from your spouse. If the nature of your communication is becoming personal or intimate. Healthy Boundaries for Friendships According to family counselor Greg Smalley, "Friendships with people of the opposite sex should be casual friendships: Your time together is infrequent and, when you do see each other, you are guided by strong boundaries that your spouse and you have previously agreed to.”[4] How to Set Boundaries The guiding principle in setting up boundaries is to prioritize your marriage. You have to preserve your relationship with your spouse above all friendships. You want to protect your marriage but also to think specifically about protecting the trust between you.[5] The balance is key since we all need to have friends; our spouse cannot be the entire extent of our social network. And all of us will have some friends of the opposite sex whom we need to be friendly to. But we need to do that without putting our marriage at risk. Here are some guidelines that you can discuss with your spouse: Do not be friends with anyone your spouse does not feel comfortable with... no exceptions. And don't continue fighting for that friendship once your spouse has waved the red flag. That only makes you look like you care more about this friend than your spouse.[6] Caveat: We are assuming here that there’s not a problem with jealousy in your marriage (see episode 113). It’s ideal if you can articulate the reason for the discomfort and both of you agree. There is the odd case where a spouse has an unaddressed and out of control jealousy problem, or even an abusive control issue and ends up isolating the other spouse on the basis of this otherwise useful and healthy principle. Your friendships with the opposite sex need to be completely out in the open. If you're hiding a relationship with the opposite sex from your spouse or hiding how close you are to the other person, that should set off some serious alarm bells.[7] Don't share private details of your marriage with anyone of the opposite sex. Lean on a mentor, pastor, life coach, or a trusted friend of the same sex.[8] There are different opinions on how much you should be a support to someone of the opposite sex. Some people say you should never be the shoulder for someone of the opposite sex to cry on. They’ll tell you to be kind, hand them a tissue and walk away. You might have healthy boundaries, but this person might not.[9] The part about boundaries is true. But there may also be a place for careful consideration of supporting someone, provided you have your spouse’s approval and awareness of the nature and extent of that support, and that you consider the potential for more that was discussed previously. Don't be alone with a person of the opposite sex outside of work, unless you and your spouse agree ahead of time. This includes being alone in a messaging app: texting, FB Messenger, WhatsApp, etc. Romantic relationships usually come out of recreational activities and intimate conversations, so if you're spending time having fun or gaining familiarity with this friend, it can easily lead to something more.[10] It’s also worth being very deliberate about planning business trips with someone of the opposite sex in a way that protects your marriage as well as both of your reputations. It’s Not All About Prevention While it can be helpful to follow a list of “do-not’s,” it is also good to think about things you can and should do for yourself and your marriage. There are a few things you can do to strengthen your marriage: First of all, cultivate a deep friendship with your spouse. Make that relationship your top priority: not just in principle but in practice. This doesn’t mean you need to exclude all other friendships, but this relationship ought to take precedence over all others.[11] You’ll be most protective of, and cultivating towards your most important friendship. Make that person your spouse. Secondly, your closest, most rewarding friendships outside your marriage should be with people of the same sex.[12] These relationships are also healthy for your marriage. If you don’t have any then that is an indicator that this is a necessary growth area for you. Something is out of balance. Thirdly, build shared social networks with your spouse.[13] Try to find people where you can be friends as a couple with another couple. So, the friendship and sharing of life and the companionship that develops exists between you as couples, and the strongest bonds or sense of connection is between the two guys and the two women in this context. Most of us need more friendships, not less. And more connection, not less. We just really want to encourage you to build that first of all with your spouse, then with same-sex friends. Thirdly, to do so carefully, thoughtfully and with boundaries towards members of the opposite sex. References [1] Debra MacLeod, “Why Opposite-Sex Friendships Will Destroy Your Marriage,” 2019,https://www.huffingtonpost....

Why You Might Be Experiencing Pain During Sex (for Husbands)

Wed, 05 Feb 2020 11:00:00 +0000

Four episodes back we addressed the topic of pain during sex for women and that show received a lot of downloads. Today we return to the topic but this time for men. Sexual issues like this can be difficult to figure out and often people just don’t even know who to ask, so they struggle alone. We hope this will be the start of getting help for anyone who is struggling with pain during sex so that you can return to enjoying physical intimacy with your wife. Pain During Sex for Men Often, the cause of pain during sex can by physical, psychological or a mixture of both. Generally, you’ll want to start by addressing this problem with your family doctor to see if there is a medical cause. You may also find help with a referral to a psychiatrist, counselor or sexologist in order to work through the causes and find a solution that works well. If you’re going to talk to your doctor, it helps to go prepared with the information you need. Men can experience pain during erection or ejaculation or post-erection or post-ejaculation.[1] Often, because we feel awkward about the topic, we don’t really think carefully and precisely about the timing of the pain, but do keep this in mind so you can assist your doctor in helping you. Also, sometimes the pain will come with other problems such as erectile dysfunction, though this may be a symptom of another problem rather than the primary cause of the pain. It’s good to note that there are some common lifestyle changes that can help with this issue of pain as well: exercising, eating well, limiting your alcohol consumption and quitting smoking can all help reduce sexual problems for men.[2] Basic Sources of Pain We are going to speak about some more complex causes of pain. But I think it’s worth noting that just the friction of sex can irritate the skin on your penis if your spouse is not sufficiently lubricated. Using a quality lubricant is the solution for this problem. It’s also helpful to note that there’s a connection between sex drive and pain. Low sex drive does not necessarily cause pain, but pain during sex may cause low sex drive. Finally, we’re not going through an extensive list of sexually transmitted infections or diseases but it should be noted that STIs such as herpes or untreated gonorrhea can cause burning, itching, or sores, bumps, or blisters in the genital area (treatment is similar for men and women).[3] Common Causes of Pain During Sex There are a number of other causes of pain during sex, some of which are not as well-known. Delayed Ejaculation Delayed ejaculation is characterized by taking more than 30 minutes to ejaculate during sex, or in some cases, not ejaculating at all. Depending on what’s happening, this can either be caused by pain or result in pain. It’s hard to distinguish cause and effect: there could be a minor physical issue that results in the delayed ejaculation. Or the delayed ejaculation may be the by-product of a medication and then the pain comes from irritation, for example, from friction due to the extended duration of intercourse. If you’re facing this issue, you should consider causes such as anxiety and stress, or medications such as antidepressants or hair loss treatments. There could also be a prostate or urinary tract infection, a hormone imbalance, possible birth defects, or pelvic or spinal nerve damage.[4] You’ll definitely want to start with your doctor on this one. Your doctor can help you figure out the underlying issues and recommend treatment. In the meantime, use plenty of lubricant and it’s also helpful sometimes to just remind yourself to take the focus off achieving orgasm and, instead, really enjoy being with your spouse.[5] Persistent Pelvic Floor Muscle Spasms Sometimes the muscles in the pelvic floor stop working properly. These are muscles that extend from your pubic bone at the front, back to the base of your spine.[6] One problem that can occur is pelvic floor muscle spasms which involve these muscles over contracting.[7] Pelvic spasms will feel like a sharp pinching and pain in the pelvic area. You may also feel pain in your lower abs and constant pain in the perineum (the area between the anus and scrotum) and groin (note: there are other possible causes of pain in this area).[8] Everything from sitting down to engaging in sex can spark pain[9] and these spasms can also lead to inflammation around the nerves in your genital area which can make erection or ejaculation painful.[10] This problem can occur for a number of reasons. Stress can prompt men to unconsciously tighten and clench their pelvic floor muscles. There may also be a urinary tract infection, prostatitis, or bladder infection that triggers and ongoing dysfunction in these pelvic floor muscles.[11] Physiotherapists can diagnose and treat this issue. Certain activities such as cycling with a hard seat that doesn’t fit is not recommended! Physiotherapists may also recommend things like biofeedback to help relax these muscles or a set of exercises called the Kegel exercises to help gain control or recondition these muscles.[12] Another similar issue is trigger points. When there’s pain in the pelvic floor, it may cause some muscles to form tight bands which can restrict blood flow, leading to inflammation around the nerves. This can lead to pain during sex. Treatment is similar to treatment for pelvic floor pain: you start with a physiotherapist but will also want to incorporate techniques that increase blood flow including quitting smoking if you smoke, exercise, weight loss, and so on. Chronic Prostatitis or Chronic Pelvic Pain Syndrome (CP/CPPS) Prostatitis is an inflammation of the prostate gland that causes swelling, pain, or a burning sensation during urination[13] and also during or after intercourse or upon ejaculation.[14] With a prevalence rate of 2-16 % in North American males and 3-14% among Asian and European males, CP/CPPS is a urological condition characterized by pain in the pelvic region, and concomitant sexual and voiding dysfunction.[15] A significant percentage of men with this issue also experience erectile dysfunction and reduced sexual interest. It can be caused by the nervous system being chronically activated and tightening of the pelvic muscles. Worry, anxiety and depression can also be factors in contributing to this issue.[16] Working with a urologist is recommended as they can treat the inflamed prostate gland. Things like taking a short walk or a warm bath before engaging in sex can help as well.[17] Hypersensitivity of the Penis Another potential source of pain is that the penis can become sensitive after you orgasm which can make continued intercourse uncomfortable or painful.[18] You may also find that if you are having very frequent intercourse with your wife, your penis becomes oversensitive. This problem may also be occurring on top of the prostate issues discussed earlier.[19] It is also possible that you may have a skin disorder such as Zoon’s balanitis (inflammation of the head of the penis and foreskin), erosive lichen planus (an inflammatory skin condition marked by an itchy, bumpy rash), lichen sclerosis (a chronic inflammatory skin disease), or penile cancer that is causing pain with intercourse.[20] Again, you’ll want to start with your doctor to determine the cause of the issue. If the issue is one of the skin disorders, your doctor will be able to advise the best treatment, but in some cases, you may just be having too much sex on a given day. If that’s the case, you may want to consider finding other ways to be intimate with your spouse. If it’s not just an issue of too much sex or a skin disorder, you may want to follow some of the recommendations for the prostrate issue. It’s also possible to reduce the sensitivity of the penis through the use of condoms or numbing cream. Additionally, you may want to consider changing sex positions to find one that is more comfortable for you.[21] Tight Foreskin or Deformities of the Penis Some causes of pain are related to the foreskin of the penis. There is a condition called phimosis where the foreskin of the penis is too tight to retract over the head of the penis completely. There’s another condition called paraphimosis where the foreskin is tucked behind the penis and cannot be pulled forward.[22] Both of these can make intercourse more painful for men. The best course of action for these issues is to see the doctor. Surgery may be recommended. It’s also possible that the structure of your penis has been damaged by some condition or disease or even has a congenital deformity.[23]This can certainly result in pain in the penis[24] and again there’s a lot of possible root causes here so you’ll want to see a urologist or at least your family doctor to start with. Priapism There’s another condition called priapism which is a prolonged erection of the penis. Before all the men start to guffaw, this is an actual problem and a non-sexual erection can be quite painful. Sometimes it can be stimulated by intercourse but it’s just not going away because blood cannot leave the penis or because the blood flow is regulated improperly in your body.[25] Men can also experience an erection for more than 4 hours, or one that is unrelated to sexual interest or stimulation. In some cases, men may have an erect but not fully rigid penis shaft. In any of these situations, this condition can be quite painful and unpleasant. As far as causes go, it can be related to sickle cell anemia or caused by medications like Viagra, Cialis and Levitra or even by certain antidepressants or antipsychotics. It’s also more common in individuals who abuse drugs or alcohol. It can result from injury to the spinal cord,...

How Pornography Affects Wives: What Husbands Need to Understand

Wed, 29 Jan 2020 11:00:00 +0000

When your wife finds out you've been using porn, she isn't overreacting and she isn't making it up. Her nervous system is responding to a betrayal wound the same way it would respond to any other relational trauma. This article is for husbands who want to understand what their wife is actually going through, and why her healing depends on more than your apology. We work with this every week in our practice. The hurt you're seeing in her is real, it has a name, and there is a structure to it that you can learn. None of that requires you to defend yourself. It requires you to listen well. Why Your Wife's Reaction Surprises You In our online counseling practice, we help a lot of husbands break a pornography habit. One pattern shows up over and over: most of them are surprised by how devastated their wife is. They expected her to be angry. They didn't expect grief. They didn't expect the trauma symptoms that came weeks or months after discovery, and they didn't expect her to be different in a way that didn't seem to be fading on its own. If that's where you're sitting right now, you're not the first husband to be confused by it. The mismatch between what you thought was happening and what's actually happening for her is part of why this article exists. Anger is the response you braced for. What you're seeing is something else, and once you can name it, you'll be in a much better position to respond to it well. For context, porn use is widespread. A 2018 study in the Journal of Sex Research found that roughly half of men are exposed to pornography before age 13, that nearly all men report using it at least occasionally for masturbation, and that about 46% use it weekly. By contrast, only 16 to 31% of women report regular use.[1] Common doesn't mean harmless, but the prevalence does explain why so many men assume their use isn't a big deal until their wife's reaction shows them otherwise. What Porn Does to How You See Sex One way to think about porn use is as a pacifier. A pacifier soothes something. It quiets a feeling that would otherwise need to be felt. The cost is that whatever the pacifier quiets never gets tended to directly, and over time, the pacifier becomes the only thing that works. For porn, the cost is sharper than that. When you view pornography, you aren't watching neutral content. You are learning about sex. Bodies are unrealistic. Lighting and editing are designed to intensify the experience past what real sex feels like. Your brain adapts to what you keep feeding it, and porn trains the reward system over time. So your sense of what sex should feel like quietly shifts. Real sex with your real wife starts to feel like the watered-down version, which is exactly backward. Your marriage hasn't gotten worse. Your reference point has. Why Casual Porn Use Is Not Harmless The most common defense husbands offer themselves is that a little porn doesn't hurt anyone. The research doesn't support that frame. A nationally representative sample of more than 20,000 married Americans found that those who reported seeing an X-rated movie in the previous year were 12% less likely to report a happy marriage, 25% more likely to have been divorced, and 10% more likely to have had an extramarital affair.[2] A separate survey of divorce attorneys found that 56% of divorce cases involved heightened use of internet pornography by one partner.[3] We don't quote those numbers to shame anyone. We quote them to point out that the gravitational pull is real. Whether the use is occasional or compulsive, it is pulling on the marriage. Most husbands underestimate that pull until they're inside the conversation we're describing here. How Pornography Decreases Intimacy in Marriage The mechanism is quieter than the affair version of betrayal. Secret use, hiding, and guilt slowly withdraw a person emotionally from his partner. She may not be able to name it, but she usually senses it. She feels less wanted, less seen, less safe to lean in. Sexual functioning often takes a hit too, because porn use and attachment patterns interact in ways that pull a couple further apart even when they're still in the same room. By the time discovery happens, the intimacy has usually been thinning for a long time. Betrayal Trauma: What Your Wife Is Actually Experiencing The clinical term for what's happening in your wife's body and brain is betrayal trauma. It is not a metaphor. The discovery of a husband's hidden porn use can produce a trauma response that looks a lot like post-infidelity stress, and many clinicians use trauma-informed tools similar to the ones used for PTSD symptoms.[4] If you want the deeper nervous-system picture, we've written a complete guide to how betrayal trauma impacts the brain and body. The response tends to move through a recognizable arc. Shock and disorientation. The first hours and days after discovery. She may feel numb, dizzy, or strangely calm, followed by waves of crying she can't predict or control. She may forget basic things. She may lose her appetite or eat far more than usual. The man she thought she knew has just become unfamiliar, and her sense of the world being predictable has fractured. In our practice, we consistently see wives describe the same hour-long stretch on the night of discovery: a wave of crying that arrives, leaves, arrives again, and then settles into something colder and more clinical, where she starts asking the kinds of questions that come from a part of her that's already deciding whether the marriage can survive. The shift from grief to interrogation in one night is a near-universal marker of how deep this goes. It is not manipulation. It is her system trying to keep her safe. Intrusive thoughts. Once the initial shock loosens, the questions start. What was he watching. When did he watch it. Was he thinking about it when we were together. These thoughts don't arrive on a schedule. They arrive while she's making dinner or trying to fall asleep. She isn't choosing to dwell on it. Her brain is trying to reassemble a story that suddenly has missing pieces. The somatic load. Sleep disturbance, appetite swings, headaches, chronic fatigue, racing heart, GI distress. Trauma lives in the body, and her body is carrying it. This isn't her being dramatic. This is what a body can look like when it stays on high alert for weeks or months. Identity beliefs. Then come the meanings. I wasn't enough. I wasn't pretty enough. He never really loved me. None of those beliefs are true, but they are extremely sticky in the aftermath of betrayal, because her brain is trying to explain to itself why this happened. The explanations land on her body, and they damage her self-worth in ways that don't undo themselves quickly. Hypervigilance. Finally, her nervous system makes a quiet promise that she'll never be caught off guard again. She watches your phone. She watches your face. She watches the door when you come home late. This is the chapter most husbands find hardest to live with, and it's also the most predictable. Why She Isn't "Just Overreacting" Once you understand betrayal trauma as a nervous-system event rather than a personality response, the behaviors that come next make sense. She starts checking phone bills and digging through browser history. She wants to know your location, often asking the same question five different ways. She seems to need to know things she has no rational reason to ask about. From the outside, that can look like control. From the inside, it's a body that has just learned the worst news of its adult life trying to reduce the chance of being blindsided again. Her detective work isn't paranoia. It's a protective part of her stepping forward because the part of her that trusted you got hurt and can't be in charge right now. In Internal Family Systems language, that protector part is loud because the wound underneath is fresh. This is also where most husbands get stuck, because their first instinct is to defend. The defense almost always lands like another denial of her reality to a nervous system already on alert, which deepens the trauma response and convinces her she still doesn't have the full picture. Of course she would react that way. From her side, every defensive move is another data point that says her perception of reality cannot be trusted, and her perception is the one thing she has left. One more piece worth naming. Many wives ask, "How could he love me and still do this?" The honest answer is that men compartmentalize differently than women do. The part of him that loves her and the part of him that uses porn don't have to talk to each other for him to function. That isn't an excuse, and it isn't permission. It's an explanation for why her question feels like a contradiction to her and doesn't to you. The work of recovery, in part, is breaking down those compartments so the same self that loves her is the self that makes the decision about what to do with arousal. Why the Lying Lands Harder Than the Porn This is the piece most husbands miss completely. We hear it from wives in nearly every session at this stage of the work: it wasn't the porn that broke me, it was finding out how long he'd been hiding it. The porn breaks one specific trust, the trust around fidelity and sexual partnership. The lying breaks something deeper. It breaks her trust in her own perception. She replays the years and realizes she was reading the marriage one way while you were quietly living a different version of it. Every "I love you" she remembers gets re-examined, not because she doubts that you meant it, but because she doesn't know what else she missed while she was busy meaning hers. This is also why minimizing the disclosure makes things worse, not better. When a husband admits to "some" porn use and a wife later finds out it was more, the second discovery hits harder than the first. She now has confirmation that her ability to read you is unreliable,...

When Family Visits Are Traumatic

Wed, 22 Jan 2020 11:00:00 +0000

What do you do when you’re going to see family for the holidays or on a vacation and you know that not everybody is in that healthy place where they’re going to be able to show you, your spouse and kids respect and care? So many of our listeners — if they want to spend time with family — know ahead of time that it’s not likely to go well. How can we prepare and protect ourselves when this is the case? For many people, family visits are a time to look forward to where you enjoy spending time with your family. But for many people, they would have at least some concern about one of their parents or family members making part of the time difficult or uncomfortable. And I know there are other folks where they feel an obligation to honor their parents by visiting them but also know that there are going to be some legitimate hardships during that visit. Signs of a Toxic Relationship Let’s start by just looking at the signs of a toxic relationship. If you are put down a lot or if you experience passive-aggressive behaviors or comments from a family member then that’s evidence of a toxic relationship.[1] For example, they may bring something up out of the blue like “why did you not invite me to that movie you went to?” Or they may tell your wife something that they want you to hear, but not have the courage to confront you directly. Another sign of toxicity is if you find the person consistently attempting to cross boundaries that you have set. When this happens, you may withdraw or feel anxious or uncomfortable but perhaps not really recognizing why. If you notice this reaction in yourself, it may be because one of your boundaries has been crossed.[2] We’ll talk more about setting boundaries later on, but the reality is that many people, despite having difficult family members, feel that they should continue to make visits or spend time with difficult, sarcastic, narcissistic, ill-mannered, or toxic family members. What’s the best way to handle that reality? Ways to Handle Difficult Family Visits 1. Prepare Beforehand If you know you're going to a family gathering and you have a difficult relationship with one or more family members, practice self-care before going on the visit. Sleep and good nutrition can help you feel good, and help you be in a positive frame of mind before meeting family members.[3] It’s also a good idea to get on the same page with your spouse. If there are predictable patterns of behavior that you’ll be facing, what do you want to ignore or tolerate, and what are behaviors that one or both of you would consider severe enough to confront? What are your shared boundaries that you both agree to? What are your absolute no-zones? The question here is how can you face this as a team? And support and maintain connection with one another in the face of these challenges? 2. Do What You Can to Work With the Relationship It doesn’t hurt to remind ourselves that some toxic relationships can become healthy. Sometimes people just go through a phase or even just slip into a way of relating to us that isn’t really a true reflection of their deeper values. If this is the case, accountability may be prudent. You might decide that you want to gently call them out if they are being passive-aggressive and let them know how this kind of behavior is hurtful to you. At the same time, you may wish to acknowledge their feelings, saying things like “I didn’t know you were upset about that.”[4] It’s good to remember that, typically, remaining silent or else trash-talking the person to your spouse doesn’t really help them to grow. And it may be worth confronting some of these behaviors to see if the person is willing and able to respond. If you find that your spouse does not respond, then it may be time to set some healthy boundaries until the person is in a place where they can relate to you with some basic elements of respect and care. Just be sure to be thoughtful and not judgmental. It’s easy to write a family member off as toxic. Sometimes it’s just a bad recipe: you and them and the circumstances you each find yourselves in. Shifting that recipe somehow may be all that’s required in order to create a more healthy pattern of interacting.[5] 3. Structure the Length of the Visit Sometimes it just helps to figure out how long to make your visits with the other party. You may come to realize that a few hours is usually fine — see if you can split your interactions into blocks of time where you know you’re likely to at least have an OK time together. If you travel from a distance for the visit — can you notice if staying for 3-4 days is fine, or maybe a week is fine but after that things start to go sideways? Paying attention to the duration of the visit may help you avoid conflict between you and family members. If your family member is quite a distance away then you may not have as much control, though you can see if you can break up the visit with a side-trip somewhere. This may require some compromise but do try to stay in charge of the length of visits and remember that longer visits are not necessarily better.[6] 4. Take Breaks Another option is to take breaks as you need them. This could be anything from leaving the house for a brisk walk to doing what we suggested earlier: perhaps even taking a three-day mini side trip with your spouse during your 10-day visit with your parents.[7] Also, you may be able to adjust the accommodations so you have some personal space or a safe area to retreat to. If it would be helpful, consider staying in a hotel or to renting a car so that you have some options available to you in order to be able to take break when you need to.[8] Debrief Afterward After the family visit make sure you debrief with your spouse. If you ended up having a difficult conversation or experienced something hurtful, be sure to talk to your spouse about what happened.[9] It’s important as you do this that your spouse doesn’t just get angry and retaliate, but acts as a support and confidant and just validates your experience. Remember: you probably don’t need a solution as much as you need to have a companion. It is helpful to have someone who hears and understands and will walk with you through the reality of traumatic family visits. Keep Perspective It’s also helpful to just work on keeping things in perspective. A family member’s one harsh comment can really color your entire perspective of that person. But try to keep the bigger picture in mind. Is that all of who that person is or just a part? Are all your relationships with your family members toxic or is it just one or two or three people?[10] Build Your Support Network It’s also helpful to build a support network around you. Dr. Paul Jenkins (2018) states that "positive, inspiring, uplifting relationships can be the antidote for the toxic ones." That said, if you've been exposed to a toxic relationship for a long time and are experiencing long-term issues because of it, therapy can also be helpful.[11] Positivity training can also help you condition your mind to see things differently.[12] If you have experienced trauma, it is also helpful to do trauma therapy using techniques like EMDR, brain spotting, or somatic experiencing. It is possible to heal from traumatic family events with good therapy. Forming close relationships with other healthy family members can also be a good way to feel supported. For example, having close and supportive relationships with siblings can be a buffer against trauma experienced in a relationship with a parent or other family member. Similarly, if you go to family gatherings with your spouse, they can be a source of strength and support to you.[13] When to Drop the Ax In extreme cases, you may need to set a boundary that looks like a cut-off. Unfortunately, this kind of boundary setting is often misused. It’s important not to do this unnecessarily, but only if the situation really requires it. If your safety or your children's safety is ever at risk, setting boundaries may mean not seeing that person, even if they are a family member. Just because someone is a family member, does not mean that you have to see them over a holiday if it is not safe to do so.[14] You and your children’s safety trumps their need to have you spend time with them because you are a family. In other words, the people in the family are more important than the institution of the family. Safety comes first. Set Appropriate Boundaries In most relationships, boundaries do not have to mean a complete cut-off, but it is still important to set boundaries to ensure your own mental health and emotional safety. It's important for you to decide what's OK and what's not ok, and what positions you will put yourself into and what positions you will choose to avoid.[15] You can set the limits. No one else will do it for you. Setting boundaries appropriately and assertively is a good way to protect yourself from toxic relationships.[16] You don't have to pretend a behavior is OK if someone is crossing a boundary that you have set. When you pretend it’s OK, you welcome further boundary violations. And being assertive about your boundary is fine: you don’t need to be aggressive nor should you be perceived as aggressive. Boundaries are just way of stating the terms on which you’re happy to have a loving, respectful relationship with someone else. The idea behind boundaries certainly isn't to avoid all people, but rather to build good, enriching, and enhancing relationships.[17] Note from BCACC: As podcasts can be subscribed to and accessed all over the world, psycho-educational podcasts should include a disclaimer to the effect that they are a self-help tool and do not replace individual counse

Husband Takes Me for Granted: Why It Happens and What to Do

Wed, 15 Jan 2020 11:00:00 +0000

If you find yourself thinking, "my husband takes me for granted," you are not being dramatic or ungrateful. You are naming something real. The noticing itself matters, and it is usually the first honest signal that something in the relationship needs attention. When a wife feels taken for granted, she is usually describing a slow accumulation: the effort she puts in has stopped being seen, the care she offers has become background noise, and the thank-yous have quietly disappeared. It is rarely one cruel moment. It is the drip of invisibility over months or years. Here is the short answer we give to women who ask us about this in our counseling office. Feeling taken for granted in marriage is almost always about relational patterns, not about who your husband is as a person. It usually shows up when two things overlap: a slow drift in the marriage where attention and appreciation have faded, and a set of patterns in how you relate (often people-pleasing or codependency) that make it easier for that drift to go unchecked. Both pieces need care, and both can change. This article is our attempt to help you make sense of what is happening and to point toward a way forward that respects both your experience and the work a real marriage actually takes. The Slow Drift Toward Being Taken for Granted Most marriages do not start out in this place. In the early years, appreciation is easy. You notice each other. You say thank you for small things. Affection is offered without being prompted. Then life gets busier. Kids arrive. Jobs intensify. Parents age. Bills compete for attention. And somewhere in there, the appreciation habit quietly dies. Psychologists call this habituation: the brain stops registering what is familiar and predictable. Your husband is not choosing to stop noticing you. His nervous system has simply filed your presence under "constant," and constants are what the brain tunes out. This is not an excuse. It is a diagnosis of drift. Drift is the default in any long relationship that is not being actively tended. The good news is that what drifted can be reoriented, and the first step is naming it honestly instead of waiting for your husband to wake up on his own. Marriage Roles and Expectations Part of what makes being taken for granted so painful is that most of us carried a set of expectations into marriage that we never fully examined. We absorbed them from our families of origin, from the culture, from what our friends' marriages looked like, from the stories we watched growing up. Those expectations tell us what a good wife does, what a good husband does, and what love should look like on an ordinary Tuesday. When the real marriage stops matching the expected marriage, the gap shows up as a feeling. Sometimes the feeling is anger. Sometimes it is sadness. Often, for the wives we sit with, it is the quiet ache of being invisible to the person who was supposed to see her most clearly. Before you can do much about the pattern, it helps to get curious about the expectations. What did you think marriage would feel like? Where did that picture come from? Is there space in it for both of you to be tired, imperfect, and still committed? Naming the expectation does not mean lowering the bar. It means giving yourself a chance to see the actual relationship, not the imagined one. The People-Pleasing Pattern Here is where things get more personal. For many of the women we work with, feeling taken for granted is tangled up with a lifelong habit of people-pleasing. People-pleasing usually has roots. It often starts in childhood, in a family where love felt conditional on being helpful, quiet, agreeable, or low-maintenance. A child in that environment learns early that the safest way to stay connected is to anticipate what other people need and provide it before being asked. That child grows up, gets married, and brings the same operating system into her marriage. On the outside, it looks like generosity. On the inside, it feels like a quiet contract: "If I keep giving, I will be loved and valued." The problem is that your husband never signed that contract. He may not even know it exists. So he receives the giving as normal, not as a love deposit he owes interest on. Over time, the giving accumulates, the thank-yous do not, and resentment quietly builds. People-pleasing is not a character flaw. It is an adaptation that worked for a long time and eventually stopped working. Recognizing it is the beginning of being able to choose something different. The Codependency Pattern Some women find that what started as people-pleasing has slid into something heavier: codependency. Codependency is what happens when your sense of worth becomes dependent on managing, caretaking, or rescuing the people around you. The marriage stops being a partnership between two whole people and starts being a system in which your wellbeing rides on how your husband is doing, how he is treating you, and whether he is meeting your unspoken needs. Author Darlene Lancer offers a four-step path out of codependency that we often reference with clients. We find it clear, practical, and kind. Abstinence. This is the deliberate choice to step back from the caretaking, rescuing, and controlling behaviors that have become automatic. Abstinence is not coldness. It is making room for yourself by stopping the behaviors that have been crowding you out of your own life. Awareness. Once you stop moving at the old pace, feelings surface. Awareness is letting yourself notice what is actually there: grief, anger, exhaustion, longing. This is the part most of us would rather skip. It is also the part that opens the door. Acceptance. Acceptance is not approval and it is not resignation. It is the honest acknowledgment that this is what is, that you did not cause all of it, and that you cannot control your husband into becoming someone who naturally notices you. Acceptance is where you finally get to put down what was never yours to carry. Action. Action is what becomes possible once the first three are in place. It is asking for what you need clearly. It is setting boundaries you are willing to follow through on. It is reconnecting with the parts of yourself that got shelved somewhere along the way. Action without the first three steps usually collapses. Action grounded in the first three has a chance to stick. A Note on Your Spouse's Role We want to be honest about something. Nothing in this article takes your husband off the hook. If he has slipped into treating you like the furniture, that is real and it matters. Part of a healthy marriage is both spouses taking responsibility for noticing each other, speaking appreciation out loud, and doing the small acts that keep the relationship alive. At the same time, you cannot change him by waiting. You can only change your own patterns and then invite him into a different kind of conversation from that new place. For many couples, that invitation is the thing that finally moves the marriage. For some, it reveals that deeper work is needed, and that is information worth having. If you are not sure where your marriage sits on that spectrum, our complete guide to counseling for husband and wife walks through what healthy repair can look like when both partners are willing to engage. Frequently Asked Questions Why does my husband take me for granted? In most marriages, being taken for granted is the product of relational drift rather than a decision your husband made. The brain tunes out what is familiar and predictable, so the care you offer stops registering as remarkable. Layered on top of that, patterns like people-pleasing or codependency can make it harder for either of you to notice and correct the drift. The combination is what produces the feeling of being invisible in your own marriage. What should I do when my spouse takes me for granted? Start with yourself before you start with him. Notice the pattern honestly, name it out loud to yourself, and get curious about the expectations and habits that have been keeping it in place. From there, you can begin to speak clearly about what you need instead of hoping he will guess. Many women find that working with a counselor helps them untangle their own patterns before having the hard conversation with their husband, and that usually makes the conversation more productive when it happens. Is feeling taken for granted a sign of codependency? Not always. Sometimes it is a signal that the marriage has drifted and needs intentional repair on both sides. But if you notice that your sense of worth rides almost entirely on how your husband is treating you, that you feel responsible for managing his moods, or that you have a long history of giving more than you receive in most of your relationships, codependency may be part of the picture. A trained counselor can help you sort out which parts are drift, which parts are pattern, and what to do with each. Can couples counseling help when one partner feels taken for granted? Yes, and in our experience it often does. Couples counseling gives both partners a structured space to say things that have been hard to say at home, to be heard without the conversation spiraling, and to practice new ways of noticing each other. It works best when both spouses are willing to show up and engage honestly. If your husband is not ready to come in yet, individual counseling is still a meaningful place to start. Moving Forward If you have read this far, you already know something important. The feeling of being taken for granted is information, not a life sentence. It is telling you that something in the marriage has drifted and that something in your own relational patterns may be due for attention. Both of those are workable. We would be honored to walk with you on that work. Our couples counseling practice exists for moments exactly like this one, where a wife is ready to stop waiting to be noticed

Why You May Be Experiencing Pain During Sex (for Wives)

Wed, 08 Jan 2020 11:00:00 +0000

If you experience pain during sex, you are certainly not alone. Pain during sex is called dyspareunia, and research shows that about 7% of women experience pain it.[1] Of those 7%, about one-quarter of them reported that the pain had been occurring frequently or every time they had intercourse over at least 6 months. Today, we’d like to look at some of the most common causes so that if you’re experiencing dyspareunia you maybe have a starting point to know how to explore and hopefully resolve this challenge. Pain during sexual intercourse is a relatively common issue. Of course, the lifetime prevalence is going to be higher, and I would expect that every person is likely to have at least some discomfort if not some pain during the course of their sexual interactions with their spouse over the lifetime of their marriage. This can be tough to talk about for some people, so we hope that today’s show serves as a bit of an icebreaker and introduction to the subject. We’re not sexologists, sex therapists or medical professionals. I am a marriage counselor so we do address sexual issues, but just be reminded that if you are experiencing pain your wisest course of action is first of all to talk to your doctor or gynaecologist, and possibly to book an appointment with a sex therapist. There are more reasons for pain during sex than what we will cover, for example, we are not going to address urinary tract infections or sexually transmitted infections. But anxiety and menopause are two major causes so we’ll start with them. Sexual Anxiety Sexual anxiety (or sexual performance anxiety) is something that affects men and women of all ages, regardless of how much experience they have had with sexual intercourse. There are a variety of possibilities here. A newly married wife may be too self-conscious to tell her husband what she does not enjoy: this could lead to some trepidation or anxiety about having sex which could result in pain during sex.[2] In some cases, the anxiety may be short-lived and go away on its own. In other cases, it may be something that occurs on a regular basis and interferes with a healthy sex life.[3] According to sex educator Amy Jo Goddard (n.d.), two things are generally the root cause of sexual performance anxiety. She states, "this response is conditioned by the way in which we were brought up to think about certain aspects of sex and our own bodies, and by social expectations that impact our relationship with our own sexuality."[4] This means that messages from your family of origin, your church, or from locker-room discussions or friends at school — all those sources could potentially contribute to anxiety during sex. Other times it may simply be a lack of sex education: perhaps not that you don’t understand how sex works, but that you’re just not prepared for all the realities of sexual encounters with your husband. Everyone functions differently and has different needs when it comes to sex, and not being well educated can lead you to feel unsure about the techniques of giving, achieving or receiving pleasure. Additionally, you may experience fear because of myths concerning pregnancy, or myths about how your body is supposed to react during sex, and these beliefs can be very anxiety-inducing.[5] Of course, anxiety impacts arousal, which impacts your body’s ability to prepare itself for penetration and intercourse. It’s also important to note that the anxiety doesn’t have to be sexual performance anxiety. It could be anxiety about anything: how you’re going to pay the bills, your child’s health, the family get-together that’s coming up, whatever. General anxiety can also impact your sexual experience, potentially resulting in discomfort or pain. What to do About Anxiety Obviously, with such a wide variety of potential sources for anxiety it is challenging to cover all the possible solutions. If your anxiety is more generalized then taking care of that anxiety may just as easily end up taking care of the pain during sex as well. But let’s look at sexual anxiety specifically. There are a few things that you can do to reduce your anxiety. Check is your own expectations of yourself. Don’t expect yourself to be a perfect romantic partner right away (if you are recently married) or even all the time (if you’ve been married a while). It takes time and patience as well as a lot of trial and error to become a proficient lover. It helps if you can learn to talk openly and honestly with your husband if there are certain things you don’t like.[6] Learning to express your wants and needs is important. If you keep things bottled up, especially fears, they will likely increase your anxiety and make sex more difficult or painful. If you’re worried about taking too long to orgasm, struggling to stay aroused, or just not being aroused in the first place, those are things that you will need to find ways to talk about and work through collaboratively, preferably without either party feeling blamed or taking the problem personally. How can you look at this as a problem to solve together? How can you frame this challenge into something that gets solved between you, real-time, in the context of intimate connection and tender, loving care? It’s important to be kind to yourself as well as respectful to your spouse during this process. If you know there is a deeper psychological reason behind the pain, it’s worth facing that issue with your spouse and seeing a therapist if it persists. If you always have pain during intercourse, it can create a difficult cycle to break out of because you may involuntarily tighten your muscles in anticipation of the pain, and that tightening causes further pain.[7] One basic approach to try here is to reassure yourself that your spouse wants to be with you, that he welcomes your presence and your sexual needs, and that he wants you to be at ease and comfortable with him. What you’re doing is really trying to lower the sense of demand or pressure and move yourself to a place of openness and curiosity. Menopause and Pain Menopause may involve falling hormone levels, which can have a variety of effects. You may be less interested in sex than your husband and that may make sexual encounters tense and stressful which could easily lead to pain. There can also be a physical shift towards vaginal dryness, which leads to pain during intercourse.[8] Dwindling estrogen due to menopause is the number one reason for pain during sex at midlife and beyond. Hormone shifts make the tissues in your vagina to become thinner and dryer. That leads to physical friction during sex; your vagina may also become less stretchy so things may feel tighter during intercourse.[9] There are a number of ways to compensate for the effects of menopause in order to reduce pain during sex. The first thing to know is that you can go to your doctor for a prescription of estrogen: this may help make intercourse less painful and comes in three forms: a cream, a tablet or a ring.[10] For some women, simply using a good water-based lubricant during sex may help with a lack of lubrication, especially if dryness is the issue more than soreness. You can also use a vaginal moisturizer which is something that you would apply regularly, not just during sex. There are both over the counter and prescription options for moisturizers. Putting more emphasis on foreplay may help: being more aroused before penetration means you will be more lubricated. Give yourself more time to enjoy caressing, perhaps oral sex, or different positions. As well, having sex more often will lead to increased blood flow to your sexual organs, which may help with lubrication, which will make intercourse less painful. Vaginismus Can Be Painful Next is a common condition called vaginismus. This involves an involuntary spasm in the vaginal muscles that comes from a tightening of the pelvic floor muscles.[11] Vaginismus sometimes is caused by anxiety about having sex or a fear of being hurt during sex. If you have this condition you may also notice pain inserting a tampon. In terms of what to do about vaginismus, doing counseling related to the source of fear or anxiety related to sex or penetration can help with this. There are also a set of exercises called Kegel exercises that can help you learn to relax the muscles surrounding your vagina. In covering anxiety and menopause and vaginismus, we’ve dealt with some of the most common sources, but let’s just run through some more potential sources of pain in case some of our listeners are experiencing these as well. Uterine Fibroids Uterine Fibroids are benign lumps that grow on the uterus. Symptoms may also include heavy periods, cramping and an urge to urinate as well as painful sex. Your best option here is to see your doctor. Treatment options may include embolization (a minimally invasive surgical technique and hormone therapy or a hysterectomy (removal of the uterus).[12] Endometriosis This is a difficult condition where the tissue that lines your uterus can grow elsewhere within or even outside of your pelvis, causing pain in your stomach, pelvis and back during sex.[13] You definitely want to see the doctor if you are experiencing deeper pain, not just pain at penetration so your doctor can diagnose this and recommend treatments.[14] Pelvic Inflammatory Disease With PID, the tissues deep inside become badly inflamed and the pressure of intercourse can cause deep pain. Again, you’ll want to see a doctor here for appropriate treatments.[15] Vaginal Infections This is possibly one of the simpler causes: you may have a yeast infection which causes pain and itching in the vaginal area. This can be treated with an over the counter product,...

Betrayed By Your Wife? 5 Things You Need to Do

Wed, 01 Jan 2020 17:08:37 +0000

Back in episode 209, we did a show on the five things you need to know if you’ve been betrayed by your husband. Today we want to look at the experience of a husband who has been betrayed. Men and women both experience betrayal, but have different ways of responding to it. Betrayal trauma is the result of a shocking disclosure of a relational breach, whether that’s unfaithfulness or some other form of broken trust or loss of confidence in your marriage. These breaches can come from things like spousal neglect, cheating or various forms of infidelity, dishonesty, deception, betrayal, rejection, or other circumstances that cause you to stop trusting your spouse.[1] Men Process Betrayal Trauma Differently Than Women Unfortunately, there is much less research on men dealing with betrayal trauma than on women. Men definitely experience pain and have to go through a process of healing after they are betrayed, but they tend to process it differently than women. According to Douglas Weiss (2019), a psychologist who sees both women and men dealing with betrayal trauma, men tend to compartmentalize more than women and they tend to block out painful experiences such as betrayal.[2] Research shows that men tend to go in one of two directions when dealing with infidelity: either they divorce their spouse or they give them one more chance.[3] Women are actually more likely to experience symptoms of trauma and PTSD after betrayal, whereas men don’t end up with the same PTSD symptoms. Keep in mind that this is a general statement. There are men who do experience trauma and PTSD symptoms after betrayal. They also should look for professional help, grieve what has happened, and deal with the hurt, anger and betrayal that they’ve endured.[4] Betrayal can Have Lasting Effects Just because you have not developed symptoms of PTSD, this does not necessarily mean you are free and clear of any lasting effects. Even without adverse ongoing symptoms, you still have to take time to process the hurt, anger and betrayal. You have to grieve the loss of an unadulterated marriage and other effects of what has happened. There are some feelings that betrayed men experience that are common to both genders. For example, shame. It could be shame of believing that others will see them as sexually incompetent, thus prompting their spouse to go outside the marriage. It could also be believing that they are relationally or emotionally inadequate, again prompting the spouse to seek to meet their needs outside the marriage. However, where other women will typically rally around one of their own when betrayed, a man in the same situation may find himself with friends who don’t know how to support him in this very vulnerable and emotionally raw stage after he discloses the affair to them. Finally, it’s always helpful to remember that everyone processes betrayal differently. And every kind of betrayal is different. For example, a financial betrayal (e.g., a hidden gambling loss) will prompt a very different reaction than the discovery of an affair. One thing both genders need to do is to consider, process and express the emotions generated by the betrayal. If you have friends, a mentor, or someone in your support network who can be there with you as you do this work, that is a huge help. It’s also a good idea to reach out to your therapist for counseling. If you haven’t worked with a therapist before we have a number of our team members at OnlyYouForever who work with betrayal situations in marriage too. 5 Ways To Heal From Betrayal We’d like to give you the five things you can do to help you recover from a betrayal. 1. Give Yourself Time It’s important to understand that there is no quick fix to a situation like this. Recovery from betrayal is a painful process. It takes time to heal. It is totally normal during this time to feel anger and distress. It’s normal to be fine one moment and ambushed by emotions the next. It’s all part of the process of healing. Betrayed husbands may feel tempted to act out in a revenge fling after finding out their wife has had an affair, but that does not help the marriage heal. Typically, you just end up hurting each other worse through a reaction like this and it does nothing to help your healing process.[5] Sometimes these revenge affairs are just an attempt to fill the hole in your own heart or an attempt to replace the loss you feel. Even if the betrayal has left you alone, being alone for a while is not necessarily a bad thing.[6] It will take several weeks before things are not totally raw. It will take several months to return to a fairly normal state of being. And it may take a few years to fully heal from betrayal, especially if it was traumatic. To be honest, some spouses report not being able to fully heal from their spouse’s betrayal even with enough time.[7] That said, if you are motivated to heal and you can find the right kind of help to walk with you through that healing journey, there is definitely hope that you can heal with time. 2. View It As a Wake-up Call This is challenging — but, ask yourself if there is a way you can see this betrayal as a wake-up call? A way to learn and discover things about yourself and about marriage so that you can grow. In a marriage, there are always times when one or both spouses’ emotional needs are not being fulfilled. This is especially true if you have had communication problems with one another. So as you work on regaining trust, try to be aware of the ways in which you perhaps have not been communicating your own needs and desires to your spouse. A good couples’ therapist is very helpful: ultimately both of you will have to take some responsibility for the problems in the relationship that led up to the affair, even though your wife was the only one who was unfaithful. This is about taking charge of and accepting responsibility for the future.[8] Seeing the betrayal as a wake-up call is also a helpful perspective to adopt because it is empowering. If you are just blaming everything on your wife, and staking your future on her making all of the changes, then you are adopting a disempowered position. Yes, she does need to make changes and she does need to demonstrate reliable behavior over time so that trust can be rebuilt, but you can also be part of the change process in order to create a new, safer, thriving and passionate relationship. 3. Allow Yourself to Grieve For men especially: we are not good at grieving. But going through a betrayal is a lot like bereavement. We talked earlier about some of the losses related to betrayal. Those things are in the past and cannot be recovered. Grief is a process that requires time.[9] It cannot be rushed and it should not be bypassed or it will likely show up in your marriage as anger later on, or even show up in your health in the form of mental health issues or even physiological problems. 4. Don’t Assume Moral Superiority Taking the moral high ground in a situation like can be very tempting: being betrayed puts you into the place of a victim. Moral superiority appears to restore power and offers an outlet for anger. Unfortunately, it will not help you heal. It will increase your spouse’s shame and that will not help her to heal or to do what she needs to do in order to avoid this problem in the future. On the flip side, blaming yourself is not productive either. While we do encourage you to face your part in contributing to a marriage where this became a possibility, it was still your wife’s choice to go outside of the vows she made to you. You don’t need to compromise your own integrity, the person you are, or the person you believe you can be.[10] Ideally, what you want to do is to move on from the experience and commit yourselves to restoring your marriage rather than ruminating on the betrayal. 5. Focus on The Good Blame and guilt are destructive in a relationship. There’ll be a period where that is at the forefront, but if you maintain that and it becomes resentment you will have a hard time sustaining your marriage (if that is what you hope to do).[11] There has to be a process of acknowledging all the hurt, doing the hard work of forgiveness, working on yourself to understand how you’ve been impacted, and then restoring the marriage. Throughout this, focusing on the positive can be helpful. This is a time, as you begin to heal, to strengthen yourself. Look for things at work or in your recreation time where you can be successful and boost your self-confidence.[12] Ground yourself back in things that matter to you: your faith community is a good one to consider. Practice gratitude. If you choose to rebuild your marriage, while the betrayal will remain as a significant event, don’t allow it to become what defines your interactions and your relationship with your wife for the remainder of your marriage. Note From BCACC: As podcasts can be subscribed to and accessed all over the world, psycho-educational podcasts should include a disclaimer to the effect that they are a self-help tool and do not replace individual counselling or represent an attempt to solicit clients from jurisdictions where the RCC does not have the legal ability to practice. Further, they are not intended for those experiencing severe symptoms such as suicidal thoughts, for which emergency help should be sought. References [1]“Recovery From Partner Betrayal Trauma,” n.d., https://partnerbetrayaltrauma.org/.[2]Doug Weiss, Do Men Get Partner Betrayal Trauma Too? What’s The Difference? (Question Answered), n.d., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nussTjkgchY.[3]Weiss.[4]Weiss.[5]Linda Blair, “I Can’t Stop Thinking about My Wife’s Affair,” 2008, https://www.theguardian....

Why Physical Touch Matters in Marriage (and How to Rebuild It)

Wed, 18 Dec 2019 11:00:00 +0000

Picture an ordinary Tuesday. Your wife is at the stove, and you walk past, resting your hand briefly between her shoulder blades. Three seconds. No words. That small piece of contact is doing more for your marriage than most couples realize. Physical touch is one of the first senses we develop, and it never stops being a primary channel of intimacy in adult love. It is also the channel that erodes most quickly when life gets busy, when children arrive, when stress builds, or when the relationship has been wounded. Couples often arrive convinced they have grown apart, when what has actually happened is that the small, daily touches have quietly disappeared. Fortunately, this channel can be rebuilt, and the research gives us a clear path back. Why Touch Matters More Than Words Social touch is essential to normal human development and to the formation of attachment bonds in adult relationships. Most of the research literature on touch begins with the mother-infant relationship, where it is well established that physical contact regulates the infant's nervous system and forms the foundation of secure attachment.[1] That same regulating function does not stop at childhood. In adult marriage, touch carries information that words cannot. A hand on the back, a forehead resting against your partner's, a long hug at the door before you leave for work: these communicate "I see you, I am with you, you are safe with me" faster and more reliably than the same words spoken aloud. We sometimes see couples who pour effort into talking and still feel disconnected. Often the missing piece is not more conversation. It is the steady stream of small physical contact that signals safety and presence to each other's nervous systems before either of you has said a word. What Counts as Affectionate Touch The research literature uses a careful definition. Romantic physical affection is "any touch intended to arouse feelings of love in the giver and/or the recipient."[2] The word "arouse" can be misleading here. Loving touch can be either non-sexual or sexual, and both matter. Researchers add a useful clarifier: ideally, the touch fits the setting, does not get in the way of what your partner is doing, and is not aimed at immediate sexual gratification.[3] In plain language, that breaks down to three things. Touch should be appropriate to where you are. Most couples understand intuitively that sexual touch belongs in private. Affectionate non-sexual touch can happen anywhere, but the kind of touch and the level of intensity should match the setting. Touch should not interfere with what your spouse is doing. It should never restrain or control. Holding your partner's hand while they are trying to chop vegetables, or putting an arm around them while they need both hands on the steering wheel in a snowstorm, can feel intrusive even when the intent is warm. Affection can wait the thirty seconds it takes for them to finish. Touch should not be exclusively a runway to sex. There is a place for sexual touch in a healthy marriage, and there is a place for touching your spouse in a way that signals openness to sexual initiation. But if every touch is a sexual touch, your spouse will start to feel objectified instead of loved. The non-sexual touches matter precisely because they are not loaded. How Touch Calms the Nervous System This is where the nervous system gives us a practical clinical frame. Affectionate touch activates the parasympathetic nervous system. That is the body's calm-down system, the one that slows your heart rate, lowers your blood pressure, and signals to your brain that there is no threat in the room. Recent research highlights the role of the vagus nerve, which acts somewhat like a highway between the head and the heart. Activities that stimulate the vagus nerve include touch, slow synchronized breathing, and placing a hand over your partner's heart. These are some of the simplest practices any couple can try, and they calm the body before either partner has found the right words. Across many couples, this also explains a counterintuitive observation. Sometimes the conversation does not need to happen first. The regulation needs to happen first. Sue Johnson, the founder of Emotionally Focused Therapy, uses the phrase "hold me tight" precisely because the embrace itself does the regulating, long before the right words show up. Many of the couples we work with discover that twenty seconds of contact at the door, before either of them tries to talk, changes the entire conversation that follows. If you want a deeper picture of how this co-regulation works at the nervous system level, see the 5 pillars of attachment. This is also why so many couples drift into unintended distance. When two people stop touching, they each lose a daily, wordless source of co-regulation. Small disagreements feel bigger. Neutral expressions get read as criticism. The world feels less safe with this person than it used to. The fix is not always more talking. Sometimes it is simply choosing to touch each other again. The Health and Bonding Benefits Research Confirms Once you understand the nervous system mechanism, the research findings line up cleanly. Affectionate touch in marriage is linked to measurable health benefits. Studies have found positive effects on cardiovascular health, neuroendocrine markers, and immune function in connection with various forms of partner touch, including holding hands, neck and shoulder massages, kissing, and physical intimacy.[4] One particularly clean study looked at what researchers called "warm partner contact," defined as positive, relationship-focused interaction (talking about a topic that enhanced closeness, watching a short romantic video) while maintaining physical contact such as holding hands for ten minutes, followed by a full ventral hug lasting twenty seconds. Compared to a group without warm contact, the touch group showed lower systolic blood pressure, lower diastolic blood pressure, and lower heart rate responses to laboratory stress tasks afterward.[5] What that means in practice: a hug before a hard day at work is not merely sentimental. It is doing measurable work in your spouse's body. Touch also reshapes how threatening the world feels. In a 2006 brain imaging study, women received a small electrical shock in three conditions: alone, holding a stranger's hand, and holding their husband's hand. Holding any hand reduced the brain's threat response. But for women in happy marriages, holding their husband's hand quieted threat-responsive regions of the brain even more.[6] The more secure the marriage, the more your partner's hand functions as a buffer against the world. A separate study on non-sexual cuddling between partners (full-body, intimate, but not sexual) found that participants reported feeling protective, nurtured, peaceful, and very positive afterward. When asked what cuddling meant to them, themes like love, intimacy, closeness, and comfort came up far more than sexual themes did.[7] Cuddling is its own thing. It is not foreplay. It is connection. This kind of contact also releases oxytocin, the same hormone released during sexual orgasm and during breastfeeding, which produces a calming, bonded sensation. At the same time, regular physical affection lowers cortisol, the body's primary stress hormone.[8] Daily small touches, then, are doing two things at once. They are turning down stress and turning up connection. Touch Is a Love Language Gary Chapman names physical touch as one of the five love languages.[9] If physical touch is your love language or your spouse's, then the daily touches we have been describing are not optional flavor. They are the primary way love registers as love. Some husbands hear "physical touch" and immediately think of sex. Sex is one dialect of this love language, but it is only one. Holding hands, brief kisses, hugging, back rubs, an arm around the shoulder, a hand resting on the small of the back as you pour your wife a cup of coffee: these are full sentences in this language, not preliminaries. Some forms of touch require your full attention. A foot rub, a back massage, sexual foreplay. Other forms only require a moment and can layer on top of whatever else you are doing. Both kinds count. The longer ones build memory. The shorter ones keep the channel open. You can also use touch to soften an experience that would otherwise feel mundane or stressful. A kiss before you both get into the car for a road trip. A hug before the grocery store. A hand resting on your spouse's back while you wait in line for something neither of you wanted to do. These small acts redirect the emotional tone of an ordinary moment. If you did not grow up in a touchy family, you can still learn this language. It can begin with a pat on the back, or your hand resting on your spouse's leg as you drive or watch something together. It is allowed to feel a little awkward at first. The body learns. When Touch Has Become Loaded: Rebuilding After Trauma or Long Distance For some couples, touch is not neutral. It is loaded. If you have a history of touch deprivation, an abusive past relationship, sexual trauma, or a betrayal in your current marriage, the same touch that calms one nervous system can put another into alarm. This is one of the situations where Therapevo's clients most often need help, and it is also the situation where well-meaning advice about "just hold each other more" can do real damage. The work here is not to push through. It is to rebuild slowly, with the body included. Stay present. When safe touch happens, let yourself notice that this touch, right now, is not the touch you were hurt by. The hand on your back belongs to someone you have chosen to be with, in a present where you are not being violated. That distinction has to be felt, not only thought. ...

How Retirement Affects Marriage

Wed, 11 Dec 2019 11:00:47 +0000

Transitioning from full-time employment into retirement is naturally going to impact both your life and your marriage. Retirement comes with lots of changes, and there are ups and downs to the process. Whether you have parents going through this, you’re coming up to retirement, or you have recently retired, there’s lots to learn about how to handle the changes that come with moving into retirement since it’s a brand-new stage of life. Research shows that there are both positives and negatives that can come as a result of retirement. Certainly, in North American culture retirement is idealized and celebrated as something to look forward to at the end of your career, but many couples also experience some disappointment when it turns out to be not as great as they had hoped. Marital Satisfaction for Couples at Different Life Stages One study looked at positive interactions between couples of different ages. The study showed that younger couples had the most positive interactions: good healthy, positive day to day moments. Middle age couples (40’s) had the least. And older couples (about 65 and over…the retirement group) had an intermediate amount of positive interactions. But the study also found that negative attitudes decreased with age. It’s normal for couples to go through tough stages of becoming parents, establishing their careers, getting mortgages paid off: this requires adjustments across the lifespan. It is reasonable to expect that going into retirement is going to require some adjustments as well.[1] According to studies from around the turn of the century and current research, the divorce rate rises within the older population compared to the divorce rate of the younger generation. This raises an important question: if retirement is pitched as such a wonderful thing, why are people struggling in their most important relationships? Retirement is a Life Transition Transitioning into retirement comes with a lot of adjustments. Going from working to not working is just one of the changes that come with retirement. Many couples find themselves facing changes in where they live, changes in their routines with their spouse, and even changes in their identity. A retiring therapist might ask himself questions such as “Am I still a therapist if I am not doing therapy? What am I now? What is my purpose? What is our purpose?”[2] When retiring from any profession, one or both spouses may find themselves facing a shift in their sense of identity as they move into a new stage of life. There are many other questions that come up for couples in retirement: How will you and your spouse decide what to do with your time? What is your retirement plan in terms of your savings: can you live without employment income for 10, 20, or 30 or more years? In addition to these questions, the couple have to adjust to changes on the relational side of things. Couples find that they’re spending a lot more time together, more than they have for many, many years. Most retired couples are not raising children, caring for parents, or heading off to work for the bulk of the day. Suddenly, whatever your marriage is like, it is all right there in front of you and it has to be faced.[3] If your marriage has been strong and healthy — you’ll see the effects of that. And that’s great! For those couples, marital satisfaction will increase because they have even more time to spend together. But if your marriage really hasn’t been great for 20 years but you’ve made it through by focusing on raising and launching your kids, or concentrating on your career or business, and now you’re past those things and you’re just left with a “not great” marriage: that’s a challenging place to be in. Those escape mechanisms of work or other things are gone and not available any longer, and there’s a lot to figure out.[4] Retirement Factors that Affect Marriage One factor that impacts couples when they retire is whether or not they retire together. More and more couples are both working in today’s world. That makes it tough to retire at the same time, especially if there are differences in your pension eligibility. Research shows that older couples where both spouses were still working or looking for work reported significantly lower relationship satisfaction than couples where both spouses were retired. That’s a tough spot to be in: you wish you were retired, your peers may be retired, but you have to keep working. But it is good to remember that this is not a problem in the marriage: it’s a problem outside the marriage that affects the marriage. Another factor is having a “refilled” nest or boomerang children.[5] What happens when those young adults come home? In 1995 and 2001, men and women with children present in the home rated their marriage quality lower than those who had no children at home. It’s important to note that having children at home can be a very positive experience. The unhappier couples may not be unhappy due to the adult children returning home. But it could very well be the case that the issues which prompt the children to come back home are also affecting the parents: e.g., a depressed economy or labour market difficulties. Your Style of Marriage Another thing to consider is that your style of marriage may become more amplified during retirement. A couple with a well balanced husband-wife relationship that stresses intimacy and sharing are likely to find their marriage during retirement very rewarding as they have more time together to interact and enjoy one another’s company. If you both enjoy this way of interacting with one another, that’s a good thing. If one or both of you do not, that may result in challenges.[6] There are other patterns that couples tend to fall into in the way they interact with one another. If you have more of a parent-child marriage where one spouse assumes a parenting role and the other the role of child, that could be distressing for some couples. On the other hand, if you find it fulfilling to parent your spouse or need and appreciate the extra care your spouse provides, things could be fine with this style of interaction. If you and your spouse are more like associates or partners with a friendship between you, your retirement may involve more rewarding moments outside of the marriage such as activities or groups you belong to, and the ways that you spend your time away from home together. Couples in this context can also enjoy their marriage but it will look different in retirement than the other styles. It’s also reasonable to expect that your marriage may go through more than one of these phases in retirement. Perhaps you start off like associates: you each have a sort of local bucket list things you want to get involved in. That goes well. If one of you has a health crisis, you may adapt to a parent-child format. When you recover, and through the care and support you experience you really want more time together, you may adopt the husband-wife style rather than going back to the associates/partners format. This is also a possibility. Ways to Grow as a Couple There are some practical ways that couples can make the most of the transition into retirement. First, it is helpful if you and your spouse can find common goals as you approach retirement. If you find yourself retired and realize that you have different goals, it may be a good time to look for something that you can both work towards. Couples who have common goals are able to work together to determine the best way to achieve those goals. If there is no discussion surrounding common goals, it can be difficult for couples to be on the same page and they might move in conflicting directions.[7] Most older married adults say that their greatest source of conflict lies in communication and recreation. On the flip side, most older married adults report that they have the greatest pleasure in discussing children or grandchildren, in doing things together, sharing dreams, and going on vacations together.[8] By establishing goals around your time with family, what you would like to do, and where you would like to go, you share a sense of purpose and togetherness that brings you closer together as a couple. One particularly important thing for couples is to be flexible. Your marriage will need to adjust to retirement, and you are both in it together. As you move into retirement, you will need to adjust to other life factors such as changes in your grown children’s lives (relocation, the addition of grandchildren, possible health crises in their families) in addition to the changes in your own lives. A few things are really helpful when adjusting to these changes: Effective communication Rationality (not losing perspective on the marriage because of anger over small things, or constantly bickering over plans or the lack of planning for the future) Considering how your social support network affects your relationship Recognizing the importance of goals, whether shared or individual. Really, retirement can be a very sweet time for older couples. In one study, couples married for 50 years or more frequently identified increased sharing and time together as a blessing in their later life.[9] There is so much to enjoy. But it helps to have clear goals, some sense of purpose, and also adaptability. Because retirement is not one final phase of life: it will have transitions and changes and challenges within it as well. References [1]Michelle Gagnon, “Interpersonal and Psychological Correlates of Marital Dissatisfaction in Late Life: A Review,” Clinical Psychology Review 19, no. 3 (1999): 359–78.[2]Morris Medley, “Marital Adjustment in the Post-Retirement Years” 1, no. 26 (1977): 5–11, https://doi.org/10.2307/581854 https://ezproxy.student.twu....

Attachment Style and Porn Addiction: How They’re Connected

Wed, 27 Nov 2019 11:00:00 +0000

If you or your spouse is working through recovery from porn or sex addiction, you have probably noticed that the problem runs deeper than the behavior itself. There is a reason for that. Research consistently shows that attachment style plays a significant role in who develops compulsive sexual behavior and why. In a landmark 2008 study, Zapf, Greiner, and Carroll found that over 80% of men with sex addiction had insecure attachment styles. That is not a coincidence. It points to something foundational about how these addictions take root. Attachment is the way you learned to connect with people starting in your earliest relationships with your caregivers. If those relationships taught you that closeness was unreliable, unavailable, or even dangerous, then you developed strategies for managing that pain. For many people, porn or sex addiction becomes one of those strategies: an attempt to experience something that feels like intimacy without the vulnerability that real connection requires. Understanding this connection is not about excusing the addiction. It is about seeing the full picture so that recovery can go deeper than just stopping the behavior. If attachment wounds are driving the cycle, then healing has to reach those wounds too. How Attachment Style Connects to Porn and Sex Addiction John Bowlby, the father of attachment theory, observed that our earliest bonds with caregivers create working models for how we view relationships throughout our lives. This includes how comfortable we are with closeness, how we handle separation, and what we believe we deserve from the people closest to us. Bowlby did not speak to sex addiction specifically, but his framework explains a great deal about why it happens. When a person’s attachment style makes genuine intimacy feel threatening or unattainable, fantasy becomes an alternative. Leeds (1999, cited in Zapf et al., 2008) described the tension this way: the more comfortable a person is with real interpersonal relationships, the less pull fantasy has. The reverse is also true. When closeness feels risky, the draw toward fantasy, including pornography, intensifies. This is not a character flaw. It is an attachment strategy that made sense at some point in that person’s history, even though it is causing damage now. Patrick Carnes, widely regarded as the pioneer of the sex addiction recovery movement, was the first to document that over 70% of individuals with sexual addiction come from rigid, authoritarian, and disengaged households. That finding matters because those are exactly the kinds of homes that produce insecure attachment. A home with little warmth, connection, or flexibility shapes how a child learns to pursue closeness as an adult. Carnes and others have consistently framed sex addiction as primarily a relational problem, not simply a behavioral one. Why Insecure Attachment Makes Porn Addiction More Likely The research on this point is clear. Attachment insecurity and compulsive sexual behavior are strongly correlated. Weinstein and colleagues (2015) found that sexual compulsivity is characterized by sexual activity without emotional connection. That is the signature of insecure attachment at work: a person seeking something that resembles intimacy while avoiding the emotional risks that come with real closeness. In an earlier study, Leeds (1999) reported that 95% of his clinical sample of self-identified sex addicts had insecure attachment styles. That sample was small (22 participants), so the exact percentage should be read with that context in mind. But the direction of the finding is consistent with larger studies. The Zapf et al. (2008) study found the rate at over 80%, with nearly half of those participants showing fearful avoidant (disorganized) attachment specifically. It is important to be clear about what this does not mean. Having an insecure attachment style does not mean you will develop a porn or sex addiction. There are many ways insecure attachment plays out in the context of faithful, committed marriages. But the reverse relationship holds: if someone does have a porn or sex addiction, they very rarely have a secure attachment style. The addiction is almost always tangled up with deeper relational patterns. How Each Attachment Style Interacts with Porn Addiction If your spouse is in recovery from a porn or sex addiction, understanding how their specific attachment style feeds into the addiction can be a meaningful part of the healing process. Not all insecure attachment looks the same, and the pathways into addiction differ accordingly. Avoidant Attachment If you grew up in a home where detachment was a survival skill—where you learned to check out mentally, hide your feelings, or avoid closeness because it carried risk—that pattern is formational for avoidant attachment. Avoidant attachment fits well with porn and sex addiction because the addiction provides an experience that feels similar to intimacy without requiring actual emotional closeness to another person. People with avoidant attachment often struggle to express their feelings. Common characteristics include introversion, difficulty being emotionally expressive, a belief that they are undeserving of love and support, and an interest in sex without emotional engagement (Zapf et al., 2008). Pornography offers exactly that: sexual stimulation with no relational demand. Research by Gentzler and Kerns (2004) found that individuals with avoidant attachment styles were more likely to participate in sex earlier, have fewer committed relationships, and hold less restrictive beliefs about sexual behavior. The pattern is consistent. Anxious Attachment If you were never certain of your parent’s availability and developed an anxious attachment style, sex may become a way to feel closeness and reassurance. For anxiously attached individuals, the appeal of sexual activity without commitment is that it offers something like intimacy without the fear of separation or abandonment. The craving for connection is intense, but so is the fear of losing it. Pornography or compulsive sexual behavior can function as a way to manage that anxiety temporarily, even though it deepens the isolation over time. Disorganized Attachment If you have a disorganized attachment style, the experience is typically a mixture of both patterns. There is a deep longing for connection alongside a profound fear of it, compounded by shame about being truly seen. In the Zapf et al. (2008) study, nearly half of the sex-addicted participants fell into the fearful avoidant (disorganized) category. Pornography or sex addiction becomes an attempt to fill in the missing piece of the attachment puzzle: the person craves closeness but feels unable to sustain it in a real relationship, so they seek a substitute that demands nothing back. How Pornography Deteriorates Attachment in Marriage The connection between attachment and addiction runs in both directions. Insecure attachment contributes to the development of porn addiction, and porn use in turn damages attachment within the marriage. Leeds (1999) wrote that “although the inability to form close attachments may not be sufficient to explain the etiology of sexual addiction, it is a necessary component.” The problem is self-reinforcing. When a person turns to pornography to meet emotional and intimacy needs, it decreases what researchers call partner significance in the mind of the user. The spouse becomes less central, less important, in the addict’s internal world. Whether the porn use is known or hidden, it erodes closeness and threatens both the stability and satisfaction of the marriage (Twine, 2015). The emotional dysregulation that accompanies compulsive sexual behavior further disrupts the couple’s ability to co-regulate, to be a source of safety for each other. This is why so many spouses of porn addicts describe a gut-level sense that something is wrong even before discovery. The attachment bond is being weakened on the addict’s side, and the other partner can feel it. What This Means for Recovery Understanding the attachment roots of porn and sex addiction changes what effective recovery looks like. It is not enough to focus only on stopping the sexual behavior. Treatment needs to address the underlying attachment patterns that keep driving the person back to the addiction. If you are avoidantly attached and in recovery, part of the work is learning to tolerate closeness. That means building the skills of emotional expression, learning to trust that your spouse’s connection is reliable, and practicing vulnerability in small, supported steps. A therapist trained in attachment-informed approaches can help you adjust the core beliefs that tell you closeness is dangerous or that you are undeserving of love. For anxiously attached individuals, recovery involves learning to self-soothe without reaching for the addictive behavior. It means building confidence that the relationship can hold your needs without you having to constantly test or pursue reassurance through sexual intensity. For those with disorganized attachment, the work often involves processing the early experiences that created the simultaneous craving for and fear of closeness. This is where approaches like Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) and other attachment-based modalities can be especially powerful, because they work directly with the relational patterns that feed the addiction. Christiansen (2014) identified several practices that help couples rebuild intimacy through this process: sitting with discomfort rather than escaping it, practicing mutual support, focusing on the positives in the marriage, and learning to self-soothe in healthy ways. These are not quick fixes. They take patience and consistency. But when you begin to experience the depth of real intimacy and connection in your marriage,...

Why You Really Need to Consider Emotional Labour in Your Marriage

Wed, 13 Nov 2019 14:24:53 +0000

Emotional labour is a significant part of a couple’s relationship. Emotional labour was first coined by the sociologist Arlie Hochschild in her book, The Managed Heart (1983)[1]. She defined it as the work of managing your own emotions, but the term has been expanded to looking at the overall burden of managing or carrying emotions in a marriage and/or family context. You’ll probably be aware in your own marriage, one spouse often takes most of the responsibility for worrying about a particular issue: a struggling child, or financial issues, etc. That is part of their emotional labour that they are carrying in the marriage. Emotional Labour is not Distributed Equally Often, the burden of emotional labour is not borne equally by both partners in a marriage. According to a 2011 study by Ellison et al., women take on the majority of emotional labour bearing in marriage[2]. Women may be socialized or programmed to be more nurturing than men, and they typically take on not only their own feelings and concerns, but also those of their husband in order to accomplish daily tasks. Morris and Feldman (1996) reported that nearly 2/3 of both men and women report that women tend to remind their spouse more often about things that need to be done like going to the grocery store or taking out the trash[3]. In addition, husbands don’t experience societal pressure to take charge of family to-do lists the same way wives do. Men are more likely to issue reminders about things from which they personally benefit. For example, making sure your wife remembers to buy you a new suit jacket for a work party. Women’s reminders, on the other hand, are more selfless and oriented towards others: organizing a child’s birthday party, picking up the family dry cleaning, taking the dog to the groomer, and so on. The problem with the difference between men and women’s agendas comes back to the idea of emotional labour. In this case, the greater burden is on the wife. This can lead to burnout as she has to keep a happy face on but carry most of the emotional labour. Emotional Labour Involves Mental Work Emotional labour involves more than just who does what items on the to-do list. Morris and Feldman (1996) also noticed that husbands frequently don’t take responsibility to think beyond the task nor do we take initiative regarding the task[4]. For example: when a wife asks her husband to go to the grocery store, he may ask her to tell him what to buy. He may not put in the mental work of going to the kitchen and considering a meal plan and what’s in the pantry and fridge and figuring it out himself. So even though he goes to the grocery store and does the purchasing, which is helping out physically, he is not really helping with the emotional workload associated with the task. Spouses Should Agree Division of Emotional Labour Returning to the idea of fair division of labour: what matters in marriage is not that division of labour (emotional or physical) is exactly 50/50 but, rather, that the division is seen to be fair by both the husband and wife. How exactly emotional labour should be divided is something that needs to be worked out in your marriage between you and your spouse. It may be that in your marriage it is perfectly fine for the husband to be given a list and just get the groceries. But it’s important to think beyond the example to the concept behind it. By considering the overall emotional burden, you may be in a marriage where both spouses appear busy and working hard to contribute to the functioning of the household, but the way you have arranged it may leave a much greater emotional burden on one spouse versus the other. That may lead to burnout. It may feel unfair. It may create resentment: even though both spouses as busy in the physical sense of doing things. This is definitely something you want to talk to your spouse about. Because this subject is one that requires us to step back and reflect, we created a worksheet for our Patreon supporters that helps you look at the emotional contribution you are making to your marriage. It will help you understand what you bring to the marriage and what you need from it so that both of you can discuss and refine balance of emotional labour in your marriage. If you’re not a patron, you can get this worksheet by becoming a patron of The Marriage Podcast for Smart People. Emotional Labour and Conflict Emotional labour also relates to the issue of conflict in marriage. Most people are guilty of immature behaviour during conflict. For example, if you avoid talking about a fight you had with your spouse, even when it’s important to do so, you really just let the discomfort hang in the air which is basically a ploy to get you to take on the emotional labour of that problem. It shows your spouse that you’re not willing to put the effort in to resolve it. You may even be passively working to get your spouse to pull out their feelings without actually communicating with them so that it becomes their problem to try to guess what to do to make things better. This puts the emotional burden on you[5]. Another study related to this issue of emotional labour and conflict showed that the effort required by emotional labour is not only physically exhausting, but can actually result in psychological harm to the people involved in the conflict[6]. Additionally, it means the spouse carrying the emotional labour burden may end up feeling the feelings for both spouses. Typically, wives are more absorbent emotionally and able to feel negative emotional energy more instinctively. In the long run this can be exhausting[7]. What to Do About Emotional Labour The question remains: what do you do if your spouse is bearing too much emotional labour in your marriage? Well, if you’re the person dumping your emotional burden on your spouse due to conflict between you, you should be open to your spouse trying to help you. If you put down your spouse’s offers of help, or suggestions about solutions, you’re sending the message that you’re not interested in processing what happened or what you feel and that you’re just looking to take your feelings out on your wife or husband. That’s going to have a distancing effect in your marriage: it pushes your spouse away. But it’s also going to exhaust and deplete your spouse both physically and psychologically. To create a strong relationship, you need to find a way to tackle these issues together. It becomes important to share the emotional burden even of the conflict that occurs between you. Things to Remember About Sharing Emotional Labour Here are three key points for sharing emotional labour in marriage[8]: 1. Understand that the Emotional Labour is Necessary. A relationship without some aspect of emotional labour cannot be a healthy relationship. For example, if you’re expecting that you can have emotional outbursts of anger and that it’s up to your spouse to regulate and solve the problems for you when you are upset, this is going to be very exhausting of your spouse. Especially if it’s a common occurrence. The better approach is to understand that a good marriage requires hard work — and a good part of that hard work is what we are calling emotional labour. This means taking responsibility for your own emotions and being willing to do the work necessary to resolve conflict. 2. Learn to Listen Instead of Defend. Part of the work of emotional labour is also being willing to listen to your spouse’s feedback regarding things that you aren’t doing a great job of. This is particularly important for husbands, although some wives struggle with the same thing. It’s easy to hear that kind of feedback as an attack and it can poke a hole in your ego. But when you are willing to consider the emotional issue that your spouse is presenting, and are willing to be open to and invite her to share her perspective with you, that is sending a clear signal that you’re willing to share in the emotional labour of the challenge that is facing you. There’s also a gender issue involved because a lot of the emotional labour that wives put into their marriage is around presenting things to their husbands in a way that makes sure their husband doesn’t blow up or get upset[9]. Really, that should not be part of a marriage. We all need to be considerate about the way in which we present a problem in order to be fair to our spouse. It’s important to make yourself approachable by showing your wife that you’re willing to listen and by setting aside any natural tendency towards defensiveness that you may have. 3. Learn to Become Comfortable with Vulnerability One of the hardest parts of taking on emotional labour for any spouse is the vulnerability that it requires from us. Husbands sometimes need to be pushed a little harder because part of our society’s definition of what it means to “be a man” is to be invulnerable and hide our negative emotions (other than anger). But when you are willing to show your sadness or fear or anxiety or uncertainty, that actually is how you participate in the emotional labour of an issue. Whether it’s conflict between us as spouses, a family issue with children, or an outside issue with work or church life, etc. As a husband, if instead of minimizing or dismissing these issues, you can allow yourself to feel the struggle of the issue, and share that feeling with your spouse without needing her to take it on for you. Then you are able to feel joined together. It can really create unity between you as you are vulnerable and sharing and together in that moment. This is how even things like life challenges can bring a couple together. That’s all dealing primarily with emotional labour as it relates to conflict or problems. In conclusion,...

Secure Attachment in Marriage

Wed, 06 Nov 2019 11:00:49 +0000

Secure attachment is foundational for strong marriages where both partners feel safe and secure. In the past three episodes, we’ve been looking at different styles of attachment that are born out of difficult childhood experiences. Today, we are considering the fourth style, secure attachment, which is really the goal that those of us with these other styles are striving for. Only about 46% of the population has secure attachment as their primary attachment style. We want to explore this one and really understand what it looks like so that we know what we’re aiming for if we are wanting to experience more of this style of attachment. What Does Secure Attachment Look Like in Marriage? One of the signs of secure attachment in a marriage is that both partners can take comfort in their spouse[1]. Couples with a secure attachment can share feelings of both joy and discomfort. They are also able to ask for help when they need it without fearing a negative response from their spouse. Secure in Conflict One of the times when it is most evident whether or not a couple has a secure attachment style is when they experience conflict. During conflict, securely attached couples are more able to discuss difficulties in a calm way without raising their voices or getting exasperated. Furthermore, they do not let conflict formulate doubts about the future of their relationship. When they do get into conflict, they are more likely to see that as “just a phase” or as a passing, temporary experience rather than allowing it to escalate into a question about their future together. Couples with a secure attachment to each other trust the security of the bond that they have with their spouse. They can trust the integrity of that bond even when they are not getting along well. One researcher looking at secure attachment during conflict also noted that those who have the ability to formulate or initiate affection toward their spouse maintain problem-solving communication while in conflict. By communicating well with one another even in conflict, they are more likely to express their needs to one another and prevent misunderstanding. Secure in Interdependence People with a secure attachment generally feel secure and connected in a wider variety of areas[2]. They allow themselves and their spouse to move more freely and have time alone without concern or questioning. It doesn’t mean they are together less, but the security allows a greater freedom to come and go without the security of their bond being questioned. Generally, they are more in touch with their own feelings and so are able to be more empathic and understanding of their spouse’s emotions as well. They are very capable of offering support and comfort when their spouse is distressed. A healthy, interdependent relationship helps a couple when they are together and when they are apart. Securely attached spouses also tend to be more honest, open and fair in their marriage. They feel comfortable sharing intimate thoughts (including regarding sexuality) and emotions. Their empathy tends to be more out front and leading in their interactions[3]. Another sign of secure attachment is that they enjoy doing activities with their spouse; they also enjoy their own space for doing some things separately. While those with anxious or avoidant attachment are less likely to view others as trustworthy, those with secure attachment feel that they can depend on others and they are more likely to perceive others as trustworthy. Securely attached individuals also have better self-esteem and more positive thoughts of others. A lot of attachment is about how I view myself and how I view others. Avoidants tend to be high on self and low on others; Anxious tend to be low on self and high on others. Secure are more balanced: they are better able to trust others and sort things out when others let them down. Secure as Parents As parents, secure individuals are involved, attentive, sensitive and responsive to their children’s needs. They more naturally are able to do things like: Prepare for pregnancy, birth, and parenting Give their infants love and respect Respond with sensitivity (e.g., using empathy and being more curious and non-judgmental about their children’s outbursts) Use nurturing touch Ensure safe sleep, both physically and emotionally Provide consistent and loving care Practice positive discipline Balance their personal, work, and family life[4]. Another study observed that after toddlerhood and beyond, secure parents adopt an authoritative parenting style that provides the child age-appropriate limits and support[5]. Because they are more trusting, secure individuals will allow and more easily adapt to their child’s growing skills and needs. They’ll allow the right amount of freedom by balancing that with the child’s need to be protected and kept safe. In sum, securely attached people are very aware of what is happening with their children. They pay attention, they are more able to understand what their child is experiencing, and they are better equipped to provide a helpful response. Secure Attachment in Childhood When your primary caregiver is responsive, warm, loving and emotionally available to you as a baby or toddler, you’re likely to develop secure attachment[6]. This helps the baby grow to be confident in its mother’s ability to handle their positive and negative feelings. For that reason, the child feels freer to express both positive and negative emotions, and does not need to learn to develop defenses against their own unpleasant emotions[7]. One of the grandmothers of attachment theory, Mary Ainsworth, suggested that when a mother is a secure attachment figure, she became a safe haven for the child to explore from[8]. The child would feel safe and confident to explore the world or their environment knowing that he or she could always return to the mother for safety. Babies who are securely attached tend to cry less, cooperate more, and enjoy their mother’s company more. They also grow up to be happier and healthier as adults. How Securely Attached Partners Can Support Their Anxious or Avoidant Spouses If you are secure in your attachment style, it is still possible that your spouse is not. What do you do if you find yourself in this position? One thing that can be helpful for your spouse is partner buffering[9]. This means that as a securely attached spouse you can, with effort and insight, help your anxious or avoidant spouse become more emotionally regulated in order to more manage their anxiety, whether it is about themselves or about you. If your spouse has an anxious attachment style, you will need to give far more reassurance than you feel is necessary. This means that you are providing more reassurance than you know you would need. For example, if your anxiously attached spouse wants you to call if you’re going to be late: be diligent about making that call every time. The more you are able to provide that consistent reassurance, the more you extend a safe haven to your spouse, and the more likely their attachment system is going to be able to feel secure. If your spouse has an avoidant attachment style, it’s important to provide security for them even when they have retreated. You can learn not to encroach when they need time and space to themselves but also extend security to them by connecting or doing acts that demonstrate caring when they are with you. Think of it as a shift from pursuing towards nurturing. So instead of provoking the avoidance you are providing connection even when they are defaulting to avoiding. This will help them to learn that they can be connected, that receiving nurturing when they feel like isolating is a more attractive option, and will help them to open up more when feeling overwhelmed. This is partner buffering: it is learning to respond to your spouse in a way that fits their attachment style. Partner buffering lowers their sense of distress around the connection between you, and offers them a positive experience when they may be expecting a negative one, such as rejection. In other words, it’s helping them unlearn that it is unsafe to be in a close, trusting relationship with another person and to learn that they can feel safe and connected to someone else in the context of a secure attachment. Of course, it’s not on you to fix your spouse but partner buffering can help your secure attachment to provide a safe haven for your spouse to heal from their attachment injuries. You can learn more about this in the bonus content. References [1]R. Rogers Kobak and Cindy Hazan, “Attachment in Marriage: Effects of Security and Accuracy of Working Models.,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 60, no. 6 (1991): 861–69, https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.60.6.861. [2]Ronit Baras, “Attachment Styles in Relationships and Marriages,” 2019, https://www.ronitbaras.com/emotional-intelligence/personal-development/attachment-styles-in-relationships-and-marriages/. [3]Judith A. Feeney, “Attachment Style, Communication Patterns, and Satisfaction across the Life Cycle of Marriage,” Personal Relationships 1, no. 4 (December 1994): 333–48, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6811.1994.tb00069.x. [4]Barbara Nicholson and Lysa A. Parker, Attached at the Heart: Eight Proven Parenting Principles for Raising Connected and Compassionate Children: (From Preconception to Age Five), Revised and updated (Deerfield Beach, Florida: Health Communications, Inc, 2013). [5]Divecha, “What Is a Secure Attachment? And Why Doesn’t ‘Attachment Parenting’ Get You There? — Developmental Science,” 2017, https://www.developmentalscience.com/blog/2017/3/31/what-is-a-secure-attachmentand-why-doesnt-attachment-parenting-get-y

Disorganized Attachment in Marriage: Signs and How to Help

Wed, 23 Oct 2019 11:00:25 +0000

If your spouse seems to want you close one moment and pushes you away the next, you are not imagining things. That confusing pattern of reaching for connection and then retreating from it is one of the clearest signs of disorganized attachment in marriage. It leaves you wondering which version of your partner is the real one, and whether you are doing something wrong. You are not. What you are seeing is the result of something that started long before you entered the picture. Disorganized attachment, also called fearful avoidant attachment, is a relational style rooted in early childhood experiences that taught your spouse contradictory lessons about closeness: need it desperately, but expect it to hurt. Understanding this pattern will not fix it overnight, but it can change how you interpret what is happening between you. And that shift in understanding is often the first real step toward something different. What Is Disorganized Attachment? Attachment theory identifies four primary styles: secure, anxious, avoidant, and disorganized. The first three follow relatively predictable patterns. Someone with anxious attachment pursues closeness intensely, driven by a fear of abandonment. Someone with avoidant attachment in marriage pulls away to protect their independence. Disorganized attachment is a collision of both: the desire of the anxious and the defense of the avoidant, operating simultaneously. The term "disorganized" comes from the research of Mary Main, one of the foundational attachment researchers. She described this style as "fear without solution." A child with disorganized attachment learned that the person they depend on for safety is also a source of fear. There is no organized strategy for dealing with that contradiction. The child cannot consistently approach or consistently avoid, so they do both, unpredictably. In adults, this same pattern plays out in romantic relationships. Your spouse may crave emotional closeness with you and simultaneously feel unsafe when they get it. That is not a character flaw. It is an adaptation to an environment that required them to hold two incompatible truths at the same time. Signs of Disorganized Attachment in a Spouse If you are trying to figure out whether disorganized attachment might explain what you are experiencing, these are the patterns to look for. Not every person with this attachment style will show all of them, but you will likely recognize a cluster: Your spouse oscillates between wanting intense closeness and withdrawing suddenly, sometimes within hours. They may initiate a deep conversation and then shut down partway through it. They struggle to trust your intentions even when you are being consistent. Reassurance helps briefly but does not hold. They may interpret neutral actions as signs of rejection. They have difficulty asking for help or support directly, even when they clearly need it. When they do ask, they may minimize the request or retract it quickly. Their emotional responses can feel disproportionate to the situation. A small disagreement may trigger a level of distress that seems to belong to a much older wound. They may become controlling or possessive during times of insecurity, then flip to appearing detached or indifferent when things settle down. What we often see clinically is that the spouse on the receiving end of these patterns starts doubting their own perception. If your experience of your marriage feels like it keeps shifting underneath you, that is worth paying attention to. How Disorganized Attachment Forms in Childhood Disorganized attachment almost always traces back to early childhood experiences where a caregiver was both the source of comfort and the source of fear. This does not always mean overt abuse, though it often does. It can also develop when a parent is emotionally unavailable, frightening in unpredictable ways, or unable to function as a protector. Picture a young child who feels afraid. The brain's design is to send that child toward their primary caregiver for safety. But if the caregiver is the source of the fear, or is too overwhelmed to respond, the child faces an impossible dilemma: the person they need to run to is the person they need to run from. Mary Main called this "fear without solution," and it is one of the most precise descriptions in all of attachment research. There is no strategy that works. Approach brings danger. Avoidance removes the only source of comfort. The child learns to do both, inconsistently, because no single approach is safe. When attachment researchers observe children with this style in laboratory settings, the child moves toward the returning parent and then stops. They may freeze, change direction, or display contradictory behaviors simultaneously. It is not defiance. It is a nervous system that cannot resolve the conflict between needing closeness and fearing it. Children who grow up in homes with domestic violence, adverse childhood experiences, or chronic emotional neglect are more likely to develop this attachment style. The pattern becomes internalized: closeness equals both comfort and threat. That belief does not disappear when the child grows up and gets married. It just finds a new stage. How It Shows Up in Your Marriage The push-pull dynamic is the hallmark of disorganized attachment in a marriage. Your spouse wants to feel close to you. They may even initiate connection. But as intimacy increases, so does their internal alarm system. What follows is a withdrawal, a conflict, or a sudden shift in mood that leaves you confused about what just happened. This is not manipulation. It is a nervous system responding to closeness the way it learned to in childhood: with simultaneous desire and dread. One pattern we see regularly in our practice is the use of sex as a way to resolve conflict. When a disagreement surfaces, a spouse with disorganized attachment may move quickly toward physical intimacy rather than working through the underlying issue. This serves both sides of their internal conflict: it avoids the vulnerability of emotional repair (that is the avoidant part) while restoring a sense of connection (that is the anxious part). Many couples do this occasionally, but when it becomes the primary conflict resolution strategy, it usually points to something deeper. Your spouse may also seem to disappear during moments of high emotion, not by leaving the room, but by going somewhere unreachable inside themselves. This is dissociation, and it is worth understanding. Think of it less as "ignoring you" and more like a circuit breaker tripping because the emotional voltage got too high. Their system has temporarily gone offline for safety. They are not choosing to be unavailable. Their nervous system is doing what it learned to do when overwhelm arrived: shut down before something worse happens. It is not stonewalling in the traditional sense. It is a protective response that was wired in long before your relationship began. When Disorganized Attachment Overlaps With Sexual Infidelity This is a sensitive area, and it is important to be precise about it. Not everyone with disorganized attachment is unfaithful, and not every person who has an affair has disorganized attachment. But research does show a connection worth understanding. Because of the tension between wanting closeness and fearing it, some people with disorganized attachment tend to have a higher number of sexual partners over their lifetime and tend to be more sexually compliant. When someone initiates sexual contact, they are more likely to say yes, not because they lack boundaries, but because the encounter offers connection without the sustained vulnerability that a committed relationship demands. What we see clinically is that this pattern is not about desire. It is about the specific kind of connection that feels manageable. A brief encounter provides closeness without the exposure that deeper intimacy requires. For a nervous system trained to treat intimacy as dangerous, that tradeoff can feel like the only safe option, even when the person knows it conflicts with their values and their commitment. If this is part of your story, it does not define the trajectory of your marriage. But it does need to be understood as an attachment behavior, not simply a moral failure, in order for real healing to happen. Can Someone With Disorganized Attachment Build a Secure Marriage? Yes. Attachment researchers use the term "earned secure attachment" to describe the process of developing a secure relational style after starting from an insecure one. It is not a lesser version of security. It is security built through intentional work, and the research shows it functions the same way in relationships as attachment security that was established in childhood. The process typically involves three things. First, making sense of your story. A therapist trained in attachment work will help you construct a coherent narrative of your childhood experiences. This does not mean excusing what happened. It means understanding the connection between what you experienced then and how you relate now. When that connection becomes clear, the patterns lose some of their automatic power. Second, learning to tolerate closeness gradually. For someone with disorganized attachment, intimacy triggers a threat response. Therapy provides a relationship where closeness is safe and consistent, and that experience begins to rewire the expectation that connection always comes with danger. Trauma-informed approaches, including EMDR, can be particularly effective for processing the early experiences that drive these patterns. Third, building new patterns with your spouse. This is where couples counseling becomes essential. Your spouse's attachment patterns did not develop inside your marriage, but they play out there every day. A couples therapist can help both of you recognize the cycle,...

Avoidant Attachment in Marriage

Wed, 09 Oct 2019 11:00:26 +0000

When we look at some of the areas that people with an avoidant attachment style struggle in, it’s easy to focus on extremes or exaggerate the way they interact with you. But your spouse can be avoidantly attached to you and still be a faithful, committed, reliable person in the marriage. In this article, we’re going to look at the challenges that having an avoidant attachment presents in marriage. The section towards the end is especially important because it examines how an avoidant attachment style develops in childhood. Someone with this attachment style may behave in ways that seem like they are intentionally doing things to hurt you, and it is easy to take personally. But in most cases, there is no intent to harm or be difficult in the marriage. We really encourage you to listen to them with compassion and understanding. Avoidant Attachment and Needing Others The default posture of an avoidantly attached person is to not depend on others. There are a number of reasons they may have this fear. It may be because they are distrustful of close relationships or are afraid of relying on anyone else. It may also be because they don’t want to experience the pain of rejection. They may feel pressured to give the other person the level of support they receive. They may avoid being close enough to receive support from another because they don’t want to offer support in return and have their efforts rejected. This may be because there have been times when they have depended on someone else and it has led to disappointment. A person with an avoidant attachment styleplaces a lot of value on independence and being self-sufficient.[1] They may consider that to need someone else is to show weakness, so they sometimes develop a lone wolf mentality. They may also seem to be very much in their head and working through problems rationally. Attachment In the Brain To fully understand the avoidant attachment style, we need to look at how attachment in general develops in childhood. When a child is with their parent and they experience a moment of threat or uncertainty or distress, their attachment system is activated. What this means is the part of the brain that is responsible for tracking and monitoring the safety and availability of their primary caregiver is turned on. The moment of fear prompts the child to re-establish if their parent is safe and available and can meet their needs. When the parent affirms this, the child’s brain turns the activation off. A child whose caregiver is not available learns to prevent their attachment system from activating. They don’t let themselves get upset or distressed or needy towards a loving significant other. Therefore,they develop an avoidant attachment style: first towards their caregiver, and later on towards their spouse. An avoidant attachment can have a significant impact on a marriage. An avoidant spouse may do the following things: Averting their gaze from what they consider to be an unpleasant emotion in an attempt to prevent intimacy or connection. Tuning out a conversation related to commitment topics[2] Accusing their spouse of wanting too much from them when the spouse is asking for deeper emotional connection (Catlett, 2015) Turning towards busy work in the home or at work when conflict with their spouse threatens their sense of safety in the relationship, or using sulking or hinting or complaining to seek support from their spouse during a conflict or when in crisis. All of these responses are geared towards keeping that attachment system deactivated. They’ll deny or minimize their vulnerability and repress their emotions as a way to manage emotions that have been aroused. They Operate Independently Because of the “not needing” others attitude and fiercely independent coping style that comes with keeping their attachment system deactivated, people with an avoidant attachment style are often very self-reliant. This desire for independence can cause the following things to happen: They may put up unnecessary boundaries in a marriage, like sleeping in different beds, or not sharing information that would be better shared.[3] Again, this is not about an intent to deceive but the avoidance of intimate connection. For some, disengaged sex may be easier than intimate sex. It can be difficult for them to think about being concerned with their spouse’s feelings during or after sex. They can develop habits like making dinner independently after their spouse goes to bed, or exaggerating their work schedule rather than simply asking for alone time from their spouse. They may say “I love you” and mean it but actually be dissociated from the emotion of love. Some avoidants are dissociated from most of their emotions as a way of maintaining emotional distance and not feeling needy. Again, you can see that this supports their need to feel independent. Avoidant Attachment Affects Career It’s interesting to note that you will often find avoidantly attached people in litigation, scientific fields or those kinds of occupations where avoiding the feelings of others can be beneficial, or where performance is not based on group effort.[4] These occupations allow them to work in an environment where they can do their job without being involved with the emotions of others, which a career that involved a lot of people work would require them to do. Avoidant Attachment Affects Spirituality Looking at people with an avoidant attachment from a spiritual perspective, they often seem to have difficulty experiencing warmth, intimacy or closeness with God.[5] They may see God as distantor impersonal or generally uncaring.[6] This kind of information is helpful just to note that their avoidant attachment isn’t something that singles out their spouse for special treatment but is a pattern of avoiding deep connection across significant relationships. How Does Avoidant Attachment Develop in Childhood As children, avoidant adults often experienced a certain level of unresponsive behaviour towards their distress or need for comfort from their parents. This can happen on a scale from mild and continuous unresponsive behaviours through to more severe forms of neglect.[7] For example, their parents may have been unresponsive when the children were distressed or in need of comfort. Going back to the idea of activating the attachment system in the brain: these are the moments when the child feels the need to reach out to be affirmed that the parent is available and safe and responsive. If the child experiences rejection in those moments when they need reaffirmation due to being emotionally upset, the child will learn to suppress their emotional neediness. That natural desire has to be put aside when frightened, in distress or in pain, because if they are not upset then at least they can be close to their parent physically, even though they are not available to meet their emotional needs. In other words, I’ll put my distress away so I can be near you. Sometimes you see children who’ve developed this attachment style actually backing up towards their parents. It’s the pursuit of some feeling of closeness without being seen. By not outwardly expressing feelings, they can at least partially gratify one of their attachment needs, which is to remain physically close to the parent. In these situations, the child learns from repeated, painful interactions with attachment figures (parents) that their distress leads to rejection or punishment. Some children learn to rely heavily on self-soothing and self-nurturing behaviours. They attempt to meet their attachment needs on their own since they cannot rely on an attachment figure to meet them. Children with an avoidant attachment style learn to appear very independent and to not need support from others. Later in life, this translates to not seeking authentic, vulnerable intimacy in marriage[8] How to Shift to Secure Attachment When You Are Avoidantly Attached If you are listening in today and recognizing that you are avoidantly attached, your spouse may be feeling anything from content but wishing for more of a connection with you all the way to highly distressed and feeling very rejected. But the good news is that you can change your attachment style to your spouse: there are ways to help yourself as an individual and things you can work on as a couple. Things To Work On Together One of the first things you’ll want to do is to own how this attachment style shows up in your marriage. Knowing that this is what happens, owning that and being willing to face it and work on it together is a huge gift to your spouse. One of the things you can work on together is really thinking about “we” instead of me and you. If you are avoidant you can just start prompting yourself to think about things in your marriage interdependently rather than independently. Think less about doing things efficiently and more about doing things together. You can invite your spouse to gently call you out on this as well: they may be a very useful barometer on when the independence is trumping connection. As you experience more connection, notice what that’s like. It feels better. There’s warmth there and a deeper joy. Another thing to work on together is cultivating emotional intimacy. You can invite your spouse to ask what you are thinking. You can urge yourself to share more vulnerability with your spouse as well, knowing that they are a safe person. This is how you make yourself more comfortable with vulnerability and start to disconfirm the idea that when you are distressed your attachment figure (spouse) will reject or punish you for showing that distress. Things to Work On Yourself For yourself, it becomes important to learn to accept your spouse for who they are. Sometimes when you are avoidant,...

Anxious Attachment in Marriage: What It Looks Like and How to Break the Cycle

Wed, 25 Sep 2019 11:00:43 +0000

If you find yourself checking your phone constantly when your spouse is out, replaying conversations for signs of emotional distance, or feeling a wave of anxiety the moment they seem even slightly withdrawn, you are not being "too much." You may be experiencing anxious attachment in marriage, and it is one of the most common patterns we see in our practice. Anxious attachment in marriage is a relational pattern rooted in early life experiences where closeness feels essential but never quite secure. The anxiously attached spouse craves connection and reassurance but carries an underlying fear that their partner may not be fully available, responsive, or committed. This creates a cycle: the more anxious you feel, the harder you reach for your spouse, and the more that reaching can unintentionally push them away. The good news is that anxious attachment is not a permanent condition. It is a learned pattern, and with understanding, intentional work, and often the help of a skilled couples therapist, it can shift toward a more secure connection. This article will walk you through what anxious attachment looks like in marriage, why it develops, and what both partners can do to build genuine security together. What Is Anxious Attachment? Attachment theory, first developed by John Bowlby, is built on a simple observation: the way you were loved as an infant shapes how you relate to significant others as an adult.[1] Your primary caregiver becomes your first attachment figure. When you marry, your spouse becomes your primary attachment figure. The emotional bond between you and your spouse is governed by the same system that was wired in your earliest years. The core question your attachment system is always asking is this: is my person nearby, accessible, and attentive to me? When the answer feels reliably "yes," you develop secure attachment. When the answer was inconsistent during childhood, your system may have learned to stay on high alert, constantly scanning for signs that the answer might be "no." That is anxious attachment. Researchers Cindy Hazan and Phillip Shaver extended Bowlby's work into romantic relationships and found striking parallels between infant-caregiver bonds and adult partnerships: both feel safe when the other is nearby and responsive, both engage in close physical contact, and both feel distress when the other becomes inaccessible.[2] How Anxious Attachment Develops in Childhood Understanding where this pattern comes from can help you approach it with compassion rather than frustration, toward yourself and your spouse. Anxious attachment typically develops when a child's caregiver is loving but inconsistent. The parent may be warm and attentive when the child is in distress but emotionally unavailable when the child is calm.[4] The child learns early that a high degree of internal distress produces the most attentive response. Maybe as a toddler, the child discovers that tantrums bring undivided attention. When things are calm, the parent checks out. Over time, the child becomes highly sensitive to signs of unavailability, reading them as warnings of rejection. They become clingy and dependent because there is no consistency.[5] In some cases, the parent has their own abandonment wounds and unconsciously fosters dependency in the child to meet their own need to feel needed. The child is trained to remain dependent, checking in with the parent for security rather than developing an internal sense of safety.[6] This is not something you chose. It was not a decision you made. It was a survival strategy your nervous system built when you were too young to have any say in the matter. That context matters when you are trying to change the pattern, because self-criticism is a far less effective starting point than self-understanding. The Four Attachment Styles Attachment styles exist on a spectrum defined by two dimensions: avoidance (how comfortable you are with closeness) and anxiety (how worried you are about the security of your connection). Each person falls somewhere in one of four quadrants: Secure: Low on avoidance and low on anxiety. Comfortable with intimacy, not preoccupied with the relationship's status. Invested and present without underlying worry about their spouse's availability. Avoidant (Dismissive): High on avoidance and low on anxiety. Uncomfortable with closeness and highly values independence. Generally not worried about their spouse's availability. You can read more in our article on avoidant attachment in marriage. Anxious (Preoccupied): Low on avoidance and high on anxiety. Craves closeness and intimacy but is insecure about the relationship. This is the style we are focusing on here. Disorganized: High on both avoidance and anxiety. Uncomfortable with intimacy yet simultaneously worried about their spouse's commitment and love. We cover this in depth in our article on disorganized attachment in marriage. These are not fixed personality types. They are patterns, and they can change with awareness, effort, and the right relational environment. Signs of Anxious Attachment in Marriage The anxiously attached spouse draws attention to the relationship bond. Their main goal is to find consistent security, and after conflict, they will often gather positive evidence about the relationship to use as a defense against the fear of abandonment.[3] In our practice, we often hear anxiously attached spouses say things like: "I often worry that my spouse doesn't really love me." "When my spouse is out of sight, I worry that he or she might become interested in someone else." "My spouse is not as consistently available as I would like." "I frequently get angry at my spouse for ignoring me." These statements point to a nervous system that does not feel safe and secure, one that is constantly looking to the other person for reassurance. It is common for an anxiously attached spouse to put their partner on a pedestal, overestimating their spouse's qualities while underestimating their own. This combination of low self-worth and high regard for the other person fuels a fear of loss that can become all-consuming. What this looks like in daily life: the anxiously attached spouse may text constantly while their partner is at work, asking for updates, needing to know where things stand. If their spouse gets annoyed and pulls back, the anxiety intensifies. The anxiously attached person does not see how their own fear is affecting their spouse, and the very behaviors driven by that fear may be creating the distance they are trying to prevent. The Demand-Withdraw Cycle: Why Conflict Keeps Escalating One of the most destructive patterns in marriages affected by anxious attachment is what therapists trained in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) call the demand-withdraw cycle. It works like this: when the anxiously attached spouse senses distance, they pursue. They bring up the relationship, ask probing questions, express frustration, or become visibly upset. Their goal is reconnection. But the other spouse, often someone with a more avoidant style or simply someone who feels overwhelmed by the intensity, does the opposite. They withdraw. They get quieter, change the subject, leave the room, or shut down emotionally. Their goal is also self-protection, just expressed in the opposite direction. Here is what makes this cycle so painful: neither person is wrong. The pursuing spouse is not "too needy," and the withdrawing spouse is not "cold." Both are reacting to the same underlying fear of disconnection, just from different sides of the same coin. The more one pursues, the more the other retreats. The more one retreats, the more the other pursues. And both end up feeling more alone. What we see in practice is that couples often come in blaming each other for this pattern without realizing they are both caught in it. The real enemy is not your spouse. It is the cycle itself. When couples learn to name the pattern and see it as the shared problem rather than a character flaw in either person, something shifts. They start to turn toward each other instead of against each other. What Triggers Anxious Attachment in Marriage Anxious attachment does not run at full intensity all the time. It gets activated by specific situations that signal, to an already-sensitized nervous system, that the connection might be at risk. Common triggers include: Your spouse acting distant or preoccupied, even if the reason has nothing to do with you. A missed call or text that goes unanswered for longer than feels comfortable. Your spouse canceling plans or coming home later than expected. A neutral facial expression that gets read as coldness or disinterest. Your spouse being warm with someone else in a way that feels threatening. Forgetting something that matters to you, like an anniversary or a conversation you thought was significant. None of these situations are inherently dangerous to a relationship. But for the anxiously attached spouse, each one can feel like evidence that the bond is weakening. The nervous system fires a warning, and the response, whether it is anger, clinging, or interrogating, follows automatically before there is time to think it through. Recognizing your specific triggers is one of the most useful things you can do. When you can name the trigger ("I noticed I got anxious when you didn't text me back within an hour") rather than act from the trigger ("Why are you ignoring me?"), you create space for a completely different conversation. How to Support a Spouse with Anxious Attachment If your spouse is the anxiously attached one, it can be confusing and exhausting to be on the receiving end of their need for reassurance. You may feel like nothing you do is ever enough. But understanding what is driving the behavior changes everything. Your spouse is not trying to control you. They are trying to feel safe....

How Prayer Impacts Marriage

Wed, 18 Sep 2019 11:00:33 +0000

Often, people see tension between spirituality and the field of psychology. Academics seem to look down on matters of belief as unintellectual, and the faithful sometimes think that scientists are secular opponents to all religion. However, research is continuing to indicate that expressions of faith have tangible, measurable benefits. This holds particularly true about prayer. Marriage Affects Cardiovascular Health Marital strain and conflict can have a direct effect on your heart. In fact, researchers have found that these factors correlate with poorer cardiovascular health. In one study, they found that one of the large chambers of the heart, the left ventricle, thickens in response to marital distress. This thickening is closely associated with a decrease in heart function along with other cardiovascular issues. So experiencing stress in your marriage will physically affect your heart. Surprisingly, prayer can reverse negative impacts on the heart. Prayer Affects Cardiovascular Health A new study came out this year that examined the impact of daily prayer on your health, specifically what is known as daily partner-focused petitionary prayer (PFPP). This kind of prayer, while quite a mouthful, simply refers to speaking with God using your own words and language. You can contrast this against memorized or liturgical prayer–not because one is better than the other, but just as a way to define the scope of the study. PFPP is praying to God for your well-being as well as the well-being of your spouse. It focuses on asking for support for the challenges you are facing in marriage. The study found that PFPP had a positive impact on relationship communication and quality as well as certain specifics of cardiovascular functionality. This type of prayer reduces the strain of daily stress on the heart and improves its efficiency. Prayer Affects Marital Health Not only does this kind of prayer have positive benefits for your cardiovascular health, it also helps enhance your marriage. Researchers have found that prayer that focuses on your spouse improves relational satisfaction, particularly as marriages mature. In a study by Fincham and Beach, they found that this enhanced satisfaction in relationships led to an overall increase in commitment. A second study by Fincham and Beach confirmed their findings. As couples pray for each other, they find greater satisfaction in their relationship. And as that grows, they become more committed to one another. And yet another study discovered that when you pray for your spouse, you become more willing to sacrifice for them, more so than merely having positive thoughts about them. Intentional prayer in and for your marriage helps you enjoy your relationship and leads to a deeper, more intimate connection with your spouse. Prayer Motivates Kindness An essential factor in examining prayer is how it affects your thinking. For example, a study in 1990 took a look at how prayer affects your intentions and willingness to engage in certain behaviors that influence relationship functioning. This study found that when you pray for your spouse, you are primed to think about them with more love and compassion. As a result, you will start to show greater respect and sensitivity to them. How does this work? Think about what happens when you argue. Before the conflict, you feel in tune with your spouse, having the same goals in life. But as soon as the fight starts, new, selfish purposes appear that clash with those of your spouse. However, prayer provides a way to step away from the battle and to calm yourself. As you pray, you allow your cooperative goals to reemerge and replace your more contentious motives. Furthermore, prayer helps to invoke an experience of relationship with God. Research shows that this results in the following: Diffused hostile emotions Decreased emotional reactivity Increased empathy between spouses Increased self-change focus Improved reconciliation and problem-solving As you pray, you equip yourself with tools that allow you to see your spouse with kindness, even while you are in conflict. Prayer Promotes Forgiveness Beyond thinking of your spouse more kindly, prayer also enables you to be more likely to forgive them. Those of you familiar with the Lord’s Prayer might remember the line, “Forgive us as we forgive those who trespass against us.” When you consciously think about forgiveness, you are more likely to forgive. In the heat of conflict, as you hold onto the anger and hurt, it can be easy to forget. But praying will reset this process, reminding you of the need to forgive your spouse in day-to-day living. Forgiveness is crucial in marriage because it helps stop cycles of negative interaction. When one of you takes a moment to step back and stop seeing the other as the enemy, you make it easier for both of you to work together to face your challenges. This is the power of prayer. It allows your body to manage stress more effectively and allows your mind to see and interact with your spouse in a more charitable way, deepening the relationship you have with one another. References Beach, Steven R. H., Frank D. Fincham, Tera R. Hurt, Lily M. McNair, and Scott M. Stanley. “Prayer and Marital Intervention: A Conceptual Framework.” Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 27, no. 7 (September 2008): 641–69. https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.2008.27.7.641. Butler, Mark H., Julie A. Stout, and Brandt C. Gardner. “Prayer as a Conflict Resolution Ritual: Clinical Implications of Religious Couples’ Report of Relationship Softening, Healing Perspective, and Change Responsibility.” The American Journal of Family Therapy 30, no. 1 (January 2002): 19–37. https://doi.org/10.1080/019261802753455624. Dudley, Margaret G., and Frederick A. Kosinski. “Religiosity and Marital Satisfaction: A Research Note.” Review of Religious Research 32, no. 1 (September 1990): 78. https://doi.org/10.2307/3511329. Fincham, Frank D., and Steven R. H. Beach. “I Say a Little Prayer for You: Praying for Partner Increases Commitment in Romantic Relationships.” Journal of Family Psychology 28, no. 5 (2014): 587–93. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0034999. Fincham, Frank D., R. H, N. Lambert, T. Stillman, and S. Braithwaite. “Spiritual Behaviors and Relationship Satisfaction: A Critical Analysis of the Role of Prayer.” Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 27, no. 4 (2008): 362–88. https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.2008.27.4.362. Gallo, Linda C., Wendy M. Troxel, Karen A. Matthews, and Lewis H. Kuller. “Marital Status and Quality in Middle-Aged Women: Associations with Levels and Trajectories of Cardiovascular Risk Factors.” Health Psychology: Official Journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association 22, no. 5 (September 2003): 453–63. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-6133.22.5.453. Lambert, Nathaniel M., Frank D. Fincham, and Scott Stanley. “Prayer and Satisfaction with Sacrifice in Close Relationships.” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 29, no. 8 (December 2012): 1058.May, Ross W., Ashley N. Cooper, and Frank D. Fincham. “Prayer in Marriage to Improve Wellness: Relationship Quality and Cardiovascular Functioning.” Journal of Religion and Health, May 7, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-019-00829-3.

Pastor Adultery: Why It’s Usually Clergy Sexual Misconduct

Wed, 11 Sep 2019 11:00:59 +0000

How Common Is Clergy Sexual Misconduct? When people search for 'pastor adultery,' they are usually looking for one of two things: evidence that the problem is real, or help understanding why it happens. What the research reveals is that this kind of behavior is both more common and more clinically complex than most people expect -- and that calling it 'adultery' often misses something important. Research on clergy sexual misconduct in the church paints a troubling picture. In an anonymous survey cited by Ray Carroll, author of Fallen Pastor: Finding Restoration in a Broken World, 33% of pastors admitted to crossing a sexual boundary with someone other than their spouse without being caught. In another study, roughly 1 in 9 pastors (about 11%) reported having committed adultery. These numbers are not outliers. A survey of 277 Southern Baptist pastors found that 14% had been involved in inappropriate sexual activity, and 10% disclosed having a sexual relationship with a current or former church member. While this data comes from one denomination, the pattern extends across denominational lines. Clergy sexual misconduct is not confined to a single tradition. It is important to name something clearly here: when a pastor engages in sexual behavior with a congregant or someone under their spiritual care, this is not a mutual affair between equals. It is an abuse of power. The pastoral role carries inherent spiritual authority, and that authority makes genuine consent impossible in the same way it is impossible in any professional relationship defined by a significant power differential. The person in the pew is not on equal footing with the person behind the pulpit, regardless of how the relationship might feel to either party. More recent data from the FaithTrust Institute's 2024 study on clergy misconduct examined rates across mainline Protestant denominations, reporting misconduct cases per 1,000 ministers. The study revealed significant variation by denomination, with some traditions reporting rates several times higher than others. This data has become one of the most searched topics in this space, and it confirms what clinicians who work with church leadership already know: this is a systemic issue, not an isolated one. Christianity Today also found that 18% of pastors visit a pornographic website at least twice a month, with some visiting more frequently. When you add pornography and sexual addiction to the picture of clergy sexual misconduct, the scope of the problem becomes even clearer. The point of laying out these statistics is not to vilify or condemn. It is to help leaders recognize the scope of the problem so they can take the proactive steps that protect themselves, their families, and their congregations. What Makes Pastors Vulnerable to Boundary Violations? Pastors who engage in sexual misconduct are generally acting from some combination of the following factors. Understanding these vulnerabilities is not the same as excusing the behavior -- it is how we prevent it. Power. Pastors hold a particular kind of authority: spiritual authority. When someone trusts you with their deepest questions about God, meaning, and morality, the relational dynamic is inherently unequal. That power differential, if unexamined, does not just create opportunity for misconduct. It creates a structural condition in which misconduct can be rationalized, minimized, or misframed as mutual. This is why accountability structures matter so much -- they introduce external checks on a dynamic that the pastor alone cannot be trusted to regulate. Narcissism. As we will explore in detail below, narcissistic traits are overrepresented in clergy populations. The feedback loop between congregational admiration and an unmet need for validation can make a boundary violation feel, to the pastor, like a natural extension of the affirmation they already receive. This distorted perception does not change the harm it causes. Desire for instant gratification. Ministry is a long game. The fruits of pastoral work are often invisible or slow to materialize. When a pastor is running on empty and a shortcut to feeling alive or competent presents itself, the temptation is real. Sexual misconduct or pornography offers an immediate neurological reward that the slow work of ministry does not. False feelings of invincibility. Leaders who have been successful in ministry can develop a blind spot: the belief that they are somehow above the struggles common to everyone else. This is a form of denial, and it leaves them unprotected in the moments when they are most at risk. It also tends to suppress the kind of honest self-examination that would otherwise provide an early warning. Corroding family relationships. When the marriage at home is strained and the emotional needs of the congregation are consuming, a sexual relationship outside the marriage can feel like an escape hatch. It is not. But in the moment, it can feel like the only place where someone is not asking for more from the pastor than he has to give. That feeling does not justify the harm caused to the person who is the target of the misconduct. Other contributing factors include the structural opportunity pastors have for private access to vulnerable people, lack of discipline or self-control, delusions of grandeur, and the justification of selfish choices. What matters clinically is not the list itself, but the convergence of these factors in a role that provides unique access, authority, and emotional exposure. The Emotional Burdens That Set the Stage Church leaders are a very busy group of people. They suffer from a congregational expectation, explicit or not, that the local church is their priority, even more so than family. Because of the amount of attention the church requires, it can be challenging to relax at home and make time for their family. Their long hours usually come in the context of spiritual calling and purpose. As a result, pastors can exhaust themselves emotionally, intellectually, and physically. And because they overstretch themselves, their capacity for intimacy and connection with their spouse diminishes, leading to a fading relationship at home. We see this pattern regularly in our practice: a pastor who is deeply empathic with his congregation members during the week and emotionally flat by the time he walks through his own front door. The giving is real. But the well runs dry. This is because they are responsible for more than the logistical concerns of the church. They are also responsible for the emotional burdens of their parishioners. As pastors, they are expected to empathize with and even solve those burdens, eating away at the emotional reserves needed to connect with their spouse. Additionally, these emotional burdens can be confidential, not able to be shared at home. And as these intimate details are shared, the pastor might feel pressured to reciprocate with close aspects of their life to help their parishioner feel more at ease. If the pastor does not maintain a professional position, this reciprocation can allow close emotional commitments to develop. This is a common pathway into clergy sexual misconduct -- not a sudden decision, but a slow erosion of professional boundaries that began with genuine empathy and an unguarded moment of oversharing. The harm to the congregant is real regardless of how gradual the process felt. The Particular Challenge of Narcissism in Church Leaders Narcissism has gained higher visibility in recent years, and for good reason. According to Ruffing et al. (2018), there is evidence that narcissism levels have been increasing in Western society over the past few decades. This affects church leaders particularly because it is common for people with narcissistic traits, or even the full-blown personality disorder, to end up in positions of leadership. Campbell and Miller describe pathological narcissism as impairment in the ability to manage and satisfy needs for validation and admiration, such that self-enhancement becomes an overriding goal in nearly all situations and may be sought in manipulative ways and in inappropriate contexts. In short, it is an out-of-control compulsion to meet the needs of the ego. Sexual misconduct involving a congregant can provide an external means of validation and admiration, which is why a church leader with narcissistic tendencies may be at elevated risk for exploiting a pastoral relationship. Research into clergy populations confirms higher than average levels of narcissism. In one study of 210 clergy members, researchers found that 31.2% would likely meet criteria for a diagnosable narcissistic personality disorder. From an attachment theory perspective, these narcissistic patterns often develop from early relational wounds. When a child learns that love is conditional on performance, they internalize a model of relationships built on earning approval rather than trusting secure connection. This matters because it means narcissistic vulnerability in pastors is not simply a character flaw; it is often a relational wound carried forward from childhood. Narcissism and Empathy Zondag (2007) points out an interesting connection. In clergy, pathological narcissism is connected to empathic perspective-taking. For example, a pastor might offer a parishioner a great deal of empathy. In response to this empathy, the parishioner might respond with gratitude, maybe saying something like, "Pastor, you are so helpful. I don't know how I could make it through this without you." As a result, narcissistic clergymen can be exceptionally good at empathizing, as this feeds into their need for affirmation. Of course it is not wrong to give empathy. It is not wrong to express gratitude and appreciation for help. But you can see how it can feed narcissism -- and how a pastor who relies on congregational admiration for their sense of

Is My Spouse a Sex Addict?

Wed, 04 Sep 2019 11:00:27 +0000

The road to discovering your spouse’s sexual addiction takes many forms. Sometimes, compulsive sexual behavior can be completely hidden for years before it is found out. It may happen as a single, devastating revelation or as a series of smaller discoveries. Perhaps you already knew about their sexual compulsivity but hoped that marriage would somehow temper this behavior. But each promise that your spouse makes to change becomes yet another broken commitment. Sexual addiction can have devastating consequences for the addict as well as their spouse. It’s essential to understand what it is, how to diagnose it, what causes it, and what a healthy path forward looks like for a marriage dealing with sex addiction. Defining Sex Addiction While still relatively new to psychology, sexually compulsive behavior is becoming an increasingly recognized phenomenon with a reasonably well-defined set of features. It is not merely an extension of a Christian worldview. Regardless of their religious background, a large number of researchers and therapists now specialize in the treatment of sex addiction. The point of this article is not to preach against or shame sexual desire. After all, sex addiction is not necessarily about having a high sex drive. Just because you or your spouse enjoys having sex does not make either of you a sex addict. Only You Forever has several certified sex addiction therapists on our team. We have years of experience in working with sex addicts, and we know how crucial it is not to confuse the enjoyment of sex with sexual addiction. Sex addiction involves sexual expression or activity that is excessive, problematic, or out of control in either men or women. It can look like hypersexual or destructive sexual behaviors characterized by compulsivity, secrecy, or continuation of a behavior in spite of negative consequences. These behaviors are harmful to at least one person if not more. The addict, their spouse, their lover, their family, their employer, or other members of society can be affected by their behavior. These effects span economic, health-related, psychological, social, or relational impacts. It is a real problem, one that takes a substantial amount of courage and commitment to address. But recovery is possible. Diagnosing Sex Addiction DSM-V Proposal The North American standard for articulating diagnostic criteria for disorders (the DSM-V, or Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition) has not yet officially addressed sex addiction. However, a hypersexual disorder has been proposed. Based on this proposal, individuals must have the following symptoms: Over a period of at least six months, recurrent and intense sexual fantasies, sexual urges, and sexual behavior in association with four or more of the following five criteria: Excessive time is consumed by sexual fantasies and urges, and by planning for and engaging in sexual behavior. Repetitively engaging in these sexual fantasies, urges, and behavior in response to dysphoric mood states (e.g., anxiety, depression, boredom, and irritability). Repetitively engaging in sexual fantasies, urges, and behavior in response to stressful life events. Repetitive but unsuccessful efforts to control or significantly reduce these sexual fantasies, urges, and behavior. Repetitively engaging in sexual behavior while disregarding the risk for physical or emotional harm to self or others. There is clinically significant personal distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning associated with the frequency and intensity of these sexual fantasies, urges, and behaviors. In other words, it is impacting the quality of your life. These sexual fantasies, urges, and behaviors are not due to direct physiological effects of exogenous substances (e.g., drugs of abuse or medications), a co-occurring general medical condition, or manic episodes. These or other specific causes of sexual hyperactivity are not indicators of sex addiction. The person is at least 18 years of age. The above evaluation is just one set of criteria to help you see if your spouse is a sex addict. If you notice that they are consistently meeting these criteria, you might be looking at a problem here. Sexual Addiction Screening Test (SAST) The SAST is another set of criteria that can help diagnose sex addiction. It is currently one of the most widely-used screening tools. It’s used in at least eight published, peer-reviewed empirical studies. Outside of research, it is also used in practical applications by certified sex addiction therapists and in inpatient residential treatment centers in the United States and around the world. Initially created in 1989, the SAST has been revised to help adjust to homosexual and female populations. It exists as part of a larger package of assessments known as the Sexual Dependency Inventory (SDI). The SDI is a comprehensive bundle of evaluations that help psychologists and therapists establish a basis for planning treatment. The SAST is available for free at https://www.recoveryzone.com. PATHOS If the SAST is too long for you, you can also use a system called PATHOS. It’s just six questions long (one for each letter of the acronym), and several studies have established its validity. Preoccupied. Do you often find yourself preoccupied with sexual thoughts? Ashamed. Do you hide some of your sexual behavior from others? Treatment. Have you ever sought help for sexual behavior you did not like? Hurt. Has anyone been hurt emotionally because of your sexual behavior? Out of control. Do you feel controlled by your sexual desire? Sad. When you have sex, do you feel depressed afterward? If your spouse answers “yes” to three or more of these questions, then you need to see a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist (CSAT) because this is an informal, self-reported assessment. The CSAT will be able to verify its accuracy and give you a formal diagnosis. Remember that you do need to see a professional clinician. For example, based on these questions, a 22-year old porn addict might easily appear to be a sex addict to a non-professional. However, this would be an incorrect diagnosis. While porn addicts can arrive at sobriety in 10-14 counseling sessions, a sex addict might need 3-5 years to get to the same level of mental health. So make sure to see a medical professional before concluding on your own that your spouse is a sex addict. These tests are just to help you know when it might be serious enough for you to seek a clinical diagnosis. Why Do Some People Become Sex Addicted? It can be easy to stop seeing sex addicts as fully developed humans and start only to see them as their addiction. Because of all the stigmas and moral connotations with this particular addiction, it becomes necessary to remember that all addictions are maladaptive coping mechanisms. In no way does this diminish the impact of the addiction, particularly on you, the spouse. However, this serves as a way to ground the situations and establish a point of empathy and understanding–sex addiction at its core is a very human reaction. It might be helpful to look at the situation on a much smaller scale. Imagine a scenario where you’re really upset and have had a terrible day. On an impulse, you go to the freezer and start eating ice cream straight from the carton. You might consider how gross you’ll feel after binging or how much weight you might gain, but in that moment it doesn’t matter: you just want to feel better, regardless of the consequences. Sex addiction is similar to this, just on a much more severe scale. It affects you, your relationship and your finances. And it goes even further because it is more than just something you do when you are upset. There is a deep, deep level of pain behind it. Sex addicts suffer from high levels of shame, and their addiction often is preceded by physical, emotional, and/or sexual abuse in their past. The numbers are shockingly high: 72% have experienced childhood physical abuse. 81% have experienced sexual abuse. 97% have experienced emotional abuse. Many people who suffer from sex addiction have yet to see the source of their compulsive behavior: an attempt to medicate deep wounds. However, after hearing their story and evaluating their history, their addiction begins to make sense. For some, the addiction numbs the pain they feel. For others, they are desperate to find intimacy to fill the void they feel inside. Sometimes addicts use these behaviors to find approval. Still others find addiction to be the only way they know how to respond to the traumatic wounds of childhood abuse. People who suffer from sex addiction are more than just their labels. As morally wrong and devastating as their behaviors might be, their reasons are discoverable and understandable. When you listen to sex addicts in recovery and listen to their stories, their addiction begins to make sense. Again, the purpose of this is to build empathy, not excuses or rationalization. But if you truly understood the circumstances that led to the development of their addiction, would you judge them in the same way? Now that you can see the pain they’ve been carrying, perhaps you can help them face it and search for healing. The pain does not justify the behavior, but knowing the reasons can help you understand why your spouse might find themselves in the situation of doing what was unthinkable even to them. Impact on Spouses As dangerous as it is to deny the depth of the pain sufferers of sex addiction experience, it is also dangerous to deny the pain that their spouses suffer as a result of the addiction. ...

Why People Seek Marriage Counseling & What Approaches They Choose

Wed, 28 Aug 2019 14:24:05 +0000

Everyone knows the “fairy-tale ending.” The prince and the princess get married, and they live happily ever after. While you will be able to find happiness in marriage, it’s common to experience hardships that fairy tales never address. Sometimes, you will experience rocky times for a few days, months, or even years. The reality of two very different people living as a single unit is very challenging. But at the end of the day, it’s worth the effort. Studies show that married people are, on average, healthier, happier, and financially better off than those who are not. So what do you do when you start to struggle with your marriage? While hard work and good intentions can help, sometimes you need the help of someone neutral and experienced to sort through these matters. That’s why people should seek marriage counseling. Wives Generally See the Problem First According to a 2016 study, women are the first to see the problem and the first to seek professional help. And this is also anecdotally true for many practices, as women are typically the first to reach out for counseling. Why is this? By the time most couples are ready to look for counseling, their marriage has already become distressed. They often fall into patterns of blame, withdrawal, and even some aggression. Husbands, in particular, feel a sense of failure and judgment when considering couple’s counseling. Because of this shame, they are less likely to reach out. However, this is partly why couples counseling can be such a challenge. For one person to seek individual counseling is already a big step. Getting two people to agree that they need professional help is a much larger one. Among couples who separated without seeking professional help, over 70% self-reported that one spouse was unwilling to go to counseling or that it was too late for counseling to help. Barriers to Marriage Counseling 1. Enforcing “Privacy” It should come as no surprise in the age of Facebook and Instagram that couples are unlikely to share their struggles in marriage openly. Many people believe that their relationships should be kept private or that they can only divulge issues to spiritual leaders. Because of this mindset, couples are less likely to get professional help. 2. Laying Blame Another barrier to marriage counseling is the blame game. When two people are having problems in their relationship, it’s easier to say that the other is at fault rather than accepting the complicated, nuanced truth that each partner bears at least some responsibility. Finger-pointing instead of taking responsibility is a significant factor in why many marriages end without getting the help they need. It is crucial to reframe marital distress. The problem that both individuals face is an unhealthy dynamic, not one another. This reframing reduces the amount of blame cast on each other and helps couples work together to solve the problem. 3. Lacking Prior Problem-Solving Couples counseling is just one tool in a large kit for repairing a marriage. So if you haven’t used a similar tool, such as attending a retreat or workshop, reading a marriage book together, or having premarital counseling, you are less likely to seek counseling when running into marital problems., 4. Going Too Late While often seen as a last-ditch effort to keep a relationship from falling apart, marriage counseling is more effective the sooner you go. Couples will usually wait for too long, often until levels of distress feel like the relationship is beyond repair. On average, married couples wait for six years of serious marital problems before getting help. Counseling can still work in such late stages, but it’s still difficult. But the perception that there is it’s too late prevents couples from seeking therapy. Effectiveness of Marriage Counseling On average, couples therapy makes a positive impact on 70% of the people who attend it. This is in spite of the fact that couples frequently wait until it’s nearly too late to get professional help. But where does this leave the other 30%? Perhaps a factor might lie in the training of the counselors themselves. Many people complain on this site of therapists that try to help couples even though they are unqualified. According to the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, many of those therapists that offer specialized marital counseling have never had any formal training in that area. That’s why at OnlyYouForever, we make sure that all of our couples therapists have specific, formal training in couples work. Our counselors that lack this qualification do not do marriage counseling, as they specialize in other areas of individual therapy. When seeking marriage counseling, make sure that your therapist is qualified to help. And if they have qualifications, try to make sure that they use research and modalities that have the highest success rates with couples. Common Approaches to Marriage Counseling There are many ways for a therapist to try to provide marriage counseling. While some are generally more effective than others, you must seek a therapist that uses a method that works for you. 1. Behavior Modification As the name dictates, the focus here on behaviors. The purpose is to ensure that any harmful practices (physically, emotionally, financially, etc.) are modified so that there is a reduction in harm. This approach follows the solution-focused therapy model, where couples are taught to focus on solutions instead of problems. Most initial sessions focus on actions rather than addressing feelings. Couples can get trapped in negative cycles because of unhelpful behaviors. And often, people feel helpless because even though they are aware of what they are doing, they are unable to stop. Behavior modification gives them the tools to change this. 2. Insight-Oriented Therapy This approach seeks to shift each spouse’s view of their relationship with each other. The goal here is to help couples take a step back and view their marriage objectively. 3. Communication Coaching When couples are doing well, or at least not in distress, communication coaching is a great tool to help couples improve their relationship. This method teaches you how to listen actively and apply empathy to your marriage. This method is beneficial for helping couples communicate effectively, but doesn’t touch on more profound, underlying dynamics. Communication coaching is better for couples who are relatively healthy or even for teaching scenarios. 4. Gottman Method If you’ve heard of The Gottman Institute, you’ve probably heard of their work with the Four Horsemen of Marriage. But aside from research in that area, they have also developed many good strategies for couples in conflict. The Gottman Method uses techniques to increase affection, closeness, and respect by emphasizing conflict management and repair. It is a helpful tool for helping couples know each other when they’ve drifted apart. 5. Narrative Therapy By assisting couples in articulating their problems as a story, this form seeks to help people rewrite the negative parts of their relationship. Narrative therapy allows couples to find new ways to deal with their problems and new ways to talk about their relationship. 6. Emotionally-Focused Couples Therapy This method forces you to examine how you engage with your significant other. It expands your emotional responses, creates new ways of interacting, and nurtures the bond you have together. Many couples find difficulty in sharing their private feelings, and this method helps them do that. Rather than being stuck in an emotionally distant relationship, they learn to grow together. Emotionally-focused couples therapy (EFCT) is excellent for couples with a high amount of conflict that expresses itself in a clear pattern of pursue-withdraw. Compared with other forms, this type of therapy is relatively short-term. Its fundamental goals are: For couples to understand and reorganize their key emotional responses to each other. You will learn how to see the core emotional issues that are happening underneath the surface. By doing that, you can compassionately address your partner’s heart instead of dealing with the more visible but shallower emotions. For couples to change their stance during interactions on difficult issues. By doing this, you can experience new, beneficial, and constructive interactions with one another. For couples to strengthen and build a very tight bond with one another. At OnlyYouForever, this is the predominant approach we use in our practice. We use this method because 70-75% of troubled relationships that undergo EFCT can move into a state of recovery. And over 90% of couples experience significant improvement. What About Individual Counseling (For Marriage Issues)? While it may seem counterintuitive, there are specific situations where individual counseling might be the best option to take. For example, if both partners are not able to seek help with methods of communication, couples counseling can be ineffective. You might also choose individual counseling if your partner is not willing to go to couples therapy or as a precursor to couples counseling. Individual therapy can be beneficial if one partner has to deal with trauma. One typical example is childhood sexual abuse. While not all who experience this require treatment, this trauma can have a severe and lasting effect on that spouse’s relationship. Sometimes when victims of this are unable to offer the level of sexual intimacy that their spouse desires, their spouse feels rejected, and they feel like they aren’t understood. ...

How Shame Perpetuates Porn Addiction

Wed, 21 Aug 2019 14:24:18 +0000

Shame is such a powerful emotion. The problem is, it can lead to seemingly contradictory behavior, particularly in the context of addiction. Shame’s close relationship with pornography consumption can cause porn addicts to fall into cycles of shame over their addiction, followed by giving into their addiction, followed by more shame. As with most addictions, porn addiction typically has roots in other deficits. Because you are hurt, lack something, or desire something, you might turn to porn as a coping mechanism, hoping that it will provide the feeling or fulfillment you seek. At the end of the day, it’s important to remember that porn is a maladaptive coping mechanism. Rather than helping with the problems it is supposed to solve, it simply makes them worse, particularly in the case of an addictive cycle. The Link Between Porn and Shame As the widespread use of pornography is a relatively new phenomenon, there is only a limited amount of research on its connection with shame. Despite this, there is a lot of anecdotal knowledge among counsellors and psychologists about the connection between, and combination of porn and shame. This link has been documented as far back as 1989. In the book “Contrary to Love,” Patrick Carnes, the grandfather of the sexual addiction treatment movement, identifies shame and guilt as fuelling the despair in addiction. An addictive cycle looks like this: The addict experiences despair. In order to alleviate this feeling, they seek relief by acting out. Upon acting out, they feel shame and guilt. These feelings increase the feeling of despair. While this cycle was discussed in the context of sexual addiction, porn addiction operates in much the same way. As you can see, the efforts of the addict only serve to temporarily deal with the feeling of despair. So you can see how shame only deepens the cycle of porn addiction. Rather than equipping the addict to deal with the source of their problem, porn simply makes it worse for them. In order to deal with porn addiction, you need to discover and deal with the root issues, not as a way to excuse the behavior, but to find where you need healing to start the process of recovery. Shame Buried Out of Sight A common denominator among some porn addicts is an early form of relationship trauma. These can range from abuse (sexual, physical, verbal, mental, etc.) to parental disregard or a variety of combinations. With all of these issues, you can see a similar feature. Typically, the child will not find validation of their distress. Often their problems are minimized, ignored, or not acknowledge. As a result, they do not find healing, which perpetuates and often magnifies the pain they felt. And when not dealt with, this lack of validation will cause the adult to seek it out elsewhere. Porn is an easy “fix” for this. So if you were never validated by your mother, you might find that porn stars are very validating. In some ways, they are. But that validation is just an act. A fake, exaggerated facsimile of genuine human connection. The validation offered by porn doesn’t work because it’s not real. But the imitation is close enough that it subconsciously fires the reward circuits that keep you trying to get that need met. Porn acts as an outlet for repressed emotions, wounds, and unrequited yearnings. Instead of having these needs met, porn is so accessible and provides enough temporary pleasure that it becomes an easy outlet or sort of balm or salve for these wounds. However, it never actually heals them, instead it requires more and more while returning less and less. It is a lie. It cannot meet your needs. Of course, this is not the same for everyone with an addiction to pornography. People can have a healthy childhood and still get hooked. But even in those cases, they experience this cycle of shame and addiction. What’s the Problem With Shame? The effects of shame are well documented. In 2015, a couple researchers found that shame is a self-directed negative view of self and that it tends to create self-loathing and also a lack of self-compassion. It creates anxiety and emotional distress, and importantly, it creates a desire for mood regulation back to a secure or stable state. It pushes you do what you can to stop feeling shame anymore. This explains why people bearing the burden of shame would choose an “easy fix” like a pill, a drug, a behaviour, or a sexual act to cope with their emotional distress. Because this “fix,” in the short term, regulates their mood, returning them to a stable state. Researchers have found that this actually fuels the addictive cycle. Regardless of consequences, people will continue with their addictions, and after giving into it, they feel even more shame, pushing them to indulge once again. Half of boys and nearly a third of girls experience guilt or shame after using pornography. Another study found that men who were more religious would experience more negative than positive effects as they struggled to reconcile their behaviour with their beliefs. However, the increased negative feelings, including shame, did not reduce the use of pornography. So we can see that shame, rather than pushing people away from harmful behaviours like addiction, can actually fuel the cycle, causing addicts to spiral further. How Shame Works When an addict experiences shame, they start to ruminate, mentally go over the same things repeatedly. They get stuck in thought and action. Shame also keeps addicts from forming healthy connections with other people. This is because shame causes the addict to feel that at their core, they are unworthy or even worthless. Because they don’t feel deserving of care or attention from others, they hold themselves back. As a result, an addict with shame will be more vulnerable to easily accessed, but ultimately unhealthy attempts at intimacy like porn. On the one hand, true connection is what is needed. But shame makes healthy intimacy difficult because the addict fears being seen by their significant other. If they are seen, the addict feels like they won’t be acceptable to the most important person in their life, and therefore keeps them at a distance. Shame perpetuates and accelerates the addiction cycle. When it mixes with other issues, its effect compounds. If you lack the security of knowing that important figures in your life are actually available, if you lack impulse control, or if you have mood disorders, you are more likely to suffer from sex addiction. In particular, disorders such as PTSD with roots in childhood trauma, neglect, or sexual abuse can make you particularly vulnerable to sexual compulsivity. All of these elements mixed together–sexual compulsivity, shame, and other negative stimuli–help to reinforce a cycle that fuels porn or sex addiction. (Reid et al, 2009) The more intense the maelstrom of negative feelings, the more intense the urge to act out sexually to find relief. And the more that you reinforce the pattern of acting out in order to escape emotional distress. Shame helps push you into this cycle of addiction, and shame keeps you there. It is one of the barriers to shaking yourself free of the addiction. This can combine with neurological deficits from early childhood trauma to keep you stuck in sex addiction. These issues are incredibly complex and very personal to every individual. In order to tackle them successfully, you will need to understand just how deep the rabbit hole goes. Regardless of how complex the situation may be, there is always hope. If you find yourself in a situation where you are unable to stop acting out sexually or quitting your porn habit, it is important to seek the help of a trained therapist. It is extremely difficult to untangle the complex threads of shame and early childhood challenges that lead to, and keep you ensnared in addiction. By seeking help, you will learn and equip yourself with the necessary tools to find freedom from these addictions. It will take a lot of time and effort to dig out the reasons for your addiction, but in the end it will allow you to find healthier and more productive coping mechanisms that will allow you to address the core reasons behind your addiction and move forward in your life. References Bancroft, John. “Biological Factors in Human Sexuality.” Journal of Sex Research 39, no. 1 (February 2002): 15–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224490209552114. Bogaert, Anthony F., and Stan Sadava. “Adult Attachment and Sexual Behavior.” Personal Relationships 9, no. 2 (June 2002): 191–204. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6811.00012. Carnes, Patrick. Contrary to Love: Helping the Sexual Addict. Minneapolis, Minn: CompCare Publishers, 1989. Chisholm, Myles, and Terry Lynn Gall. “Shame and the X-Rated Addiction: The Role of Spirituality in Treating Male Pornography Addiction.” Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity 22, no. 4 (October 2, 2015): 259–72. https://doi.org/10.1080/10720162.2015.1066279. Katehakis, Alexandra. “Affective Neuroscience and the Treatment of Sexual Addiction.” Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity 16, no. 1 (March 4, 2009): 1–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/10720160802708966. M. Adams, Donald W. Robinson, Kenneth. “Shame Reduction, Affect Regulation, and Sexual Boundary Development: Essential Building Blocks of Sexual Addiction Treatment.” Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity 8, no. 1 (January 2001): 23–44. https://doi.org/10.1080/10720160127559. Prosek, Elizabeth A., Amanda L. Giordano, Jessica M. Holm, Cynthia M. Bevly, Kristy M. Sender, Zachary B. Ramsey, and Meagan R. Abernathy. “Experiencing Shame: Collegiate Alcohol Abuse, Religiosity, and Spirituality.” Journal of College Counseling 20, no....

How to Set Boundaries in a Kind Way

Wed, 14 Aug 2019 11:00:59 +0000

Most people have heard of boundaries and understand that it’s good to have healthy boundaries in marriage. But as with any psychological concept that enters the public sphere, its application can be quite twisted from its intended form. Sometimes people will cut off members of their family, labeling that action as “setting a boundary”. Or others will use boundaries as a way to manipulate friends into doing what they want. By applying the term “boundaries” to these actions, people often are just using a generally accepted keyword to try to validate their actions. At their core, boundaries are indeed necessary for healthy relationships, helping you navigate your complex dance with other unique individuals. When used appropriately, they help you move closer together to other people rather than moving away. This is why it’s crucial to look at how you can create boundaries that uplift and strengthen your relationships and apply them in healthy, productive ways. What Are Boundaries? The term “boundary” defines the rules and limits you set in a particular relationship in order to establish a sense of safety. Safety in this context refers to an appropriate balance of closeness or distance in the relationship. In marriage, you typically set boundaries to define where you feel safe and able to be close with your spouse. If a rule isn’t set, it isn’t a boundary. This can be a perfectly valid choice for your situation. For instance, you might simply make an observation (“I love it when you do this when we have sex”) or make a complaint (“When you drink, I can’t have honest conversations with you about our marriage.”). In these cases, rather than setting the boundary, you are stating something and letting your spouse react as they choose. But if the issue is important enough to you and your marriage, making that observation or complaint might not be enough. You might choose to set a boundary. For example, you might say that you will no longer discuss your marriage as a couple if your spouse is under the influence of alcohol. Or that you might be willing to experiment with your spouse’s sexual fantasies if they agree to stop when you say, “Stop.” In each of these cases, the purpose of the boundary is to increase connection by establishing rules that will protect you and preserve your sense of safety. Why Are Boundaries Important in Relationships? Safety is fundamental for creating trust. If you don’t feel safe with your spouse, you can’t experience trust. And if you can’t trust your spouse, then you can’t develop intimacy. Boundaries help you feel safe enough to experience a deeper relationship with your spouse. Typically, boundaries will define ownership and responsibility, which are closely related to self-esteem. When you establish boundaries, you are saying that you value not only your relationship with the other person but that you value yourself. Boundaries help define what each person in the relationship is responsible for. A boundary between you and your spouse says that each of you is responsible for your own bodies, words, emotions, attitudes, values, and preferences. By establishing these boundaries and agreeing to abide by them, you create a strong foundation to build emotional intimacy together. In marriage, boundaries clarify what you prefer or need from your spouse. Agreeing to the boundaries you set shows that they respect you. And by setting the boundary, you show that you respect yourself enough to tell them what you need from them. If you think about it, marriage vows are a public form of boundaries. Each of you agrees to basic terms that are essential to your relationship to create safety, to create a foundation of trust, for intimacy. Vows are an example of an explicit boundary as you are clearly expressing them to one another. Implicit boundaries are boundaries that are held without being stated. For example, you might expect that your spouse will work and provide for the family. Implicit boundaries like this are just as important to the relationship, but may never be discussed until they are threatened or broken. This is why you need to be clear with your spouse who you are, what you want, what you believe, what you value, and even what you cannot allow or endure. Without establishing these things about yourself, you might gravitate towards the unhealthy response of trying to be like your spouse instead of being who you are. For example, if your spouse, an introvert, needs a significant amount of solitude in order to recharge, you might try to do that with them when both of you have low energy. However, if you are an extrovert, you won’t come out of that time of recharging refreshed and energized. You will simply be frustrated and drained as a result. But if you know and have communicated with your spouse that as an extrovert, you need to spend time with other people to recharge, you might both collaborate on how you can meet that need in order to bring a more energized version of yourself to the marriage. These boundaries will help you with self-definition, self-care, self-esteem, comfort, and safety. That often seems selfish, and sometimes saying that you wish to establish boundaries conjures up images of building walls, of cutting people off from you, or of stonewalling. This is only the case if you are using boundaries as a way to excuse your bad behavior or to isolate yourself. The goal here needs to be directed towards improving your relationship. For instance, joining that prayer group might be helpful for you specifically, but it also helps you to have the energy and passion you need to be a great partner to your spouse. You are setting boundaries that allow you to give yourself more fully and completely to the marriage in an expression of healthy independence and interdependence. How to Set Boundaries in Marriage 1. Communicate Openly It can be very difficult sometimes to explain your boundaries to your spouse. You might feel like you are being selfish, or you might be afraid of hurting the other person. So take some time to collect your thoughts and feelings, then start that discussion with your spouse even if it’s difficult and scary. To see how this might play out, let’s look at another sample scenario: You notice that whenever you visit a certain friend together, your spouse tends to make fun of you in front of them. It’s “just teasing” but it does sting a little or, at the very least, it feels uncomfortable. A boundary could be set by telling your spouse that if that behavior continues, you will not be able to accompany them on such visits. Let them know that you are doing this so that you can continue to feel respected and valued by them. This isn’t a selfish action. After all, you are setting this boundary in order to build your relationship. And you aren’t doing this to hurt them. Remember that despite the fact that you aren’t trying to hurt them (if you are, you need to take a step back and reevaluate this boundary), sometimes hurting them is unavoidable. This is especially true when you are limited or prohibiting a certain kind of behavior. When you say you won’t go with your spouse to visit someone if they keep making fun of you in that context, they might still feel hurt because of that boundary, even if it is reasonable. There is an element of confrontation to a boundary like this, so it’s quite likely that your spouse will react to it. But if you clearly and openly communicate the boundary without trying to establish blame or victimhood, you might help them understand the boundary without triggering their defensiveness. 2. Follow Through For some people, this might be the hardest part of the process. As anyone with kids knows, it’s easy to threaten children with consequences, but it can be much more difficult to follow through on the consequences when the situation warrants it. It can be even harder to follow through on consequences when a spouse violates a boundary. If you don’t follow through, it can be worse than never setting boundaries. Your spouse might use that as a justification or even validation for their violation. After all, they might think, if you really thought it was a violation, you would have followed through on the consequences. However, sometimes it is important to take a look on the boundary you are setting. After the violation, you might examine the boundary and see that it was too vague or the consequences were too high for the situation. Based on your evaluation, you might choose to make an exception. Just be 100% sure to carefully consider this choice and explain it to your spouse. Otherwise, you will typically want to follow through on your boundary. If you had enough self-respect to assert the boundary, you should feel enough self-respect to see it enforced. 3. Be Clear on Responsibility Effective boundaries reflect where the responsibilities for certain actions lie. It is quite common for people to take less responsibility than they should, so take a step back and look at the boundary you have set. Look out especially for areas where responsibility should fall to you, but instead, you lay all the blame on your spouse. What decisions might have you have made in the relationship that contributed to this contention? Is the entire burden of your feelings and desires placed on your spouse? Is there a chance that you might have been at least partially responsible for the boundary violation? These can be difficult questions to ask, but necessary to form healthy and fair boundaries in your marriage. Be careful not to set up your spouse for failure by creating a double bind or no-win situation. There needs to be a way for them to change,...

Unpack the Four Horsemen

Wed, 07 Aug 2019 11:00:25 +0000

In the Book of Revelation, the Bible talks about Four Horsemen that will herald the apocalypse. Symbolizing pestilence, war, famine, and death, these Horsemen are meant to be the signs that indicate that the end of the world is imminent. Borrowing from this Biblical illustration, Dr. John Gottman identified the four most critical indicators of marital separation: criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling. Based on his study of over 2,000 couples for more than twenty years, he was able to identify especially problematic communication styles that could bring about the end of a marriage. In fact, if these factors were left unaddressed, he could predict the end of the marriage with over 90% accuracy. However, it isn’t all doom and gloom. Gottman also found that for each Horseman, there is an antidote that will help give your marriage a fighting chance. The Research Gottman sought to determine the most important predictors of marital failure and divorce. He took a look at many of the ways that couples communicate, including facial expressions, physiology, how they talked about each other and their relationship. And what he and other researchers found was that couples with the Four Horsemen present in their marriage were likely to divorce 5.6 years after their wedding day. Most couples might think that other factors might be worse for a marriage than these Four Horsemen. However, this is not necessarily the case. For example, on average, emotionally disengaged couples would divorce 16 years after their wedding, meaning that marriages with this issue would typically last nearly 3 times longer than those with criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling. The Four Horsemen are to be taken very seriously. In fact, of the Four, contempt is the most destructive. It is the strongest predictor of relationship failure. But Gottman found that these behaviors are related and that there is typically a sequence to them. Starting with criticism, couples shift to defensiveness, contempt, and finally shut each other out with stonewalling. Despite the fact that these issues can lead to divorce, they often do not stop people from forming new romantic relationships. While the presence of the Four Horsemen can cause you to end your marriage, they are unlikely to cause the end of a premarital relationship. As a result, it is common for couples to get married despite having experienced these issues. This doesn’t mean that the Four Horsemen are nonexistent in healthy marriages. What helps marriages succeed is confronting these issues together. While sometimes you tend to overlook serious issues during the dating phase of your relationship, if you are committed to your marriage, you will need to face these behaviors in yourself head-on. The Four Horsemen Let’s examine how each Horseman impacts your marriage. Criticism This is anything that communicates that your spouse is not worthy of your consideration or respect. Rather than focusing on behavior, criticism typically assaults character. The negative effects are often compounded by globalizing which happens when you use terms like “you always…” or “you never…”. Criticism makes mistakes or even small incidents bigger than they should be and paints them as a result of permanent character flaws in your spouse. It accuses them of being such a bad person that they are not worthy of respect. Criticism inhibits addressing and modifying specific behaviors, instead offering suggestions as to why the other person will never change because of who they are. Voicing criticism is different from simply voicing concern and displeasure, which are important and healthy practices in any relationship. But rather than helping you and your spouse learn and grow, criticism is destructive. When you criticize your spouse, you destroy your view of them, their view of you, and even their view of themselves. And the more you undermine them, the more they may have to respond defensively or even offensively in order to protect their sense of positive self-identity. This vicious cycle only escalates, increasing in frequency and intensity. The cycle of criticism leads to defensiveness in the receiving party, eventually creating contempt for one another. Defensiveness Attacked spouses will often use defensiveness as a tool to reduce the sting of criticism. It can also be used to deny accountability, reject feedback because of how it was delivered, or as an offensive ploy during conflict. Let’s assume for a moment that your defensiveness is not in response to criticism. You’re just uncomfortable with the negative feedback being given to you. Instead of accepting responsibility for your actions, you find yourself deflecting, diverting, or disposing of accusations against you. Defensiveness takes many forms, but at the end of the day, it is typically a refusal to accept blame or fault. While criticism is a damaging way of communicating, defensiveness exacerbates (or initiates) a cycle of poor conflict resolution behaviors. The defensive spouse will refuse to accept blame, and the critical spouse will refuse to back down feel the need to accuse more severely in order to get through to their spouse. Contempt The purpose of contempt is to cause psychological suffering to someone else by showing disgust. You might insult, use name-calling, mockery, or roll your eyes. These behaviors come from an absence of regard or admiration for your spouse. In some ways, contempt may be a misguided attempt to lead your spouse out of a difficult or problematic situation. For example, after all the complaints you’ve made with no effect, your last resort might be to insult them as a last-ditch effort to get them to follow your prompting to make the changes you deem necessary. Or in your defensiveness, your desperate refusal to accept responsibility, you might try to hurt your spouse verbally to get them to stop accusing you of things. But in the absence of patience and charity, you communicate (intentionally or not) that you are simply better than them; therefore they should admit their inferiority and follow your lead. This sounds awful, and it really is awful to be on the receiving end of contempt. This is the reason why, of the Four Horsemen, contempt is one of the strongest indicators of a failing marriage. Its effect on relationships is so severe that it can even weaken immune systems, causing you to experience more colds, cases of the flu, and other infectious diseases than normal. Allowing contempt to fester in your marriage will very likely lead to disaster. Stonewalling In any marriage, it is crucial that you maintain open lines of communication. Stonewalling does the opposite. It involves distancing yourself from your spouse psychologically or physically. Stonewalling takes many forms, but they all involve a sort of disengagement from your spouse. You might stop actively participating in a discussion, just saying, “mmhmm” every couple minutes while you scroll through your phone. You might say that you’re busy and have to work on other things. Or you might just get up and walk away from the conflict or conversation entirely. This strategy is primarily used by men: over 80% of stonewalling is done by males. In best-case scenarios, stonewalling is another misguided way to preserve a relationship by avoiding conflict entirely with your spouse. In other cases, it can also be used as a method of manipulation and punishment (the “silent treatment”). Regardless of intent, stonewalling is an isolating strategy because it disconnects you and your spouse rather than bringing you closer. The Antidotes It’s easy to look at the Four Horsemen and think that all you need to do is avoid these behaviors. But it’s more effective to find ways of replacing these unhelpful behaviors rather than simply trying to stop doing them. This is why Gottman provides alternatives to replace the Four Horsemen. Learn to Complain: The Antidote to Criticism Often, complaining is treated as a synonym for criticizing. But instead of addressing problems by attacking your spouse (criticism), complaining involves talking about what you need. It involves opening a line of communication between you and your spouse, helping them see your side of the relationship, or to see themselves through your eyes. Let’s look at a sample scenario. With your friends, your spouse decides to make a joke that doesn’t reflect well on you. Rather than using criticism such as, “Why are you always such an inconsiderate jerk?” try saying, “When you mock me in front of my friends (use precise language to elaborate on what you perceive as mocking), I feel belittled and humiliated.” In doing this, you help your spouse understand how their words impact you. Instead of launching an attack at their character, a legitimate complaint shows your spouse the clear line between their action and its effect on you. This strategy is more likely to result in a positive response than criticism and helps establish the fact that despite the complaint, you still believe in them. You provide a path towards empathy, leading towards a healthier, more intimate marriage. Own What You Can: The Antidote to Defensiveness Resorting to defensiveness involves avoiding responsibility at all costs. So in some ways, this antidote can be difficult. Rather than raising your defenses, you need to learn to lower your guard. You need to learn to be vulnerable with your spouse. When you hear a complaint or even a criticism, be willing to be honest about what you could have done better or differently. Instead of viewing this as an attack, see this as an opportunity to learn from your spouse’s perspective....

How to Identify Your Emotions

Wed, 31 Jul 2019 11:00:33 +0000

You know something is wrong. Your chest feels tight, your jaw is clenched, and the conversation with your spouse that ended twenty minutes ago is still looping in your head. But if someone asked you right now what you actually feel, you might say "fine" or "frustrated" or just shrug. This is where most people live. And if you have ever wondered how to identify your emotions past the surface level, you are not alone. The short answer: to identify your emotions, pause long enough to notice what is happening in your body, locate where the sensation is (chest, throat, stomach, or jaw), describe its quality (tight, heavy, warm, or sharp), and then find the specific feeling word that matches. It is not a mystical skill. It is a pattern of attention. And like any skill, it can be built, even if no one ever taught you. We see people struggle with this every week in our practice. It is not that they do not care or are not trying. They were never given words for what is happening inside them. When you can identify emotions accurately, something changes in the way you speak to yourself, to your partner, and to the people closest to you. This is what emotional literacy actually means: the ability to name what is happening inside you clearly enough to do something useful with it. Here is how to build the skill. What "I Feel" Really Means (and Why Most People Get It Wrong) People use the phrase "I feel" hundreds of times a week without realizing they almost never use it to describe a feeling. Most of the time, the sentence that follows "I feel" is actually a thought in disguise. If you say, "I feel like you do not want to spend time with me," you are not naming an emotion. You are naming what you think is going on. The word "feel" is doing the work of the word "think." This is one of the most common habits we hear in sessions, and it quietly shapes the conflict that follows. The "I Think" Test There is a simple check that exposes this. Replace "I feel" with "I think." If the sentence still makes sense, you were not describing an emotion. "I feel like you never listen to me" becomes "I think you never listen to me." That still makes sense, so it was a thought. "I feel sad when you do not listen to me" becomes "I think sad when you do not listen to me." That does not make sense. You were describing a real emotion. Emotions are words like sad, disappointed, anxious, lonely, proud, tender, relieved, ashamed, disgusted, happy, hurt, trapped, calm. They are not sentences. They are single words that name an internal state. When you catch yourself using "I feel" to describe a thought, slow down and ask: what is the emotion underneath this thought? That is usually where the real conversation is hiding. In couples work, this small shift often changes the entire quality of a difficult conversation. The Brain-Body Connection in Emotion Emotions are not just thoughts. They are physical. You cannot understand how to identify your emotions without understanding that feelings live in the body as much as the mind. A lot is happening very quickly in the brain and body when an emotion shows up. The hypothalamus activates the nervous system. The thalamus, amygdala, and several cortical areas help interpret and respond to emotional information. The amygdala is especially important because it sends signals out to the body, which is why emotions land as physical sensations and not just ideas. Think about watching someone get hit hard in the groin. That "ugh" reaction you feel is real. Your body responds as if it were happening to you. You did not think your way into it. The signal moved through your nervous system before your conscious mind could catch up. This is why therapists ask clients where in the body they feel the emotion. Happiness often feels light in the chest. Anxiety tends to gather in the abdomen, sometimes with a faint nausea. Anger lives in the jaw, shoulders, and hands. Sadness has a heaviness that settles behind the eyes and in the throat. This is the meaning of the word feeling. An emotion will always have a physical signature. When you learn to read that signature, you learn to identify emotions in real time, not hours later when the moment has passed. Which Comes First: Brain or Body? Researchers still debate whether emotion starts in the brain or the body first. For practical purposes, both directions matter. Place a cool cloth on the back of your neck when you are angry, and the intensity of the anger will drop. That is the body influencing the brain. Replay the moment someone cut you off in traffic, and you will feel your fists clench all over again. That is the brain influencing the body. This bidirectionality is a gift, not a complication. It means you have multiple doors into the same room. You can work with emotions from the inside out or from the outside in. Why Identifying Emotions Is Harder Than It Sounds If you grew up in a home where emotions were rarely named, or where the only acceptable feeling was calm (or anger, or silence), you probably never built an emotional vocabulary. That is not a character flaw. It is a gap in emotional education. The skill was never taught, so it was never built. In clinical language, the difficulty identifying and describing internal emotional states has a name: alexithymia. It is not a standalone diagnosis in the DSM, but it is a real and measurable trait. People who score higher in alexithymia can often describe exactly what their body is doing but have no word for the feeling behind it. We see this constantly. Someone will say, "My chest is tight and I cannot sit still," and when we ask what feeling that is, they stop and look genuinely puzzled. That puzzled look is not stubbornness. It is a skill that was never built. Men more often report this, partly because many boys are raised to notice only anger and calm, with everything else routed through one of those two channels. But it shows up in women too, especially in people who grew up in homes where emotions were treated as inconvenient or dangerous. There is good news here. Alexithymia is not fixed. With practice, people expand their emotional vocabulary and their ability to locate and name feelings. The rest of this article is about how. Building Your Emotional Vocabulary: Plutchik's Wheel Before you can identify an emotion, you need to know the emotion exists in your vocabulary. A lot of people feel stuck between four or five words: good, bad, fine, mad, sad. That is not enough resolution to work with. Psychologist Robert Plutchik built a diagram to help with this. His wheel of emotions maps out eight primary feelings and shows how they relate to each other by intensity and opposition. You can find a copy of Plutchik's wheel on Wikimedia Commons. Around the edge of the wheel, you have the eight primary emotions: anger, fear, anticipation, surprise, sadness, joy, trust, and disgust. Each one sits across from its polar opposite. Joy and sadness are opposites. Fear and anger are opposites. Anticipation and surprise are opposites. Disgust and trust are opposites. Moving toward the center of the wheel, each emotion intensifies. Annoyance becomes anger becomes rage. Apprehension becomes fear becomes terror. The wheel gives you a scale, not just a list. Save a copy to your phone. Reference it when you are stuck on "I just feel bad." Scan the wheel and ask which word actually fits. Most people, the first few times they do this, find a feeling they would not have named on their own. Expanding your emotional vocabulary is the foundation of emotional literacy. It is the difference between saying, "I feel bad," and saying, "I feel ashamed and scared that you will see it." The first one closes the door. The second can start a real conversation. How to Identify Your Emotions: A Step-by-Step Process Here is a practical process you can run in real time or after the fact. The first part is a body scan. The second part is a structured debrief informed by dialectical behavior therapy (DBT). Start with a Body Scan Before you try to name a feeling in words, locate it in your body. This is the move most people skip, and it is the move that makes naming possible. Pause. Close your eyes if you can, or just soften your gaze. Drop your attention from your head down into your body. Scan slowly from your jaw to your chest to your stomach to your hands. Notice where something is happening. Where is the tightness, the heat, the flutter, the weight? Describe the sensation before you name the feeling. Is it tight or loose? Heavy or light? Warm or cold? Sharp or dull? Still or buzzing? Once you have the sensation described, ask the simple question: if this sensation had a name, what feeling would it be? The body scan matters for a reason neuroscientists have studied. When you put a feeling into words, a process called affect labeling, brain scans show decreased activation in the amygdala. In plain language, naming the emotion lowers its volume. This was first demonstrated in research by Matthew Lieberman and colleagues in 2007, and it has held up across many studies since. "Name it to tame it" has a real mechanism behind it. Then Run a Six-Step Debrief Once you can locate a feeling, you can use a structured debrief after an emotionally intense moment. This process is informed by DBT, the therapy developed by Dr. Marsha Linehan, and it is a practical tool for making sense of what happened inside you. 1. What happened? Describe the event factually. Just the facts. Not interpretations, not motives, not what you think the other person was trying to do. A neutral description. 2. Why do you think it happened? Now write down the meaning you made of the event. This matters because the meaning you assigned, whether you realized you were assigning it or not, is a large part of the emotional response that followed. 3. How did the situation make you feel? ...

How To Keep The Romance Alive in Your Marriage

Wed, 17 Jul 2019 11:00:26 +0000

Marriages can be strange. You slog through the daily grind, but at least you’ve got your partner. You think that everything’s fine, but then one day you wake up and realize that you don’t feel close to your spouse anymore. This is a common event in any marriage. Sometimes it’s because of normal life transitions. Sometimes it’s something drastic, like the death of a parent, or a traumatic accident. Or maybe the excitement you once felt has just gradually disappeared until you’re just… bored. Is that such a bad thing? Isn’t it normal as you grow older for romance to fade? Isn’t it enough just to be committed and to remain faithful? Do you really need to try to rekindle the fire? Why You Need to Keep the Romance Alive It’s easy to think of romance is just an emotion, one that isn’t necessary compared with your mutual commitment to marriage. But romance is more than that. There’s a reason why you vow not just to love but also to cherish. When you stop having sex or intentionally dating your spouse, your neglect tells your spouse that they aren’t special to you anymore. It tells them that you no longer care about your relationship or your marriage. It’s not uncommon for this neglect to manifest itself through lower self-esteem in your spouse. By stopping the romance, you communicate that you no longer value them enough to give them the special attention you once gave them. In order to work together as a couple, you need to depend on one another. But if it feels like you aren’t valuing each other, you will start to depend on yourself rather than each other. When that happens, you raise the question of whether or not the marriage is working or necessary anymore. The lack of romance will increasingly cause both of you to wonder if this marriage is even worth the effort. However, research shows that rekindling commitment to romance can reinvigorate your marriage. Actively keeping the romance in your marriage alive strengthens your spouse’s confidence in you. It builds their confidence in you as a partner in life and in marriage, someone they can rely on. So yes. You need to make the effort to show your spouse that they are special and loved by you. You can’t allow your marriage to grow cold and stagnant. But what do you do when romance has faded? How do you rekindle the flame of your first love? What Erodes Romance? Everyone’s situation is unique and personal to themselves. Because of this, there are countless reasons why your marriage might erode. And often, they are personal to you. Sometimes external demands can dominate your focus, pulling your attention away from your spouse. A difficult phase in your child’s development, new responsibilities at work, a chronic illness, or other stressors can upset the balance of your marriage. Other times, you just forget to be curious about your spouse. You become overly familiar, and stop asking questions because you feel like you already know everything about them. You might start becoming purely pragmatic, treating your marriage like a business arrangement, taking sensuality and sexuality out of the picture. Each of these reasons will wear away at your marriage, often in conjunction with each other. But there is one that you need to take special care to defend against. Beware of Boredom Especially Newlyweds have a hard time imagining that marriage could be boring. Because you didn’t know each other well at the time, everything is new, shiny, exciting. It’s hard to be bored when every day, every minute spent together produces another revelation about your significant other. But once this period of accelerated discovery fades, boredom can creep in if you do not take precautions. That initial excitement comes from rapidly growing closer together, which is easy when you really don’t know anything about the other. And while it is natural for this period to fade, allowing boredom to build reduces your overall marital satisfaction. It’s interesting to note that marriage satisfaction was unaffected by tension within the marriage. Typically you might think that conflict is a sign of a failing marriage, but that provides couples with scenarios that force them to grow closer and rely on one another more. This actually promotes marital satisfaction over the long term. So if you want to keep your romance and marriage alive, you need to look at specific strategies and tactics generate excitement and to avoid boredom in your relationship. Keeping The Romance Alive One important part of the process is connecting with other married couples and experts for advice. While sometimes it seems like no one would understand the issue you’re going through, there is a lot of anecdotal and research-based marital knowledge to learn from. For example, Nan Silver (renowned clinical psychologist) and John Gottman (marriage researcher) wrote a great book entitled “The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work”. Their work in marriage research contains a few parts that specifically address romance. Enhance Your Love Maps Happy couples are very familiar with what is happening in their spouse’s world. But this familiarity shouldn’t stop you from investigating further. This is an important point to drive home – humans are far too complex for you to know everything about your spouse. Think of everything in your brain that you can use to describe your spouse. That is your love map. It’s crucial to understand that this map is incomplete, leaving a lot of room for discovery. You can explore your spouse’s past, looking into their memories and experiences of childhood. You can explore their present. What is stressing them right now? What do they feel about it? And even the future: what are their hopes and dreams? As you regularly continue to explore and build that love map, you can help keep the romance alive. Whenever you sit together for a meal or just to relax, take some time to learn more about them. Work on Fondness & Admiration Fondness and admiration are two essential elements in satisfying long term relationships. We have a helpful exercise in this week’s bonus content for our patrons called “I appreciate” that steps you through some ways to nurture the fondness and admiration between you. Turn Toward Each Other Instead of Away The daily grind makes it difficult to make time for your spouse. So naturally, over time, it becomes easier just to overlook small things in your relationship. To combat this, actively remind yourself to seek out your spouse when you need support, and to make yourself available when your spouse needs you. By making time for them, you let your spouse know they are more valuable to you than daily life. Even if you can’t give them the attention they need right at this moment, make sure to tell them that you hear them and will make time for them later in the day. Don’t let outside demands take away attention from your partner. Send them an encouraging text or a voicemail to brighten their day. Pick up some flowers or a meaningful present for when you next see one another. There will always be another calendar appointment or email to deal with. By setting that aside, even momentarily, you remind your spouse that they matter. Create Shared Meaning Marriage is about building a life together. It’s not just about routines and duty; it’s about meaning. Within that relationship, there needs to be a unique culture filled with significant rituals, roles, and purposes. Your marriage is its own little world, just the two of you. There are many small things you can do to help build and define your marriage. Research shows that each of these actions can help rekindle the passion and romance in your relationship with your spouse: 1. Show Daily Appreciation Ask yourself, “What is something I can do to celebrate my partner today?” Take those thoughts and ideas and act on them. Find ways to acknowledge the importance and role your spouse plays in your life. 2. Surprise Your Partner Make every day special by leaving little Easter eggs for your spouse to find. Small things, like a note on the fridge, in their wallet, in the car. Or give them a loving or sexy voicemail on the phone. These small acts and discoveries will help reignite passion between the two of you. 3. Make Time Together As you grow more comfortable together, it can feel less urgent to set aside time for each other in your marriage. Intentionally find ways to spend time together. They can be little moments like talking together, holding hands, cooking, or watching a movie. But always look for ways to create these special moments together. 4. Mix It Up When you do something new together, your brain releases oxytocin, one of the neurotransmitters associated with the feeling of love we have when a relationship is fresh. By having new experiences together, you can experience some of the electricity you had before. 5. Do Chores This may not rank high among the ideas you have to rekindle romance, but there are studies that show that people feel loved and cared for when their spouse helps around the house. Doing the dishes can be sexy. 6. Remember What Sparked Love Sometimes familiarity causes us to forget what we once had. Revisiting the past can help both of you appreciate how far you’ve come as a couple. A great way to do this is to physically go back to where you met and reliving your first date. 7. Be Intimate Display vulnerability to your spouse, which is crucial for allowing them to get closer to you. Remember to use touch to tether your consciousness to one another. Intimacy is all about connection and openness, so foster healthy and consistent communication to provide regular intimacy in your m

Dealing with Your Shame and Guilt After Betrayal

Wed, 03 Jul 2019 11:00:10 +0000

It might seem strange to be focusing on the betraying spouse. After all, they weren’t the ones who were victimized. However, if the betraying spouse does not grow as a result of the wrong they did, that leaves their betrayed spouse vulnerable. So yes, it is vital for you, the betraying spouse, to help your partner cope with the fallout of your betrayal. But in the aftermath, you too must focus on your own healing process as well. In this way, you take tangible steps to safeguard your spouse from the possibility of betraying them in the future. Balanced Coping is Important Betraying your spouse opens up your marriage to many interpersonal conflicts for you to address. How you choose to cope with these conflicts will largely determine the future of your marriage. One common tendency might be to focus solely on the needs of your betrayed spouse. It’s easy to devote all your efforts towards calming them down. The risk in this approach is you keep yourself from dealing with the fact that you betrayed them. You don’t address why you did it in the first place, much less how you can prevent yourself from repeating the past. Or you might even ignore the effects of the betrayal altogether. You act as if nothing happened, turning a blind eye towards the elephant in the room. You think that perhaps the storm will pass, and life will go on as it did before. Or you might take it to another extreme and focus all of your attention on yourself. You become so self-absorbed in your frustration and even self-pity because of the realization that you have betrayed someone. You force your spouse, intentionally or not, to take care of you instead of leaving them room to deal with their own needs. This is where balance comes in. In the aftermath of your betrayal, you will need to accommodate both your spouse as well as your own issues. Despite the tension between the concern for your spouse and concern for yourself, you cannot simply focus solely on one or the other. To address both, use an integrated, balanced approach.[1] Having balanced coping is necessary for the long-term health of your marriage. In the first days following betrayal, your spouse will need extra attention to help their healing process. But as they heal, start concentrating on your own journey of growth so that you do not repeat the betrayal. In cases of severe or even profound betrayal, it is ideal if both of you have your own individual counselors, with a third counselor who sees you as a couple. This way, you each have someone on “your side” helping you grow while a neutral third party can help you navigate the crisis between the two of you. Dealing With Shame and Guilt From Betrayal When you do something you are not proud of, shame and guilt are two very common emotional reactions. They help regulate moral behavior by increasing your self-awareness and stress, helping to make it more difficult to do things that go against your own values. However, researchers have found that guilt and shame also influence how you handle problems in your relationship.[2] As a result, it’s important to understand how to deal with these emotions. Understanding Shame How do you see yourself? When you’ve done something you deeply regret, how do you see your character and identity? After you’ve betrayed someone, shame may tell you that you are a betrayer, a cheater, an immoral person, or something like this. Shame makes you feel hopeless because it talks about you as if this is who you have always been and always will be. It frames your betrayal as more than an act: as an integral part of your identity. While it is crucial to recognize the magnitude of your betrayal and its effect on your spouse, it is more important to focus on the behavior and consequences rather than on shame-based identity motifs. Rather than pushing you to change and to become a better person, shame paralyzes and prevents you from growing. It disables you, blocking your capacity to do better or make things right. Because it is such an awful feeling and disabling internal voice, you may try to do whatever it takes to silence it. You might blame your spouse or others so you can prove the accusations wrong. Or you might avoid your spouse altogether, so you don’t have to listen to the shame. Or you might yield to the accusations, believing that you are the shame-based label you (or others) assign to yourself. The problem is that shame prevents you and your spouse from problem-solving. It inhibits any effort to reestablish intimacy because if you are only and entirely the person shame makes you out to be, you will naturally want to hide this from your spouse.[3] However, problem-solving and intimacy are necessary for your marriage to heal and move forward. Shame pushes you away from your spouse at precisely the moment you should be trying to rebuild your connection. How To Deal With Shame When you default to the idea that you are a horrible person, period, this stops you from uncovering how you came to betray your spouse. While shame is painful, it is also a simple coping mechanism to turn to, particularly in the immediate aftermath of the betrayal. Because a betraying spouse tends to minimize a betrayal, the betrayed spouse may even overcompensate to make sure that you know what you did. This compounds the effects of shame but also can prevent healing because then you don’t need to address future steps of change; you simply are terrible. End of story. This is why it’s important not to become paralyzed with shame. Once you admit what you did, then what your spouse really needs is for you to figure out your stuff so that you don’t repeat the betrayal. What were the actions, beliefs, and decisions that led you there? Did you make excuses along the way? Hide things from yourself or others? Lied about things? How did you come to make those errors in judgment? You can begin to adopt a healthier perspective by recognizing that you are more than the poor choices you make. Be careful not to minimize, but instead, carefully examine the wrong you did to prevent it from reoccurring.[4] By understanding where and how you failed to keep your own values, you can learn how to make better choices moving forward. Understanding Guilt As you leave behind your shame, you will find a place where you can really examine those choices. And this will bring you face to face with guilt. This isn’t a happy place. It’s certainly not enjoyable. But it’s a lot more productive than shame. While shame focuses on who you are, guilt takes a look at what you did. Where shame says, “You are and always will be an adulterer,” guilt says, “You hurt your spouse by committing adultery.” Even a shift in language like this might seem like a subtle change, but it is crucial. When you feel guilty, you realize the situation is no longer hopeless; you can change! Instead of disabling you further, healthy guilt motivates.[5] Guilt helps you contextualize your betrayal as something finite rather than something infinite. You are able to see how your betrayal affected others, not just what it says about you. This promotes empathy and accountability. Researchers have found that guilt “leads to higher-quality solutions to crises, is associated with constructive anger-management … and controls and inhibits (restrains) actions that are likely to cause harm.”[6] Thus overall, guilt is more effective in helping your marriage heal after betrayal. This is hard work, but good work to do. How To Deal With Guilt While guilt is certainly an improvement over shame, you do need to be aware that not all guilt is productive. Healthy guilt should help you make amends and navigate the recovery of your marriage. However, just as shame paralyzes you, there is a kind of guilt that can do the same. Maladaptive guilt dwells on the past and gets stuck there. Healthy guilt, also known as adaptive guilt, accepts that what you did was wrong but instead focuses on improvement and forward progress. It says, “What I did was so wrong, but I will work towards making it right.”[7] It helps you make the necessary changes in your life to prevent repeating the past. Learn to see yourself as someone with the capacity and means to make things right. As you rebuild your marriage, continue to move forward. Be honest enough to admit your faults, embracing the guilt, but always look towards a hopeful future so you do not foster shame. Focus on owning what went wrong and then on making things right. Adaptive guilt doesn’t avoid sitting with the consequences of your betrayal. It is uncomfortable but beneficial to feel the effects of what you did so that you can turn those difficult feelings into productive action. It will allow you to make amends, commit to recovery work, and to extend compassion and empathy to your betrayed spouse as they deal with their grief. If you set aside your shame and move towards (and even embrace) your guilt, you will be able to courageously confront your past failure and start building a future where your marriage can heal and thrive once more. References [1]Behrendt, Hadar, and Rachel Ben-Ari. “The Positive Side of Negative Emotion: The Role of Guilt and Shame in Coping with Interpersonal Conflict.” The Journal of Conflict Resolution 56, no. 6 (December 2012): 1116–38. [2]Behrendt and Ben-Ari. [3]Behrendt and Ben-Ari. [4]Sack, David. “5 Ways to Silence Shame.” Professional. PsychologyToday, January 13, 2015. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/where-science-meets-the-steps/201501/5-ways-silence-shame. [5]Behrendt and Ben-Ari. [6]Behrendt and Ben-Ari. [7]Selva, Joaquin. “Why Shame and Guilt Are Functional For Mental Health....

How To Work With Your Spouse’s Betrayal Trauma Part 2

Wed, 26 Jun 2019 11:00:00 +0000

So you’ve taken the initial steps towards helping your spouse heal from your betrayal. You admitted your guilt. You demonstrated your remorse. You showed your willingness to make it right. And your spouse sees and understands this. But you still find yourselves caught in a cycle where you go back to the same thing over and over again. First, make sure you’ve already issued a sincere, thoughtful apology and have truly made an empathic acknowledgment of all the ways in which your betrayal impacted your spouse. If you haven’t done this yet, please refer to Part 1 because doing so is integral to showing them that you identify with their pain, which is essential for the foundation of your spouse’s healing. It’s helpful to remember that recovering from betrayal takes time. To help you, here are some things to keep in mind as you continue to face the consequences of your actions: 1. Be Patient The offending spouse will almost always find themselves assuming or pushing for a quick recovery. But traumatic experiences like betrayal are often life-changing. They don’t just affect your spouse’s present emotions; they can change his or her entire worldview.[1] While your spouse may have moved on from the initial feelings of shock and numbness, they may continue to harbor insecurity, suspicion, and distrust of you. They may even have continuous rage against you, which you will find can be much harder to deal with than continuous sadness.[2] Your physical intimacy during this period might be unpredictable as well. Sometimes couples experience a period of hypersexuality as both are desperate to heal the breach in their marriage. Or sometimes the betrayed spouse will refuse to share in any sexual intimacy or intercourse until they are ready. There are no quick fixes here. You need to take the long view, to understand that this is a lengthy process, one that will have ups and downs. You and your spouse might enjoy a few good days that feel normal again, but be careful that you do not assume that things are completely healed. Often those smooth periods are followed by turbulent ones. You might be frustrated, feeling like the two of you have reverted, that you haven’t made any progress. You might get upset when you hit some bumps again because you think you’ve already dealt with this. But a healthier and more realistic way to look at this process is from a broader perspective. Patience will help you understand that you are on a long, slow (but continuous) trajectory towards healing, one that has both good times and tough ones. The good times should not be taken as a sign of arrival just like the tough times should not be taken as a sign that you’ve made zero progress. Rather, just understand there are good times and tough times on the journey to healing. With time, you’ll see that the good times become longer and more frequent than the tough times. The journey will require patience. 2. Be Helpful It’s very easy to withdraw from your spouse during this time. Causing betrayal trauma can lead to feelings of hopelessness in your marriage. You need to resist this tendency to withdraw when discouraged. Instead of shying away, take time to have those difficult discussions with your spouse. Show that you are willing to do the difficult work of making things right. As you have these discussions together, there are certain things to be mindful of. While you will have to discuss the betrayal in order to help your spouse make sense of things and to help the two of you take tangible steps towards change, there are a couple of ways that these discussions can become unhelpful. The first is in giving too many details of the betrayal. For example, the sexually betrayed spouse will sometimes want to hear all the gritty particulars of your encounter or encounters, but sharing them might actually retraumatize him or her. While you do need to be open in order to reestablish trust, you will also want to be careful about how much detail you share so as not to create imagery that is traumatizing. You can ask, “Are you really sure you want to have those details?”[3] This way your spouse knows that you aren’t hiding anything, yet you also protect them from unnecessary pain and further trauma. In instances of sexual betrayal, we believe the betrayed spouse should know who your sexual partners were, how often you met, where you met and when you met. These are details that the betrayed partner needs to know so that they can serve as safety measures in the event of future concerns. The second way these discussions can become unhelpful is when you are too exhausted to have a productive conversation. Particularly in the early stages of dealing with the betrayal, your spouse might want to talk for hours late into the night and into the wee hours of the morning. At some point, the discussion will no longer be helpful and may do more damage than good simply because you’re both beyond exhaustion. You and your spouse might feel like you are alert and able to have a productive discussion at 2 AM, but that’s likely more because your stress system is in overdrive. In reality, your brains are exhausted and not in their best shape to address the betrayal. Once again, you need to set some gentle and considerate boundaries with your spouse about the timing of your discussions. First of all, your spouse needs to know that you are not avoiding these discussions altogether. Don’t say, “I’m tired,” and just walk away. Talk with them about what a healthy time would be to pause the conversation for some much-needed rest. And reassure them that you will continue the conversation as promised. If months go by and the two of you realize that you are just talking in circles, that’s a good signal that it’s time to seek out a therapist who has the specialized training needed to deal with betrayal trauma. Most people and even many counselors don’t necessarily have the tools to deal with betrayal trauma, so finding a qualified therapist to help with this issue is a great idea. 3. Be Hopeful The journey you are on is a long and difficult one. It’s easy to get frustrated. While the betrayal and its effects on your spouse are your responsibility, it’s impossible for you to fix it all by yourself. Not only are you unable to fix everything, but it’s also difficult to recognize that healing has no shortcuts. There are no silver bullets, no sure-fire ways that will ensure that your marriage will recover in the way you want it. Despite all this, there is still cause to be hopeful. When you undergo this journey together and you persist and find healing, you and your spouse will create a marriage that is stronger and more intimate than what you had before betrayal tore it apart. And through commitment and effort from you and your spouse, you will be able to rebuild.[4][5] You can cling to the fact that regardless of the damage dealt to your marriage, healing is still possible. No matter how bad your situation is, know that couples have recovered from incredible betrayals. While couples we work with would never choose the hard journey of betrayal and healing, they do find that through the hard work of forgiveness and willingness to be vulnerable once more, they can build a stronger and more resilient relationship than they had ever experienced before. No, this doesn’t mean that marriages need betrayal to become stronger. There is no justifying what you did. However, the hope is that together, you will discover new ways to strengthen your marriage for the future. Hope comes from the fact that the two of you are now assuring one another of your commitment to your marriage. And not just from promises, but from doing the actual work required to rebuild and renew your marriage bond. When you show consistent effort and commitment towards becoming a safe, dependable, and reliable spouse, you help rebuild the trust that you lost. Just remember that promises don’t build trust. Trust is built by reliable behavior over time. This means that promises need to be kept: every time. No matter how small. It’s not uncommon for betrayed spouses to be more sensitive to small details that they didn’t seem to care about before. It might seem like you are being judged more harshly for things that you consider to be of little consequence. But it’s your follow-through on these micro-commitments that will help rebuild trust so that they can eventually trust you for major commitments (like fidelity). This is a normal part of rebuilding trust. This process will require you to change. It will be long and difficult. But if you want to help your spouse to heal, you must persevere. So be patient, be helpful, and be hopeful. References [1] Worthington, Everett. “If You Want to Forgive... A Psychologist Outlines Five Steps to Forgiveness.” Spiritual. Beliefnet, 2001. https://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Faith-Tools/Meditation/2001/10/If-You-Want-To-Forgive.aspx. [2] Heitler, Susan. “Recovery from an Affair.” Professional. PsychologyToday, November 1, 2011. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/resolution-not-conflict/201111/recovery-affair. [3] Heitler. [4] Vaughan, Peggy. “A Brief Guide to Recovering from an Affair.” Professional. PsychologyToday, 2011. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/resolution-not-conflict/201111/recovery-affair. [5] Whitbourne, Susan. “Overcoming Betrayal: It’s a 2-Way Street.” Professional. PsychologyToday, August 21, 2012. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201208/overcoming-betrayal-it-s-2-way-street.

Betrayal Trauma in Marriage: How to Help Your Spouse Heal (When You Caused It)

Wed, 19 Jun 2019 11:00:20 +0000

It is a Tuesday afternoon. You are loading the dishwasher. Your phone buzzes on the counter. You glance at it. Nothing important, a coworker about a meeting. But you catch your wife's face out of the corner of your eye. The muscles around her jaw tighten. Her eyes flick from the phone to you, then away. She does not say anything. She just goes quiet for the next twenty minutes. You betrayed her months ago. You confessed. You apologized. You changed the password on your phone, told her it would never happen again, and meant it. And yet here she is, six months later, still flinching at the sound of a notification. You want to say, "It was just Mike." You want to say, "Why are you still doing this to yourself?" You want it to be over. Betrayal trauma in marriage is what happens when a partner's deception, infidelity, or hidden behavior leaves the betrayed spouse's body on alert long after the truth comes out. It is not a phase your spouse moves through in a few weeks because you said sorry. It is a real injury, and helping her heal is going to ask more of you than you probably realize. This article is for the person on the betraying side. If you are the one who did the unthinkable, what follows is what we often see actually moves the healing forward, and what does not. What Betrayal Trauma in Marriage Actually Looks Like Before you can help, you need to know what you are working with. Betrayal trauma is not the same as ordinary grief or disappointment. The discovery that the person closest to you has been living a hidden life, or has had a relationship with someone else, produces a specific kind of injury. The mind catches up to the betrayal long after the body has already registered it. In practice, this often looks like: Intrusive thoughts. Scenes she did not witness play in her head anyway. The other person's face. The hotel room. A phrase from your text history. These can show up without warning, in the middle of a grocery run. Hypervigilance. She scans your phone, your face, your tone, the timing of your texts. Her body is doing this whether she wants it to or not. The same questions, asked again. You answered them last month. You answered them last week. She is asking again. This is not her being unreasonable. This is her nervous system checking that the story still holds. Mood whiplash. She seems fine in the morning. By afternoon she is crying. By bedtime she is furious. There may be no obvious trigger. Body-level reactivity. She flinches at a notification sound. Her stomach drops when she sees an unknown number. She wakes at 3 a.m. and cannot get back to sleep. These are not signs that she is failing to heal. These are signs that her body is doing exactly what bodies do after this kind of injury. Her nervous system has learned that the person it trusted for safety is also a source of danger. It now has to relearn safety in your presence. That is slow work, and a lot of it happens beneath conscious awareness. If you want the longer version of why this happens at the brain-body level, our companion article on how betrayal trauma impacts the brain and body walks through the neurobiology. One pattern we often see in our practice: the betraying spouse decides, around week two or three, that he has "fixed it." He has confessed, apologized, and changed his behavior. He genuinely cannot understand why, at month six, his wife is still asking the same questions and still flinching at his phone. From the inside, it feels like she is refusing to move on. From her side, her body has not yet had enough evidence to file the danger as past tense. Both experiences are real. But her pace, not your impatience, has to set the recovery timeline. Why Your Defensiveness Makes Betrayal Trauma Worse The single most common thing we see derail recovery on the betrayer's side is defensiveness. Not big, obvious defensiveness. The small kind. The sigh when she asks the question again. The "I already told you that." The "It was not as bad as you are making it sound." The "I have been doing everything I am supposed to be doing." Of course you would be defensive. Given how exposed you feel, given the shame, given how many times you have apologized, how could you not be? The impulse is understandable. It is also one of the things keeping her stuck. Here is what the defensiveness is actually doing. It is a kind of pacifier. It is not soothing her. It is soothing you. The pacifier is doing its job, taking the edge off the shame in your chest for a moment, but the cost is that her nervous system reads your defensiveness as the same signal that produced the betrayal in the first place: you do not understand the gravity of what you did, which means you might do it again. Her body cannot tell the difference between "he is minimizing because he is uncomfortable" and "he is minimizing because he does not really get it." So she escalates. She raises her voice. She asks more questions. She brings up old material. And the spiral begins. Your defensiveness raises her alarm. Her alarm raises your defensiveness. The louder she gets, the more you minimize. The more you minimize, the louder she gets. Both of you end up exhausted, both of you end up feeling unheard, and the actual healing work stops happening because all your bandwidth is going into managing the cycle. Breaking that cycle is the work. It starts with three moves. Step 1: Admit Your Guilt Without Hedging Defensiveness on the betrayer's side tends to come in three flavors. None of them work, but each one feels protective in the moment. The first is brazen denial. You lie, or you keep details out of the picture, hoping that what she does not know will not hurt her further. The problem is that she usually already knows, or will figure it out, and now you have added "lying about it" on top of the original betrayal. The recovery clock has to reset. The second is more subtle. You do not lie. You try to talk her out of her feelings. "It was not as bad as you think." "It only happened a few times." "She did not mean anything to me." You think you are helping by making it smaller. She hears, "He still does not get how much he hurt me," which is the opposite of safety. The third is blame-shifting. Maybe you let slip that if she had been more available, or more affectionate, or less critical, things would not have happened. Even if there is some truth in the marital dynamic that preceded the betrayal, this is not the time. She is too vulnerable right now to weigh her contribution to a marriage you were not honest about. There may be a place for that conversation later, in therapy, when she has stabilized. Right now, raising it sounds like you are looking for an exit ramp from responsibility. Admitting guilt without hedging means owning the full extent of what you did, the way you would describe it if her best friend asked, not the way you would describe it to a sympathetic lawyer. It also means letting go of the impulse to compare yourself to other betrayers. "At least I did not do what so-and-so did" is a comparison your spouse is not going to find comforting. The gravity of your betrayal is determined by what it did to her, not by where it ranks on a hypothetical scale. How She Knows It Will Not Happen Again The thing she is unconsciously scanning for, in every conversation, is evidence that you have integrated what happened. When you own your guilt without hedging, you communicate something her body can actually use: I see this. I see what I did. I see the impact. A person who can see all of that clearly is much less likely to repeat the behavior than a person who is still bargaining with the size of it. That is the function of the unhedged apology. It is not performance. It is not penance. It is information. It tells her that the part of you that did this is being looked at, not protected. And steer clear of the cheap apologies that look like apologies but are not: "I'm sorry you feel that way" puts the problem in her feelings. "If I hurt you, I apologize" makes the hurt conditional. "I already said I was sorry" claims completion she has not had a chance to confirm. Each of those is the pacifier doing its work for you, not for her. Step 2: Demonstrate Remorse, Not Self-Pity Admitting guilt is the seeing-and-saying part. You look at what you did, and you say it without trimming the edges. Remorse is the feeling-it part. Remorse is, in the words of one researcher, "the transgressor's distress over the effect of their misbehavior."[1] Guilt says, "I did this." Remorse says, "I see what this did to you, and I feel it." This is the part of the work that is hardest to fake and hardest to push through, because remorse asks you to reconnect two things you had to separate in order to do the betrayal in the first place. To act out, you had to disconnect the desire for whatever you went looking for from the consequence for the person sleeping next to you. Those wires got cut. Remorse is the rewiring. It is what happens when you let yourself sit, really sit, in the impact you had on her, and feel the natural response that follows. You cannot rush this. You also cannot manufacture it. But you can stop blocking it. The most common block is the impulse to turn the conversation toward your own pain. Do Not Play the Victim Your pain is real. The shame, the loss of your own sense of yourself as a good person, the fear that your marriage might not survive: all of it is real. But when the conversation is about her wound, your pain cannot become the center of the room. When you collapse into self-pity in a conversation about her wound, you put her in the position of comforting you for hurting her. That is not a position any betrayed spouse can be in and also heal....

Male Privilege in Marriage

Wed, 12 Jun 2019 11:00:38 +0000

These days, it’s difficult to have an open conversation about privilege because it has become such a hot button political issue. But if we can take a step back from political agendas, we can see that there is quite a lot of research that shows the reality of privilege and its impact on marriages. So here, there will be no accusatory fingers, no tearing down of the idea of being men. Taking a look at research-based observations on the reality of male privilege will help husbands empower both themselves and their wives in their marriages. Privilege Explained In general, privilege is an advantage that a person or a group has that others may not. Sometimes, this can be situational. For example, by being the most attractive person in the room, you may enjoy the privilege of being given the most attention. This situational privilege comes and goes depending on your specific context. However, privilege also can be constant, or at least more long-term. By having a certain wealth, citizenship, race, and/or gender, you are afforded certain benefits wherever you go that others without those advantages do not. There is nothing wrong with having privilege! Being born into a specific context does not make you a better or worse person. However, we do need to be aware of our privilege. We need to acknowledge its presence in our experience. One way to look at it would be like how people look at biases and opinions. If someone says that they have an unbiased opinion, you know that this is impossible. Since everyone has certain biases, a more honest approach would be sharing an opinion while acknowledging the biases involved. Similarly, you can have better relationships and conversations when you recognize that others do not have the same privilege as you do. By not recognizing those privileges, you might unwittingly leverage them to your personal gain or even exert dominance. You can better love your neighbor when you can see where you have advantages that they do not and use those advantages for their benefit. Acknowledging privilege can often be difficult because it requires humility. It means realizing that some of your advantages may not be fully earned due to merit, which can be quite hard to admit. But in doing so, you can learn to esteem others better than yourself and reduce the risk of mishandling the privilege that you carry. To bring this concept into the real world, let’s look at what it means for a husband and a wife to be preparing for church or simply going out. Typically, the husband doesn’t have to be worrying about a whole lot when he’s getting ready. However, the wife is much more likely to consciously worry about how she looks: both in terms of feeling that her beauty and her modesty may be evaluated at church. A husband’s frustration with the amount of time required for his wife to get ready in this context is a reflection of the fact that there are different societal expectations based on gender. You tap your feet impatiently, wondering why your wife is spending so much time “unnecessarily”. Why does she need to bother with makeup or spending so much time on her hair? This is an example of male privilege: the husband has the benefit of lower expectations being placed on him. One of the key goals of talking about privilege is to become aware of it. This will help you understand your wife better and extend empathy to her rather than getting frustrated with her for taking the time to deal with things you don’t need to think about. Understanding Male Privilege Generally You can’t help being born as a man or a woman. There’s nothing wrong with that. But the way you experience the world is shaped by your gender. This ranges from physical and biological differences (e.g. typically higher levels of testosterone and greater physical strength) to social differences in priorities, values, and concerns. One researcher observed that the world has generally been shaped to cater to men’s interests since historically, women’s roles have been restricted to the home. This leads to several privileges in society: Men are more likely to be seen as having or being worthy of authority. Men are less likely to attract unwanted attention or criticism to their bodies. Men’s age tends to be less of an issue than it is with women. And if these privileges aren’t things you have noticed before, that in itself is a type of privilege. Men are afforded the advantage of not being required to have a certain level of self-consciousness. Women, on the other hand, are forced to be more self-conscious and concerned about their position and place in the world. Again, this is a large factor for why women have to worry about how they appear in public. Another place this exhibits itself is in visiting a mechanic for car repairs. Yes, as a man, you might be concerned that the mechanic might be trying to rip you off because he’s a crook. But in the exact same scenario, your wife will also have to worry about being ripped off for being a woman. What if the mechanic, seeing her as a woman, considers her to be an easier target? This is a privilege that men have that women do not. Or what about when it comes to personal safety? Many men wouldn’t think twice about walking around by themselves at night. But women experience far more fear in these situations than men do. If you don’t have to worry, or if you have to worry less because you are a man, then that is a privilege you experience. Because of its fit with dominant social norms, male privilege often appears invisible, even to itself. Thus male privilege can seem… fit with respect to health, adult with respect to age, traditionless with respect to ethnicity, colorless with respect to race … whereas women often feel acutely aware of their distinctive social position, men can often find it difficult to distinguish their own social features, because they see it as the norm. Like with many things people take for granted, men typically do not see their own privilege. It’s only when specific factors are different (e.g. gender) that people are forced to be aware of their lack of privilege. Once again, it’s not wrong to have privilege, to be a male. But it becomes wrong if you use that privilege selfishly or presumptuously, whether you are aware of that privilege or not. Male Privilege in Marriage Now that you have a better understanding of male privilege in general, it’s time to see how male privilege shows up in your relationship with your wife. 1. Power Balance It might seem counterintuitive, but more men are starting to see themselves as the subordinate party in their relationship. While you might think that male privilege should lead to more power in relationships, that isn’t actually always the case. Often, if women take more dominant roles in marriage, the effect on men is not as strong as you might imagine. Despite experiencing less dominance at home, men typically experience power and privilege elsewhere. However, for women, a loving marriage might be the only place available to them to restore self-esteem and empowerment by becoming more dominant. This is especially true for women that are members of social groups that have historically received poor treatment. This overlap of privileges and/or disadvantages is commonly referred to as intersectionality. Essentially, the disadvantages of being a woman in society are compounded other disadvantages, such as those experienced by people with disabilities, immigrants, people of color, or low-income communities. If you see your wife employing dominance at home to feel empowered in general, you should try to see this larger reality of her life. While you might feel personally affected by her overbearing attitude, realize that it may not even be about you. There might be other areas of her life where she feels powerless. Use this opportunity to ask about areas in her life where she feels overlooked or not in control. Your goal here is to help her empower her generally in life, not to reestablish dominance as a man in your relationship (this too is privilege!). As a husband, you want your wife to feel respected and empowered not just at home, but in all aspects of her life. Please note that this is not necessarily true in all situations, nor is it the whole picture of what is happening. But you do need to be aware that it is an influence, one that affects the balance of your marriage dynamics. If you have privilege, you can bestow it on others. And you should. This is not an act of belittlement because you are better than her, but it’s realizing that you intrinsically receive things simply by being born as a male. And by sharing that privilege with your wife, you help bring equity and fairness into your marriage. 2. Perceptions of Vulnerability Male privilege also comes to bear in what you fear in your marriage. Of course, both of you can experience great anxiety over the possibility of losing the other. However, in most marriages, the husband only has to be focused on the loss of their wife. Their wife, on the other hand, might have to be concerned about her future livelihood. Because men typically inhabit the role of active provider, women in marriage often have to deal with the added fear of losing their security. These added layers of concern and vulnerability around issues of power and advantage mean that you do need to be careful how you talk about certain things. For example, men can joke in certain ways about gender that their wife can’t make back. And not just that, but she has to consider other layers of effects that the husband might not in marriage. Like how society might perceive her as being nagging, or how her husband might feel his authority was being undercut, etc. ...

How to Forgive Betrayal in Marriage: A Step-by-Step Guide

Wed, 05 Jun 2019 11:00:02 +0000

Can you forgive betrayal in marriage? Yes. But not the way most people think. Forgiveness after betrayal is not a single decision you make and then feel better. It is a process that unfolds over weeks and months, often painfully, as you move from the grip of anger and grief toward something you might not be able to imagine right now: compassion for the person who hurt you most. If your spouse has betrayed you, whether through an affair, pornography use, emotional infidelity, or another deep breach of trust, the pain you are carrying is real. It is not something you need to rush past. Forgiveness does not mean pretending the hurt did not happen. It does not mean your spouse is off the hook. And it does not mean you have to stay in the marriage. What it means is that, when you are ready, you can begin to loosen the hold that anger, resentment, and grief have on your life so that the betrayal no longer defines you. We see couples in our practice every week who are navigating this exact question. Some arrive convinced they will never be able to forgive. Others arrive wanting to forgive immediately, hoping it will make the pain stop. Both positions are understandable, and both need to be challenged gently. The path to genuine forgiveness lives somewhere in between, and it starts with understanding what forgiveness actually requires of you. What Forgiveness After Betrayal Really Means Forgiveness is more than a single decision, particularly when you are dealing with deep hurt. It is a journey of many steps, a process filled with difficult and sometimes painful choices. The process of forgiveness is what brings you from feelings of ill will, revenge, punishment, avoidance, or hatred toward a sense of what researchers call “benevolent emotion” toward the person who wronged you. You know that you have genuinely forgiven when you are able to have warm, kind thoughts about the person who hurt you. When you can make the shift from negative feelings about your spouse to something more balanced, more whole. That will not happen all at once. As you forgive, you will still feel angry and hurt even as you start to build that benevolent emotion toward them. This is normal. This is the process. And this forgiveness is something you need. Your mental health needs it. Your marriage, if you choose to rebuild it, needs it. In order for you to be healthy, you need to move toward forgiveness. Not the day after a betrayal. Not the week after. You need time to vent your anger, to grieve, to understand what happened before you can even begin this work. Depending on the severity of the betrayal, this might take weeks or months. That is completely okay. But when you are in a place where you are ready to begin, and when you are in a safer place where the betrayal is no longer ongoing, you will find it is time to take that first step. How to Forgive Betrayal in Marriage: The Four Reframes One of the reasons that forgiveness of a grave offense is so difficult is that it involves reframing. You will need to take a close look at the betrayal, your spouse, yourself, and then your marriage from a more complete perspective. Not a more positive perspective, necessarily. A more honest one. This is hard work, and it takes time. But it is the road that leads to freedom. 1. Reframe the Action The first difficult step in the process is reframing what your spouse did to you. This means looking at what happened through a lens of empathy, which will help you toward forgiveness by lessening the intensity of the anger and blame you feel. Let us be clear about what empathy does not mean here. Empathy does not mean excusing what your spouse did. It does not mean their choices were acceptable. It does not mean you are minimizing the damage. What empathy means in this context is stepping back far enough to see the bigger picture of what was happening in your spouse’s life, their emotional state, their history, and the vulnerabilities that contributed to their terrible decision. In our practice, we often walk clients through this distinction carefully. One of the most common fears we hear is: “If I try to understand why they did it, doesn’t that let them off the hook?” No. Understanding why something happened is not the same as saying it was okay. A therapist working within attachment theory would frame it this way: your spouse’s behavior came from somewhere. It did not appear out of nothing. Understanding the “where” does not excuse the “what,” but it gives you information you need to decide what happens next. When you are able to understand the how and the why of the betrayal, you are able to gain a more objective perspective. And as a result of reframing their action, you will start to experience relief from the feelings of anger and rage that may have been consuming you. 2. Reframe How You Feel About Your Spouse When you have been betrayed in marriage, your attention naturally locks onto the hurt. The pain fills the entire frame. This is why the first reframe matters: when you can begin to see the action in context, it also starts to change how you feel about the person. By reframing, you begin to restore balance in your feelings about your spouse. There is far more to who your spouse is than the wrong they did to you. By seeing the bigger picture, you can start to look past the hurt and see the whole person again. Not immediately. Not easily. But gradually. Once you have processed the initial wave of grief and started to reframe your feelings, you can begin to remember and reflect on the good things about your spouse. The qualities that drew you to them. The moments that mattered. And by taking those into account alongside the betrayal, you will start to rebuild a more complete picture. You might be afraid to do this. Opening yourself up to warm feelings can make you feel vulnerable to being betrayed again. Or you might worry that reframing communicates to your spouse that what they did was acceptable. Sometimes choosing not to forgive, choosing not to reframe, functions as a safety mechanism to protect yourself from being hurt again. This is where a trained counselor can make a real difference. In couples counseling, we help the betrayed spouse identify the difference between emotional vulnerability and emotional danger. Feeling vulnerable is part of healing. Being in actual danger, where the betrayal is ongoing or your spouse refuses accountability, is a different situation entirely. In the first case, the reframe helps. In the second, it is premature. 3. Reframe How You See Yourself When you have been hurt, the voice in your head that screams “how could they do this to me?” can drown out everything else. The indignation feels righteous. You can begin to move into a place where your identity becomes entirely wrapped up in being the wronged party, the victim, the one who would never do something like this. We want to be gentle here, because this is the most delicate of the four reframes. As you begin the healing process, it helps to remember that you, the offended spouse, have also done things in your life that have required forgiveness from others. Not the same things. Not of the same magnitude. But you have wanted and needed grace, too. When you remember that, you begin to reframe how you view yourself. You start to see yourself as more than just a victim. You see yourself as a full human being who has both given and received forgiveness before. This is not about moral equivalence. Your spouse’s betrayal is not the same as you forgetting an anniversary or losing your temper. The point is not to equalize the offenses. The point is to access the part of yourself that understands what it feels like to need forgiveness, because that part of you is the part that can eventually extend it. Clinically, we see that people who remain locked in the identity of “the wronged one” for too long often struggle to move forward, even when the rest of the healing work is going well. The identity of being betrayed becomes a kind of prison of its own. Reframing how you see yourself is the key that opens that door. 4. Reframe the Dynamic of Your Marriage The final reframe is the hardest of them all. It requires you to have gone through the previous three, because you will build on what you have learned from each of them. In taking stock of the situation after a betrayal, you will need to examine the behavior and attitude changes your marriage must undergo to prevent this from happening again. Your spouse will need to see how and why they came to a place where they would betray you. That is their work, and it is non-negotiable. But here is the part that is extremely difficult to hear: you will also need to take stock of the ways the marriage dynamic as a whole contributed to an environment where this offense became possible. This does not mean the betrayal was your fault. It was not. The person who betrayed you made a choice, and that choice belongs to them. What it does mean is that a marriage is a system. And systems have patterns. In Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), we look at the negative interaction cycle that a couple has built over time, the ways they have learned to protect themselves from each other that inadvertently push the other away. Understanding that cycle is not about blame. It is about building something different going forward. A large part of this fourth reframe is reminding yourself that the two of you are a team in rebuilding. By seeing that the one who hurt you is actually on your side in the repair work, you will find it easier to forgive them than if you continue to see them as an outsider in your own marriage. Start small. Go for groceries together. Plan a family outing. Find a way to serve in your community together. As you take small steps as a team, you begin to build a new sense of togetherness and partnership that you may not have had before. It may feel awkward....

Why Your Husband Can’t Hear You During Conflict

Wed, 29 May 2019 11:00:24 +0000

So you’re trying to have a serious conversation with your spouse, but it doesn’t seem to be working. They aren’t answering the questions you ask. Instead, they seem to be ignoring you or shutting you out. And that just gets you even more upset. Don’t they care? It’s easy to take these situations personally, to assume that these actions are deliberate. But what if it wasn’t? When you conflict with your spouse, something interesting happens inside of both of you that inhibits your ability to hear or even to remember what is said. What’s Happening on the Inside? To properly understand what is going on when your spouse appears to be shutting down or shutting you out during marital conflict, you need a quick primer on the nervous system. Your central nervous system (CNS) is a collection of nerves and cells that connects your brain and spinal cord to the rest of your body, allowing signals and messages to be transmitted back and forth. Always on, it enables you to control your bodily functions, most of which are subconscious. By not having to concentrate on things like your heartbeat or digestion, this frees you up to focus on higher level tasks. You can work, exercise, watch movies, or talk with others. Since the CNS handles the plethora of unconscious tasks in your body, you can focus on the conscious challenges. When Stress Happens In the event of a stressful situation, the CNS responds, affecting you on both conscious and subconscious levels. Based on the severity of the threat, it begins to override every other priority that you have at the moment. This strong response is designed to protect you from potential danger. If you encountered a wolf as you walked in the local park, your CNS response would allow you to quickly stop worrying about what’s for dinner and instead focus on not becoming dinner. These responses can range from moderate to extreme, depending on the situation. Extreme responses are usually given for extreme situations when you are in clear, imminent danger.[1] In these cases, your CNS might shut down enough body functions that you flee, collapse, faint, or dissociate from the experience. Our primal desire to stay alive is more important to our body than even our ability to think about staying alive [or to think about much else, for that matter].[2] While marital conflict does not typically trigger this extreme reaction, it still is common for conflict to trigger a notable CNS response. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you feel that your spouse is a threat to you. However, if they are upset with you, then your safety in your marriage is at risk. Because safety is at risk, your CNS triggers alarm bells to try to protect that safety. When you have a serious conflict with the most important person in your life, your body registers this as a significant emergency. It activates all of the fight or flight tools for survival like increased heart rate, respiration, and cortisol. And worse yet, it decreases your ability to reason, ironically making it more challenging to deal with the conflict at hand. What Really Happens When You Fight Another issue with this response is that it is most concerned with self-preservation. When you are fighting with your spouse, you need to focus on preserving your marriage, not yourself. Please note that this is about typical marital conflicts, not situations of spousal abuse when you do need to be focusing on self-preservation. When your nervous system is activated, your thought patterns do not run the same way they do when you are calm. Your CNS response makes it more challenging to be open and engaged, making it more difficult to exchange information and affection. It affects nearly every single organ in your body. Your body starts to release hormones like adrenaline. Your mind becomes hyper-aware of your environment. Your heart begins to race, and you might even start to sweat. Your fight or flight system activates, pushing you to be aggressive and defensive towards your spouse (fight) or else pushing you to walk away or shut out the threat (flight). If you can stay in a calm state, you will more emotionally open, more facially expressive, and better at listening to and understanding each other.[3] These all are essential tools to connect and solve problems together. And if you both are calm, you help each other by showing affection and affirming the safety and security of your marriage. However, your own CNS tends to fight this, acting directly against the tools you need to tackle the situation together. Hearing Interestingly, your body reduces your ability to listen while under stress. Your CNS filters out the range of sound in which human voices fall. It does this to heighten your ability to detect threats you would expect in a survival scenario. Your nervous system forces you to focus on strange or unusual sounds like a twig snapping in the forest or shoe scraping on cement. Your nervous system is trying to help you survive, but in a marital conflict, it ends up inhibiting your ability to hear each other. It doesn’t mean that either of you wants to stop listening, only that your bodies are making it more challenging to do so. Reasoning In these situations, your body even compromises your ability to reason well.[4] Sometimes when you or your spouse are in an argument, one of you might say something out of character. You might jump to ridiculous or extreme conclusions, reacting with irrational fears that don’t make sense when you are in a calmer state. Again, your nervous system is trying to help you survive. Heightened emotional responses and logical leaps are meant to help you get out of harm’s way, but in the context of marital conflict, they only make the situation worse. Memory Affecting more than just reasoning, your CNS also has been found to respond to stress by affecting your ability to create narrative memory.[5] After an argument, you or your spouse might only remember bits and pieces. You might have a difficult time tracing back the course of the argument or understanding why you were fighting in the first place. This is why it is so crucial to be able to learn how to return to a state of calm. You will not only be better able to deal with the conflict in the present, but you will also remember and learn more from the experience in the future. Calming Your Central Nervous System in Conflict It’s important to reiterate that the very reason why your survival mechanisms kick in during marital conflict is that they are incredibly important to you. Even though your CNS may not actually be helping you, it is responding because you instinctively know that your marriage is in danger. So what is the best way to manage this response? Researchers have found that the best way to adapt to stressful circumstances is through the practice of emotional regulation.[6] By doing things that reduce your vulnerability to unwanted feelings, you prepare yourself for stressful situations. This will help to reverse the effect that your nervous system has on your body, allowing you to return to a calmer mindset. And this, in turn, will allow you to be more aware and present, better equipped to deal with the situation at hand. Calm Your Body Again, the relationship the CNS has with the body works both ways. While stress can trigger your CNS to tell your body to behave in certain ways, certain behaviors can signal to your CNS that you are no longer in danger. In this way, you communicate through your body to your nervous system that the stress response is no longer necessary. Breathe A stress response will typically cause you to accelerate your breathing involuntarily. Researchers have found that when people who have post-traumatic stress disorder breathe mindfully and meditate, they can reduce their stress and anxiety levels. While not everyone has PTSD, the principle remains the same. When you are in a stressful situation, such as arguing with your spouse, start by breathing slowly and deeply. By consciously controlling your breathing, you are telling your CNS that it can calm down. Visualize Your nervous system’s response to stress involves pushing you to escape or fight your way to a safer place. So if you can picture yourself in a peaceful place, you can “hack” your CNS, signaling to it that you’re no longer in the dangerous situation anymore. So perhaps revisit a favorite childhood memory, or visualize sunbathing at the beach. Just try to think of a specific time and place that will help you calm down, and your body will begin to relax. Of course, you need to tell with your spouse what you are doing. Otherwise, they may think that you are just checking out, or that you don’t consider this issue to be important enough to focus on. Let them know that you are taking a moment to calm down your body because you believe that the discussion is important enough to require your full attention. Move Because your CNS has locked down so many processes, you need to reestablish your connection with your body. As a result, it is common to hear of people going for a walk to clear their heads. And while a marital conflict is not always the best time to go for a walk, at the same time slow and mindful movements can help you reconnect your body with your mind.[7] Again, just be sure to tell your spouse you’re doing this so you can reconnect -- not so that you can disconnect. Calm Your Mind Physical activities are not the only method to push back on your nervous system’s stress response. There are several psychological techniques that will enable you to diffuse a high-stress situation with your spouse. Reframe Researchers know that the way you perceive the nature of the source

How Empathy Deepens Intimacy

Wed, 22 May 2019 11:00:35 +0000

There are few things more discouraging than coming to your spouse with something exciting to share and being met with a blank stare. Or saying what a disappointing day you’ve had and being told to be more positive. In relationships, you want to be understood. You want your spouse to feel what you feel, to validate the experiences that you’re having. It can be devastating when that doesn’t happen. But if you’re able to cultivate empathy, you will be able to find more stability and intimacy in your marriage. What is Empathy? More than simply hearing someone else, empathy is about being able to take on their perspective almost as if it were your own.[1],[2] You can stand in their shoes and see the world through their lens. It’s about being able to fully understand what a situation is like for someone else.[3] It’s not enough to feel sorry for the other person. Empathy is not the same as sympathy. Experiencing empathy is telling them that you can feel their pain and understand why they feel it, not merely feeling sorry that they are in pain. Showing empathy in this way validates their experience, telling them that it’s understandable to feel this way. Empathy doesn’t necessarily require you to agree with the other’s perspective. If your spouse is furious with how a friend treated them, showing empathy doesn’t mean you have to be angry at their friend. But it does mean being willing to listen and understand the reasons for their anger. It means acknowledging that it makes sense they would be upset. It can be challenging to feel the ups and downs of another your spouse’s experience. But if you take the time to hear them out and put yourself in their shoes, you can offer them something valuable: being seen and understood. Why Should You Empathize? In marriage, empathy brings a broad range of benefits to the table.[4] Being able to show empathy to your spouse is a big part of being able to have a well-adjusted and stable relationship. When you can understand their perspective, you will be able to better adjust to married life, reducing the possibility of divorce. Empathy is a skill that you develop, and some marriage counselors even suggest empathy training for newlywed couples. For some, it comes naturally, but training can help individuals be more understanding despite not learning this skill as children or even as adults. And everyone can benefit from further developing empathy, as it provides new and more profound ways to communicate and interact. Research shows that becoming better at expressing empathetic understanding often leads to improved relationship satisfaction. After all, feeling understood meets a deep need that can’t be found anywhere else. How Can You Build Empathy? There are three primary building blocks to help expand in your capacity for empathy:[5] 1. Honesty To see things from your spouse’s perspective, they first have to be able to share it with you. If you want your spouse to understand you, you need to be open and willing to share your perspective with them. Looking for your spouse to feel what you feel? You have to be honest about how you’re feeling. So dishonesty gets in the way of allowing yourself or your spouse to extend empathy. Sometimes it creeps in for genuine reasons. You might want to protect your spouse from the stress of your work life, so you choose to say that you’re okay after you come home. But you need the courage and willingness to expose even the most carefully hidden parts of you to your spouse. If you want to have a deeper relationship, you need to be honest and vulnerable enough to share everything with your spouse, not just the easy stuff. 2. Compassion While similar to sympathy, which was defined above, compassion goes beyond just feeling bad for someone. It’s about genuinely seeking to understand for the sake of helping the other. Compassion helps to develop your empathy because it provides a caring motivation for doing so. When you can feel for your spouse, you will be able to start feeling with them. When you emotionally engage with and respond to what your spouse is feeling, you provide a fantastic way to have experience intimacy with one another. 3. Equity One of the reasons to contrast empathy with sympathy is that sympathy can easily lead you to assume that you know better. When your spouse comes crying to you, it’s easy to think that they are only feeling this way because they don’t have the insight that you do in the situation. And somehow it’s up to you to educate them how to react correctly to their situation. However, this assumption actually keeps you from feeling what they feel. If you don’t treat them with the same level of respect as you treat yourself, you will dismiss their perspective instead of understanding it. Equity is about being fair and impartial. Your spouse deserves someone able to listen and show empathy as an equal, and when you are that person for them, you help build a deeper relationship. My Spouse Can’t Do Empathy! So what are you supposed to do if you can’t see any capacity for empathy from your spouse? You need to remember that empathy is developed. Maybe in their home growing up, that wasn’t a value that was encouraged. Perhaps empathy wasn’t something offered to them, so they never learned how to be empathetic. Certain personality disorders can make it difficult to show empathy, but it’s quite rare for a person to be completely unable to show empathy. Only sociopaths and psychopaths are like this. So odds are that your spouse just needs to learn how to develop her empathy skills. Or, what happens when your spouse is more empathetic to others than to you? It’s understandable to feel offended at this, but it’s possible that this doesn’t mean they value others more than you. Researchers have found that some people have learned to express empathy in specific contexts and relationships more than in others.[6] Rather than assuming to know why they do this, see it as a chance to show some curiosity and build empathy with them. Try to find out why they show empathy in some situations and not in others. In discovering this, you can better understand them as you help them better understand you. Instead of assuming that they can’t or that they refuse to show empathy to you, take the opportunity to help them do a better job of expressing empathy in your marriage. By doing this, you will help build intimacy together. How to Empathize for Deeper Intimacy Now that you know the foundation and broad strokes of empathy and its relationship with intimacy, here are three tangible strategies to apply in your marriage: 1. Focus on Your Spouse You need to show through actions that you truly believe that it’s not all about you. It’s not just an external signifier, as you do need to internalize this. But your spouse needs to see you demonstrate this behavior. To achieve this, you actually will have to temporarily put your own ideas and feelings on hold.[7] As you do this, you will be building a relationship where your spouse will begin to reciprocate, giving you the time and space to share your ideas and feelings as well. For example, what do you do when they tell you a story about how crazy their day was? Do you counter with how much more insane your day was? Or do you listen and ask questions, affirming them as you show them understanding and empathy? Remember that you need to focus on your spouse. As much as you want to talk about your own experience, you need to make sure that you are meeting the needs of your spouse. If you use their opening up and sharing of their lives as a chance to talk about yourself, they might give up. They won’t feel listened to, and you’ll lose an opportunity to deepen your intimacy through empathy. But if you take the time to hear them out and validate their feelings and experience, they will feel loved and acknowledged. And maybe that will open up a perfect time for you to share the craziness of your own day. Just as long as you remember that it’s not all about you. 2. Listen To Understand A major pitfall when you start trying to listen to your spouse is listening in order to respond. You may have the perfect response or illustration for the conversation; you’re just waiting for the opening. But listening to respond isn’t actually listening. When you do this, you miss out on important moments in your conversation. You miss out on the core needs of your spouse. They might be desperate to hear affirmation, but you’re so focused on what you have to say that you miss out on meeting their need. If, however, you listen to understand, you will achieve what’s called “shared meaning”.[8] This happens when you both realize you understand what your spouse said in the way that they intended for you to understand it. This can be such a difficult thing to accomplish that it’s no wonder it doesn’t happen when you listen to respond! But if you listen to understand, you will be able to enter into their experience empathically and you will create shared meaning. And when you feel their frustration, their joy, their sorrow as they do, you discover something beautiful. Each other. Through this shared meaning, you see your loved one and know them intimately, and your spouse knows this is happening. 3. Pay Attention Time is precious. In a world that demands your attention, the focus that you place on your spouse is invaluable. Don’t let yourself be distracted by the news, the notifications on your phone, or your Facebook feed. Look at them when they are sharing with you. What do they look like? Are they relaxed or agitated? Are they maintaining eye contact or looking away frequently?...

How Curiosity Deepens Intimacy

Wed, 15 May 2019 11:00:39 +0000

So there you are, carrying on with your day as usual when for some reason, your spouse does something completely unexpected. You have two options at this point. You could make an assumption based on previous experience, or you can choose to investigate further to find out something new. Making an assumption is generally more comfortable, but it represents a missed opportunity to get closer to your spouse. When confronted with the unexpected, curiosity can push you into areas of discovery that will deepen intimacy in your marriage. What Is Curiosity? Curiosity is the desire to learn new things, bridging the gap between what you know and what you want to know.[1] If irreducibility is the idea that your spouse is infinitely complex, curiosity is the drive that pushes you to continue your quest to know them. Typically, curiosity leads to a sense of resolution as you find something new. That discovery satiates you, and you move on. Not so with marriage. In some ways, curiosity is like sex. When you have physical intimacy with your spouse, there is a resolution to your lovemaking but that resolution is never finally satiated. You will want more. Curiosity allows you to seek and discover new things about each other continually. When you find out something new, it is satisfying but that does mean the discovery of all there is to learn about your spouse is complete. There’s always more! And so curiosity and irreducibility provide a cycle that repeats itself over and over. Curiosity seeks new information that irreducibility provides, discovers it, and then provides a feeling of resolve when you learn something new.[2] And so curiosity pulls you into a grand, lifelong chase of exploring your spouse, always pushing you towards the next revelation. How Does Curiosity Affect Intimacy? Knowing the different ways that curiosity affects intimacy will help paint a picture of how you can apply curiosity in your marriage. Here are five ways that curiosity works to deepen intimacy: 1. Curiosity Leads to Deeper Understanding of One Another As the saying goes, closed mouths don’t get fed. You can’t learn about your spouse if you do not allow yourself to.[3] Curiosity supplies the drive to discover new revelations, creating the opportunity to build understanding in your marriage. That understanding is critical to finding acceptance in each other. For example, when your spouse does something that agitates you, without enough information, you will tend to make up your own explanation. And in a distressed marriage, confirmation bias will often influence you to assume the worst. Curiosity provides a healthier response. When confronted with something you don’t understand, curiosity helps you constructively seek to understand what is happening for your spouse. Doing this allows you to improve your relationship instead of making assumptions that inhibit growth. 2. Curiosity Helps Both of You Grow When you ask your spouse questions, you allow them to share things with you. When they choose to share, and you listen to them, a process begins called self-expansion. Essentially, this is the process of growing and learning from the things your spouse shares with you. When we are in a relationship that offers self-expansion opportunities, besides feeling closer to our partner, we become linked to them—their qualities become part of us. Several studies show that greater self-expansion corresponds to greater relationship satisfaction and commitment.[4] Self-expansion helps you to grow through what your curiosity uncovers about your spouse. In a way, their strengths, ideas, and resources become yours as well. When you witness your spouse showing growth you didn’t see before, that encourages you to grow in that area as well. As curiosity helps you grow, you become more fulfilled in and committed to your marriage. Because you are now working as one unit. Curiosity and self-expansion mean that when one of you grows, both do. 3. Curiosity Makes You More Open To Your Spouse When you are engrossed in your own world, filled solely with your thoughts, ideas, and desires, your perspective becomes close-minded. Because you aren’t opening yourself up to your spouse, you won’t be able to understand or grow together. However, curiosity does the opposite.[5] It shifts your perspective outside of yourself. And the stronger your curiosity, the higher your levels of openness.[6] When you choose to learn about your spouse, you choose to open your heart and to engage with whatever may come.[7] That openness gives you and your spouse a safe place to share. By being open, your spouse can feel secure knowing that you won’t judge them. And as you both open up to each other, you can speak honestly from the heart. In this way, curiosity enables you to grow your intimacy with one another. 4. Curiosity Make You More Adaptable As you each become less close-minded, curiosity also helps you both respond to and engage with the challenges you face. Higher levels of curiosity have been linked with adaptability and proactiveness.[8] As a result, you will be better equipped to handle changes and difficulties in your marital life. Rather than fearing change, curiosity gives you the confidence and the tools to respond to new information. No matter what the changes mean, you will be ready. And as you stand together to face the challenges ahead, your intimacy grows. Because you know that whatever life brings you, you will be able to survive and thrive, together. 5. Curiosity Encourages Acceptance If you don’t learn to adapt, you learn to fear uncertainty. Without curiosity, you only think from your perspective, relying on assumptions, expectations, or initial impressions of situations instead of investigating further. Researchers have found that doing this leads to premature conclusions and reliance on stereotypes.[9] This line of reasoning will often lead you to conclusions that aren’t supported by facts. Curiosity fights this by helping you unearth what’s really happening. Instead of jumping to conclusions, through curiosity, you will find the space to connect and find common ground. You can move past your often negative gut response to find understanding. Curious people show a strong tendency to engage in tension-producing situations that offer self-expansion opportunities … When profoundly aware and curious, a person is able to be responsive to the disclosures of other people and enjoy this intimacy generation process regardless of any negative thoughts and emotions.[10] When your spouse does the unexpected, choose curiosity. Seek to understand rather than to assume. Take advantage of this chance to reach out with love, acceptance, and compassion. We Already Know Everything About Each Other! As mentioned in our previous post about irreducibility, it’s impossible for you to know everything about yourself, much less your spouse. And even if it were possible to know everything at one moment, you and your spouse are always growing and developing. There’s still something new to know. One great thing about curiosity is that it breeds interest. Scholars have found that even in situations that are not inherently engaging, curious people can generate interest on their own.[11] So even if your marriage might seem a little boring, curiosity can revitalize it and bring excitement. For example, have you found yourself stuck doing small talk with a stranger? You ask the standard questions out of politeness when “Bam!” They say something that grabs your attention. Suddenly, you’re engaged in a new exchange that you were not expecting. You need to look for that subtle flicker in conversations with your spouse. It’s smoldering there under the surface, but with a little air, a little interest, sparks will fly. If you pay attention and let curiosity guide you, you’ll always find ways to bring that fire back to life. So How Do I “Do” Curiosity? There is no one way to be curious, but there are some ways to use it intentionally to increase intimacy in your marriage: Be open to receiving. Keep your mind and heart open to hear from your spouse. Be ready for anything. Asking questions can reveal more than you were expecting.[12] You will find complex answers that might raise even more questions. But life is like that, so you will need to… Embrace uncertainty. Be ready to adapt to whatever comes your way as a result of curiosity. Try to listen impartially without allowing your assumptions get in the way of the experience. Curiosity will open up situations that you didn’t expect, and rather than sticking with what you expected, embrace and adapt to what you find. Be a learner, not a student. Be a learner, not a student. Remember that it’s not about finding the answer. It’s about a lifelong process of learning, not a finite end-goal.[13] If learning is your goal, you will find that you can achieve it every single time. When you adopt a mindset that tries to learn in every situation, you will always manage to remain curious. References [1] Mussel, P. (2013). "Introducing the Construct Curiosity for Predicting Job Performance." Journal of Organizational Behavior, 34(4), 453-472. Retrieved from Http://Www.Jstor.Org/Stable/23464120. [2] Mussel, P. (2013). "Introducing the Construct Curiosity for Predicting Job Performance." Journal of Organizational Behavior, 34(4), 453-472. Retrieved from Http://Www.Jstor.Org/Stable/23464120. [3] Mussel, P. (2013). "Introducing the Construct Curiosity for Predicting Job Performance." Journal of Organizational Behavior, 34(4), 453-472. Retrieved from Http://Www.Jstor.Org/Stable/23464120. [4] Rose, Paul (last), Fincham, Frank, McKnight, Patrick, and Kashdan, Todd....

How Irreducibility Deepens Intimacy in Marriage

Wed, 08 May 2019 11:00:09 +0000

How can your marriage work when the two of you are so wildly different? At the start of your marriage, it’s easy to overlook those differences. But the more you get to know your spouse, the more you realize that they are a totally distinct person from you. While that can be overwhelming or even unexpected, this is an incredible step towards developing intimacy. Learning to appreciate and explore the mystery of the individual you are married to will help you grow closer to one another. Irreducibility and Autonomy Build Intimacy The first step, while perhaps a little tedious, is to define terms. Irreducibility and autonomy are critical psychological concepts to nail down. Once you see what each means, you will see how crucial they are as you work to build a marriage together. Autonomy in Marriage You and your spouse are separate people. And autonomy means that you each have the ability and the right to govern yourself [1]. Each of you can be independent and complete without the other. This might seem to contradict how you might see marriage portrayed. Some of the most romantic quotes from movies (e.g. “you complete me”) can give the impression that we are incomplete without the other. This isn’t the case; you are absolutely capable of existing apart from your partner. Marriage is choosing to become interdependent, to become one, not surrendering the capacity to be independent altogether. Understanding this will protect you against psychological abuse that says that you can’t live without your partner or that says you are nothing without them. Autonomy in marriage means that no matter what, you and your spouse are two individuals with the ability to make choices independent from each other (even though you have chosen to live inside the union of marriage). Irreducibility in Marriage Knowing that you are separate allows you to build on that idea. Since you are autonomous, you will never fully understand the mind and heart of your spouse. This is irreducibility. Being different people means that each of you will have different emotions, thoughts, and motivations. And this is a great thing! If you could fully understand and comprehend your spouse, then at a certain point, your intimacy would stop growing. Your marriage would become stagnant if you stopped trying to get to know your spouse. Irreducibility brings hope to marriage. It means there is always something more to know, always another way to become more intimate, to grow, to deepen your understanding of one another. How Irreducibility Deepens Intimacy in Marriage As two married, autonomous, irreducible individuals, you are bound to run into differences in thoughts, feelings, perspectives, and experiences. Discovering these differences will affect your behavior and how you interact with one another.[2] The truth is that discovering these things will take a lifetime. No matter how long you have known each other, you will always surprise one another. This should not cause you to feel anxious or somehow inadequate as a spouse. Instead, this should encourage you to pursue one another continually. Irreducibility brings vibrancy, mystery, and excitement. If you embrace it in your marriage, you will never be bored with your spouse. Instead, you will have a foundation for exploration, creativity, understanding, and intimacy between you. How To Make Autonomy and Irreducibility Work For You Now that you know what autonomy and irreducibility are and the roles they play in marriage in general, here are some practical steps to see how they can deepen the intimacy in your own lives: Go For Understanding It’s not enough to know about autonomy and irreducibility in marriage. Those concepts only give you the framework. If for whatever reason you have stopped trying to understand each other, you need to take the next logical step. You need to pursue your lifelong journey of understanding your spouse. This journey will be full of wonder and surprises. As you continually get to know your spouse, resist the urge to give up, thinking that somehow you’ve made it. Instead, let curiosity push you forward. As you learn more and more about each other, you will understand each other better, deepening your intimacy.[3] Leverage Autonomy to Spice Things Up Sometimes without realizing, you can find yourself in a rut or a routine. You’ve started to coast, no longer driven by curiosity to explore one another. In these moments, remember that there’s more to explore, to understand about each other. So try something new. Use your autonomy, your ability to make decisions as an individual to help the two of you discover new experiences together. Put yourselves in an unfamiliar environment or situation. There, you will find something new to learn with and about your spouse, helping you get out of that rut. Beware Independence However, there is a balance to be had here. You need to be careful not to put too much value on autonomy and independence in marriage. Research shows that overemphasis on individualism and personal space is linked to higher divorce rates.[4] While you do need to acknowledge your differences in marriage, you also must partner and work together as one flesh. This is why you need to bring in the other ingredients of intimacy–vulnerability, curiosity, and empathy. These provide counterbalances to autonomy and independence. Marriage is about two “Me’s” becoming “We.” If you forget this and remain as two “Me’s,” you will start to undo intimacy. Practice Compromise Finally, as you embrace the irreducibility and autonomy in your marriage, you need to learn to employ healthy compromise. Again, learn to find balance. In abusive marriages, only one person can enforce their will. When this happens, the other partner will secretly look for ways to free themselves.[5] So if you don’t compromise and become overbearing and domineering, you will push away your spouse. Compromise is not about betraying your values in favor of theirs. Compromise is an invitation into a dance where each of you learns what the other wants. And together you find your rhythm and step forward through the song as one. Whenever you are making decisions, do everything you can to find out what the other is thinking. Just because they agree with your suggestion doesn’t mean that they are happy with it. Compromise sometimes means doing the hard work of asking questions even when you think you know their answers. Asking questions invites them into a conversation where they can share who they truly are. And compromise allows each of you to express yourselves and even surprise one another as you deepen your intimacy as a couple. References [1] Laceulle, H. (2018). “Autonomy. In Aging and Self-Realization: Cultural Narratives about Later Life” (Pp. 159-188). Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag. Retrieved from Http://Www.Jstor.Org/Stable/j.Ctv8d5tp1.9. [2] Wilson, J., & Musick, M. (1995). “Personal Autonomy in Religion and Marriage; Is There a Link? Review of Religious Research”, 37(1), 3-18. Doi:10.2307/3512067. [3] Obert, Julia C. “What We Talk about When We Talk about Intimacy.” Emotion, Space and Society 21 (November 1, 2016): 25–32. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2016.10.002. [4] Wilson, J., & Musick, M. (1995). “Personal Autonomy in Religion and Marriage; Is There a Link? Review of Religious Research”, 37(1), 3-18. Doi:10.2307/3512067. [5] Weber, M., & Bermingham, C. (2003). “Authority and Autonomy in Marriage. Sociological Theory”, 21(2), 85-102. Retrieved from Http://Www.Jstor.Org/Stable/3108620.

How Vulnerability Deepens Intimacy in Marriage

Wed, 01 May 2019 11:00:36 +0000

Intimacy is something that everyone wants for their marriage. But achieving that requires risk. Because to deepen intimacy in your marriage, you will need to open up to your spouse, to be vulnerable. Building Intimacy with Vulnerability Intimacy is complex. It is not something that happens passively; you must work with your spouse to put it together. Vulnerability is a crucial piece, one of the four primary aspects working in sync as parts of the whole[1]. 1. Irreducibility Your spouse is not a puzzle you can solve. Whenever you think you know everything about them, you’ll always find something new. Irreducibility means respecting the fact that your spouse is a fully realized human being, with an infinite number of intricacies. Their emotions, thoughts, and motivations run incredibly deep and constantly change. No matter how long you’ve known them, they will always surprise you. 2. Curiosity Knowing that you can’t fully comprehend your spouse does not stop you from trying. On the contrary, curiosity compels you to pursue them, to get to know them, to understand them. It’s the eternal pursuit of marriage to know and be known by one another. Every day of your relationship should be a dance, an adventure where you relish another chance to learn something new about each other. 3. Vulnerability Humans crave connection. But fear of rejection and pain can cause you to close yourself off from others, to protect yourself. Because opening yourself up to another person means you are handing them the power to hurt you. Marriage is different than other relationships. You committed to fight together, to depend on each other, to have each other’s back. You can’t have that deep connection to one another if you are not willing to be vulnerable. So try to let that person into the places you have shielded from others. Yes, there is risk here. But this is where the payoff is. When another person can see you and accept you for who you truly are, you will find an incredibly deep, profound connection. 4. Empathy Your spouse craves that connection as well. That’s why you married each other! By sharing in your spouse’s joy, sadness, pain, hopes, fears, and dreams, you can understand and accept them for who they are. You too will be able to empathize with them, to see the world from their perspective. It’s beautiful when these aspects work together as you build intimacy with your spouse. Irreducibility lets you acknowledge that there is always something more to discover about each other. Curiosity drives you forward to learn it. Vulnerability allows each of you the opportunity to see more about the other. Empathy enables you to fulfill each other’s deep need for connection and acceptance. This empathy you find when you are at your most vulnerable with each other is the very thing that will deepen your intimacy in marriage[2]. What Does Vulnerability Look Like? Vulnerability in marriage means opening up to your spouse. It’s about allowing them to see and to share your emotions, experiences, needs, and beliefs. And a large part of confiding in them is opening yourself up to the possibility of being hurt. Take Emotional Risks By revealing yourself to your spouse, you allow them to decide how to react to your vulnerability. At that moment, they can choose to offer empathy, acceptance, and love, the very things you crave. They can also choose to reject or dismiss a part of you that you hold dear. In giving them this opportunity, you are telling them that you trust them, that you believe the best in them. That despite your fear of being rejected, you are allowing them the opportunity to know you better. Confiding in your spouse despite the risk is essential to building intimacy with them. However, you do need to be careful. Building risk is a process, and you can’t just jump to being 100% vulnerable all the time. You need to make sure to lay the groundwork necessary to grow together and deepen your intimacy with each other safely. Create the Safety to be Vulnerable When taking steps towards opening up with your spouse, you need to know that it’s safe to do so. Obviously, if you are in an abusive marriage, you must wait until your abusive spouse becomes a safe person before choosing to be vulnerable with them. And if you are in a distressed marriage, certain destructive behaviors will need to be deal with before it becomes safe. For example, you might share with your spouse how you struggle with changing a particular habit. In a distressed marriage, your spouse might take the opportunity to berate you for not changing rather than choosing to listen and empathize. Or you might find yourself reacting so strongly that you accuse them of being intentionally unsupportive or being the reason why you struggle with that issue. You will need to address bad behaviors like this to ensure that you both can open up without hurting the other. Once you can create a baseline level of safety for each other, you will be able to start exploring what it means to be vulnerable with each other. Starting slowly will give each of you the practice and opportunity to relearn how to extend empathy to one another. And the more you practice this, the more easily and the more deeply you will be able to find connection with your spouse. Here are four ways to make your relationship safe enough to allow both of you to be vulnerable with each other: 1. Reciprocate It’s not fair to ask from your spouse what you aren’t willing to offer yourself. To encourage vulnerability from them, you need to be vulnerable yourself. By doing this, you can help your spouse see that you can be a safe haven they can open up to[3]. And when they do open up to you, extend the very empathy that you seek towards them. 2. Build Trust It’s easier to take emotional risks when you know that you can trust your partner with your vulnerability. Build trust in your marriage by being transparent, honest, and faithful. Start with the small things, like following through on your promise to pick up some eggs at the grocery store, and work your way up. This way your spouse will learn to trust you enough to be vulnerable with more significant issues[4]. 3. Raise Issues Appropriately Sometimes in an effort to be vulnerable, it’s easy to forget that your spouse has other things happening in their life. When they are stressing about the possibility of losing their job, maybe find a better time to tell them about that dream vacation in Bali you’ve wanted to go on since you got married. If you bring up important topics at difficult times for your spouse, you are more likely to be rejected[5]. So remember to empathize with them by choosing when to bring up tough topics wisely. 4. Practice As you and your spouse make vulnerability a habit, you will find that it becomes easier for both of you. Maybe right now, you are finding it very difficult to share certain things about yourselves to each other. You can ease into this is by sharing smaller things or things not directly about you. As you get used to this, you can slowly start to open up with each other more and more[6]. Vulnerability does not happen overnight. You need to practice care and safety to lay the groundwork for greater vulnerability. And the more you create safety, the easier it will be to be vulnerable, and the more you practice this, the stronger and deeper your marriage will become. References [1] Julia C. Obert, “What We Talk about When We Talk about Intimacy,” Emotion, Space and Society 21 (November 1, 2016): 25–32, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2016.10.002. [2] Obert. [3] Patricia Carter and David Carter, “Emotional Risk-Taking in Marital Relationships: A Phenomenological Approach,” Journal of Couple & Relationship Therapy 9, no. 4 (October 8, 2010): 327–43, https://doi.org/10.1080/15332691.2010.515533. [4] Elizabeth Fawcett, “Helping with the Transition to Parenthood: An Evaluation of the Marriage Moments Program,” All Theses and Dissertations, April 19, 2004, https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/1135. [5] Carter and Carter, “Emotional Risk-Taking in Marital Relationships.” [6] E. M. Waring, “Facilitating Marital Intimacy through Self-Disclosure,” The American Journal of Family Therapy 9, no. 4 (January 1, 1981): 33–42, https://doi.org/10.1080/01926188108250422.

How Couples Can Grow Spiritually…Together

Wed, 24 Apr 2019 11:00:39 +0000

The Internet floods us with ideas, tips, and tricks for couples to grow in their relationship with God. Sifting through it all can get overwhelming. Which works and which doesn’t? Let’s separate the wheat from the chaff and look at the ideas that truly work. Be Doers, Not Just Hearers Couples who share religious faith experience higher overall marital satisfaction (Perry, 2015). So yes, being married to a fellow believer is great! But that’s just the beginning. You need to go beyond passively hearing about your beliefs and actively start to do what your belief tells you. Research also has shown that when couples take specific spiritual actions together, they experience better marriages than just by sharing the same faith (Mahoney et al., 1999). If you want to strengthen your union, you need to take steps in your spiritual journey together. As you grow in your shared faith, your marital satisfaction and quality go up. Marriage becomes healthier and more satisfying. Is Personality a Factor? It’s rare for couples to have the same personality and expression of spirituality as each other. And sometimes those differences can be discouraging. If you are shy, you might feel disheartened that you don’t seem to have the same energy for God as your extroverted spouse. If you’re more outgoing, you might think you’re spiritually shallow because your quieter spouse spends more time in personal prayer than you. The apostle Paul addresses this in his letter to the Romans. He describes how you are different parts of the same body, that each of you has something unique to bring to the table. Recognizing that you “have gifts that differ according to the grace given” to you, Paul exhorts you “to exercise them accordingly” (Romans 12:6). And research backs him up on this. Dyer & Luckey (1961) found that differences in personality type do not affect spirituality in marriage. There is no right personality type to grow spiritually, so you shouldn’t worry that your spiritual growth doesn’t look like your spouse’s. Instead, focus on what’s important: sharing your journey pursuing God. How Couples Can Grow Spiritually So what are some specific ways to grow in your relationship with the Lord as partners? Here are some easy, yet effective methods to accomplish this: 1. Hold Weekly Check-Ins Hectic schedules can easily cause you to forget to touch base with each other, so you might start to drift apart. To prevent this, Willford & Willford (2013) recommend that couples hold a weekly check-in. Consistency is vital because it shows your spouse that you are prioritizing and valuing this time with them. In these check-ins, you should cover these important topics: Celebrate the Wins. What were the highlights of your week? Share moments that gave you joy, and give your full attention to them when they share theirs. Rejoice in each others’ triumphs, remembering to thank God for these blessings. Share the Struggles. Be real with each other. Open up and share your frustrations and problems. Use the scheduled time to gather your thoughts so that you can have a healthy discussion on these difficult topics. Process together, and bring them before the Lord in prayer. Dream of the Future. What are you hoping? Planning? Where is God guiding you? As a couple, you need a glimpse of the future before you, to know that you are striving towards the same dream together. When you make it a point to have these deep conversations with each other, you develop incredible intimacy, growing in your relationship together. 2. Pray Together Joint prayer is another excellent way for couples to thrive. When couples regularly pray together, they experience higher marital quality, higher levels of trust, and reduced conflict as praying teaches them to forgive each other (Fincham et al., 2008). Sometimes you might be tempted to use your joint prayer time to air your grievances against your spouse. But you need to be careful not to use this time to passive-aggressively attack your spouse. It shouldn’t need to be said, but prayer is not meant to manipulate or change each other. Abusing prayer like this will damage your relationship instead of building it up (Fincham et al., 2008). As you pray together, focus on thanking God, trusting Him with your lives. Pray for blessings, wellbeing, and guidance for yourselves and each other. Listen to your partner's prayer, and take this opportunity to develop empathy for them. Doing this helps you to understand your partner’s heart and desire. By learning to empathize, you learn to work cooperatively instead of against each other. 3. Share Marital Beliefs Understanding how God views marriage helps couples to grow spiritually and guides their journey together (Mahoney et al., 1999). These mutual beliefs bring you closer to your spouse and God. Some of these tenets include: God is a part of your marriage, and He influences your actions. Your marriage is sacred and blessed by God. Marriage symbolizes Christ’s union with the church. Sharing these beliefs will give you the strong foundation your marriage needs. 4. Face Challenges Together You will have trials wherever you go in life, including in marriage. But sometimes it’s easy to forget that God didn’t create you to face them alone, nor did you pledge to when you said your vows. When facing challenges, you need to turn to one another and God for support. When couples have to deal with stressful situations, marital conflict, or life transitions, van Tongeren et al. (2018) found that turning to God together helps them take on these difficulties. And not only will it help you with what’s before you now, but it also helps you with future struggles. When you turn to God as a couple, you both grow in your faith, strengthening your marriage for what you will face tomorrow. References Dyer, D. T., & Luckey, E. B. (1961). Religious Affiliation and Selected Personality Scores as They Relate to Marital Happiness of a Minnesota College Sample. Marriage and Family Living, 23(1), 46–47. https://doi.org/10.2307/346886 Mahoney, A., Pargament, K. I., Jewell, T., Swank, A. B., Scott, E., Emery, E., & Rye, M. (1999). Marriage and the spiritual realm: The role of proximal and distal religious constructs in marital functioning. Journal of Family Psychology, 13(3), 321. Perry, S. L. (2015). A Match Made in Heaven? Religion-Based Marriage Decisions, Marital Quality, and the Moderating Effects of Spouse’s Religious Commitment. Social Indicators Research, 123(1), 203–225. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-014-0730-7 Williford, C., & Williford, C. (2013). Faith Tango: A Liberating Approach to Spiritual Growth in Marriage. Crown Publishing Group.

Cognitive Biases in Marriage: Reactance, Mood and Confirmation

Wed, 17 Apr 2019 11:00:55 +0000

Cognitive biases are those sneaky little brain shortcuts that happen without us even realizing it. They make life more efficient and most of the time are helpful… but sometimes they can backfire too! Today we’ll look at three more of these biases so you know what they are, why they happen and how to stop them from messing with your marriage! Reactance Bias What Is This Cognitive Bias? Gotta love this one: when you feel like someone is trying to force you to do something, you react by doing the exact opposite. Why This Happens Reactance happens when a person feels that their freedom to make choices is being threatened. If you feel that your choice is being taken away, you are likely to act in a way that reaffirms your own ability to choose. Usually, by acting in a way that is the total opposite to what you were being pressured into[i]. Here’s an example of reactance in action: when the legal drinking age was increased from 18 to 21, research shows that young students aged 18 to 20 started to drink much MORE, as an act of defiance against the fact that they weren't allowed to drink any more. The fact that they were being told they weren’t allowed something just made them want it even more. In marriage, this may happen when you demand that your spouse does something (e.g., helping with housework, cutting down on some unhealthy behavior, spending more time with the family, etc.), and they feel like their freedom is being threatened. Quite often, they will react negatively by taking even less care of the house, or spending more time away, and so on[ii]. What To Do About It The first step is to recognize when this bias is at work within yourself. You can learn to challenge this whenever it occurs and we have more on this in the bonus guide for today’s episode. If you are married to someone who is quite prone to reactance bias, you can also learn to phrase your request differently. Research shows that that there are ways to phrase requests so that they are less likely to trigger reactance bias. These ways are[iii]: Use less threatening language: instead of "you have to" or "you must” or “I need you to", try "could you" or "I'd like you to" Add a 'postscript' to your request: adding phrases to the end of your request that make it seem like more of a choice. Eg "it's up to you, but it would really mean a lot to me" or "only if it isn't too much trouble”. If you notice, these post scripts underscore that you’re giving your spouse the option to choose. Empathy: help them see why this particular is an issue for you and allow them to see it from your perspective. This is so your spouse can want to help instead of feeling like they have to help. Mood Bias What Is This Cognitive Bias? When judgments and actions related to your marriage are influenced by your current mood. And this occurs even if your mood has nothing to do with the current situation. Why This Happens Emotions, decisions and memories are all linked in the brain. When we are feeling one particular emotion, the brain activates memories and thoughts that fit with the current mood, and dampens memories/thoughts that do not fit with it[iv]. This can cause your mood to affect the way you relate to your spouse, even if the source of your mood has nothing to do with your marriage. Let me give you some examples tied to various brain functions: Memory: feeling sad or angry causes you to recall more sad and angry memories and makes it harder for you to recall happy memories[v]. For example, if you come home from work feeling frustrated it will be easier to recall things your spouse has done that frustrate you. See how your mood has nothing to do with the current situation? But can impact your marriage? Attention: feeling anxious or down causes you to focus your attention onto things that fit with these emotions[vi]. For example, if you are feeling sad you are more likely to focus on the negative things your spouse does than the positive. Or, if you are feeling anxious you are more likely to pick up on the things your spouse does that heighten your uncertainty. Interpretation: events and actions can also be filtered and interpreted to fit with your current mood. For example, if you are feeling anxious you may interpret your spouse's snappy comment as a sign that they don't love you and want to leave you, rather than seeing it as just a one-off incident. What To Do About It There are two primary coping methods for mood bias. Stress Regulation. Mood bias is much more pronounced when we are under high levels of stress[vii]. So learning effective ways to deal with stress can stop this bias from impacting you as much. Emotion regulation. Learning to process and regulate your emotions in healthy ways is the best way to stop them from interfering with your thoughts and actions. Learning strategies to lift your mood and reduce worry can also help with this. Even simple things like exercise[viii] and adjusting your posture to be more upright and less slouched[ix] can improve your mood and reduce mood bias. So there are all these little things you can do to look after your mind and make sure it’s working in a way that helps you. Last, but not least... Confirmation Bias What Is This Cognitive Bias? People try to interpret events to fit with their already existing beliefs and opinions. Or, put another way, we look for the data that confirms what we already think is true, rather than using the data to decide what we believe. Why This Happens Once a belief forms in your mind, it takes a lot of effort to change or remove it, especially if the belief is something deeply important to you. It is much easier to interpret events around you in such a way that fits with the beliefs you already hold. People will therefore place great importance on information that fits with their beliefs, while downplaying or excusing away info that contradicts their beliefs[x]. Once you form an opinion of your spouse, confirmation bias can cause you to interpret most everything to confirm that belief. This can either be positive or negative. For example, imagine a wife who holds the belief "my husband doesn't like spending time with me anymore" If the husband has to cancel dinner plans and work late one night, she will interpret that in keeping with her belief, thinking something like "he is hiding from me by staying at work, he never wanted to have dinner with me in the first place." Equally, if the wife held the belief "I can depend on my husband to provide for the family", she would interpret the same situation to fit with this belief, thinking something like "obviously he would rather spend time with me but he needs to prioritize work so that he can provide for us." So you can see that this bias is not inherently problematic: it can go either way. How do we make sure it goes the right way for us? What To Do About It Admiration is the key. Dr. Gottman[xi] writes that admiration is one way to overcome negative confirmation bias as it helps you to see the best in your spouse and interpret their actions positively. Developing admiration for your spouse causes you to form positive beliefs about them. This means that you will interpret their actions in keeping with these positive beliefs more often. In this situation confirmation bias will actually be helping your marriage rather than hindering it. It goes to show that these biases in our mind aren’t necessarily a bad thing- you just need to know about them so that you can learn to use them for your advantage. References [i] Benjamin D. Rosenberg and Jason T. Siegel, “A 50-Year Review of Psychological Reactance Theory: Do Not Read This Article,” Motivation Science 4, no. 4 (2018): 281–300, https://doi.org/10.1037/mot0000091. [ii] Rosenberg and Siegel. [iii] Rosenberg and Siegel. [iv] Riccardo Russo et al., “Mood-Congruent Free Recall Bias in Anxiety,” Cognition & Emotion 15, no. 4 (July 2001): 419–33, https://doi.org/10.1080/0269993004200259. [v] Russo et al. [vi] Richard J. Macatee et al., “Attention Bias towards Negative Emotional Information and Its Relationship with Daily Worry in the Context of Acute Stress: An Eye-Tracking Study,” Behaviour Research and Therapy 90 (March 1, 2017): 96–110, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2016.12.013. [vii] Macatee et al. [viii] Séraphine C. Clarke et al., “Cognitive Interpretation Bias: The Effect of a Single Session Moderate Exercise Protocol on Anxiety and Depression,” Frontiers in Psychology 9 (2018), https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01363. [ix] Lotte Veenstra, Iris K. Schneider, and Sander L. Koole, “Embodied Mood Regulation: The Impact of Body Posture on Mood Recovery, Negative Thoughts, and Mood-Congruent Recall,” Cognition & Emotion 31, no. 7 (2017): 1361–76, https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2016.1225003. [x] Christina Schwind and Jürgen Buder, “Reducing Confirmation Bias and Evaluation Bias: When Are Preference-Inconsistent Recommendations Effective – and When Not?,” Computers in Human Behavior 28, no. 6 (November 1, 2012): 2280–90, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2012.06.035. [xi] John Gottman, Catherine Swanson, and James Murray, “The Mathematics of Marital Conflict: Dynamic Mathematical Nonlinear Modeling Od Newlywed Marital Interaction,” Journal of Family Psychology 13, no. 1 (March 1999): 3–19.

Cognitive Biases in Marriage: Spotlight, Illusion of Transparency & Availability Heuristic

Wed, 10 Apr 2019 11:00:05 +0000

Cognitive biases are assumptions and judgments and error that our brains automatically make without us even knowing it’s happening. They are like automatic mental shortcuts. But the problem is: they could be messing with your marriage without either of you even realizing it! We have a brainy episode for you this week. We’re going to be talking about cognitive biases in marriage. This is about how your brain gets in the way of your connection with one another, and how to deal with that. What Is Cognitive Bias? As we pointed out in the intro, biases are assumptions, judgments and errors which our brains automatically make without us knowing. Often they are "shortcuts" the brain takes to help us process information and make decisions more quickly. Biases are not necessarily bad nor are they a sign of mental illness (although they do get stronger when we are stressed or experiencing anxiety/depression), and often they are useful[i]. But sometimes they can influence our thinking in unhelpful ways without us knowing. These biases can impact all areas of life, including marriage. So it’s good to know about them, why they happen, how they affect us and what to do about it. The Spotlight Effect and The Illusion of Transparency What Is This Cognitive Bias? The spotlight effect is "the tendency for people to overestimate the extent to which they believe that others see and attend to their external appearance"[ii]. Essentially it means you expect people to notice things about you (like how you look) and notice things you do (both good and bad) far more than they actually do. This was originally tested by a study done in 2000[iii] by asking study participants to walk through a crowded cafeteria while wearing an embarrassing t shirt. The participants expected that everyone would notice them and judge them for wearing a silly shirt, but in actual fact hardly anyone noticed or cared. That’s overestimating the extent to which others notice your appearance. The illusion of transparency is similar, but to do with our thoughts rather than our outward actions. It is the "tendency for people to overestimate the extent to which their internal thoughts, feelings, and attitudes ‘leak out’ and are seen by others.[iv] We expect others to be able to read our thoughts and emotions a lot more clearly than they actually do. This is also sometimes called the "mind reading bias" because we expect people to be able to read our minds much more accurately than they really can. Why This Happens Our actions, thoughts and appearance are always obvious to us than to others. So when we do something embarrassing we expect it to be just as obvious to everyone else. Equally, if we do something good or succeed at something, we expect everyone else to notice and can become annoyed when they don’t. Or when we see something a certain way, it is abundantly clear to us and we expect others to be just as lucid. How This Cognitive Bias Affects Marriage These two effects can lead to increased anxiety: thinking that your spouse is scrutinizing your appearance and thoughts can lead to high anxiety and over-compensating by trying to mask your emotions. Eg "I have to look my best all the time or my spouse will notice and think I'm not making any effort" or "If he/she notices I'm upset it will upset him/her too, so I need to make sure it doesn't show" They can lead to feeling unappreciated: thinking that your experiences are obvious to your spouse can leave you feeling unappreciated when they don't react. Eg "He didn't even notice my new hairstyle" or "I was obviously upset and he/she didn't even ask why" They can also contribute to poor conflict resolution. Thinking that your grievances are obvious to your spouse can lead to conflict avoidance or passive-aggressive behavior. E.g., "I shouldn't have to tell him/her why I'm upset! it should be obvious!" What To Do About It Say what you're thinking. Instead of assuming your spouse already knows, say what you are thinking! Really it’s as simple as that. Your spouse isn’t a mind reader. They have their own life and their own thoughts which can preoccupy them so that they don’t notice every little detail about your life right away. Give them some grace and if there’s something you want them to pay attention to, let them know. Shift your focus away from yourself. Both of these biases are correlated with spending a lot of time thinking about your own thoughts and appearance during social interaction. So shifting your attention to think about your spouse's perspective will help you avoid getting stuck in your own self-perception[v]. Learn to spend less time focused on your own thoughts and experiences, and instead try to see things how your spouse might see them. The Availability Heuristic What Is This Cognitive Bias? The availability heuristic is the tendency to make judgments and decisions based on whatever information you can quickly call to mind[vi]. This bias means that more recent events and also events that were particularly unusual or extreme have a strong impact on our judgment, even if they do not accurately reflect reality. For example, if you read a news story about violent crime you may start to think there is a high risk of it happening to you. Or if someone you know gets diagnosed with a rare disease you may start to worry that you or your family will get the same disease. You may have experienced this kind of “scare” or craze in your community following a particularly shocking news story. These strong examples in your memory outweigh the fact that the odds of these bad things happening are still very low[vii]. Why This Happens Our brains are programmed to make quick decisions and snap judgments because it is mentally less demanding to do this than to weigh every bit of evidence before making a decision. So the brain often makes decisions based on whatever info comes to mind first[viii]. How This Cognitive Bias Affects Marriage This bias means that a very extreme event can change your view of the entire marriage even if it was not a true reflection of the overall character of your marriage. For example a single, very intense fight may cause you to think that your marriage is failing, even if in reality you very rarely disagree. It’s not that you fight often, it’s just that this one fight stands out in your memory whenever you ask yourself “am I happy in my marriage?” Now, the availability heuristic can affect marriages for both good and bad. If it is easy to think of examples of good times with your spouse then you are likely to be highly satisfied with your marriage. But if it is easy to recall unpleasant times with your spouse then you will rate your marriage as being bad. This is partly why marital satisfaction is often cyclical: strong marriages get stronger while difficult marriage get worse. What To Do About It Celebrate the good. Keeping happy memories close in your mind by reminiscing about them together, keeping photos around the house etc makes it easy to recall happy times, leading you to feel more satisfied with your marriage[ix]. Make it easier to remember good times and your brain will pick up on them. Don't let single events distort your views. Once you are aware this bias occurs, you can counteract it by slowing down your judgment and trying to think of examples that agree/disagree with the ones that easily spring to mind. For example if you've just had a fight and it is making you think your marriage is failing, think back on how many fights you've had in the last few months. Is the current example a true reflection of reality? By thinking rationally in this way it is possible to prevent the bias from impacting your perception of the marriage. So I hope you’ve found this look at the mind’s little biases and errors interesting. It can be really fascinating to start spotting these biases in yourself (and your spouse). Next week we’ll be looking at some more of these biases and how you can stop them affecting your marriage. References [i] Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Reprint edition (London: Penguin, 2012). [ii] Michael A. Brown and Lusia Stopa, “The Spotlight Effect and the Illusion of Transparency in Social Anxiety,” Journal of Anxiety Disorders 21, no. 6 (January 1, 2007): 804–19, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2006.11.006. [iii] Thomas Gilovich, Kenneth Savitsky, and Victoria Husted Medvec, “The Illusion of Transparency: Biased Assessments of Others’ Ability to Read One’s Emotional States,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75, no. 2 (August 1998): 332–46, https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.75.2.332. [iv] Brown and Stopa, “The Spotlight Effect and the Illusion of Transparency in Social Anxiety.” [v] Brown and Stopa. [vi] Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow. [vii] Kahneman. [viii] Kahneman. [ix] Doris G. Bazzini et al., “The Effect of Reminiscing about Laughter on Relationship Satisfaction,” Motivation and Emotion 31, no. 1 (March 2007): 25–34, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-006-9045-6.

How To Make The Most of an Unhappy Marriage

Wed, 03 Apr 2019 11:00:35 +0000

So what if you are in a marriage that you are totally committed to but really not enjoying or appreciating. You are unhappy but it is quite a stable situation. And you aren’t leaving. How can you make the most of this situation? We’ll look at how folks find themselves in a spot like this and how to make the most of it. Long Term Unhappy Marriages Let’s start by looking at what we mean by “unhappy” in this situation. Overall marital quality is a combination of marital satisfaction and marital stability[i]. Using these two dimensions you can categorize marriages into four groups: High satisfaction, high stability High satisfaction, low stability Low satisfaction, high stability Low satisfaction, low stability Long term unhappy marriages fall into the third category: low in satisfaction but high in stability. Why Do People Stay? There are various reasons people may choose to stay in an unhappy marriage, divided into "reasons for staying" and "barriers to leaving" (from Heaton & Albrecht, 1991) Reasons to Stay Economic: you may be financially much better off even if you aren't happy in the marriage Familiarity: even if you aren't truly happy in your marriage, after many years together you may appreciate the stability and routine of life Belief that marriage is sacred: your religious commitment to marriage may keep you there. Barriers to Leaving Fear of being single or not being able to find another spouse Stigma around divorce Inability or doubts about your ability to fend for yourself (e.g., if your spouse is the main earner or handles important household issues and you don't know how you'd cope without them) Not wanting to distress your children by separating (even adult children). How To Make The Most of It Find Positive Reasons to Stay This first point is to do with a change in your mindset, rather than trying to change your circumstances. A research study from 2004[ii] interviewed unhappy couples about why they stay together. They found that couples whose only reasons to stay together were barriers to leaving were much more likely to end up divorced. So you need to try and find positive reasons to stay together, rather than thinking you have no choice. For example, wanting to stay in the marriage because you believe that God values your marriage and values your efforts to stay together is a better way of thinking about things than only staying together because you believe divorce is sinful. That’s putting a more positive slant on the reason for staying. This slight shift can have a big impact. It's Better Than Divorce Couples may be able to take comfort from the fact that staying together is often better for you than divorce. A research study from 2002[iii] found that, even in unhappily married couples, divorce generally did not increase their levels of happiness or life satisfaction. So sticking together and working on issues is often the best thing to do. Don't Disengage Couples in an unhappy marriage often end up withdrawing away from each other. This leads to a breakdown in communication that can ultimately make divorce much more likely[iv]. Our recommendation is that you try to keep talking and engaging with each other even if you are unhappy. Even if you cannot manage to be develop a lot of closeness, just remaining friendly and respectful will make the situation much more bearable[v]. Accept Who Your Spouse Is Spouses in long-term unhappy marriages should try to accept the person their spouse is, rather than trying to change them or remaining bitter about what they wish their spouse was like. Trying to change who your spouse is often ends in resentment and conflict. On the other hand accepting and supporting who they are can improve how you relate to them, as well as freeing you from the "responsibility" of who they are and what they do. Personal Growth Another effective strategy is instead of trying to change your spouse, work on developing yourself as a person. Finding ways to increase your own happiness, competence and self-worth will mean that these qualities will be reflected into your marriage too[vi]. For example, people in long term unhappy marriages are often insecurely attached, and struggling with anxiety and low self-worth[vii]. So working through these issues in individual counselling or mastering new communication skills to improve your self-confidence will make you a stronger, happier person. And this will naturally make your marriage stronger and happier too. This is great because it’s something you can work on personally, even if your spouse is totally uninterested, and it will still benefit you and the marriage. There's Always Hope Finally, we just want to sow a little hope into this situation. Research shows that even in marriages that have been unhappy for a long time, there is still hope that things can turn around. A study from 2002[viii] surveyed 645 couples who rated their marriages as unhappy and continued to track them for the next 5 years. The found that two out of three couples who rated themselves as unhappy at the start of the study ended up describing their marriages as happy after five years. It’s also helpful to consider the possibility that this may just be a season of life. It is easy to lose hope, but many marriages do have dry seasons and with commitment and investment those marriages can return to a happier place. As always, if you would like help with any of these things as an individual or as a couple, do feel free to reach out to us through our website at only you forever dot com and we’d be glad to connect you with one of our experienced marriage counsellors. References [i] Tim B. Heaton and Stan L. Albrecht, “Stable Unhappy Marriages,” Journal of Marriage and Family 53, no. 3 (1991): 747–58, https://doi.org/10.2307/352748. [ii] Denise Previti and Paul R. Amato, “Why Stay Married? Rewards, Barriers, and Marital Stability,” Journal of Marriage and Family 65, no. 3 (August 2003): 561–73. [iii] Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher, The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier and Better Off Financially (Crown/Archetype, 2002). [iv] Eli J. Finkel et al., “A Brief Intervention to Promote Conflict Reappraisal Preserves Marital Quality Over Time,” Psychological Science 24, no. 8 (August 1, 2013): 1595–1601, https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612474938. [v] Michelle Farris, “How to Survive in an Unhappy Marriage and Thrive,” World of Psychology, September 21, 2017, https://psychcentral.com/blog/how-to-survive-in-an-unhappy-marriage-and-thrive/. [vi] Farris. [vii] Joanne Davila and Thomas N. Bradbury, “Attachment Insecurity and the Distinction between Unhappy Spouses Who Do and Do Not Divorce,” Journal of Family Psychology 15, no. 3 (September 2001): 371–93, https://doi.org/10.1037/0893-3200.15.3.371. [viii] Waite and Gallagher, The Case for Marriage.

When Your Spouse Doesn’t Share Your Faith

Wed, 27 Mar 2019 11:00:38 +0000

Most times when Christian podcasters take up a topic like this we tend to get preachy about not entering into an unequal yoke, where you have a Christian marrying a non-Christian. While we fully agree with the truth of Scripture on that subject, in this episode we want to look at this issue more from the perspective of how to best face this issue as a couple when you find yourselves in a marriage where you don’t share your religious values, or even don’t share convictions about your faith to nearly the same degree. Religious Values Are Good For Marriage Just as a quick disclaimer around terminology — we are born again Christians who believe that salvation is faith in Jesus Christ. We believe that Biblical Christianity is a faith, not a religion. In other words, the blessing that God has for Christians comes through faith in Christ, not through a set of religious practices, law-keeping or following a set of rules. Which translates into the fact that we don’t think of our faith as a religion, nor do we normally call our faith-based practices “religious practices”. However, in the research literature, nearly all studies lump anything to do with God or faith under this term “religion” or “religious views” or “religious practices”. So for the sake of keeping things simple, we are just going to roll with the most commonly used terminology in the research journals. To start off then, there is strong evidence that religious views and spirituality have positive effects on marriage. There are a number of reasons for this[i]: Christianity promotes positive values like love, faithfulness, patience, forgiveness and kindness, all of which are good for marriage Christianity also encourages positive behaviors, such as putting your spouse's needs before your own, resolving conflict positively, and regularly connecting through joint prayer and church attendance Christianity teaches that marriage is sacred, meaning that those with religious beliefs are more likely to remain faithful and committed to the marriage over their whole life Christians often have stronger support networks than non-Christians (from their church communities), giving them more people to turn to for support and guidance All of this means that when both spouses are of the same faith, and both place high importance on their religious values, marital satisfaction is normally high[ii]. When Your Religious Beliefs Don’t Align Misaligned values can occur when one spouse is very committed to their faith and the other isn't, when one spouse is religious and the other isn't, or when spouses are committed to different religions. All of these situations can impact the marriage, but probably not for the reasons you would expect. Reduced Positive Behaviors Now just note as we go through this that we are dealing with studies of the general population. So I’ll say something like, non-religious people will probably display less actions that are good for the marriage. Note the tentative language: “will probably”. Please don’t be offended if you are non-religious — we are reporting on statistical issues here and you may well be an exception. We acknowledge that there are highly religious people who are terrible marriage partners. And we acknowledge that there are non-religious people who are devoted, loving and magnificent spouses. We aren’t making global statements. We are just pointing out general trends in a population. If you are an exception, great. If you are not, I hope you’ll make some room to consider what the research is saying and think about how you might apply this thing to your marriage, as we do to ours. Generally, spirituality leads to attitudes and actions that are good for marriage. If one spouse is non-religious or less committed to their faith, they will probably display less of these attitudes and actions. This was tested by a research study in 2015[iii], who interviewed couples where one spouse placed high importance on their faith and the other spouse did not. The study found that the non-religious (or the less religious) spouse was often happier and had higher marital satisfaction, because their religious spouse would act based on their spiritual values of love, kindness and forgiveness towards them. On the other hand, the religious spouse often had lower marital satisfaction, because their non-religious spouse would be less likely to act based on the same positive Christian values. So the religious spouse still acts in ways that are good for the marriage, but this is not reciprocated and that has an impact on the marriage. Less Shared Experiences Another point that is not obvious in a situation like this is that couples with mismatched faith levels may not attend church together. Or they may not have the same degree of overlap in terms of social network and activities, and often do not pray as much together. The loss of the shared experiences can also lead to lower marital happiness[iv]. Impact Over Time In marriages where spouses are mismatched on their religious values, the strength of these values tends to decline over time. If your spouse is not strongly religious, it becomes harder to keep attending church and practicing your faith, and so your own beliefs tend to slip[v]. This decline in beliefs leads to a decline in the positive attitudes and actions associated with faith, leading to a decline in marital satisfaction. The main message here is that mismatched religious values do not in themselves harm your marriage: they do not necessarily cause conflict or cause you to disagree on important life issues. Instead the mismatch simply causes you to miss out on all the positives that religious values bring to your marriage. And over time it is challenging to maintain your own faith values and practices when you don’t have that shared appreciation for those values. How To Keep Your Marriage Strong The good news is that there are things you can do to offset these challenges. This particular issue is just another facet of the classic marriage dilemma: you cannot change your spouse, but you can change yourself. And also we will see that engaging in open dialogue becomes helpful here too. Stay Strong in Faith Marriages decline in quality when spouses lose their religious beliefs and practices. So for the strongly religious spouse, keeping strong in your faith will stop your marriage quality declining. We give you some great ideas of how to do this in the bonus guide. Maintain Positive Behaviors Positive attitudes and behaviors may come more easily to religious spouses but there is no reason that less-religious (or non-religious) spouses can't use them too. So for the less-religious spouse in a couple, working on showing the same attitudes of love, faithfulness, forgiveness etc will help keep the marriage strong. Communicate When Disagreeing In couples who have different faiths, or different commitment to faith, conflict can arise when one spouse wants to make decisions based on religious teaching/morals and the other does not. Use of positive, helpful conflict resolution strategies in these situations is a strong predictor of marital satisfaction[vi]. You’re bound to have differing opinions on one issue or another. So talk about them. Don’t assume your way is the best and understand that your spouse might be coming at it from a very different worldview. You Both Need A Strong Sense of Identity Religious belief forms a big part of people's identity, giving them a sense of who they are and a strong social support network. People who are less religious may not have this sense of identity and purpose, or the same level of support, leading them to feel isolated and having to try and fit in with beliefs and people they don't agree with[vii]. If your spouse is much more religious than you, it's important to find your own sense of meaning and purpose, your own support network, and your own identity rather than trying to merge wit to your spouse's beliefs. Research from 2007[viii] describe this as finding a balance between togetherness and individuality. Ideally, I would encourage you to consider your spouse’s Christian faith — but not engaging in that faith through his or her relationship to Christ, but pursuing your own relationship with Jesus Christ. We all need to have our own journey, our own new birth into the family of God. So, rather than just obliging your spouse or even being indifferent, pursue your own relationship with God and read the Bible for yourself as a way to figure out what your needs are as well. References [i] Samuel L. Perry, “A Match Made in Heaven? Religion-Based Marriage Decisions, Marital Quality, and the Moderating Effects of Spouse’s Religious Commitment,” Social Indicators Research 123, no. 1 (August 1, 2015): 203–25, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-014-0730-7. [ii] Constance L. Shehan, E. Wilbur Bock, and Gary R. Lee, “Religious Heterogamy, Religiosity, and Marital Happiness: The Case of Catholics,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 52, no. 1 (February 1990): 73, https://doi.org/10.2307/352839. [iii] Perry, “A Match Made in Heaven?” [iv] Shehan, Bock, and Lee, “Religious Heterogamy, Religiosity, and Marital Happiness.” [v] Shehan, Bock, and Lee. [vi] Jerold S. Heiss, “Interfaith Marriage and Marital Outcome,” Marriage and Family Living 23, no. 3 (1961): 228–33, https://doi.org/10.2307/346966. [vii] Ryan N. Parsons et al., “Identity Development, Differentiation, Personal Authority, and Degree of Religiosity as Predictors of Interfaith Marital Satisfaction,” The American Journal of Family Therapy 35, no. 4 (July 5, 2007): 343–61, https://doi.org/10.1080/01926180600814601. [viii] Parsons et al.

When Your Spouse Has Let Themselves Go (and You’re Not Attracted)

Wed, 20 Mar 2019 11:00:30 +0000

If your spouse has let themselves go and you're finding it harder to feel attracted, you're probably carrying some guilt about that. You might be wondering if you're shallow, if something is wrong with you, or if this is just what marriage looks like after a couple of decades. Here's the clinical truth most people don't expect: when a spouse lets themselves go physically, the lost attraction you're feeling is almost never about their appearance alone. It's a signal. And if you pay attention to what it's actually telling you, you'll find a much more useful path forward than a gym membership ever could. In my practice, when a couple comes in and one partner names this issue, what we usually uncover is that the change in physical self-care is sitting on top of something deeper: emotional distance, unspoken resentment, depression, burnout, or a slow erosion of the investment both people are making in the marriage. The body is telling a story. The question is whether you're willing to read it. Does Physical Appearance Really Affect Marriage Satisfaction? Research generally shows that there is a link between how attractive you perceive your spouse to be and how satisfied you are with the marriage. This effect tends to be more pronounced for men than for women, likely because of how deeply we are socialized around visual attraction. What happens as couples get older? A 2014 study by Meltzer and colleagues found that for the first four years of marriage, a spouse's physical attractiveness was a strong predictor of marital satisfaction for husbands and a less important predictor for wives. Murstein and Christy found the same pattern in 1976 among couples married 10 to 20 years: the wife's attractiveness still predicted the husband's satisfaction, but not the reverse. Peterson and Miller confirmed this held true even in couples married 30 or more years. So yes, appearance does matter on some level. But here's where the research gets more interesting. Couples tend to rate themselves as roughly equal in attractiveness at all stages of life. A young couple might call themselves a solid 7 out of 10. Twenty years later, maybe a 5. But they usually move together. When that symmetry breaks and one partner's physical self-care noticeably declines, the researchers found something that surprised a lot of people: it typically does not damage overall marital quality on its own. Why? Because attraction in a long-term relationship is not built on a single dimension. When Lost Attraction Is Really About Lost Connection Research by Baumeister and Bratslavsky has shown that attraction to your spouse is partly physical but also strongly determined by the levels of intimacy in your marriage: the emotional connection between you, the quality of time spent together, your attentiveness to one another, the support your partner offers, your own self-esteem, and the frequency and quality of your sexual relationship. Attraction is a multi-dimensional experience. I think the truth of this gets obscured in a culture that treats physical appearance as the primary currency of desirability. In reality, a lifetime of building emotional, spiritual, and relational depth is what creates the deepest and most durable attraction between two people. Emotional intimacy, in particular, is one of the most powerful drivers of lasting physical attraction. The flip side is also true: if you feel less attracted to your partner, while you may have fixed on their physical appearance, it is much more likely that the overall quality of your connection has thinned. You may be frustrated with your spouse, resentful about something unspoken, or disappointed in a way you haven't fully named. And that relational distance is showing up as diminished physical attraction. I can illustrate this rather directly. Imagine you were single and had the opportunity to marry the most physically attractive person you've ever seen, but you knew they were entitled, dismissive, and self-absorbed. You wouldn't want that. And a woman offered the chance to marry the most conventionally handsome man on earth would pass if she knew he was emotionally unavailable or controlling. The whole person is what creates attraction. When the whole package isn't working, the physical dimension often takes the blame because it's the easiest thing to point at. If you're struggling with attraction, it's probably time to focus on restoring the quality of your marriage by addressing the underlying emotional and relational distance, rather than fixating on what your spouse looks like. Why Spouses Let Themselves Go: What's Often Underneath Before you interpret your spouse's physical decline as a lack of effort or care, it's worth considering what might be driving it. In many cases, what looks like "letting go" is actually a symptom of something clinical, not a character flaw. Depression and burnout are two of the most common drivers. When someone is clinically depressed, the motivation to care for their body, their appearance, or their daily routines erodes. The energy required for basic self-care feels enormous. If your spouse has withdrawn from activities they used to enjoy, is sleeping more or less than usual, or seems emotionally flat, they may be struggling with something that needs professional attention, not a lecture about the gym. Grief and life transitions can have the same effect. A parent's death, a job loss, a child leaving home, a health diagnosis: any of these can quietly reconfigure how someone relates to their own body and their sense of agency. Sometimes a spouse who appears to have "let themselves go" has actually had the ground shift under them in ways they haven't been able to articulate. There is also a psychological pattern worth understanding. Our culture holds a very narrow standard of attractiveness: youthful, slim, styled. When a person reaches a certain age and feels they can no longer meet that standard, they may decide they're "past it" and stop trying altogether. Research by Schwartz, Diefendorf, and McGlynn-Wright describes how this belief becomes self-fulfilling: thinking yourself unattractive leads to reduced effort, which leads others to perceive you as less attractive, which confirms the original belief. But here's the encouraging part: that cycle can also run in reverse. When a person believes they are attractive, valued, and desired, they put more effort into their appearance, carry themselves with more confidence, and report higher self-esteem. The belief is the catalyst. This means that if you invest in the emotional and relational dimensions of your marriage (intimacy, attentiveness, affirmation, quality time together), you can help your spouse feel more vital and engaged. That renewed sense of being valued often translates into renewed energy for self-care. The physical change you're hoping for may actually begin with something that has nothing to do with physical appearance: the quality of your connection. How to Talk to Your Spouse About This If you've been sitting on this concern, you probably already know that saying "you've let yourself go" would be devastating. And you're right: it would be. That framing makes it about their failure, and very few people respond to criticism by feeling motivated. A better entry point is genuine concern. Not concern wrapped around a complaint, but actual concern for your spouse's well-being. Something like: "I've noticed you seem to have less energy lately, and I'm wondering how you're really doing." That opens a door instead of building a wall. A few things I'd encourage: Lead with curiosity, not correction. Ask how they're feeling about themselves before you tell them how you're feeling about them. You may discover that your spouse is already unhappy about the change but feels stuck, ashamed, or overwhelmed. If that's the case, they don't need your assessment. They need your partnership. Name what you miss in terms of connection, not appearance. "I miss feeling like we're excited about each other" is a very different message than "I wish you'd take better care of yourself." The first invites collaboration. The second assigns blame. Check your own investment. Before you bring this to your spouse, take an honest look at what you're contributing to the vitality of the marriage. Are you pursuing them emotionally? Are you making time for the relationship? Sometimes the spouse who has "let themselves go" is reflecting back a dynamic that both partners have contributed to. Watch for something deeper. If your spouse seems persistently low, withdrawn, or disengaged from things they used to care about, the conversation you need to have may not be about attraction at all. It may be about whether they need support: from you, from a counselor, or from a doctor. "Letting go" is sometimes the visible surface of an invisible struggle. And if you've tried to address this gently and the conversation keeps stalling or escalating, that's a good signal that couples counseling could help. A skilled therapist can hold the space for a conversation this sensitive in a way that keeps it productive rather than hurtful. Frequently Asked Questions What does it mean when your spouse lets themselves go? When a spouse stops investing in their physical self-care, it can be a sign of depression, burnout, grief, low self-esteem, or a broader withdrawal from engagement with life. It may also reflect the quality of the marriage itself. Before assuming it's about laziness or indifference, consider what might be driving the change underneath the surface. Is it normal to lose attraction to your spouse over time? Fluctuations in physical attraction are common in long-term marriages. Research shows that attraction is multi-dimensional: it depends on emotional intimacy, quality time, mutual support, and sexual connection, not just appearance. Most couples can rebuild attraction by investing in the relational dimensions of their marriage

How Shift Work Impacts Marriage And What To Do About It

Wed, 13 Mar 2019 11:00:32 +0000

More than 1 in 6 people regularly work shifts outside of the normal Monday to Friday work week[i]. In today’s episode we want to look at some of the unique challenges that shiftwork can bring to marriage. And not only the challenges but how you can work together as a couple to make the most of life even when it is hard to see each other due to one or both of you being involved in shift work. About 17% of workers regularly work in shifts outside the regular work week[ii]. Lots of folks have learned to make this work and we know a number of friends and family members who have been long term shift workers and have had successful marriages over the long term. However, it definitely presents some challenges and can lead to increased conflict. Let’s begin by looking at some of the problem areas associated with shift work and marriage. How Shift Work Affects Marriage Shift work can create a unique and extreme form of work-family conflict: where the roles and responsibilities of your job and your marriage start to negatively impact each other. Shift work can affect marriage in three main ways[iii]: Competition: this is where the two roles of career and family life compete for your time and energy so that you have to sacrifice parts of one in order for the other to function well. In shift work this normally means the family life has to suffer so that you can continue to function at work. Shift work typically disrupts normal sleep patterns making it harder to spend time with your spouse and family. Poor sleep can also harm your mood, energy levels and physical health, which can reduce the quality of the time you do get to spend together. If you’ve been working all night you might now always be in the best mood to chat when you get home! Spillover: this happens when low mood, fatigue and other negative effects spill over from work to home, or from home to work. In shift work this often happens when tiredness and low mood from the job are brought home, leading to negative interactions with your spouse at home. Negativity at home can then spill over into the work life, creating a cycle. Compensation: this is where you invest more in one of your roles to compensate for the fact that the other role isn't going well. For example, people whose marriages are not going well may invest more into their work and derive their happiness and satisfaction from their career instead. Some research[iv] suggests that people in distressed marriages sometimes seek out shift work in order to avoid facing their spouses and dealing with their marital problems. This of course leads to further distancing and breakdown in communication. Now, these impacts do not have to happen. They are not inevitable. But they are some of the common challenges that shift work presents to marriage. And any or all of them can happen at the same time. Your Shift Pattern Matters What is interesting to note is that the overall impact on marriage depends very much on what your shift pattern is. "Shift work" in the research can mean anything from occasionally working weekends to consistently working nights or anything in between. Generally research finds that all forms of shift work can have a negative impact on areas of marriage such as overall happiness, positive interactions, levels of conflict and sexual satisfaction[v]. But different kinds of shift work were found to have different levels of impact. These are, from least impactful to most: Weekend work Fast rotating shifts (eg 3 days nights followed by 3 days daytime work) Slow rotating shifts (eg 1-2 weeks working nights followed by 1-2 weeks working days) Long-term night shifts The faster rotating shifts make it easier for couples to get into a rhythm and still see each other fairly regularly on a week by week basis, whereas the longer rotating shifts and night shifts make regular time together much harder. Shorter shift patterns are also less disruptive to the body's sleep rhythms[vi] On that note, if you are a shift worker I hope you acquaint yourself with Shift Work Sleep Disorder — even if you just Google it to begin with you’ll find good resources to help accommodate the challenges to sleep that this kind of work brings. Shift Work and Family Life Stages Before we look at how to protect your marriage when one or both of you are working shifts, let’s also just take a moment to talk about how shift work has varying impacts and different stages of life. Research shows there are certain stages of life where shift work has different effects on marital quality. These are: Later life: shiftwork can have a big impact on marital quality and stability for newlyweds. But the longer couples have been married the less impact it tends to have. If couples have been married a long time then they probably know how to support each other and face challenges together so can adjust to shiftwork fairly easily[vii]. Children: shiftwork can have a very negative impact on marital quality if you are raising young children. This is especially true if it is the wife who is working shifts, as she is normally the one who does the majority of childcare[viii]. Mother's shift work can also have negative impacts on a child's wellbeing and behavior. So shift work when you have young (pre teen) children is likely to have a larger impact on your family. We aren’t saying this to shame anyone but the thing is that when you have these additional challenges, it just becomes even more important to be strategic about compensating for them and facing them as a couple. Protecting Your Marriage From The Impact of Shift Work Communication is the key! Communication style fully mediates the link between marital satisfaction and work-family conflict caused by shiftwork[ix]. This means that if couples learn to communicate properly then shift work has NO negative effect on marriage. That’s great news! The most important thing is speaking to each other in a way that is constructive rather than destructive. This involves proactive choices that are important in any marriage such as self disclosure, warmth, and positive conflict resolution. All the good ways of talking to each other than you’d want in any marriage. But for couples dealing with shift work, these additional factors were found to be helpful[x]: Frequency of problem-solving communication: couples need to find ways to talk about normal day to day issues regularly. Even if they aren't able to have longer conversations everyday due to shifts, just checking in daily or even talking via phone/text is still important. So how can you both carve out some space for those daily conversations? Empathy and understanding: couples should try to show that they understand and empathize with the difficulties their spouse is experiencing as either the shift working spouse or the non-shift working spouse. Both have unique challenges: understanding and showing compassion will go a long way towards easing the additional challenges of shift work. Support: learn to support one another with these challenges. Help your spouse adjust to shift work (or to you being a shift worker) and just be ready to do your best to make the situation work. Maintenance behaviors. These are the actions spouses take to maintain the strength of the relationship and invest in each other. These are important in any marriage, but may look slightly different in shift marriages. For example spouses can leave notes or gifts around the house if they don't see each other often to give them in person. Or send loving texts during the day or make time for date nights on the time they do have together etc. In other words, find adaptive and creative ways to do the things all couples need to do in order to create thriving, passionate marriages. So while there are some real challenges, we hope that this has given you a lot of hope. Shift work is a challenge — but with the right spirit and the right tools you should do just fine. References [i] Irena Iskra-Golec et al., “Shift Schedule, Work-Family Relationships, Marital Communication, Job Satisfaction and Health among Transport Service Shift Workers,” International Journal of Occupational Medicine and Environmental Health 30, no. 1 (February 21, 2017): 121–31, https://doi.org/10.13075/ijomeh.1896.00670. [ii] Iskra-Golec et al. [iii] Blanche Grosswald, “Shift Work and Negative Work-to-Family Spillover,” Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare 30, no. 4 (2003): 31–56. [iv] Harriet B. Presser, “Nonstandard Work Schedules and Marital Instability,” Journal of Marriage and Family 62, no. 1 (2000): 93–110, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2000.00093.x. [v] Lynn White and Bruce Keith, “The Effect of Shift Work on the Quality and Stability of Marital Relations,” Journal of Marriage and Family 52, no. 2 (1990): 453–62, https://doi.org/10.2307/353039. [vi] Iskra-Golec et al., “Shift Schedule, Work-Family Relationships, Marital Communication, Job Satisfaction and Health among Transport Service Shift Workers.” [vii] Presser, “Nonstandard Work Schedules and Marital Instability.” [viii] Rosalind Chait Barnett, Karen C. Gareis, and Robert T. Brennan, “Wives’ Shift Work Schedules and Husbands’ and Wives’ Well-Being in Dual-Earner Couples With Children: A Within-Couple Analysis,” Journal of Family Issues 29, no. 3 (March 1, 2008): 396–422, https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513X07305346. [ix] Sarah Carroll et al., “Couple Communication as a Mediator Between Work-Family Conflict and Marital Satisfaction,” Contemporary Family Therapy: An International Journal 35, no. 3 (September 2013): 530–45, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10591-013-9237-7. [x] Carroll et al.

Here’s The Best Thing You Can Do After a Fight With Your Spouse

Wed, 06 Mar 2019 11:00:32 +0000

Having a fight with your spouse is a stressful, upsetting experience that can leave you bewildered, frustrated and feeling stuck. In this episode, we want to give you a straightforward strategy that you can use to help break yourselves out of a downward spiral of increasing conflict and unhappiness. The Issue: Rumination and Negative Cycles A single argument is unlikely to have huge negative effects on a marriage. The problem is that after an argument couples tend to ruminate over it for a long time. You might keep going over and reliving the arguments in your minds, causing you to feel upset and angry with your spouse all over again. Sometimes you will get "stuck" in this rumination to the point where a single fight can continue to affect you for a long time afterwards[i]. That’s an issue because this leads to negative reciprocity. Meaning, next time there is the possibility of conflict, one or both of you are still feeling angry about the previous fight. You therefore react more strongly to the current issue and you may bring up past hurts as well, causing the conflict to escalate. Perhaps your spouse says something hurtful or brings up a past annoyance, and you retaliate in kind. This happens more and more as time goes on[ii]. Don’t miss this point: this pattern of negative rumination and reciprocity has been identified as the biggest reason that marital quality declines over time as a result of conflict[iii]. It’s not the fight itself that damages your marriage: it’s the way you hold onto the hurt and keep bringing it up again and again. Rumination and holding on to past hurts also has negative personal consequences such as low mood, higher stress levels, higher blood pressure and reduced physical health[iv]. So it has cascading effects to other parts of your wellbeing. The Best Thing To Do After a Fight: Break This Negative Cycle Stopping this cycle of rumination and reciprocity lets the negative feelings end when the fight ends. This means that the negativity and upset stop affecting your mood and will not influence how you react next time a potential conflict situation arises. Letting go of rumination also makes it much easier to make up with your spouse and resolve the conflict issue[v]. You will not always be able to prevent conflict from happening, but by breaking this cycle you can "draw a line" after it happens to ensure it does not keep affecting you. Ok, you’re sold: now, how do you do this? How To Break The Negative Cycle 1) Cool Off Immediately after a fight our brains tend to be in self defense "fight or flight" mode, which makes thinking calmly and rationally very difficult. That’s the normal physiological response to a distressing event. To compensate for that, give yourselves time to cool off before you come back together to resolve the issue[vi]. For Christian couples, prayer can be a good way to help cool off from an argument as well. Research has shown that this can also make conflict resolution easier[vii]. 2) Reappraise The Conflict The best way to stop yourself getting stuck in rumination and bitterness is to think back over the argument from a different perspective and reappraise what happened. A research study from 2013[viii] tested this by training couples to imagine what their argument would have looked like if a neutral friend was watching them. Here’s what they taught their study participants: "Think about this disagreement with your partner from the perspective of a neutral third party who wants the best for all involved; a person who sees things from a neutral point of view. How might this person think about the disagreement? How might he or she find the good that could come from it?[ix]” What they found in the results of their study is that using this technique, couples were able to re-evaluate the argument and see more clearly if they were being irrational or hurtful. They were also more able to see things from their spouse's perspective and therefore had more empathy towards them. That is a huge benefit. In the study, couples who did not use the reappraising technique experienced a decline in marital satisfaction due to conflict, but couples who did use the technique did not. Meaning that if you can learn to step outside your own perspective and reappraise the situation like this, conflict stops impacting your marriage there and then. Now, in our show we always tell you the truth. We give you research based advice. But we need to also tell you that this approach is challenging. It can be difficult to pause and step away from your own arguments and see your personal issues from an outside perspective. That’s a difficult skill to develop. But with practice, you can learn to do this very effectively. 3) Forgive and Be Forgiven Once you are able to see the situation from an outside perspective it is much easier to forgive your spouse for the ways they may have upset you, and it is also easier to recognize the things you did to upset them. Come back together when you are both ready and make amends and forgive each other. Seeing things from the outside perspective makes you much more empathic to each other's perspectives, which makes you both much more willing to forgive[x] 4) Resolve the Real Issue Once you see things from a perspective other than your own, it becomes much easier to resolve the original issue that caused the argument. But often you need to go deeper and address the unresolved issue underneath[xi]. Usually there is a deeper issue at stake. If you can uncover this and have a conversation about it, you’ll also be better positioned to avoid future arguments. For example if the issue which sparked the argument was about who should do the dishes, the "real" issue may be that one of you feels unappreciated or feels that the balance of housework is unfair. Addressing this deeper issue and agreeing on how to resolve it will ensure that this problem is put to rest once and for all. As always, if you and your spouse have been stuck in conflict for a long time, we do have top shelf marriage therapists on staff at OnlyYouForever who would be glad to meet with you both. We can help you create a loving, kind marriage where conflict is resolved much more quickly, with much less distress, and the overall tone and experience of your marriage becomes one of joy and contentment rather than distress and upset. To begin making that change today, hit that Get In Touch link at the top of the screen and send us a note. We’ll get right back to you and get you some help right away. References [i] Eli J. Finkel et al., “A Brief Intervention to Promote Conflict Reappraisal Preserves Marital Quality Over Time,” Psychological Science 24, no. 8 (August 1, 2013): 1595–1601, https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612474938. [ii] Finkel et al. [iii] Finkel et al. [iv] Charlotte vanOyen Witvliet et al., “Transforming or Restraining Rumination: The Impact of Compassionate Reappraisal versus Emotion Suppression on Empathy, Forgiveness, and Affective Psychophysiology,” The Journal of Positive Psychology 10, no. 3 (2015): 248–61, https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2014.941381. [v] vanOyen Witvliet et al. [vi] Robert Taibbi, “After an Argument: The Right Way to Make Up,” Psychology Today, 2018, https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fixing-families/201806/after-argument-the-right-way-make. [vii] Mark H. Butler, Brandt C. Gardner, and Mark H. Bird, “Not Just a Time-Out: Change Dynamics of Prayer for Religious Couples in Conflict Situations,” Family Process 37, no. 4 (1998): 451–78, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1545-5300.1998.00451.x. [viii] Finkel et al., “A Brief Intervention to Promote Conflict Reappraisal Preserves Marital Quality Over Time.” [ix] Finkel et al. [x] vanOyen Witvliet et al., “Transforming or Restraining Rumination.” [xi] Taibbi, “After an Argument.”

How To Help Your Husband Through His Man Cold

Wed, 27 Feb 2019 11:00:28 +0000

Today’s episode is on the lighter side. But did you know that researchers have actually done studies on the phenomenon of the man cold or man flu? You may be wondering if it’s really worse for a man to have a cold than for a woman? Well: like we say every time, we have the research, the truth and the answers you’re looking for! That’s right, today we’re going to be talking about the very serious and culturally under-acknowledged and deeply stigmatized issue of man colds. Do Men Suffer More Than Woman? Funny enough, there have been a few research journal articles published on the man cold or man flu phenomenon. There was a joke article published in the British Medical Journal where a researcher tried to establish whether men were immunologically inferior or if they were just wimps. Fast forwarding to the conclusion, the researcher from the University of Alberta suggested that “Perhaps now is the time for male friendly spaces, equipped with enormous televisions and reclining chairs, to be set up where men can recover from the debilitating effects of man flu in safety and comfort"[i]. Another Research Group Responds Not content to let the issue lie, another group of researchers (who perhaps had too much time on their hands)[ii] wrote in to the British Medical Journal with their own investigation. "Being men ourselves, and having had several near death experiences enduring the flu, we were intrigued by the same question as Dr. Sue." In their study 15 men and 15 women were injected with a flu virus and their responses were measured. They found that women have a stronger immune response to the virus than men, meaning that women naturally recover from colds and flu more quickly while men suffer from them more severely. "We indeed found that the male subjects did not erect shelves, maintain cars or attend a football match (or engaged in reproductive activities for that matter) directly following [our] study, illustrating how inflammation may affect social life.[iii]". So some (not all) research shows that men may experience cold and flu symptoms more severely. But they may also communicate their illness in different ways. A study from 2018[iv] found that men and women "moaned and complained equally" when ill with cold symptoms but that men had a tendency to sigh and take long deep breaths more often. This perhaps suggests a tendency to exaggerate symptom severity. Overall research suggests that men may experience cold and flu more severely due to women having a stronger immune response. I think this warrants some sympathy! How To Help Your Ill Spouse It is interesting to follow this gender issue further. We’ll give you some practical info to help be that caring wife that you always wanted to be! Get Him To The Doctor! Men are much less likely to seek medical help regarding illnesses than women[v], or may seek help but do so much later once symptoms have gotten worse. This is thought to be due to "traditionally masculine beliefs" about wanting to cope with illness on your own and being reluctant to seek help. So if your husband is complaining about illness but refusing to do anything about it, get him to a doctor! Be Sympathetic, But Not Too Sympathetic This one is interesting. Research from 2018[vi] found that your expectations of how severe an illness will be can actually impact how severe it is. Expecting an illness to be very severe can lead to negative mood and anxiety, and these can increase the severity of the symptoms you feel. So when comforting your spouse you want to be sympathetic and supportive, but making too big a deal of the illness can make it worse. Your Communication Style Impacts Your Marriage More Than Your Cold Now let’s look in a bit more depth about how illness can affect your marriage. Communication forms the link between illness and marital quality. How you speak to each other when one of you is ill has more of an effect on marriage than the actual illness itself. Research from 2004[vii] studied this and identified five main styles of communication about illness, three of which were positive and two negative. Depending which style of communication you use as a couple, different things will affect your marital satisfaction while you are ill. This is well worth considering. Positive Communication Styles Sympathetic style. This is where both spouses want to be pampered and looked after when ill, and are willing to do so for each other. You both like being made a fuss of, and are happy to do this for your spouse when the need arises. If this sounds like you and your spouse, here’s how you can support each other: Attention: spouses felt better when they were looked after and "made a fuss of" Empathy and validation: spouses felt better when their spouse made the effort to understand how they felt Independent Style. This is where both spouses want to be left alone when ill, and are happy to do so for one another. Very much the “hands off” approach. If this is you, here’s how you should talk to each other: Autonomy: understand that leaving your spouse alone will help them feel better Self-sufficiency: let them manage their own illness in terms of medication and care rather than doing it for them Mixed style. This is where one spouse wants to be pampered and looked after when ill, while the other prefers to be left alone. You don’t have to react the same way when ill, so long as you both understand how your spouse wants to be treated. Ways to support your spouse in this style (in addition to the above): Understand their different needs: respect the fact that they want to be treated differently to how you would want to be treated, and make the effort to meet those needs. For example making a fuss of your spouse when they are ill, even if you would rather be left alone if it were you. Negative Communication Styles Mismatched style. This happens when couples do not understand how to meet each other’s needs when ill, or when one spouse gets their needs met but not the other. For example a husband assuming his wife wants to be left alone when sick, because that is what he prefers. Easy enough to do … but unhelpful. Couples in this situation need to work on clarity: being able to clearly express what you want from your spouse while you are ill, and then try to meet your spouse's needs when they are ill. Also the person showing care can study and observe what works well for their spouse more than just thinking of what they themselves would appreciate. Rejecting style. This is when spouses may understand what their spouse wants but choose to reject it. For example a husband wants to be made a fuss of but his wife ignores him. This is often a cycle where one spouse feels their needs are not met and so thinks "if you aren't going to look after me then why should I look after you?" Obviously this is a negative communication style and leads to poor marital quality. Couples can avoid this by breaking the "like for like" cycle: start meeting your spouse's needs even if they don't meet yours. This will make them more likely to want to look after you next time you are ill. So understanding how your spouse wants to be treated while ill, and making the effort to act accordingly is the a great way to improve marital quality during illness. Give it a shot, let us know how it goes! And I just want to say to all my bro-dudes out there who are down with a cold right now. I feel your pain, man, I really do. Hope your wife is showing you some love. You take care of yourself ok? References [i] Kyle Sue, “The Science behind ‘Man Flu,’” BMJ 359 (December 11, 2017): j5560, https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.j5560. [ii] Lucas T. van Eijk et al., “Gender Differences in the Innate Immune Response and Vascular Reactivity Following the Administration of Endotoxin to Human Volunteers,” Critical Care Medicine 35, no. 6 (June 2007): 1464–69, https://doi.org/10.1097/01.CCM.0000266534.14262.E8. [iii] van Eijk et al. [iv] Julie Lasselin et al., “Sickness Behavior Is Not All about the Immune Response: Possible Roles of Expectations and Prediction Errors in the Worry of Being Sick,” Brain, Behavior, and Immunity 74 (November 2018): 213–21, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbi.2018.09.008. [v] Paul M. Galdas, Francine Cheater, and Paul Marshall, “Men and Health Help-Seeking Behaviour: Literature Review,” Journal of Advanced Nursing 49, no. 6 (2005): 616–23, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2648.2004.03331.x. [vi] Lasselin et al., “Sickness Behavior Is Not All about the Immune Response.” [vii] Kandi L. Walker and Fran C. Dickson, “An Exploration of Illness-Related Narratives in Marriage: The Identification of Illness-Identity Scripts,” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 21, no. 4 (August 1, 2004): 527–44, https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407504044846.

How Losing a Child Impacts Marriage

Wed, 20 Feb 2019 11:00:14 +0000

Thankfully, losing a child is a relatively rare event. However, this tragedy still happens to some in our world. And one of the common concerns I hear expressed is concern for the marriage of those who have lost a child. There seems to be a real perception that couples who lose a child are more likely to experience the failure of their marriage. We explore the research on this today and then turn towards helping each other through the grief. Many people and researchers describe losing a child as the hardest thing a couple could go through[i] and we certainly would agree with this. How Losing a Child Impacts Marriage Bereaved parents experience intense and overwhelming grief at their loss, and have to cope with substantial changes to their life, their role, and their relationship. Parents have to deal with their own individual grief as well as attempting to comfort each other and deal with the changes to their relationship. This is a subject we wanted to address here but we have to be up front that we have never been through this ourselves. Others have and there are helpful blogs and articles on the Internet from those who speak to this issue from a very personal place. Our approach here is different: we wanted to look at the research and see what happens not just in the life of this couple or that couple, but across the experiences of many marriages to see what could be learned. Losing a Child Doesn’t Increase Divorce Rates There’s no doubt that this loss can potentially have a huge impact on marital quality, but research finds no link between the loss of a child and marital stability. So the idea that losing a child makes divorce more likely is in fact a myth[ii]. But it can definitely impact marriage in other ways, such as: Increased strain and conflict Reduced communication Distancing Reduced sexual functioning Despite the extreme grief of losing a child, not all couples experience these negative outcomes: setting the grief and loss itself to one side for the moment, some couples end up stronger as a result of a tragedy like this. This is partly down to situational factors (things outside the couple's control, see below), partly down to how the couple grieves, and partly down to how strong the couple were before the loss. Situational Factors Cause of death: we want to be cautious about comparing the cause of death knowing that each case is so unique. But generally, losing a child in sudden or violent circumstances such as accidents, homicide or suicide is much more distressing to the marriage than other causes such as illness or stillbirth[iii]. Age at death: the older a child is when they die, the more the parents have invested in them and formed strong bonds with them, so the harder their loss impacts them[iv] Other children: having other children can be a source of comfort when one child is lost, and provide a continued sense of purpose for the couple[v]. However, it can also increase the strain on the couple as they have to care for their surviving children at the same time as dealing with their own grief[vi]. State of The Marriage At The Time of Loss The quality of your marriage prior to the loss can impact how you cope with the loss, for good or bad. For example, if your marriage has been child-centred, you may not have nurtured a strong bond between yourselves and so probably start the grieving process more alone. Hopefully, you would both be able to recognize the need to turn towards each other during a time like this. But pre-existing strains and conflicts before the loss of the child can also lead to couples coping poorly with the bereavement. Couples who struggled with poor communication and conflict prior to the loss are unable to properly comfort and support each other during the grieving process, and so end up becoming distanced and non-communicative rather than facing the problem together. This can lead to a breakdown in the stability of the marriage[vii] unless the couple realizes the nature of the challenge and makes deliberate moves to compensate. Equally, a strong marriage can help couples cope with the loss more effectively. Couples in a strong marriage are better able to support one another and feel supported, and will be more likely to use good communication and coping strategies. "Feeling secure, and protected in the relationship helped parents to survive and endure the grief after the loss of their child[viii]". We don’t get to choose the timing of major losses so this is another reason to create a strong marriage: it acts as a strong buffer against the blows that can come during life on planet earth. At the same time, if your marriage was not strong all hope is not lost. It just becomes a matter of turning towards one another at a time of loss like this, rather than turning against one another. How To Help Your Spouse Through The Grief The grief of losing a child is complicated because on the one hand it is dependent on your own ability to manage the emotions and come to terms with the loss. But on the other hand, it is determined by how your spouse copes with the same process: if your spouse copes well, it will be easier for you to cope well, and if they struggle it may be harder for you. This means that grieving is both an individual and a joint process[ix]. Here are five particular areas to focus on as you journey through grief. Be Real With Each Other Couples going through the loss of a child may want to protect each other by appearing strong and not expressing their sadness in front of each other. This is not a great strategy: trying to hide your emotions makes things harder for you (since you aren't expressing yourself) and makes things harder for your spouse (since they feel like you aren't sharing in their grief). So hiding your emotions to protect your spouse often ends up having the opposite effect of making them feel more alone[x]. Individual and Joint Grieving As mentioned above, grieving the loss of a child is an individual and joint process. Couples cope well when they make use of joint coping strategies: talking about their grief together, sharing resources such as books on grief and loss, and dealing with the practical aspects of the loss together (funeral arrangements etc). However, making time for individual grieving is also important. A research study in 2016[xi] found that couples coped best when they were able to both communicate openly about their experiences, and also give each other space to process things alone. Utilize Social Support Couples with a strong, healthy marriage are able to offer support to each other during the loss of a child. But relying exclusively on each other for support may put too much strain on your spouse. Finding other people who you can talk to can therefore help you cope, and also reduce the strain your spouse is feeling[xii]. Find Your Hope In Christ A link has been found between religious faith and better marital coping with the loss of a child[xiii]. There are a few reasons for this. Couples can often turn to other members of their church for support, guidance and practical help during this difficult time. Second, praying together can help couples feel connected, strengthening their bond and helping them feel less alone in their grief. Finally, faith in the promise of eternal life gives couples hope that death is not final and lets them continue to feel connected to the child they have lost[xiv]. Look for New Meaning Parents often take a lot of personal meaning from raising their children. That’s not wrong—that is a healthy aspect of parenting. But it means the loss of a child can devastate this sense of meaning and purpose. Finding new meaning in other places is therefore "crucial in rebuilding the predictability and order of life[xv]". Couples can find meaning in all kinds of things, including by investing in their own marriage, from their faith, from other passions and life goals, from deepening relationships with surviving children, or from forming new, deeper relationships with family and friends. So if you are in this awful situation I hope today’s episode has given you some hope. Losing a child is a terrible loss, but it doesn’t mean that you have to lose your marriage as well. It is possible to work through your grief as a couple and start to find a new sense of meaning and purpose in life. References [i] Sara Albuquerque, Marco Pereira, and Isabel Narciso, “Couple’s Relationship after the Death of a Child: A Systematic Review,” Journal of Child and Family Studies 25, no. 1 (2016): 30–53, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-015-0219-2. [ii] Albuquerque, Pereira, and Narciso. [iii] Katja Joronen, Marja Kaunonen, and Anna Liisa Aho, “Parental Relationship Satisfaction after the Death of a Child,” Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences 30, no. 3 (September 2016): 499–506, https://doi.org/10.1111/scs.12270. [iv] Joronen, Kaunonen, and Aho. [v] Albuquerque, Pereira, and Narciso, “Couple’s Relationship after the Death of a Child.” [vi] Joronen, Kaunonen, and Aho, “Parental Relationship Satisfaction after the Death of a Child.” [vii] Albuquerque, Pereira, and Narciso, “Couple’s Relationship after the Death of a Child.” [viii] Albuquerque, Pereira, and Narciso. [ix] Margaret Stroebe et al., “Partner-Oriented Self-Regulation among Bereaved Parents: The Costs of Holding in Grief for the Partner’s Sake,” Psychological Science 24, no. 4 (April 2013): 395–402, https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612457383. [x] Stroebe et al. [xi] Albuquerque, Pereira, and Narciso, “Couple’s Relationship after the Death of a Child.” [xii] Albuquerque, Pereira, and Narciso. [xiii] Albuquerque,...

The Abusive Wife

Wed, 13 Feb 2019 11:00:41 +0000

The classic domestic abuse scenario is a husband beating his wife. I think almost all of society gets that and understands it’s wrong. Then you have husbands that are emotionally and psychologically abusive: people are still struggling to accept this as a form of domestic violence, but more and more are understanding this is a severely devastating problem for a wife. But today we are going to cover the least well known and least understood situation: the abusive wife. As it turns out, women are capable of the same mindset and actions that abusive men are capable of. How Common Are Male Victims of Abuse? It turns out this is a difficult question to answer as abuse towards men is underreported and underbelieved (yes, I just invented a new word there: what I mean is that when a man reports abuse he is not as likely to be believed as a woman reporting the same). What do we know about the stats? A research study from 2008[i] found that 19% of reported domestic violence cases involved a male victim. Another study from 2010[ii] found that for every 1000 people in the American population, 3.8 women and 1.3 men will be victims of partner abuse each year, making female victims of abuse roughly three times more common than male. However, these stats do not give the whole story. Western society is still fairly patriarchal in the sense that men are assumed to be in a position of power over women in most contexts, including marriage. This means that abuse is normally thought of as an abuse of that power, inflicted by men upon women. The idea that a woman could physically or emotionally abuse a man does not fit with this worldview that the man is the powerful head of the house[iii]. This means that men will very rarely admit to being victims of abuse, for fear of humiliation, being labeled as cowardly and weak, or not being taken seriously. The fact that very few men admit to being abuse victims leads much of society to think that it does not happen, making it even harder for male victims to be taken seriously[iv]. Many Reactions Are Unhelpful In addition to being a hidden, shame-inducing problem, men who do come forward about abuse from their wives are often ignored, disbelieved or even suspected of abuse themselves when they do come forward. Since much of society views abuse through a patriarchal lens, the idea of male victims is inconceivable. This means that for male victims, their family and friends may not believe the abuse is really happening, or downplay how serious it is. This can also happen when men take their allegations to social services or to the police. Research from 2004[v] found that 35% of abused men were ignored by the police and 21% were arrested themselves, since the police assumed the wife must have been attacked herself and acted in self-defense. With this issue of under-reporting and disbelief in mind, a large study from 2014[vi] reviewed over 200 studies and concluded that abusive wives may in fact be just as common as abusive husbands. What Does Female-Perpetrated Abuse Look Like? Abuse directed at men can take many forms and is in most ways very similar to abuse directed at women. A study from 2004[vii] interviewed 100 abused husbands and found all the different types of abuse were present: Physical abuse: men reported being kicked, threatened with weapons, burned or scalded, stabbed, and other forms of violence Emotional and psychological: verbal abuse, belittling, threats and aggression Social: controlling where the husband goes, not letting him see other people or not letting him interact with the children Economic: denying access to food/money etc Since abuse is largely the same regardless of gender, all the mind games, manipulation and control issues that apply to abusive husbands also apply to abusive wives. Psychological impact on abused men is also similar to its effect on women, but with an added component of shame at being a victim of something that is normally thought of as only happening to women, and the added isolation of it being much harder to get help[viii]. What Men in Abusive Marriages Can Do Deal With Denial The first barrier abused men have to face is their own refusal to accept the situation, due to the shame of being labeled as an abused man[ix]. Men may also find it harder to view their own experiences as "abuse" since abuse is mostly talked about in regards to women. Educating yourself about the realities of abuse and coming to terms with the reality of the situation is an important first step[x]. Police Action Is a Risk As noted above, police are often predisposed to take the woman's side in cases of abuse, assuming that violence against husbands must be an act of self-defense[xi]. A study into this from 2016[xii] interviewed abused men about their experiences of the criminal justice system and found that most men felt there was a "guilty until proven innocent" mentality in their interactions with police. So taking your issue to the police may not be the solution you’re looking for unfortunately. However a study from 2004[xiii] found that police were more likely to take the issue seriously and arrest the abusive woman if there was clear evidence of serious physical injury, or if the abusive woman became aggressive to the police. If your physical safety is clearly in danger, police are obligated to act, so never be afraid to come forward in this circumstance. She Needs the Right Help Abuse perpetrated by women often features the same behaviors as abuse perpetrated by men, and also has the same causes, risk factors and motivations[xiv]. Batterer programs should therefore be equally effective for abusive women as they are for men. Batterer interventions specifically for abusive women are rare, but they do exist. The resources we list in the bonus guide and the agencies you can call should be able to help you find one. The Right Counselor Will Help When abused men go to marriage counseling, only 45% of counselors were willing to accept that wife-instigated abuse was taking place. When this was the case, men reported that marriage counseling could be helpful[xv]. So finding a counselor who is aware of and able to deal with abusive women may be beneficial. I’ll plug our team here: we have four therapists on the team and this is an issue that we are familiar with and able to help you whether you’re coming alone as the husband, or as the wife or as a couple. Specific Resources for Male Victims Men often gain little benefit from seeking help from conventional domestic abuse resources, since these are catered towards women. However, specific resources for abused men do exist and are found to be very helpful in educating, advising and advocating for abused men[xvi]. Our bonus guide has a list of available resources for North America and similar resources exist around the world. Hope For Abused Men Awareness of abuse against women has improved a lot over the last 30 years, and rates of domestic violence against women have decreased in that time. Awareness of abuse against men has lagged behind this, but it slowly growing. Research from 2010[xvii] found that in recent years the rates of women being prosecuted for abuse has doubled, and that more help lines and services are being trained in helping abused men as well as women. So the issue is coming to light: abuse against men is real and can be just as devastating as when it is against women. It is nothing to be ashamed of and is a problem you don’t deserve to live with. So if you think we can help, please reach out. References [i] Christopher F. Barber, “Domestic Violence against Men,” Nursing Standard (Royal College of Nursing (Great Britain): 1987) 22, no. 51 (September 27, 2008): 35–39, https://doi.org/10.7748/ns2008.08.22.51.35.c6644. [ii] Caroletta A. Shuler, “Male Victims of Intimate Partner Violence in the United States: An Examination of the Review of Literature through the Critical Theoretical Perspective.,” International Journal of Criminal Justice Sciences 5, no. 1 (2010). [iii] Shuler. [iv] Shuler. [v] Malcolm J. George and David J. Yarwood, Male Domestic Violence Victims Survey 2001: Main Findings (Dewar Research, 2004). [vi] Mark A Whisman, Lisa Uebelacker, and Lauren Weinstock, Psychopathology and Marital Satisfaction: The Importance of Evaluating Both Partners., vol. 72, 2004, https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-006X.72.5.830. [vii] George and Yarwood, Male Domestic Violence Victims Survey 2001: Main Findings. [viii] Jessica McCarrick, Catriona Davis-McCabe, and Sarah Hirst-Winthrop, “Men’s Experiences of the Criminal Justice System Following Female Perpetrated Intimate Partner Violence,” Journal of Family Violence 31, no. 2 (February 1, 2016): 203–13, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-015-9749-z. [ix] Barber, “Domestic Violence against Men.” [x] Barber. [xi] Shuler, “Male Victims of Intimate Partner Violence in the United States: An Examination of the Review of Literature through the Critical Theoretical Perspective.” [xii] McCarrick, Davis-McCabe, and Hirst-Winthrop, “Men’s Experiences of the Criminal Justice System Following Female Perpetrated Intimate Partner Violence.” [xiii] George and Yarwood, Male Domestic Violence Victims Survey 2001: Main Findings. [xiv] Bradon Allan Valgardson, “Intimate Partner Violence: Domestic Violence Service Providers’ Perceptions of Male Victims,” 2014. [xv] George and Yarwood, Male Domestic Violence Victims Survey 2001: Main Findings. [xvi] McCarrick, Davis-McCabe, and Hirst-Winthrop, “Men’s Experiences of the Criminal Justice System Following Female Perpetrated Intimate Partner Violence.” [xvii] Shuler,...

How Generosity Could Transform Your Marriage

Wed, 06 Feb 2019 11:00:50 +0000

Who knew that something as generic as generosity could transform your marriage? It has the potential to increase marital quality, make conflict resolution easier, increase your own happiness, help you to see other people’s perspectives, decrease divorce risk... Basically, make everything better except for my poor finger... Today, we’re offering some variety! I (Caleb) injured my finger and while it is not exactly life threatening (like such horrors as a man cold), I am not supposed to type. Sooo, this week Verlynda has gone through the research and written up this episode. Wasn’t it just last week we had an iTunes review asking for more input from Verlynda? Well, here you are! Ok, let’s get into the topic of generosity. What Is Generosity? Bear with me while we go through some boring definitions, but they really do lay the foundation for looking at how generosity affects marriage. Marital generosity is defined as "giving good things to one's spouse freely and abundantly[i]". Generosity is considered a "marital virtue": a character trait and personal strength which naturally leads a person to act in ways that are good for the marriage[ii]. More practically speaking, within marriage, generosity can be seen as investing in the relationship with behaviors such as putting your spouse’s needs above your own, and freely giving of your time, effort and energy without any thought of personal gain[iii]. What Effect does Generosity Have on Marriage? I think it’s obvious to say that generosity will have a positive impact on marriage. What I thought was neat though, was it had a positive impact both for the person acting generously and for their spouse. This is a win-win! Generosity often feels good and satisfying personally. It also increases your spouse's happiness and makes them more likely to act generously in return. So even though generosity shouldn't be motivated by personal gain, people do still benefit from it. Here’s a blurb from the research: generosity increases marital satisfaction for both spouses, reduces marital conflict and is negatively correlated with risk of divorce[iv]. These effects are true for both husbands and wives but are normally more pronounced in women. So, who wouldn’t want to add a little more generosity into their repertoire? Generous acts also serve to protect the marriage from stresses such as financial pressure. A study from 2018[v] found that a husband's levels of generosity mediated the link between economic hardship and his wife's levels of marital quality. Here’s something about generosity that I found really interesting. Generosity is related to specific acts that a person does for their spouse, but it is also a state of mind which affects how they see and relate to the world[vi]. Both aspects are important. First, let’s talk about the acts or behaviors, and then we’ll look into the mind piece. Acts of Generosity Here are four key ways that the research[vii] gives to show generosity to one’s spouse. These are: small, everyday acts of kindness expressions of respect displays of affection willingness to forgive These four kinds of generosity were linked to higher marital satisfaction for both spouses, reduced conflict and reduced divorce risk. Household labor! This is another important area that marital generosity impacts. Research from 2012[viii] found a link between generosity and willingness to share household and childcare labor. Deciding to share these jobs fairly (rather than doing them out of obligation) led to couples seeing each other as more generous, which led to higher marital quality. Like the other day, when I hadn’t got the dishes done, and had done a ton of baking, so the counter was full, and after supper, Caleb just started on washing. It was totally unnecessary as I had made all the mess, but you were so generous with your time and your wrinkly dishpan hands and you finished them all for me. That was total generosity. I’m quite sure our marital quality went up! Ok, onto the mind! A Generous Mind Having a generous personality or mindset positively affects marriage through the way it causes you to see your spouse and the way it motivates you to act. Other-Centered Generous people are naturally other-centered: they think more in terms of other people than about their own needs. This means that a generous spouse is better able to perceive and respond to his or her spouse's needs, and more motivated to think about their spouse's needs before their own. A generous mindset also makes it easier to see other people's perspectives, making it easier to resolve disagreement[ix]. Who wouldn’t want to be more generous after hearing that? But it gets even better! Seeing The Best Generosity also allows a person to view their spouse in a more positive way. So instead of assuming the worst about them, you assume the best. For example, if your spouse snaps at you, a generous interpretation would be that they had a bad day, rather than thinking they are just an angry person. (Check out our episode on misinterpreting your spouse for more about this) This willingness to look for the best in your spouse makes forgiveness and conflict resolution easier. Generosity also affects how you see your spouse more generally. As one researcher put it, "Generosity reflects a willingness to focus on a spouse's strengths and work around his or her weaknesses[x]". What I love about this, is that it becomes an upward spiral. We hear about the downward spiral of negativity, but if we’re proactive with the generosity, we can cause an upward spiral of positivity. Being able to view your spouse in this way of focusing on their strengths will increase your own happiness and satisfaction with the marriage, and will cause you to act in ways which increase your spouse's happiness too. And if they’re happier and generous, it will continue to increase their own marital happiness and cause them to act in ways to increase your happiness, and on and on it goes! So how can we increase our generosity? Increasing Our Marital Generosity In 2012[xi], researchers identified 3 other personality factors which naturally lead to more marital generosity. These were: Egalitarianism: the belief that fairly sharing out all the roles and responsibilities between both spouses is important. I was thinking about this one. I think if I felt like I had to do the most work, then I would be less likely to be generous and help Caleb out too. But if I felt that we shared things fairly, then I would be happy to help out (generosity!). Commitment: high levels of commitment to the marriage makes spouses more likely to invest in each other through generosity Faith: the Bible teaches the virtue of putting other's needs before your own, so religious views naturally lead to a more generous mindset. Well, I have thoroughly enjoyed looking at the topic of Generosity, and I hope you’ll join me this week (and ongoing…) in putting it more into practice in your marriage. Remember generosity is a mindset - a way of thinking about your spouse, and also actions. I’d love to hear what sneaky little ways you’ve found to be generous to your spouse when they’re least expecting it, or perhaps when they least deserve it. Except that you’ll be thinking so generously of them, you won’t even notice that... References [i] Jeffrey Dew and W. Bradford Wilcox, “Generosity and the Maintenance of Marital Quality,” Journal of Marriage and Family 75, no. 5 (2013): 1218–28. [ii] H. Wallace Goddard et al., “Qualities of Character That Predict Marital Well‐being,” Family Relations 65, no. 3 (2016): 424–38. [iii] Dew and Wilcox, “Generosity and the Maintenance of Marital Quality.” [iv] Dew and Wilcox. [v] Jeffrey Dew and Mark Jackson, “Commitment and Relationship Maintenance Behaviors as Marital Protective Factors during Economic Pressure,” Journal of Family and Economic Issues 39, no. 2 (June 1, 2018): 191–204, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-017-9550-7. [vi] Wallace Goddard et al., “Qualities of Character That Predict Marital Well‐being.” [vii] Dew and Wilcox, “Generosity and the Maintenance of Marital Quality.” [viii] Bradford Wilcox and Jeffrey Dew, “The Date Night Opportunity: What Does Coupe Time Tell Us About the Potential Value of Date Nights?” (The National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, 2012), https://nationalmarriageproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/NMP-DateNight.pdf. [ix] Wallace Goddard et al., “Qualities of Character That Predict Marital Well‐being.” [x] Dew and Wilcox, “Generosity and the Maintenance of Marital Quality.” [xi] Wilcox and Dew, “The Date Night Opportunity: What Does Coupe Time Tell Us About the Potential Value of Date Nights?”

When Others Don’t See Your Spouse as Abusive

Wed, 30 Jan 2019 11:00:09 +0000

When a spouse is being abused, one of the challenges they may have to face is that other people around them may not believe that they are being abused. When this happens, there are even fewer resources available to empower the person experiencing the abuse. Let’s look at how this happens and then what to do about it. We wanted to bring this topic forward today because social support is a vital support for helping women recover from all forms of abuse[i]. However, when a woman is in a genuinely abusive situation and her support network do not understand the severity of the problem, then she feels even more isolated and stuck in the abusive relationship[ii]. Often the abuser is pretty slick and he has maybe convinced others — even her own family — that’s she’s having mental health issues or is just not stable or not rational. So you can imagine how profoundly trapped a woman might feel in this kind of situation. It really shakes her core sense of reality and truth. We hope that with this episode you’ll have some real clarity and also a bit of plan for how to navigate your way through this. What Is Emotional Abuse? We have covered the definition of abuse before, but a quick review of the main factors of emotional abuse is in order[iii]: Threats: these can be overt threats to harm you, your children or your family in any way. It includes threats to withhold basic needs: food, healthcare, financial support, safety, etc. Control: control or placing restrictions on your life. This could include things like depriving you of sleep, denying you access to friends, support, money, food or transportation. Destabilization: ongoing intimidation, insults, degradation or trying to convince you that you are inferior and undeserving of better treatment. One-off instances of these behaviors are not necessarily a sign of emotional abuse. A study from 2013[iv] states that for these actions to cross over from bad marital behavior to abusive behavior then it must reoccur repeatedly, without the abuser showing any sign of responsibility for or awareness of the issue. Common Mistakes Others Make Even counselors may not always see the abuse for what it is. A study from 2010[v] gives a helpful list of reasons why therapists may miss identifying abuse, and these are reasons that other people in your support network may be prone to as well: Failing to recognize that emotional abuse is an act of violence just as physical abuse is. Not having an understanding of patriarchy, power and gender can lead to blindness toward abuse. Holding you in any way responsible for your husband’s pervasive pattern of abuse In the context of helping someone see the abuse you’re experiencing, you may need to educate them on one or more of these issues. Referring them to articles such as ours on abuse, or giving them good books such as “The Verbally Abusive Relationship” by Patricia Evans or “Why Does He Do That?” by Lundy Bancroft may help them begin to see the issue. On the other hand, if you come from a family where all of the men operate in a patriarchal mindset it may be impossible to involve them as resources in your support network. Instead, you may choose to turn to others who already are better prepared to understand the abuse and confront it alongside you. Why Do Others Not See the Abuse? They Only See the Good Abuse normally occurs in a simple cycle. You have a period of abuse followed by reconciliation and then a honeymoon period where the abuser is especially kind and loving. Since the actual abuse is normally only done in private, other people only see the honeymoon phase where the abuser appears to be a perfect, even doting, spouse[vi]. Mind Games and Justification Abusive husbands are often very good at belittling their spouses, damaging their self-esteem and convincing them that the abuse is their own fault. Abused women can often be so disoriented by suffering abuse from the person they love that they end up rationalizing or justifying the abuse they receive ("Was it really as bad as I imagined?" or "He would never do anything to upset me unless I provoked him" etc). It may be that you have found yourself collaborating with your husband to minimize what you are experiencing[vii]. This is linked to the idea of trauma bonding, which we looked over in a past episode. The Stigma of Abuse Being in an abusive marriage is a hard thing to admit to. Many abuse survivors are ashamed of their situation and do their best to cover it up[viii]. This means that when/if they do open up about it to friends and family, other people have a hard time believing it since it appeared that everything in the marriage was fine. On the flipside, it can be a hard thing for friends and family to face up to as well. Many societies and cultures still view abuse as a personal and private matter which should not be addressed in public[ix]. Someone you know being a victim of abuse is a hard thing to have to confront, so families and friends may unconsciously justify, minimize or rationalize the abuse rather than face up to a difficult situation ("they just had a fight" "She must be exaggerating" etc). Abuse is such an ugly thing that sometimes everyone involved will work overtime to deny that it is happening. Isolation: They May Not See It Social isolation is often a part of abuse. The abuser may limit the abused spouse's contact with friends or family[x], or only allow them to see friends/family as a couple, which can make talking about the situation harder. Also it may not even give others the chance to see any evidence of what you are experiencing. Misunderstanding Abuse Many people hold the view that abuse is always physical. Getting friends and family to recognize emotional abuse may be hard as it goes against their understanding of what abuse is[xi]. You get the classic question, “Well, has he ever hit you?” And when you say “No”, it is easy enough for them to say, “OK so you are safe then.” And what do you say next? Ideally, you would say that you are safe physically but you are not safe emotionally. What To Do About The Abuse There are a number of things you can do to face the reality of the abuse, empower yourself, and help others to see what is going on so that you can involve them in supporting your journey of recovery from abuse. Document or Journal the Abuse Some women find that keeping a written record of their husband’s abuse is helpful[xii]. Keeping accurate records of what happened and when and even identifying the patterns of abuse helps you to see the severity of the problem over time. It can also be used to counter your husband’s attempts to deny or minimize the abuse when seeking help. Figuring Out Who To Talk To If you’ve decided to reach out to someone about your situation, it’s worth thinking carefully about who you talk to. A study from 2000[xiii] interviewed 31 women who were either currently in abusive marriages or had left them about who they turned to for support, and how helpful that support was. They found that confiding in a few close female friends was often the most helpful strategy. All of the women who reached out to a girlfriend reported that it was extremely helpful in terms of practical support, emotional support, and helping to clarify and get some distance from the issue. Many women confide in a single trusted friend who then acts as a supporter or facilitator in helping the abused women receive support and confront the issue. Having this kind of friend on their side helped to convince the abused women that their problems were real and buffered them against rationalizing or explaining the abuse away[xiv]. The same study also found that talking to professionals was often very helpful. Women who sought help from social workers, counselors or church leaders found that this enabled them to understand that the abuse was not their fault and helped them develop a plan of what to do. Again, you just want to make sure that whichever type of person you talk to: they need to have a basic understanding of abuse. Talking to family members was much more mixed. Some women found that talking to their mothers, siblings or even parents in law was helpful, while some did not. There was no clear pattern as to which family members are best to talk to, suggesting that it is mostly down to your individual relationships within the family and that particular family member’s ability to make sense of the issue and respond appropriately. Find Fellow Survivors Talking to other women who have been through abuse was often found to be very helpful in clarifying the situation and deciding what to do. Talking to someone who understands the cycle of abuse and the blaming/mind games that can occur enabled women to take the next step to seek professional help[xv]. Support groups for abused women were also found to be good sources of emotional support and guidance[xvi]. Definitely, something to explore and see if one is available in your area. Faith Is Valuable Even When All Else Fails Several studies[xvii] report that faith and prayer were helpful tools for women suffering from loneliness and alienation due to emotional abuse. Even when other people refuse to see the abuse or are unable to help, prayer and connecting with God still helped these women cope with their circumstances and reduced the loneliness they were experiencing. Even if you’re not sure where to start or what to turn to next, the Lord is near to those who have a crushed spirit. References [i] Rose LE, Campbell J, and Kub J, “The Role of Social Support and Family Relationships in Women’s Responses to Battering,” Health Care for Women International 21, no. 1 (February 1, 2000): 27–39. [ii] Mieko Yoshihama, “Breaking the Web of Abuse and Silence: Voices of Battered Women in Japan,” Social Work 47, no. 4 (October 2002): 389–400. [iii] Diane R. Follingstad and Dana D. Dehart,...

When Your Spouse is in Victim Mode

Wed, 23 Jan 2019 11:00:12 +0000

In today’s show, we’ll dive into the nitty gritty of victim mode: what’s really happening and why people even go there. If your spouse or if you yourself ever fall into victim mode you’ll also learn how to deal with it so that you can find healthier ways of relating to one another and overcoming the challenges that life brings. What is Victim Mode? Victim mode or victim mentality is where a person going through difficult situations views themselves as a helpless victim unable to do anything about their circumstances. People with victim mentality blame other people or outside forces for their suffering and believe they are helpless to prevent bad things happening[i]. Understanding Victim Mentality To understand the victim mentality you have to understand the concept called locus of control (LOC). Internal LOC means that you believe you have the power to affect situations and circumstances. When you have this internal LOC you know and understand that your actions determine how successful you are with regards to the life challenges that arise. An external LOC means that you tend to see other people or random chance as being the driving forces in your life and you likely believe you have little power over them. Victim mentality is linked to an external LOC: people with this mindset believe that bad things happen to them, and while they are not to blame, they are also powerless to do anything about it[ii]. If your spouse struggles with this, s/he also is likely to have very anxious and negative views about themselves and the world around them. Your spouse probably believes that bad things happen specifically to them, that their situation is uniquely bad, and that attempts to help them will fail[iii]. This can lead your spouse to be passive and apathetic about solving their problems and instead expecting other people to "rescue" them. Probably you. Victim Mode Becomes Self-Fulfilling This mentality can often create situations where the person in victim mode ends up becoming a victim. Think of it this way: if someone expects bad things to happen, and thinks there is nothing they can do about it, they will make no effort to prevent bad things from actually happening… since it is what they were expecting all along. Now you have a greater risk of victimization and the belief is reinforced because the greater probability of victimization means something bad is more likely to happen. Not only is it self-fulfilling, but when people in victim mode ask for help, they will often reject other people's attempts to help them. They see their situation as hopeless so dismiss any suggestions of how to solve the problem or even react with hostility[iv]. This causes the person who was attempting to help them to withdraw, leading the person with victim mentality to conclude that they were right all along and they cannot be helped. This is where you as a spouse may really find yourself running into a brick wall: you cannot even help your spouse help him/herself. Then There’s Secondary Gains This is level 2 kind of stuff, so we’re going deeper here. I often ask folks in counseling — when they’re doing something that appears to be unhelpful — “How is that actually helpful for you? if you set all judgment aside for a moment?" A couple researchers that studied this argued that people often unconsciously keep themselves in victim mode because there are some hidden benefits that come along with the unhappiness it brings. In other words, it kinda works or helps in a unique way. For example, acting like a disempowered victim may lead to a spouse showing more affection and attention as they try to comfort the victim. Or, believing yourself to be powerless may mean that you don't have to accept responsibility for the harm you are causing yourself/others. These are referred to as "secondary gains": the beneficial things that come as a result of bad things happening to you. Note that this is all subconscious: people with victim mentality aren't deliberately being manipulative or consciously trying to hold on to this mindset. As the spouse of someone struggling with victim mentality, you will definitely find it easier to show compassion if you can identify these secondary benefits. You may have to figure it out on your own or, if possible, have a gentle and curious discussion with your spouse to try to figure out how responding the way they do is helpful to them. Where It Comes From How do people fall into victim mode? Victim mentality is often learned from going through unpleasant situations and being unable to prevent them (severe or chronic health problems, injuries and accidents, abuse etc). Adverse experiences in childhood in your family of origin can play a big part in developing this mindset, but it also depends on how other people react to your behavior. If your parents only showed you affection when you were hurt or upset, this may teach a child that playing the victim is the only way to receive attention and love[v]. I think it’s good to understand the source of these kinds of issues because it is easy to become frustrated when your spouse appears to be stuck in this mentality. Hopefully by understanding the background it will make some room for compassion — not that we need to enable the mentality. How Victim Mentality Impacts Marriage A spouse with a victim mindset can be challenging to live with since they are constantly wanting help from their spouse, but at the same time rejecting any attempts made to help[vi]. A study from 1999[vii] found that victim mentality/external LOC in either or both spouses was linked to lower marital satisfaction for both. Specific effects of this mindset include: More use of bad conflict resolution strategies such as avoiding confrontation or being passive aggressive Blaming your spouse for problems rather than accepting responsibility Less likelihood of being assertive and directly stating what you want and need Less likelihood of using good problem-solving skills to deal with marital problems Higher rates of physical and verbal aggression Less willingness to cooperate and compromise on conflict issues As you can see it puts some real strain on marriage and creates a platform for behaviors that you wouldn’t normally want to engage with but find yourself doing anyway. So the question becomes: how can a couple break out of this? How To Deal With Victim Mentality Our thoughts here are primarily directed towards the spouse who finds themselves resorting to the victim mentality more than they want to. Break the Cycle This is challenging but not impossible: people with victim mentality do not believe that they can be helped. This leads them to reject attempts to help from their spouse, leading to rejection from their spouse. So as the spouse who experiences the victim mentality, it’s important to find ways to open yourself up to your spouse’s attempts to help. Learning to react more positively when your spouse offers help will make them more willing and able to actually help you, eventually destroying the idea that your problems are unsolvable[viii]. Empowerment A study in 2015[ix] found that people can develop a more external LOC and less of a victim mindset by finding areas of life they excel in. Doing well at work, in hobbies or even in niche areas of life, and learning new skills that allow you to do so, develops your sense of autonomy, your self-esteem, and your belief that you can positively impact your circumstances. Find small successes and build on them. As well, learning good conflict resolution and problem-solving skills can also help your marriage. For example, learning to be assertive helps you have more control over what happens to you and allows your spouse to more effectively meet your needs. Recognize the Secondary Gains Recognizing that you are unconsciously holding on to your victim mindset because of the positives it brings (the secondary gains) and then finding healthier ways to meet those needs helps you resolve the issue. Those secondary needs are often valid: it’s not wrong to want attention from your spouse or to long to feel like your spouse has affection for you. But how you go about getting those needs met has to come from assertiveness rather than passivity. Helping vs Rescuing If you are married to someone with victim mindset, it's tempting to want to try and "rescue" them by solving all their problems for them. But this keeps them in a place of powerlessness, and they come to rely on you rather than seeing themselves as capable by themselves[x]. Assisting your spouse and helping them figure out how to solve issues is, therefore, more helpful than simply fixing everything for them. In other words, you want to make sure that your part in the dynamic is contributing to empowerment rather than enabling, and (related to breaking the cycle) communicating acceptance and accountability rather than rejection. References [i] Kets de Vries and Manfred F.r, “Are You a Victim of the Victim Syndrome?,” SSRN Scholarly Paper (Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network, July 24, 2012), https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2116238. [ii] Scott M. Myers and Alan Booth, “Marital Strains and Marital Quality: The Role of High and Low Locus of Control,” Journal of Marriage and Family 61, no. 2 (1999): 423–36, https://doi.org/10.2307/353759. [iii] Vries and F.r, “Are You a Victim of the Victim Syndrome?” [iv] Vries and F.r. [v] Vries and F.r. [vi] Vries and F.r. [vii] Myers and Booth, “Marital Strains and Marital Quality.” [viii] Vries and F.r, “Are You a Victim of the Victim Syndrome?” [ix] Chia-Huei Wu, Mark A. Griffin, and Sharon K. Parker, “Developing Agency through Good Work: Longitudinal Effects of Job Autonomy and Skill Utilization on Locus of Control,” Journal of Vocational Behavior 89 (August 1, 2015): 102–8, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2015.05.004. ...

Coming to Terms With Your Unexpected Pregnancy

Wed, 16 Jan 2019 11:00:34 +0000

Did you know that one-third of all childbirths in the USA are as a result of unexpected pregnancies[i]? Now: that is not necessarily unexpected with regards to married couples — that’s just unexpected across the entire population so that’s in any relational context. Still, it’s a huge percentage. Unexpected Pregnancy Woes and Blessings There is quite a variety of ways unexpected pregnancy can affect a couple: both positive and negative[ii]: Reduced mental health (especially for the mother) Lower quality relationship with the child Lower quality relationship with spouse Negative impact on the mother’s career trajectory (having to quit a job or take reduced hours) However, many couples also experience positive outcomes from the pregnancy such as: Increased happiness Increased relationship quality Increased self-worth and sense of meaning in life You can see that these outcomes are the opposite of each other. So there are lots of personal and marital factors which can determine whether an unexpected pregnancy becomes a positive or negative. I don’t doubt that in some cases there are also a mixture of positives and negatives. The question becomes: how can we make this a positive? Transition to Parenthood If it’s your first, becoming a parent is the start of a major new life role, which will drastically alter your life and your sense of who you are[iii]. This can be difficult even for planned pregnancies, but when the baby is unplanned then this shift in role may be something the couple doesn't want or feel ready for. Women may, for example, feel like becoming a mother will impact their chances at a career or get in the way of other life goals. You May Feel “Role Overload” The unexpected new role of being a parent can also lead to a feeling of "role overload" where the couple feel like they have too many roles to cope with, leading to stress and unhappiness. It’s like you’re juggling all these responsibilities- parent, spouse, bread-winner and so on- and it becomes nearly impossible to balance them all. A research study from 2009[iv] found that this feeling of role overload mediated the link between unplanned pregnancy and satisfaction with being a parent. So preventing role overload by sharing out the different tasks, or by dropping some of your less important roles for a time, can improve couple's satisfaction with their new role. Preparation Helps Preparing yourself mentally and practically for the new parenting role is also essential. A study from 2017[v] found that taking women with unplanned pregnancies through a maternal role training program helped them to accept and find satisfaction in their new role. The program involves practical training on caring for the baby, breastfeeding, and looking after your own health during and after pregnancy. So learning the skills helps, but there’s an emotional component to readiness too. This training program from the study also included asking the mothers to imagine and role play interacting with their new baby, to help them see themselves in the maternal role. Being able to envision themselves as mothers, as well as learning the practical skills to be good at it enabled these women to take satisfaction and find joy in their roles as mothers[vi]. Pay Attention to Finances Work and Finances Unplanned pregnancy can put a strain on finances, due to the mother often needing to quit her job or work less hours. Additional costs around caring for the baby and possibly even needing to move house to accommodate the newborn are also potential problems[vii]. So what does a couple do? Many couples dealing with an unexpected pregnancy were able to turn to family for support, both in terms of financial help and childcare to allow the mother to return to work. A study from 2017[viii] found that for as many as one-third of women, the unexpected pregnancy did not impact their work life as much as they expected. This was due to being able to use childcare services offered by their workplace, or having family/friends who were able to provide childcare. This is an example of resourcefulness: yes, there’s maybe an initial period of shock or panic but as you find your way again you can be resourceful and look for ways to effectively face the new challenge. Part of this comes down your own personal motivation. The same study found that mothers who were strongly motivated to manage both parenthood and their job usually found a way to do so. Relationship Factors and Pregnancy Several factors to do with marital quality had an impact on how the couple adjusted to an unexpected pregnancy. These are:[ix] Prior Relationship Quality Couples who had a healthy and stable marriage prior to the pregnancy are more likely to cope with the transition to parenthood and remain happy and functional. Couples who were already struggling with conflict or were already in an unstable marriage are likely to find that unexpected pregnancy makes things worse due to the added stress and responsibility of parenthood. Couples who expect a pregnancy to "fix" a dysfunctional relationship are therefore often disappointing. The lesson here is to address those marriage challenges right away, even if you have just learned you are pregnant. Lack of Perceived Support Wives who found that their husbands were unwilling or uninterested in helping raise the baby often suffered the most negative consequences from an unexpected pregnancy. These women often felt trapped and isolated by their circumstances and their mental health and marital quality suffered as a result. As was mentioned in episode 210 on being ready for parenthood, both parents need to fully commit to being involved. Child-Centered Parenting "All about the kids". Couples who found that their lives suddenly revolved entirely around their newborn child were often unhappy and low in marital satisfaction. Couples who still made some time for each other and prioritized their marriage were happier and better able to manage the demands of parenthood. Life Trajectory The couples who adjusted best to unexpected pregnancy were the ones who could see both the good and bad effects it had on their life trajectory. For example, many couples acknowledged a lack of freedom to pursue their own goals and desires, but many also found that having an unexpected child gave them a new sense of purpose and motivation in life. Unexpected pregnancy often gave individuals the motivation to make positive life changes, such as cutting out unhealthy habits such as smoking or alcohol abuse. Some couples reported that the pregnancy gave them the motivation to go back to school or college in order to get a good job to support the family[x]. So while it can have negative consequences, unexpected pregnancy can also be the catalyst that creates positive change and growth. References [i] Megan L. Kavanaugh et al., “Parents’ Experience of Unintended Childbearing: A Qualitative Study of Factors That Mitigate or Exacerbate Effects,” Social Science & Medicine 174 (February 1, 2017): 133–41, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2016.12.024. [ii] Kavanaugh et al. [iii] Chris May and Richard Fletcher, “Preparing Fathers for the Transition to Parenthood: Recommendations for the Content of Antenatal Education,” Midwifery 29, no. 5 (May 1, 2013): 474–78, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.midw.2012.03.005. [iv] Mylène Lachance-Grzela and Geneviève Bouchard, “Marital Status, Pregnancy Planning, and Role Overload: A Mediated-Moderation Model of Parenting Satisfaction,” Journal of Family Psychology: JFP: Journal of the Division of Family Psychology of the American Psychological Association (Division 43) 23, no. 5 (October 2009): 739–48, https://doi.org/10.1037/a0016378. [v] Masoumeh Kordi et al., “The Effect of Maternal Role Training Program on Role Attainment and Maternal Role Satisfaction in Nulliparous Women with Unplanned Pregnancy,” Journal of Education and Health Promotion 6 (August 9, 2017), https://doi.org/10.4103/jehp.jehp_113_15. [vi] Kordi et al. [vii] Kavanaugh et al., “Parents’ Experience of Unintended Childbearing.” [viii] Kavanaugh et al. [ix] Kavanaugh et al. [x] Kavanaugh et al.

Relational OCD

Wed, 09 Jan 2019 11:00:38 +0000

Today we’re going to be looking at relational obsessive-compulsive disorder — a condition that I was only made aware of in the last year first through a friend. Relational Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is a sub-type of OCD in which a person experiences “obsessive preoccupation, doubt and compulsive behaviors focused on one’s romantic partner[i]”. People with this condition report uncontrollable thoughts or obsessions about their relationship to their romantic partner and this can be very distressing and draining. What Is ROCD? ROCD or Relational Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is a condition where you have repeated uncontrollable thoughts or obsessions either about your relationship with your spouse (or fiancee or boy/girlfriend) or else you have those thoughts about the partner themselves. Because of these thoughts, there are also certain actions or compulsions that arise in order to try to satisfy or calm those obsessive thoughts. Any time you have OCD in any form, the O is the obsession. That’s the uncontrollable thought. And the C is the compulsion, which is the nearly involuntary behavior to try to satisfy the thought. The classic example for OCD is hand washing. So the obsession is with germs or cleanliness and the compulsion is to try to keep washing them to satisfy the thought. When it comes to ROCD, there are two main types[ii]: Relationship-centered: obsessive doubts about whether the relationship is working, whether your spouse really loves you and fears about being with the wrong person. This could occur with a fiancée or boy/girlfriend but we’ll just talk about spouses from now on. Partner centered: obsessive thoughts about possible flaws in your spouse, or constantly comparing your spouse to others (often with regards to flaws) So those are the obsessions. The compulsive behaviors that follow are actions a person feels they need to take in order to reduce the anxiety caused by the obsessive thought. Often the behaviors may be mental acts like checking or reviewing in your mind whether you really do feel in love with your spouse. Maybe you’ll list their good qualities or make yourself remember positive experiences or you may perseverate over their flaws. You may also compulsively read marriage books or listen to marriage podcasts (*cough*). There can also be verbal compulsivity where you talk extensively to others about your spouse in order to attempt to soothe the obsessive thoughts or even constantly reviewing the pros and cons of your relationship with your spouse or else constantly asking your spouse if s/he loves you. How Does ROCD Form? ROCD often forms when a person is considering a major relationship commitment, such as getting married or having their first child. When most people experience doubt around these kinds of major commitments, they are able to deal with the doubts and anxieties fairly quickly and without undue distress. But some people end up over-estimating how important and significant these doubts are. They assign tremendous value to them. People in this situation believe that their doubts and worries are highly significant, and so feel the need to deal with them using compulsive actions (such as mental checking, reassurance seeking and so on). A mental link (or, neural pathway) therefore forms between the obsessive thought and the need to perform the compulsive action (e.g., when someone worries if their spouse is right for them, they feel the need to mentally compare their spouse to other men/women or seek the opinion of others). The more a person uses the compulsive action in response to the obsessive thought, the stronger the neural pathway becomes and the harder to get off it. So why can some people deal with these doubts easily while others fall into ROCD? Well a research study done in 2013[iii] identified several predisposing factors which make a person more likely to enter this cycle include: Perfectionism: the belief that your relationship or your spouse need to be perfect makes you more prone to these worries. Intolerance of uncertainty: people who find uncertainty distressing feel more of a need to be "sure" about a relationship, which is tricky because love and affection are hard things to be 100% sure how they work. Catastrophic thinking: a tendency to imagine worst case scenario consequences to your worries will contribute to ROCD. For example, "If I marry someone I'm not sure about, my life will be horrible" or "If I'm not sure my spouse loves me, he will have an affair." Insecure attachment: being raised in a home where parents were absent, abusive or inconsistent in their parenting leads to higher anxiety around relationships as an adult. "Illusion of availability”: this aspect may be more common during dating but can still be present for married folk. If you believe you have lots of alternative choices for a spouse (e.g., due to spending lots of time looking at other men or women on social media, or due to having a high opinion of how desirable you are), this may trigger obsessive comparisons or anxieties about whether you are with the right person. Having any of these factors makes you more likely to get stuck on your worries and begin to obsess over them. Often there are also specific triggers which cause the person to experience the obsessive thoughts. Triggers can include seeing other happy couples (leading to worries about whether you are with the right person), or negative feelings such as anger or even boredom[iv]. How ROCD Impacts Marriage As you might imagine, these kinds of thoughts and actions being a big part of your life can impact your marriage. ROCD can negatively impact marital quality in several different ways[v]: Negative perceptions: the more you have obsessive worries about whether your spouse is right for you, the harder it is for you to think of them positively. This increased negative view of your spouse can reduce your own satisfaction with the marriage and cause you to withdraw. Conflict: if your compulsive actions involve comparing your spouse to others, or constantly asking them for reassurance, this can become very taxing for your spouse. This can reduce their marital satisfaction and make conflict more likely. Reduced personal well-being: people with ROCD often experience high levels of anxiety and distress around their condition. They also often feel ashamed of their thoughts and distressed by the fact that they know the obsessions are irrational but can't help but think them. This leads to lower mood and lower self-esteem. It’s hard to deal with your own ROCD. Key Recovery Concepts ROCD Has Nothing To Do With Relationship Quality Couples where one spouse is experiencing ROCD should know that the condition is not caused by the marriage failing. People who experience ROCD often know that their marriage is great and yet still experience the obsessive thoughts all the same[vi]. If a person has some of the risk factor personality traits listed above, they can develop OCD in relation to anything. It's not the content of the obsessive thoughts that matters: it’s the fact that these thoughts keep appearing, cause the person distress and so lead to the compulsive actions. So the couple should not worry about whether their marriage is not working and instead focus on treating the condition. Look At the Personality Risk Factors Some of the risk factors which can lead to the development of ROCD can be healed, reducing the hold obsessive thoughts have. For example, training yourself to become comfortable with uncertainty will help reduce the obsessive need to be certain. Our bonus guide will take a deeper look at this. Exposure and Response Prevention The main treatment for OCD is about breaking the link between the obsessive thought and the compulsive action. If the person with ROCD learns to experience the obsessive thought WITHOUT then needing to perform the compulsive action, then they see that the obsession actually has no power to affect anything. The association then breaks and the obsessive thoughts become less and less common[vii]. So for example, if your obsessive thoughts are around whether you are in the right relationship, and your compulsion is having to mentally list all the good things about your marriage. When you experience the obsessive thought, do not perform the mental check and instead focus your mind on something else, such as your work or some other task that requires your full attention (prayer or meditation could also help here). Over time the link between the obsession and the compulsion will weaken until the obsessive thought no longer causes you any distress[viii]. That’s the theory anyway: in reality, it’s tough to resist those compulsions and requires a lot of practice. Professional help is often a good idea with this one, so don’t be afraid to look for help if this is affecting you. References [i] Guy Doron et al., “Relationship Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder: Interference, Symptoms, and Maladaptive Beliefs,” Frontiers in Psychiatry 7 (2016): 58. [ii] Doron et al. [iii] Doron et al. [iv] Gabriele Melli et al., “Maladaptive Beliefs in Relationship Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (ROCD): Replication and Extension in a Clinical Sample,” Journal of Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders 18 (July 1, 2018): 47–53, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jocrd.2018.06.005. [v] Doron et al., “Relationship Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder: Interference, Symptoms, and Maladaptive Beliefs.” [vi] Patricia Thornton, “Relationship OCD,” 2018, https://adaa.org/learn-from-us/from-the-experts/blog-posts/consumer/relationship-ocd. [vii] Doron et al., “Relationship Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder: Interference, Symptoms, and Maladaptive Beliefs.” [viii] Guy Doron, Danny S. Derby, and Ohad Szepsenwol, “Relationship Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (ROCD): A Conceptual Framework,...

Telling Your Partner About Your Porn Addiction: The First Sentence

Wed, 02 Jan 2019 11:00:14 +0000

You have said the sentence in your head a hundred times. In the car, in the shower, lying awake beside them. Now you are standing in the kitchen, your phone face down on the counter, and your partner is asking what you wanted to talk about. If you are trying to work out how to tell your wife, husband, or partner about your porn addiction, here is where I would start: yes, tell them, and put the whole truth into the first sentence. Everything you say after that first sentence will be easier than it. The damage usually starts when you try to make it smaller. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVV6L7gUnF4 This article is for the person who has decided to tell and has not done it yet. That is a less common position than you might think. Most of the people who reach our office come after the truth is already out, and more often through discovery than through a choice to speak. You still have the choice. What follows is how to use it well: why telling matters, what gets in the way in the first ten seconds, the five principles I want every person to carry into that conversation, and what comes next. The title says "wife" because that is how most people search for this, but everything here applies whether you are telling a wife, a husband, or a partner you are not married to. Should You Tell Your Partner? The Secret Is Already in the Room The short answer is yes. You deserve the reasons, though, not just the recommendation. Porn use that is hidden inside a committed relationship does its damage in two layers: the use itself, and the deception wrapped around it. When researchers Spencer Zitzman and Mark Butler interviewed wives in couples therapy for exactly this problem, they described the harm as an attachment injury that unfolds in stages. First a fault line opens in the relationship. Then a rift widens as the partner feels distance they cannot explain. Finally comes estrangement, a settled sense of being emotionally unsafe with the person they chose. Your partner may not know the details, and they may already be feeling the fault line anyway. The secret costs you too. A 2023 daily-diary study in The Journal of Sex Research followed 217 couples for five weeks. On days when a person's solo porn use was unknown to their partner, that person reported lower relationship satisfaction and lower intimacy that same day. The hiding does not stay in the phone. It follows you into dinner, into bed, into every conversation where you are managing what they must not find out. Telling is also far more survivable than it feels from where you are standing. Jennifer Schneider and her colleagues surveyed 164 recovering sex addicts and their partners about disclosure. At the time it happened, only about 58 percent of the people who disclosed felt it had been the right thing to do. Looking back later, 96.1 percent said it was right, and so did 93 percent of partners. Most of the people who dreaded it came to see it as the right call. Research on disclosing a relapse points the same way: when people told their partner themselves, rather than being found out, the relationship tended to fare better. "But I Read That I Don't Have to Tell Them" You may have already come across the opposite advice. Some popular quit-porn self-help programs teach that disclosing to a partner is unnecessary, that your recovery is your own business, and that a partner who asks for honesty or sets boundaries is trying to control you. Parts of those programs help some people reduce cravings, and I would not tell you to throw out everything you learned there. On this point, though, I think they are wrong, and the harm lands on the person you love. A distinction from shame-recovery work makes the difference clear. Privacy is information you have the power to share, and choosing not to share it is your right. A secret is information that has power over you. It governs what you do, what you say, and where you let your partner look. So ask yourself honestly: is this privacy I am choosing, or a secret that is choosing me? Most people reading this already know the answer. Your partner's boundaries after they learn the truth may feel restrictive, but they are not a plot to control you. They are how a person protects their own nervous system after finding out that the ground under them was not what they thought. Treating those boundaries as the problem turns the betrayed partner into the villain of your recovery. Schneider's team made a similar argument decades ago about the AA Big Book's advice not to disclose sexual history to a spouse. Their data did not support it, and I do not think the newer versions of that advice fare any better. This is still your decision. I lean strongly toward disclosure, and I think the evidence supports that, but I cannot carry the consequences for you. There are rare situations, such as a terminal diagnosis or an acute crisis that would make it impossible to take in, where timing may warrant a delay. For most couples, the truth is the harder road and the better one. The First Sentence, and Where the Trickle Starts Picture the first sentence as a door. Everything you still have to say is on the other side of it, and the door is the heaviest part. People who have been through this describe the moment as the words catching in their throat, and the pull to swap the sentence they rehearsed for a smaller one: "I've been looking at some stuff I shouldn't." "I slipped a couple of times." The smaller sentence feels merciful. It is where the trickle begins. Trickle Truth Protects You, Not Them Trickle truth is the pattern of revealing the truth in pieces over days, weeks, or months, usually in response to what your partner has already found or asked about. Schneider's research calls it staggered disclosure, and it is common: 58.7 percent of the addicts and 69.7 percent of the partners in her survey reported more than one major disclosure. From the inside, the trickle feels like protecting your partner from too much pain at once. One person in a recovery forum put it more honestly: trickle truth has nothing to do with the truth, and nothing to do with protecting the partner. What it protects is your image of yourself. Every withheld piece is a small bet that you can still be known as someone better than what you did. There is a nervous-system reason this happens. Under the lying there is usually a belief running below awareness, something like "if I am truly known, I will be rejected." When that belief is activated, the brain is choosing regulation over truth. Shrinking the sentence brings your panic down in the moment, which is exactly why it feels so necessary. It also means the price gets paid later, by your partner. And the price is steep. If you were in one serious car accident, you would be shaken, and eventually you would drive again. If you were rear-ended every two weeks for six months, you would develop a deep fear of the road. That is what staggered disclosure does to a betrayed partner. Every new piece resets their trauma clock to zero and teaches them that "that's everything" only means there is more to come. If you want to understand what that feels like from their side, our article on why trickle truth feels like a new betrayal walks through it. Shame Shrinks the Sentence, Guilt Keeps It Whole Two emotions are likely to show up in that kitchen, and they pull in opposite directions. June Tangney's research on moral emotions found that proneness to shame was linked to self-focused personal distress, while proneness to guilt was linked to empathy for the other person. Shame asks, "What will this say about me?" Guilt asks, "What did this do to you?" Shame is what edits the first sentence down. Guilt is what lets you keep it whole, because guilt keeps your attention on your partner instead of on your own collapse. You do not need to get rid of shame before you speak. You need to notice which of the two is holding the pen. Write the First Sentence Down The most practical help I can offer is this: write out everything you plan to say, in full, and do not skip anything. Writing it down means the sentence your nervous system will try to shrink in the moment has already been decided. Reading it from the page is perfectly fine. A good first sentence carries the whole shape of the truth, even without the details. Something like: "I have been using porn for most of our marriage, I have lied to you about it, and I am getting help." Adjust it so it is true for you, including how long, how often, whether it escalated, and anything that touched your finances or other people. Then a few things that help your body get through it: Ground yourself before you start. Feet on the floor, one slow breath, a moment to notice where you are. Pause to breathe when you need to. Stopping to breathe is not stalling, as long as you then keep going with the sentence you wrote. Ask your partner, gently, if they would be willing to hold their questions until you have finished. You are not controlling the conversation. You are making sure the whole truth arrives in one piece. How to Tell Your Partner: Five Principles 1. Be Ready for What They Are About to Experience Learning about a partner's hidden sexual behavior is often experienced as trauma, not just bad news. A study of wives of sex addicts by Barbara Steffens and Robyn Rennie found that a majority responded to disclosure with significant trauma-related distress. Your partner may feel shock, rage, grief, or numbness, sometimes all within an hour. Let them. Your job in that moment is to let the harm be exactly as large as it was. Two well-meaning moves make things worse. The first is what some couples therapists call the "I'm a worm" bypass: collapsing into self-condemnation ("I'm disgusting, I've ruined your life") until your partner ends up comforting you. The second is the defensive minimize, which I cover under principle three. Both are attempts to reduce the pain in the room,...

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and the Impact on Marriage

Wed, 26 Dec 2018 11:00:30 +0000

The Adverse Childhood Experiences study was a huge research study conducted in the USA that has traced the impact of very difficult childhood experiences into adulthood. For those who have faced these challenges, we want to explore what the potential impacts are in marriage and how to best respond so that you can create or keep a happy, content marriage. Adverse Childhood Experiences The ACE study wanted to explore the effects of childhood abuse and neglect on later life. It included over 17000 participants and further follow up studies continue to add to the original findings[i]. The study looked at ten different forms of adverse childhood experience (ACE), split into three categories: Abuse Neglect Household challenges Under abuse they looked at emotions, physical and/or sexual abuse. Under neglect they looked for emotional and/or physical neglect. And there were five household challenges: Mother treated violently Substance abuse in the household Mental illness in the household Parental separation or divorce Household member incarcerated Initial Findings Almost two thirds of the surveyed adults reported at least one ACE, and more than one in five reported three or more ACEs. ACEs are also often experienced together- if you experience one of the ten factors you are much more likely to have experienced at least one more[ii]. So how do these early experiences impact the rest of your life? ACEs are found to lead to a huge range of negative outcomes in adult life including damage to physical and mental health, dangerous or unhealthy lifestyle choices, and reduced life potential. Now we need to unpack the impact of ACEs a little more but I want to pause to make a point first. Our goal here is not to point out damaged goods or to make anyone feel like they are somehow permanently emotionally crippled or, in the context of our marriage podcast, that they will make a terrible spouse. Not at all. There are as many wonderful people with ACEs as there are without. However, by acknowledging the potential impact of ACEs, at least now a couple knows how and why some of the current challenges may have developed and they can create some specific and targeted goals for healing. Allow me to illustrate from the physical realm. Imagine I had a set of challenging and unexplainable physical health problems. After a lot of struggle and problems and doctoring it came out that I had been drinking from a polluted water source. Now I know that I need to stop drinking that water and also find out what was in the water. Once I know that I need to understand what the pollutants were and how they have impacted my health. And then I can take steps towards dealing with those symptoms in order to restore my health. Same with ACEs. Once I understand that my present struggles are tied to my childhood experiences, I can begin to face those things in order to pursue healing. The ACE Pyramid One of the things the researchers discovered is that there were a potential set of negative changes that built one upon another. They charted this out as a pyramid because you have many people at the bottom and few at the top. In other words, the further up the pyramid you go the less likely you are to be affected unless you’ve had very severe ACEs. The base level of the pyramid is the adverse childhood experiences themselves. The next level up is disrupted development. So children with ACEs experience poor physical and mental development due to abuse, trauma or neglect. The next level from there is social, emotional and cognitive impairment. Some of those children as adults will manifest poor coping skills, attachment disorders, mental illness, and cognitive impairment. Next, some of them will go on to adopt health-risk behaviors. Risky behaviors such as smoking, alcohol use or promiscuity. Often adopted as coping mechanisms to help them survive the difficult circumstances they find themselves in. Again the next level up involves some of that group experiencing disease, disability, and social problems. These are typically caused by both poor development and risky behavior choices. This is exacerbated by low economic income caused by low cognitive ability leading to low achievement and employment prospects. You’ve got this whole cocktail of poor lifestyle choices and bad surroundings making it all the more likely your physical and mental health will suffer. Finally, the peak of the pyramid is one sad little triangle with the words “early death” in it. Yes, people with higher ACEs are at greater risk of premature death. Some specific effects caused by ACEs include: Increased risk of chronic illnesses including cancer, heart disease and liver disease[iii] Poor work performance, low academic achievement, leading to financial strain Risk of mental health issues such as depression and increased risk of suicide Risk of drug abuse and alcoholism Higher rates of teen pregnancy and STDs The effects are cumulative- the more forms of abuse are present in a child's life, the higher the risk of each of these outcomes becomes[iv]. Let’s pivot now and bring it to our area of interest which is marriage. ACE’s and Marriage Many of the negative effects of ACEs can potentially further impact marital quality. Again, let’s not make assumptions: it is not necessarily a given that if you had ACEs you will have marriage troubles. It is more likely, however, so it’s best to consider what those impacts might be. Some of the potential impacts on marital quality include: Health: poor mental or physical health in one or both spouses can negatively impact marital satisfaction Poor social and coping skills: this can lead to increased stress and likelihood of bad conflict management Attachment: bad attachment styles formed in childhood can make it harder to form good marital bonds and trust Financial strain can negatively impact marital satiation and increase conflict Sex Can Be Impacted Adults who have experienced ACEs often display a range of risky and adverse sexual practices, such as higher number of partners, higher chance of teen or unwanted pregnancy, higher rate of catching STDs and more risky sexual behavior[v]. All of this sexual baggage can have a negative impact on marital quality and stability. Domestic Abuse Witnessing or suffering abuse as a child drastically increases risk of both perpetrating and suffering abuse from your spouse[vi]. Experiencing one of these issues doubles the risk of being involved in an abusive marriage and having experienced all three increases the risk by almost four times. Again, this is not to say that every guy who has had ACEs will be an abusive husband. However, having this insight may help point you to areas of healing that need to be addressed if you do find yourself acting in an abusive manner. So while this study has brought to light many difficult adult issues that stem from difficult experiences in childhood, one of the hopeful and promising facts that we want to point out is that marriage can be a healing agent in recovering from those experiences. Despite the many negative effects of ACE on marriage (and life in general), research has shown many adults who suffer ACEs find that marriage can be a place of healing and recovery from the trauma[vii]. A loving, stable, supportive marriage can help ACE survivors to process the trauma and counteract many of the adverse effects. Spouses married to ACE survivors can help them work through the trauma by providing a listening ear and emotional support, and by accepting them non-judgmentally[viii]. A loving marriage bond can also improve an ACE survivor's attachment style by modeling to them what a healthy relationship looks like, helping them form more loving and trusting bonds. Marriage can therefore teach an ACE survivor better emotional regulation and coping skills, as well as providing them with more motivation not to engage in unhealthy behavior. This then stops the "pyramid" of ACE at those early levels, reducing the likelihood of progressing further up the pyramid to illness and early death. This is where spouses can really team up to counteract negative effects and join together to shift the trajectory away from cascading problems and towards healing. That’s a beautiful thing that marriage can do when both spouses are open and honest about the challenge of ACEs and are united in their vision to heal and grow rather than to remain as victims of the choices of others. References [i] Vincent J. Felitti et al., “Relationship of Childhood Abuse and Household Dysfunction to Many of the Leading Causes of Death in Adults: The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study,” American Journal of Preventive Medicine 14, no. 4 (1998): 245–58. [ii] Felitti et al. [iii] David W. Brown et al., “Adverse Childhood Experiences Are Associated with the Risk of Lung Cancer: A Prospective Cohort Study,” BMC Public Health 10 (January 19, 2010): 20, https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-10-20. [iv] Leah K. Gilbert et al., “Childhood Adversity and Adult Chronic Disease: An Update from Ten States and the District of Columbia, 2010,” American Journal of Preventive Medicine 48, no. 3 (March 2015): 345–49, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2014.09.006. [v] Felitti et al., “Relationship of Childhood Abuse and Household Dysfunction to Many of the Leading Causes of Death in Adults: The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study.” [vi] Charles L. Whitfield et al., “Violent Childhood Experiences and the Risk of Intimate Partner Violence in Adults: Assessment in a Large Health Maintenance Organization,” Journal of Interpersonal Violence 18, no. 2 (February 1, 2003): 166–85, https://doi.org/10.1177/0886260502238733. [vii] Linda Skogrand et al., “Traumatic Childhood and Marriage,” Marriage & Family Review 37, no. 3 (2005): 5–26. [viii] Skogrand et al.

Couples Living With Extended Family

Wed, 19 Dec 2018 11:00:00 +0000

In the US, living with extended family is increasing. 31% of children in the US now live with at least one additional adult in the house, as well as their parents- normally a family member. 10% live with one or both grandparents in the house[i]. Let’s take a look at some of the benefits and challenges this brings to marriage and how to make the most of it if you do have family living with you. Living with extended family is becoming more common in the USA, probably in Canada as well, but in other cultures this has been the norm for a long time. Families from China, India, and most of southern Europe frequently live in multi-generational households[ii]. Families from these cultures living in America are also more likely to have more of the extended family living in the home with them. Additionally, economically disadvantaged families are more likely to live in extended family households: for example if a young couple can't afford their own house they may remain with parents. Just remember that sometimes “economically disadvantaged” in this context can also mean people who are doing just fine financially but they live in very, very expensive cities. So what are the upsides and downsides of living with family or having family live with you? Financial Benefits or Consequences of Living With Family The issue typically is based on practical matters. Living with extended family can have either positive or negative consequences for the amount of resources available to the couple. On the one hand, couples can benefit from having extra income coming into the house from other people's jobs or pensions, which can reduce financial strain and increase quality of life. A research study from 2011[iii] found that having extended families living together can help couples better manage financial difficulties, especially in more economically deprived families. Having grandparents or other family members around can also provide other resources such as childcare, practical help around the house and emotional support. Many couples living with their parents find that having mum and dad at home with them can be a real help during times of crisis or instability On the flip side, it is equally possible for extended family to be a drain on the couple's resources under different circumstances. Having extra adults in the house who aren't contributing to the household income can increase financial strain. Equally, having to care for elderly parents or having to live with siblings or other family members who you don't get along with can be emotionally draining. Under these circumstances, marital happiness is likely to suffer. Another potential impact of the financial side is if you as a couple are depending on the financial resources of others you may end up with less independence as a result. For example, if you are relying on financial help from your parents, your parents may expect to have a say in how the house is run or even on where you spend money on renovations or decorations. This can lead to frustration and conflict[iv]. Relational Impact of Family in the Home What about relational impact? Just like with the financial situation, extended families living together can either be good or bad for the bonds between you all. Many couples find that having parents or other family members with them can strengthen the bond they have with them: they are able to see them more often and connect on a more meaningful level through seeing themselves as part of the same family unit[v]. In our episode on child-centered marriage and why it’s bad we saw how a family is like a system where one good relationship has positive effects on all the others. This means that having good relationships with the others in the house naturally makes the marriage bond stronger. But the reverse can also be true. Having to share the same space and having to share practical tasks (housework, caring for elderly parents/young children) can create tension and conflict, which then rubs off on the married couple. How to Make It Work Let’s pivot now: say you are in the situation or about to enter into it: how do you make it work? Take the Good With the Bad Extended family may be a drain on resources in some ways but a blessing in others[vi]. For example, living with parents may be financially costly but the added support and closeness you get from them may be worth it. Or living with a sibling may occasionally lead to conflict but the practical help or extra income you get from a sibling may offset that. So learning to see the good, and make the most if it, can help make up for the ways in which living with family is difficult. Focus on Stability Stability in the household is a strong predictor of marital satisfaction and wellbeing of children[vii]. This can be negatively impacted if family members are regularly moving in and out. This fluctuation in who is living in the house creates an unstable environment for children and can increase stress for the married couple too[viii]. So if extended family are going to live with you, better to have them fully commit to staying long-term, rather than frequently moving in and out. I do also want to caution you that most abusers are male and are related to the child…doesn’t mean all male relatives who want to move in are abusers by any means but do set some of your boundaries around protecting your children. Do some research on the profiles of abusers and be extra cautious if you know that this has been part of your family history. Set Clear Boundaries That leads us to the topic of boundaries generally. Living amicably with extended family requires you to set clear boundaries and expectations on a few key areas: Ownership/leadership: Another study from 2011[ix] found that extended family households are often more stable and happy when one individual or couple has more of a say in the running of the house and its resources than the other family members. When multiple family members are all living together it can get confusing as to who is "in charge", especially when couples live with their parents/siblings. This can lead to conflict and disagreement over how things should be done around the house. So having one couple being more in control of how the house is run can remove this tension. Childcare: while having extended family around to help with childcare can be a good thing, family members having too much of a say in how your children are raised can lead to conflict. For example, a study in 2010[x] examined Muslim families living in the UK. They found that mothers of young children often came into conflict with their own mothers as to how the children should be raised, as the older women often had much more traditional views. This led to increased symptoms of anxiety and depression for the young mothers. That’s a snapshot out of one culture. But for any of us, settling clear boundaries on how much of a say other family members have in childcare is important when you have family in the home. Balance Family Closeness and Autonomy Closeness with your extended family is one of the main benefits of having them live with you. But it needs to be balanced with autonomy, independence, and forming adult ways of relating to each other[xi]. For example, if you are a couple living with parents, you’ll want to be cautious around becoming too dependent or even slipping back into parent-child roles. Research done in 1998[xii] found that living with multi-generational extended family in the same house works best when there is: autonomy for all family members mutual exchanges of support: not just parents supporting adult children the adult children forming adult roles and responsibilities Really interesting that once again we have a research study support the advice (commandment, really) of Scripture given right at the beginning of our Bibles: a man needs to leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife (Genesis 2:24). That leaving needs to be a relational pivot away from parent-child towards an adult to adult relationship, even if the physical venue in which you live is a shared space. Autonomy, mutuality, and independent adulthood are all part of this important shift whether living together or not. References [i] Nola du Toit, Kate Bachtell, and Catherine Haggerty, “Coming and Going: The Effect of Household Composition on the Economic Well-Being of Families with Children,” 2011, https://ezproxy.derby.ac.uk/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsuph&AN=edsuph.3025&site=eds-live. [ii] Wen-Chun Chang, “Family Ties, Living Arrangement, and Marital Satisfaction,” Journal of Happiness Studies 14, no. 1 (March 1, 2013): 215–33, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-012-9325-7. [iii] du Toit, Bachtell, and Haggerty, “Coming and Going: The Effect of Household Composition on the Economic Well-Being of Families with Children.” [iv] Barbara A. Mitchell, “Too Close for Comfort? Parental Assessments of ‘Boomerang Kid’ Living Arrangements,” The Canadian Journal of Sociology / Cahiers Canadiens de Sociologie 23, no. 1 (1998): 21–46, https://doi.org/10.2307/3341660. [v] Feinian Chen et al., “Implications of Changes in Family Structure and Composition for the Psychological Well-Being of Filipina Women in Middle and Later Years,” Research on Aging 39, no. 2 (February 2017): 275–99, https://doi.org/10.1177/0164027515611181. [vi] du Toit, Bachtell, and Haggerty, “Coming and Going: The Effect of Household Composition on the Economic Well-Being of Families with Children.” [vii] du Toit, Bachtell, and Haggerty. [viii] du Toit, Bachtell, and Haggerty. [ix] Jennifer E. Glick and Jennifer Van Hook, “Does a House Divided Stand? Kinship and the Continuity of Shared Living Arrangements,” Journal of Marriage and Family 73, no. 5 (October 1, 2011): 1149–64, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2011.00869.x. [x] Edmund J. S....

Working Through Betrayal Trauma

Wed, 12 Dec 2018 11:00:03 +0000

Discovering that your spouse has had an affair or has in some way been sexually unfaithful is often an extremely traumatic event. You’ll feel like the boundaries of your marriage have been violated, your trust in your spouse has been destroyed, and even your own identity has been shaken. Betrayal As Trauma The first thing we want to do is just confirm that a betrayal can represent trauma. Trauma has been happening since the dawn of time, but as a psychological concept, I think the Vietnam war really put it on the map as veterans came back and many of them with the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. And for a long time trauma was considered something that happened mainly to war veterans, often police officers and other first responders. Not to make light of any of what those men and women go through in service for our freedom and safety, but we have also come to realize that trauma is actually an even more widespread experience. Think, for example, of the core elements of trauma from war: near-death experiences (or having witnessed others die suddenly), feelings of overwhelm and helplessness, or when too much happens too fast and too soon. Well, in a relational context if you consider your marriage a safe zone — and you should, if your marriage is healthy — and then all of a sudden you find out that what you thought was safe is actually very unsafe and threatening through the disclosure of an affair, as an example, then you have trauma. You have too much happening too fast and too soon. Your world implodes, you may even feel that your safety is incredibly threatened — do I have an STD now? There is often overwhelm as your world crumbles and a feeling of helplessness because you cannot undo what has already happened. The disclosure of betrayal then quickly shakes the foundation of your life and marriage, leading to symptoms of trauma similar to what veterans experience[i]. Betrayal Trauma Symptoms and Effects Viewing betrayal as a trauma event can prepare you to make sense of the effects. It helps you understand what you are feeling and why. So let’s look at four of the major feelings and effects. Grief The betrayed spouse can feel an intense sense of loss following an affair. They feel that their marriage and their life as it was is now gone, and go through a grieving process. These spouses may also feel a loss of innocence, loss of safety, loss of purpose and loss of self-respect following an affair[ii]. Confusion The betrayed spouse has to deal with the "unnerving experience of feeling as though one has not the foggiest idea who this person is to whom one had pledged oneself in a committed relationship[iii]". Since marriage is such a core part of a person's identity, they may also be so shaken that they start to be unsure who they really are. This can lead to a state of emotional turmoil due to the rapid experience of all kinds of emotions (anger, sadness, hopelessness, fear, vulnerability etc) Reactivity Going through traumatic events such as betrayal often leads to high levels of emotional reactivity[iv]. Individuals who have gone through trauma often react very strongly to any trigger or situation that reminds them of the trauma. They can also have trouble regulating their emotions generally, leading to emotional outbursts, mood-swings or over-reactions to minor problems[v]. This is not meant as criticism but just to normalize that these kinds of behaviors are really just cascading effects of having gone through the profoundly difficult experience of betrayal trauma. Trust Betrayal can destroy all sense of trust between spouses so that trusting each other on little things becomes difficult. This means that conflict over little things is also much more likely, as the betrayed spouse can no longer trust that their husband/wife is being honest and has their best interests at heart[vi]. Often the lies and secrecy that surround an affair can be just as damaging as the act itself (if not more so), leading the betrayed spouse to be distrustful of anything their husband/wife says. Let’s turn towards helping those who have experienced betrayal trauma begin to manage that better and work through it. As always, here at Therapevo we have an online counseling agency with some of our therapists specializing in helping couples heal from betrayal and infidelity. To learn more about that counseling, just head over to the counseling menu and look for Infidelity Counseling to learn more about that. How To Recover From Betrayal Trauma One of the early goals for a betrayed spouse is to come to a place where you can feel safe in the marriage again. Re-establishing trust is a big part of this. That’s a process of course but as trust returns it helps you become less reactive to trauma triggers and it begins to make space for you to start processing and making sense of what happened. From that place, the couple can work on more classic marriage issues like conflict resolution, learning new relationship skills, and eventually moving towards forgiveness and reconciliation[vii]. Safety is re-established through: Honesty: the betraying spouse needs to fully disclose the extent of the affair. Thing like how long it went on, the identity of the affair partner(s), where you met, how often etc. It is not recommended that you share more detail than that or the details about the sexual encounters. This often just deepens the trauma, but knowing who when and where type details helps to establish safety. The betraying spouse then needs to work on being fully transparent with their spouse, so as to "give them no further reasons for doubts or suspicions regarding one’s behavior". So this could mean being fully transparent with your schedule, places you go, people you are seeing. Giving the betrayed spouse access to your phone/emails could also be useful to remove any suspicion[viii]. Be prepared to be far more honest and transparent than what is required in relationships where betrayal has not occurred. Boundaries: clear boundaries need to be set up regarding the affair partner. For example, the betraying spouse might need to promise never to see that person again, or if the affair partner was a work colleague, specific boundaries may need to be set up as to what is acceptable so the betrayed spouse can feel safe. Telling your spouse if the affair partner has tried to get in contact with you may also be a rule the couple want to agree on, to remove any doubt[ix]. Again, remember that it is the lies that hurt more than anything so honesty around boundary violations, even if unintentional, is very important. Expression: an important recovery step for the betrayed spouse is expressing to the betraying spouse how deeply you have been hurt by the affair. Aim to express the different ways it has impacted you, how your view of the marriage/your spouse has changed and how all this has made you feel[x]. Note that you are describing your experience primarily. Expression should be honest, but if expressed repeatedly with too much intensity or anger it may lead to escalating conflict. That’s a tough balance to find because you are allowed your anger, but if you cannot get off the attack mode it will become counterproductive at some point. Clear and honest emotional self-expression is needed here, which is often learned as part of marriage counseling. Validation: the betraying spouse should try to understand and validate the emotions which the betrayed spouse is feeling. A key aim here is "To demonstrate to the hurt partner one’s care, concern and love by way of connecting with, accepting and validating the hurt partner’s emotional experience[xi]". Often you may find yourself tempted to say, “No, you shouldn’t feel that” but it’s more important to validate the betrayed spouses experience rather than try to modify it to what you think it should be. Recognition: when the betraying spouse starts working on the above things, the betrayed spouse should try to make room to recognize that he/she is making this effort to re-connect with them and rebuild the trust between them. Recognizing the fact that your spouse is making this effort can help rebuild the trust between you[xii]. Other Betrayal Trauma Tips Look After Yourself The intense emotional turmoil of a betrayal can cause both spouses to take less care of themselves physically (eating less/more, not sleeping enough, no social contact etc). This might seem like a really simple one but as we heard in our recent interview with associate therapist Sharon Snooks, it’s an important one too. Poor physical health can increase stress and make everything harder to deal with, so it is wise and helpful to just make extra time to take proper care of yourself[xiii]. Hold Onto Hope Once the couple has started working on re-establishing emotional safety they should try to hold onto hope that the marriage can be restored. Aim not to see your marriage bond as being totally destroyed or lost, but rather believe that it can be restored. This hope is very important to help you keep going with the recovery process[xiv]. Moving Forward Dealing with the betrayal trauma is often considered the first stage of recovering from an affair[xv]. After this couples need to explore other issues, such as what happened in the marriage to allow the affair to take place, restoring intimacy and sex, and how they can start working towards forgiveness and reconciliation. Our bonus content will look at this, but marriage therapy can often help couples look at these issues too, so please reach out if you’re going through this and you don’t know what to do. References [i] Robert F. Scuka, “A Clinician’s Guide to Helping Couples Heal from the Trauma of Infidelity,” Journal of Couple & Relationship Therapy 14, no. 2 (April 3, 2015): 141–68, https://doi.org/10.1080/15332691.2014.953653. [ii] Scuka. [iii] Scuka. [iv] Christal L....

Is Your Own Sexual History Dragging You Down?

Wed, 05 Dec 2018 11:00:37 +0000

Sometimes sexual guilt can be a real drag — acting like a wet blanket not only on your sex life with your spouse but also even dampening the joy you find in your marriage. And most Christian couples don’t feel like they can just throw off their moral boundaries in order to bypass the guilt. So it’s easy to get stuck. Today we want to help you get unstuck. Sexual History and Guilt If you feel that in some way, at some time, you have violated “proper” sexual conduct then you are likely experiencing sexual guilt[i]. Actually, sex guilt is not unique to Christians or even religious people, but there is indeed a link between strong religious views and feelings of sex guilt. Causes of sex guilt for Christians include: Premarital sex: either with the person you are now married to or with past partners Sexual activity other than sex that you consider “going too far”: again, either with your spouse or with previous partners Affairs Beliefs: there are some very strict or conservative Christians who develop some belief that sex is sinful in itself and so feel guilty about having sex or feel guilty about their sexual desire. It turns out that guilt around these issues, especially premarital sex, is a lot more common than you may expect. In one study of churchgoing young adults, 70% reported having had premarital sex. Within that group, 80% regretted and felt guilty about their sexual history[ii]. A Couple Caveats We’re not here today to help you feel good about what you have done when those actions have gone against your own moral boundaries. We would like you to know and experience forgiveness and peace and to have relief from guilt — but that comes from God, not from us. We also feel that that the best sex happens within moral boundaries as outlined in the Bible — and in other episodes, we have shared the research that backs this up with hard evidence. And the last caveat is that we also want all of our listeners to know — in keeping with what we’ve just said — that it is possible to have strong moral boundaries around sex and an extremely satisfying sex life. It is not mandatory if you are Biblically conservative to also be sexually repressed. Shame vs. Guilt Let’s take a moment to differentiate between the feelings of shame and guilt. Guilt is the belief that you have done something bad, or committed a sinful act. The negative feelings it creates are specifically tied to the action or behavior. In some ways, guilt can actually be useful since it draws your attention to something you have done wrong and motivates you to try and fix it (or at least not do it again). Being prone to feeling guilt is linked to acting in a good and moral way[iii]. For the most part, guilt is a useful, healthy, adaptive emotion. Shame, on the other hand, is more all-encompassing. Shame is the belief that you yourself are sinful, or that you are a bad person[iv]. Research from 2007[v] defines guilt as "our conscience telling us we have done something wrong. If we go through the process of rectifying the wrong, then we feel better and our guilt is relieved. With shame, on the other hand, our whole being is at fault. Shame makes us feel condemned to our very core." Unlike guilt, shame does not motivate people to try and right their wrongs or to act in a morally good way. Instead, it can create withdrawal and a sense of hopelessness, as the person believes they are permanently tarnished or damaged. I often say that guilt says “I did something bad” and shame says “I am a bad person”. Guilt is about behavior. Shame is about identity. Sex can lead to guilt when you believe you have done something wrong: for example, premarital sex. But it can also lead to shame because people who have lost their virginity often feel like their "purity" or their whole worth as a husband/wife is permanently gone. Since it affects your entire view of who you are, shame is much harder to get rid of, and more psychologically harmful than guilt[vi]. How Guilt & Shame Impact Your Marriage Guilt about your sexual history can impact your current sexual activity in various harmful ways, even if you view your current sexual activity as not sinful. Possible effects include[vii]: Less sexual activity Less enjoyment of sexual activity Less favorable attitudes towards sex More difficulty becoming aroused Less willingness to talk about sex Less knowledge/understanding of how sex works and how to make it pleasurable These factors negatively impact sexual satisfaction for both spouses. They can also have knock-on effects on overall marital satisfaction[viii]. Forgiveness For Your Sexual History To stop your past sexual slip-ups from continuing to haunt you, it may be necessary for both spouses to work through a forgiveness process. The spouse with the sexual history may need to begin by repenting of that sexual history. That happens when you acknowledge the extent of the sexual sin without any minimization or denial or blaming, and then when you claim the blood of Jesus Christ as cleansing for that sin, as taught in 1 John 1:7. This means that your sin has been washed away and the guilt incurred has been paid for in Jesus Christ’s substitutionary death for you. Just like salvation is by faith, sometimes we need to remember that as Christians we can accept the forgiveness of past sin by faith as well. For the other spouse, it will either be the case that your partner’s sexual history represents a betrayal or else it may not represent a betrayal, but possibly just a strong disappointment. Sometimes I speak to a spouse who is disappointed that they worked so hard to preserve their virginity for marriage and their spouse did not. On the other hand, if the premarital sex was with another person and you are only just hearing about it now then this may represent a major betrayal. It doesn’t necessarily need to — but depending on the circumstances of that activity and whether you have been lied to or if it was disclosed in a straightforward manner — these things all affect the degree of betrayal you may feel. In its simplest terms, you may also need to forgive and let go of anger and resentment so that it’s not affecting your marriage. However, if you have been lied to for decades and you find out now that this betrayal maybe even happened while you were dating, then a discovery like this can represent a betrayal event akin to discovering an affair. In which case it may shatter your whole view of your spouse. That, obviously, is a much more impactful situation and one in which I would definitely recommend you reach out to our counseling team for help so that we can help you navigate your way through this. Talk To Your Spouse About It I want to frame this recommendation carefully. And I am assuming here that you let your spouse know you were not a virgin when you got married, or maybe this was about sexual activity between you and your spouse prior to marriage. You may need to talk about it. I don’t mean discussing the details of who was wearing what, and sexual positions, but mainly talking about what you feel and how you see this impacting your marriage now. Because likely your spouse senses something is wrong but they may not know exactly what it is. The challenge is that your sexual guilt can make sex into a taboo subject generally so that you cannot even talk about your sex life as a couple. So you may need to start with the guilt around your history and talk through that carefully and respectfully with one another. This may be especially important if it is about sexual activity between you. And you feel guilty about that activity: how it happened, or when, or where or whatever the case may be. This may intensify the feelings of guilt and then, in turn, your marriage is affected. The goal here is to learn to talk through difficult things, including your current sexuality. Inability to talk about sex also negatively impacts sexual satisfaction, intimacy and overall relationship satisfaction[ix]. Learning to talk about the issue without the spouse with the sexual history feeling condemned or unforgiven, and just learning to talk about sex generally, can reduce the feelings of guilt and make sex more enjoyable for both spouses. As tough as it is, sometimes you can’t fully heal until everything is out in the open and you’re comfortable talking about it. Talk To God About Your Sexual History Shame about sex can also lead to withdrawal from your Church community due to fear of being discerned and judged. It can also lead people to withdraw from God as hiding is a natural response to feelings of shame. This can create a bit of a cycle as a study in 2007[x] found that feeling alienated from God was a very strong predictor of feeling shame and guilt. The way to counteract this is to urge yourself to move towards God, towards the truth, towards the light. Feeling more connected to the all loving, all forgiving God through the forgiveness that is found in Jesus Christ will strongly reduce the levels of shame you feel[xi]. Renew the Sanctity of Sex Believing that your past sins are fully forgiven (by God and by your spouse) means that there is no longer any reason to feel guilty about sex. Couples should, therefore, work on enjoying sex together and learn to view sex as something which God created for their pleasure, rather than as something sinful or corrupted. Research from 2016[xii] refers to this as the "sacred bed phenomenon", where couples see their sex together as being something holy and special. This view is strongly linked to higher rates of sex and higher levels of the enjoyment of sex[xiii]. Another thing I like to point out is that we often place this huge emphasis on virginity. And I get that. But it’s easy to get stuck because you cannot get your virginity back. But what I think is maybe even more valuable than virginity is purity....

Betrayed by Your Husband? 5 Things You Need to Know

Wed, 21 Nov 2018 11:00:51 +0000

You have just discovered your husband's pornography addiction or the other woman. Your safe world or life as you know it has shattered/come crashing down. We want to provide you with some essential truths and tips/strategies for coping with this sudden devastation and also talk about what you can expect of yourself in the moments and days immediately following betrayal. Today I’m happy to introduce you to Sharon Snooks. Sharon is an Associate Therapist here at Therapevo. She is a Registered Social Service Worker in Ontario Canada and Sharon has a real passion for working with clients who are recovering from trauma. Of course, betrayal is one form of trauma and so I will often refer betrayed wives to Sharon and her work with them has been very much appreciated. So today Sharon is going to sharing five things betrayed wives need to know when they are confronted with the very real, very raw emotions and the profound impact of betrayal. Let’s jump in here by just setting the stage a little. We’re speaking mainly to wives, although some of this could be translated to betrayed husbands too, and to wives who really have just discovered their husband’s betrayal and are staggering under the shock and really feeling like their world has been shattered. Maybe just give us a quick overview of what you’re going to cover and then let’s dive in! We’re going to look at what you can expect from yourself in the immediate aftermath of this discovery, what is normal including betrayal trauma reactions and first steps in your healing journey including creating safety - a safe place and setting boundaries and basic self-care. Betrayal is a deeply traumatic experience: your life is going along as normal and then suddenly there’s a big discovery which changes everything. This discovery becomes a turning point: you think about your life before the event, and how things are different afterward. With infidelity, your view of your life, and of who your husband is has to totally change. This change becomes a real threat to your sense of safety and you begin to feel a sense of hopelessness. My first message to the betrayed wife - it is not your fault! You could not have prevented this - husband is responsible for his behavior. It’s normal to feel dumb - how could I have missed this? Some wives even start to feel like they’re going crazy due to the overwhelming shock of the discovery. On top of that many people will start to look back on their life in the run-up to the discovery, and interpret things through this new filter of “my husband betrayed me”, which totally changes how they see things. You start to question everything you thought you knew about your life. It’s normal to trust your spouse. It isn’t normal, in a healthy marriage, to scrutinize everything your spouse does as if they might have an affair. So the way you acted up until the discovery was perfectly normal. You were living a normal life, and are now in abnormal circumstances. You couldn’t have seen it coming. Another thing it’s really helpful to look at is betrayal trauma symptoms. Knowing what these are, and what to expect, can help validate this experience. Trauma has physical, emotional, behavioral, and even spiritual effects. Physically it can stop you sleeping, and create feelings of nausea. Emotionally, it can either create extreme feelings of anger or lead to a sense of numbness where you don’t really feel anything. Grief is also a factor: wives grieve for the marriage and husband they thought they had. Worry is also a huge issue as now you start to wonder how your life is going to look now. On the behavior side, many women withdraw from their social circle due to the embarrassment and shame around an affair. Mentally you often end up feeling flooded and drained, just being overloaded by every thought in your head. Spiritually, some wives struggle with feeling betrayed by God: if you believe you married the right person, who God wanted you to marry, how did this happen? In the midst of all this, I’d encourage betrayed spouses to keep trusting themselves- trust your gut instinct and learn to rely on your instinct to spot things like this in the future. You may come through this trauma wiser and better able to tell if your spouse is really on the road to recovery or if they’re at risk of repeating their betrayal. Let’s turn to look at what the first steps in the healing journey will look like. The first thing you need to find is a sense of safety and security. Maybe you used to find this through your husband, but now that’s been taken away. Even your trust in God to provide safety can be challenged. Safety is emotional and physical. Start by looking at what makes you feel safe? Simple practical things like sleeping alone, or having a safe space, can create a feeling of safety and a place you can retreat to. Safe people are a great thing to look out for- who helps you feel safe. Looking at these practical steps helps you to feel more in control and gives you some steps you can take to start feeling safer. Another really important thing to look at is self- care. This can sound selfish but in the beginning days after a betrayal its so important to look after yourself. This can be as basic as eating and sleeping, exercise, doing something for you, and the importance of routine - for you and especially if you have children. It’s so easy to stop taking care of yourself in these traumatic situations, and this only serves to make everything feel worse. So work on maintaining self-care and a feeling of normalcy for you and the children. Be gentle with yourself- you might not be able to do everything you want to, but there’s always something. During the initial time after a betrayal, it’s ok to almost put the emotions and thoughts surrounding it “in a box on the shelf” and do whatever you need to do to get through the day. You can deal with all of that later when you choose to. Everything will be moment by moment, so just focus on dealing with each step, and try not to think too far ahead. Just focus on being well in the moment. Finally, remember: people do get through betrayal in marriage. There is healing. There is hope. If you want to work with Sharon or learn more about her professional background, check out her bio page on our website. She does have some availability at the moment so if you’d been through betrayal in marriage or would like to work with Sharon on other issues feel free to reach out to her.

How Your Theology Impacts Your Sex Life

Wed, 14 Nov 2018 11:00:29 +0000

Today we’re exploring the intersection between theology and our sex lives as married couples. These may sound like very disparate topics, but in reality what you believe about God, and what you think the Bible says about sex, will have a big impact on how much - or how little - pleasure you get from God’s great gift of sexuality. This particular episode was recorded when Verlynda was recovering from pneumonia, so it is a conversation between Caleb Simonyi-Gindele and Jesse Schellenberg. A summary of this conversation follows below. So what do your beliefs about God and the Bible have to do with your sex life? Well, I think a lot of couples feel like the rug has been pulled from under their feet when it comes to sex: in today’s culture everything is permissible, everything has the green light. So how do we as Christian couples respond? A lot of Christian couples may have questions about sex, and what is and isn’t permissible: are sex toys ok? Is anal sex ok? And the general answer is that it really depends on how you feel about these things in light of what the Bible teaches generally about sexuality. The Bible does give some clear guidelines: is what you’re doing respectful? Is it honouring? Is it mutually enjoyable and physically safe? These principles will guide you towards what is healthy and helpful for your marriage and what is not.. Talk About Sexuality At Church Overall, the Church hasn’t done a great job teaching about Christian sexuality. For the most part it has not given people a healthy sense of sexuality. Sex is a fundamental, biological gift from God, and yet we never seem to talk about it in Church. On rare occasions, we do teach about sex, the lessons we get usually only amount to 1) don’t be gay, and 2) sex is bad if you do it before you’re married. That’s all we get. And then on your wedding night, you’re expected to just flip this switch and suddenly transform into a healthy sexual being after having denied your sexual feelings for decades. That sometimes doesn’t work so well! So I think it’s important to start creating a more healthy dialogue about sex within the Church. We just need to start talking about it! And then we need to start referring back to the actual biblical principles about sex. Talk About Sexuality At Home Sometimes people are uncomfortable talking about these issues, and their objection often boils down to “I’ll have to talk about sex with my kids”. But that’s good! Have those conversations: talk to your children about this fundamental part of being human: sex. Of course, filter it to the age and understanding of your children, but these discussions should be a normal and healthy thing. Kids are smarter and more aware than you think! What about between yourselves as a couple? Many couples find it hard to talk to each other about these issues. How can we deal with that? First, we need to attack the idea that talking about sex is dirty or taboo. This mentality is unbiblical and creates a culture of shame. We need to orient ourselves around what God says about sexuality. God could have had us make babies any way he wanted. And he chose this way and declared that it was good. And if God says that sex is good, who are we to go against that? Our first commandment was to be fruitful and multiply. A sexual commandment. We’re made in God’s image. So that’s a rousing endorsement that sex is good! So if you want to have better sex, talk to your partner and don’t feel ashamed to do so. Maybe you understand that, but still find it hard to talk about sex with your spouse. If that’s the case, instead maybe start by talking to your spouse about those feelings of shame around sex. Your spouse has already probably picked up on it and may have some of the same feelings. So start by talking about that issue and go from there. Sometimes “talking about talking about” something can be a good way in. It’s also really important to create a healthy lifestyle around sex. Remember that every interaction you have with your spouse is foreplay: is the way you interact helping to create a safe and trusting relationship? Are you creating an environment of intimacy in my home where sex is a natural by-product? If affection is part of your daily life- kissing each other, talking openly, hugs- then sex naturally follows. The biggest pitfall couples make around this is just getting busy with the kids. Maybe you have two or three kids, both working full-time jobs, so you have no time for sex and even when you do have time, you don’t have the energy. The way around this is to have that conversation and talk about making sex a priority again. Avoid blaming each other for this: before you start blaming your spouse for the lack of sex, have a good look at what you are contributing or not contributing to the marriage. Sex starts with taking the garbage out in the morning! One thing you can even try is scheduling sex: some couples feel this takes the romance out of it and means you lose some of the spontaneity, but others come to really look forward to the times when they know they can really connect with their spouse and this anticipation can provide a boost to the sex drive. Theology and Initiating Sex So how does theology impact how we should initiate sex. Here’s a radical idea: ask your wife how she would like you to initiate sex! Ask her how she’d like you to put out the vibe and create that environment where you can both look forward to sex? Again, that’s a great conversation to have. Going back to what the Bible says is acceptable, what about pornography? Can that be part of a healthy sex life? Well, the trust here is that most pornography is extremely degrading and objectifying to women: it reduces women to mere objects that men want to have sex with. Why would you want that to be a part of your relationship with your wife? Why would bringing someone else - even if it’s someone on a screen - into your sex life be honouring? That’s bound to be an interruption to the one-flesh principle that’s very clearly laid out in scripture. Sex is very versatile: it can be used for pleasure, to relieve stress, or to connect with your spouse. It doesn’t have to be all those things all the time, but there are lots of ways you can enjoy sex. And one of those can be connecting with God. Marriage is a three-way thing between you, your spouse and God. And when we come together in sex we experience a unity that mirrors the trinity of the Godhead. Sex is an image of how God relates to himself, and how he wants to relate to us as humans. So in that sense sex can be a glimpse of the relationship God wants to have with us. That’s a really powerful thought and there are lots of ways you can take that and use it to direct how you and your spouse think and talk about Christian sexuality.

Four Ways To Create More Intimacy In Your Marriage

Wed, 07 Nov 2018 11:00:24 +0000

Today we revisit the topic of creating more intimacy in your marriage. This is actually a replay of episode 108. We don’t normally do replays but Verlynda is in the hospital with pneumonia today. I am glad to say that she is recovering, but, boy does that pneumonia ever hit hard. So, please keep her in your thoughts and enjoy this show from a couple years ago. If you really want to build more intimacy in your marriage – and who wouldn’t??? – here are four ways to do that. Take the time to hear, and digest this. 1st Way to Build Intimacy: Intimacy is Built Through Disclosure and Responsiveness Given that intimacy itself is purely emotional, let’s put a nice, sterile definition on it… Intimacy is what happens through interactions of self-disclosure and partner responsiveness to disclosure. This process is believed to develop feelings of closeness between the speaker and the listener.[i] Gotta love it! Perhaps the definition that Caleb uses will be easier to understand. He says that intimacy is really like “Into Me See”. When I let you see into me and you respond appropriately, and when that is reciprocated, you get intimacy – That’s what deepens love. So, the first way that you can increase the level of intimacy in your relationship is through disclosure and responsiveness, or doing the “into me see” thing. Husbands, Caleb has some words of wisdom for you. When you let your wife see your emotions, that creates far more intimacy than when you let your wife just see facts and information about you.[ii] It’s cute and fun and worthwhile for you to share that you got a bike for your sixth birthday. However, when you tell her how you felt after you fell off your new bike and your dad got all mad at you for scratching it, that will create greater intimacy than just telling her you got a bike. Again, when you complain about the guys at work, that’s fine. You need to share. When you tell her you’re afraid of losing your job though, and that you’re carrying this fear around like a dark cloud in your heart, that will create intimacy far deeper than the facts regarding your work situation. Wives, the same deal goes for you. You need to be connecting emotionally with your husband. Intimacy is built up when I let you see into my emotional world. That’s very vulnerable. The flip side of this is that when your spouse shares an intimate detail with you: you have to respond. You must, must, MUST acknowledge it. Even if all you can think of is “Wow, I never knew that”, then just say, “Wow, I never knew that”; or “Thank you for sharing that with me – that’s really special.” Something, please! It’s not just enough to share: responsiveness needs to happen too. 2nd Way To Build Intimacy: Intimacy is Built Through Knowledge and Understanding There is a great study from 1998 which is worth mentioning, even though a lot of couples have already figured this out. First, couples who are better at predicting each other reported greater feelings of marital intimacy.[iii] That’s just saying that couples feel more intimate if they know each other well. Become a student of your spouse! Intimacy in marriage comes from knowing and understanding each other. There is a positive cycle that happens here. When you accurately understand and know a person, that will lead to greater trust. You trust the people you know best (assuming that the knowledge is positive…). When you have that greater degree of trust, you feel safe to be more expressive of your inner world of emotions and thoughts. In other words, you become more vulnerable and you’re more willing to self-disclose. Then what? That leads to more knowledge and understanding between the two of you, and more predictability and then there is more trust. And what happens when there is more trust? Intimacy! It’s a brilliant positive cycle. This is why marriage should keep getting better and better. So, you can build intimacy by increasing your knowledge and understanding of each other, but how do you really tease out that knowledge and understanding? 3rd Way to Build Intimacy in Marriage: Intimacy is Built Through Curiosity Curiosity is the tool you need to go down that path of seeking further knowledge and understanding. A study from 2014 investigated the link between curiosity and intimacy. The study had a definition full of research lingo, so let me summarize it for you. If you allow yourself to get really interested in your spouse and what your spouse talks about (think, by the way, of how this ties back to our earlier point of being responsive to the disclosure of emotions), it will increase your desire to have more encounters with your spouse.[iv] Again, this is a positive cycle. The more that you learn about your spouse’s perspective and experiences, the more it leads to an enduring, intimate relationship. Curiosity predicted increased rating of attraction and closeness in the people in the study[v], and will do the same for you. Finally, Intimacy in Marriage is Built Through Positive Emotions and Events Apparently happier couples have faster cycles of alternating in talking and sharing, AND they have increased emotional intimacy.[vi] This is where we need to learn to enjoy each other – to enjoy time together. Caleb and I laugh a lot together which creates a sense of intimacy because I have more fun with him that I do with anyone else. Again, this is a positive cycle. You have to work towards creating this cycle in your marriage – it’s more difficult at the start, but eventually it starts to take on a life of it’s own and just needs nurtured after that. Tied to this is the need to savour positive life events. A study in 2015 was done with 99 couples where the wife had early stage breast cancer.[vii] The researchers looked at deepening intimacy in the middle of a very scary point in life. They talked about the idea of capitalization – where a couple savours positive life events by sharing it with each other. In this case, they shared the best event of the day. What they found is that on days where capitalization events occurred, both spouses felt a higher sense of intimacy. The benefit of savouring the positive event together was actually greater than the benefit of the positive event itself.[viii] You know what that’s like – when something wonderful or funny happens and you think to yourself, “Oh, I wish my hubby was here too!” I know I think that! In summary, the four ways to build intimacy: Through Disclosure and Responsiveness (into me see) Through Knowledge and Understanding Through Curiosity Through sharing positive emotions and events References [i] Jean-Philippe Laurenceau, Lisa Feldman Barrett, and Paula R. Pietromonaco, “Intimacy as an Interpersonal Process: The Importance of Self-Disclosure, Partner Disclosure, and Perceived Partner Responsiveness in Interpersonal Exchanges,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74, no. 5 (1998): 1238–51, doi:10.1037/0022-3514.74.5.1238. [ii] Ibid. [iii] Patrice E. Heller and Beatrice Wood, “The Process of Intimacy: Similarity, Understanding and Gender,” Journal of Marital and Family Therapy 24, no. 3 (July 1998): 273–88. [iv] Todd B. Kashdan and John E. Roberts, “Trait and State Curiosity in the Genesis of Intimacy: Differentiation from Related Constructs,” Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 23, no. 6 (December 2004): 792–816. [v] Ibid. [vi] Lynda Dykes Talmadge and James M. Dabbs, “Intimacy, Conversational Patterns, and Concomitant Cognitive/Emotional Processes in Couples,” Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 9, no. 4 (December 1990): 473–88, doi:https://dx.doi.org/10.1521/jscp.1990.9.4.473. [vii] Amy K. Otto et al., “Capitalizing on Everyday Positive Events Uniquely Predicts Daily Intimacy and Well-Being in Couples Coping with Breast Cancer,” Journal of Family Psychology: JFP: Journal of the Division of Family Psychology of the American Psychological Association (Division 43) 29, no. 1 (February 2015): 69–79, doi:10.1037/fam0000042. [viii] Ibid.

The Top 10 Rules for Fair Fighting

Wed, 31 Oct 2018 11:00:27 +0000

Every marriage has conflict. As we often point out, it is not so much how often you fight, but rather what you do when you fight and afterward. Do you repair after conflict? Do you work together during conflict to get to the bottom of issues? Today we have 10 Rules to help you fight fairly. Fair Fighting Since we have so much emotionally and relationally at stake in a marriage, I think it is easy to forget that we need to be decent towards each other when we fight. In the Bible, Proverbs 18:19 says "A brother offended is more unyielding than a strong city…” and this could as easily apply to a wife or husband. As soon as you actually offend your spouse it really entrenches them into their position. We think that if we use stronger words or language they are more likely to capitulate. That doesn’t work. As always, when coming to this topic Verlynda and I didn’t sit down and just pick 10 things out of the air. No, we asked our researcher to go into the marriage research journals and see what he could find. He came up with three studies from 1989 to 2016[i] in which married couples were asked to list rules they thought were important dating with conflict. Hundreds of rules were reported and these were then grouped into common themes by the researchers. From these themes, we developed these 10 rules for fair fighting. When followed by both spouses, all 10 rules will help you resolve conflict between you more easily and will improve your marital satisfaction. They are not in any particular order: you will probably notice that you as a couple already do some of these, but you may hear some that you haven’t tried or don’t use often enough. Rule #1: Be Respectful This one is fairly self-explanatory: show respect and love for your spouse even when you disagree. But think about how you do that: Don't be rude Avoid name calling Try to keep calm Don't escalate things when you feel threatened Being deliberately hurtful or aggressive makes conflict much worse and creates a like-for-like cycle where both of you just try to retaliate when your spouse upsets you[ii]. Being calm and respectful allows you to resolve the conflict quickly, without it damaging your bond of intimacy. This theme of being considerate of your spouse, even during conflict, was by far the most important rule found in the research, accounting for 26% of the total variance in whether conflict resolution was successful or not[iii]. It is probably worth asking your wife or husband: is there anything I can do to be more respectful of you when we’re in conflict? Rule #2: Say What You Are Upset About (Concisely) Be direct in stating what you are upset about, and why[iv]. Vague hints, passive aggressive comments and saying "I'm mad at you" without explaining why do not lead to effective conflict resolution. State what the issue is plainly and concisely, eg "when you do X I feel Y". Many of the couples in the studies thought that being concise and getting to the point was a very important part of conflict resolution[v]. Doing so allows you to get the issue resolved first time, rather than leaving things unresolved and creating resentment. Knowing what you are upset about and expressing that will help you to get to the bottom of things. Rule #3: No Ultimatums This is about times when one spouse tries to force another to do what they want, eg "If you don't do X, then I'll Y". But it can also be when one spouse forces the other to deal with an issue totally on their own terms, eg "You have until tonight to deal with X or I'll be really mad" or "I don't care if you're tired from work—we have to deal with this NOW". Threats and ultimatums are unfair- they place too much focus on your own needs, while making your spouse feel cornered and forced into doing what you want (rather than actually agreeing with you)[vi]. This kind of behavior destroys trust and intimacy and creates a lot of resentment. Instead, aim to express your concerns in a way that is firm but still gives your spouse the choice in how to respond, and be considerate of their situation before making demands. You should be aiming for your spouse wanting to agree with you rather than feeling coerced. Now please keep in mind that this does not stop you from setting boundaries. For example, “Until you are able to speak to me respectfully, I will not continue this conversation.” The difference between a boundary and an ultimatum is that an ultimatum is more about manipulation or control whereas a properly executed boundary is about lovingly advising someone of the terms under which you are happy to be in relationship with them. One is a threat: the other is about respect. Rule #4: No Bringing Up Past (Resolved) Issues Bringing up past issues to add to your argument in the current conflict is distracting, makes the issue harder to resolve and often leads to "scorekeeping" where you both list past grievances. If this is happening, you need to work on forgiveness, and on properly resolving issues the first time around (or raising them when they actually happen rather than bringing them up days/weeks later)[vii]. Sometimes this is called sandbagging because you start piling on a whole bunch of issues. The difficulty here is that if you overwhelm your spouse you may win by virtue of having the most weight in the argument but you’ll lose because they can’t possibly dig themselves out of all of that so they’ll just find a way to bail out. It’s really helpful to focus in on the main issue that you need to resolve at the moment: stay with that, find closure, take a break and then decide if you really need to come back to other issues as well. Rule #5: Try to Understand When both spouses are looking at things solely from their own point of view, it's easy for both of you to think you are being treated unfairly. This often means that the conflict will end with one of you feeling like you have "lost", leading to resentment. But if both spouses make some effort to see the situation from their spouse's perspective, you are likely to be able to be more considerate of their needs and viewpoint. This leads to easier resolution of conflict, and when you see that your spouse is trying to understand your viewpoint, you feel validated and this creates intimacy.] Rule #6: Avoid Overwhelm Actually, this rule came out of the research more in terms of the words, “Be rational”. But I wanted to avoid saying it that way because everybody gets upset to some degree during conflict. That’s why it’s called conflict instead of a discussion. What I think we really need to work on is avoiding overwhelm so that you can stay engaged with your own brain and also stay engaged with your spouse. Avoiding overwhelm is about really moving towards connection (both within yourself and between yourselves). Staying grounded will help you be clearer in what you say. This can include things like[viii]: Not exaggerating how important an issue is or getting overly angry Make it clear what the issue is and how it has affected you Making sure you are not being influenced by other factors- eg angry about something else, stressed after a busy day etc Not arguing for the sake of arguing, or continuing to disagree when you are clearly wrong Rule #7: Taking Concerns Seriously It is unfair not to take your spouse's concerns seriously, even if you do not see them as being important. Acting like your spouse's concerns are unimportant to you, stonewalling them, or dismissing their concerns are all likely to escalate the conflict by creating a demand-withdraw cycle. Even if you don't think an issue is important, acknowledge that it is meaningful to your spouse, and try to understand why. Part of this is giving your spouse your full attention, and conveying that you are listening through body language and nonverbal cues. This is about being attuned to your spouse. Rule #8: Honesty Almost all couples from the research valued honesty during conflict[ix]. Conflict becomes unfair and difficult when one (or both) of you aren't giving the full picture, are manipulating facts to suit your side of the argument, or withholding important info. Often conflict can be avoided if both of you understand the full picture and have all the same information, so make sure you are being fully honest and transparent. Honestly (but calmly) expressing your emotions is also important. Another side to honesty is being honest about whether the conflict is resolved to your satisfaction. Pretending to be happy with the resolution, or going along with what your spouse says while secretly resenting them is not fair and often leads to bitterness. Rule #9: Joint Resolution Aim for a fair resolution that you are both happy with, even when this is hard to find. Seeing yourselves as together and on the same side, rather than trying to win the argument, is the best way to do this. Be willing to compromise and put your spouse's needs before your own if necessary (that is the principle of generosity at work). If you both look at conflict this way, a fair result is much more likely. This joint mentality is also good for increasing intimacy and trust within the marriage. Rule #10: Saying Sorry... and Forgiving Admitting when you are wrong is one of the key themes from the research[x]. Continuing to argue and not backing down when you are clearly in the wrong is unfair as it prolongs conflict needlessly. Admitting when you are wrong and apologizing helps built trust, and also makes your spouse more likely to admit their own wrongs as well. The flip side to this is genuinely forgiving your spouse when they have wronged you. Forgiveness is consistently found to be one of the most important ingredients in a successful marriage[xi]. Are You Agreed on the Rules? So those are our ten rules. What do you think? Are there a couple of ideas in there that could help you resolve confli

Ejaculatory Control: A Research-Based Guide for Husbands

Wed, 24 Oct 2018 11:00:32 +0000

What Is Ejaculatory Control? According to one source, 75% of men ejaculate within two minutes of penetration. Not surprisingly, 88% of men report some concern over ejaculating too quickly, and almost all men (99% in one study) use some kind of strategy to delay ejaculation. If you are searching for how to control orgasm timing during sex, you are far from alone. Ejaculatory control is the ability to influence when you reach orgasm during sex. The related term, ejaculatory latency, refers to the time between penetration and ejaculation. When that window feels too short, or when it is affecting the quality of sex for you and your wife, it becomes a problem worth addressing [i]. The clinical term is premature ejaculation, though it is not always cleanly defined. By one widely used definition, premature ejaculation is only a problem if you or your wife feel it is affecting your sex life. Given that 88% of men carry some concern about this, it is worth understanding what the research actually says about what works, what does not, and what most men are missing entirely. At the request of one of our patrons, we went into the research literature to find out whether ejaculatory latency can be reliably extended. The short answer is yes. But the longer answer, which we will get to, is that the most effective path may not be the one you expect. A Quick Physiological Primer Before we look at strategies, it helps to understand a little about how arousal and ejaculation work. Sexual arousal moves through roughly four stages: excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution [viii]. During the excitement phase, blood flow increases, muscles begin to tense, and heart rate rises. In the plateau phase, everything intensifies and you approach the point of no return. Orgasm is the peak: a series of nerve and muscle responses that produce ejaculation. Resolution is the return to baseline, including the refractory period where arousal is temporarily not possible. Most ejaculatory control strategies work by interrupting the transition from plateau to orgasm, giving you more time in the plateau phase. Understanding this helps explain why some strategies work better than others, and why the mental and emotional dimensions matter more than most men realize. Strategies That Research Actually Supports A couple of notes before we get into these. First, this is a complex issue. Think of this article as a primer. Sex therapy really is a specialty within the counseling field, and there are books, resources, and therapists who can go much deeper with you. We are aiming primarily at husbands who are doing reasonably well during sex but feel they could improve the sexual satisfaction in their marriage with better ejaculatory control. Second, while some of these strategies seem straightforward, the interaction between physical, psychological, and relational factors makes this more nuanced than most articles let on. Stay with us to the end, because we are going to go a couple of layers deeper on everything. Regular Sex and Ejaculatory Latency A research study in 1984 [ii] found a link between long periods of abstinence from sex and lower ejaculatory latency. Longer stretches without sex cause men to ejaculate at lower levels of arousal. More regular sexual activity can help with ejaculatory control. This is where it gets complex immediately. If sex has not been going well because of this issue, your wife probably does not want more of the same experience. While we titled this "A Husband's Guide," a problem like this is best faced as a couple. Talking through what is happening and finding a way forward together is part of the solution, not just a preliminary step. Medication for Ejaculatory Control Various medications exist to improve ejaculatory control, such as the pill vardenafil and the topical spray PSD502. Both have research showing they increase ejaculatory latency and overall sexual satisfaction [iii]. These medications can also reduce performance anxiety, which is often just as important as the direct physical effect. Minor side effects such as headaches or indigestion are sometimes reported. If this issue is significantly affecting your marriage, seeing a doctor about medication could be a practical first step while you work on the relational and psychological dimensions alongside it. Physical Techniques: Stop-Start, Squeeze, and What Research Found Most men attempt some form of physical strategy to delay ejaculation. The research catalogued a wide range of these, including trying different positions, withdrawing briefly, changing speed or intensity, drinking small amounts of alcohol before sex, doing pelvic floor relaxation exercises, and even applying ice (4% of the sample tried this) [v]. Two techniques have the most clinical support: The stop-start method, first described by James Semans in 1956, involves stimulating yourself (or being stimulated by your partner) until you are close to orgasm, then stopping all stimulation for about 30 seconds. Once the urgency passes, you resume. This trains your body to spend more time in the plateau phase without tipping into orgasm. You may also hear this called "edging," though in a marriage context the purpose is not just sensation control but learning to stay present and connected during sex rather than racing toward a finish line. The squeeze method works similarly. When you feel close to orgasm, you or your wife firmly squeeze just below the head of the penis for several seconds. This reduces the urge to ejaculate. After the sensation subsides, stimulation resumes. Pelvic floor exercises (sometimes called Kegels for men) have some evidence suggesting they can help with ejaculatory control by strengthening the muscles involved in ejaculation. The research on this is less robust than for the stop-start and squeeze methods, but some men find it helpful as a supplementary practice. Interestingly, the research found very little correlation between which strategies men thought were helpful and which ones actually helped [vi]. It is one of those situations where nobody really wants to talk about it, so men end up using whatever strategies they happen to hear about. The physical strategies with the most reliable evidence were: The stop-start method (withdrawing briefly during intercourse, then continuing) Drinking small amounts of alcohol before sex Experimenting with different positions Using a condom Thrusting in a circular motion Even among these, there was high variance. What helps one man may not help another, suggesting personal circumstances matter a great deal. And here is the important part: the overall effect sizes for physical strategies were much smaller than for the psychological and relational factors. That tells us something. Why Distracting Thoughts Do Not Work Perhaps on the more humorous end of the spectrum are distracting thoughts. A 1997 study [iv] found that 74% of men used mental distractions to delay ejaculation. Most used "sex neutral" thoughts (thinking about work, for example). One participant reported singing the national anthem in his head. Some used "sex negative" thoughts, including thinking about unpleasant scenarios, to reduce arousal. Here is the clinical reframe on this: when you are doing mental gymnastics to avoid ejaculating, you are not present with your wife. You have left the room mentally. You are managing your body as a mechanical problem rather than engaging with the person in front of you. This disconnection is not just a side effect of the strategy; it may actually be making things worse by feeding the cycle of performance anxiety. The Real Driver: Where You Put Your Attention During Sex This is where we get closer to the heart of the issue, and where the research tells us something most men are not hearing anywhere else. A 2005 study by Hartmann, Schedlowski, and Kruger [vii] examined the thought patterns of men during sex, specifically comparing men who struggled with ejaculatory control and men who reported good control. The findings were striking. Men who struggled with ejaculatory control were preoccupied with anxiety about trying to delay the orgasm, monitoring their own arousal level, and worrying about performance. Their attention was turned inward, focused on control and fear of failure. Men who reported good ejaculatory control had a completely different mental posture. Their thoughts were focused on their own arousal (in a present, engaged way, not an anxious monitoring way) and on their wife's experience: what she was feeling, how to meet her needs, how to connect more deeply during the encounter. What this means in practice is counterintuitive but clinically consistent with what we see in our work with couples: the more a man fixates on trying not to ejaculate, the harder it becomes to control. The more he shifts his focus toward his wife, toward connection, toward being present in the moment, the more naturally ejaculatory control follows. This makes physiological sense. Performance anxiety activates the sympathetic nervous system, your body's fight-or-flight response. When the sympathetic system is running, everything accelerates, including ejaculation. Shifting your attention to connection and pleasure activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which slows things down and allows you to stay in the plateau phase longer. In our practice, the men who make the most lasting progress with ejaculatory control tend to be the ones who make a relational shift, not just a technique shift. They stop treating sex as a performance and start treating it as an encounter with another person. That change in orientation does more than any single technique we have seen. Pulling It All Together Technique has a place in this. If you are only having sex a couple of times a month and you are middle-aged or younger and in good health, yes, it is going to go fast when you do have sex. The stop-start method can help....

How To Break Out of The Same Old Arguments

Wed, 17 Oct 2018 11:00:57 +0000

The same old arguments … the same old cycle. In the marriage counseling world, we call these negative interaction cycles. The topic or concern or issue may change but it’s usually the same pattern: one spouse is more demanding or trying to get a response and the other avoids or dismisses or withdraws. And then it escalates from there. Today, we’re going to help you get started on breaking out of this pattern! The Three Cycles There’s really just three kinds of cycles. The most common is where one spouse is pursuing or demanding or attacking; the other spouse is avoiding, dismissive or withdrawing. Sometimes called the attack-withdraw or demand-withdraw cycle. The second is where both spouses typically go on the attack. The third is where both spouses avoid. Let’s break these down a little bit. The Demand-Withdraw Cycle In this form, one spouse (classically the wife, although occasionally I see this in reverse) tries to engage in a discussion about an issue that is important to him or her. They will typically make demands or apply pressure. The automatic response of the other spouse is to avoid, dismiss or withdraw from the discussion[i]. This often leads to escalation, as the demanding spouse feels ignored or unheard and so has to resort to increasingly strong forms of attack in order to try to break through the defenses. Unfortunately, the withdrawing spouse, in the face of an intensified attack, will often double down on the defense and withdraw even more, often stonewalling the attacker. This will continue until either the attacker gives up which is a profoundly lonely moment for him or her, or until the withdrawer explodes. This style of conflict is not good for marital satisfaction (no surprise there). The Mutually-Hostile Approach In this approach, typically both spouses are pursuers or attackers. You respond to criticism with further criticism and with a conscious or subconscious agenda to provoke an angry response. As you might expect, this often escalates and usually just becomes an anger-venting, cathartic experience rather than one that actually solves problems and resolves conflict[ii]. While this may be a more frightening approach to conflict, and certainly doesn’t do much good for either of you, it is at least easier to break out of than the common demand-withdraw pattern. Simply because both spouses want to express themselves (which is helpful) and work on the issue at hand. It simply becomes a matter of figuring out a more productive way to do so[iii]. Avoid-Avoid The third pattern is where both spouses are avoiding or are naturally withdrawers. In this situation, there’s no major overt conflict and no screaming matches but typically nothing ever gets resolved. Unfortunately, this leads to a buildup of resentment as all these unresolved issues grow and grow[iv]. Now it is important to note that your style may change. For example, if you started out your marriage avoid-avoid you may eventually find one person transitions to pursuing. Or both of you get so frustrated that you become mutually hostile. One shift I see more commonly is in the demand-withdraw cycle (the common one we began with), the pursuer gets burnt out. Then they often come in as an avoid-avoid situation in therapy and when we do our history and assessment work at the start I soon begin to see that it used to be demand-withdraw but then eventually the pursuing spouse got burnt out. All of these cycles are more common in couples whose marriage is distressed: if things are going badly and there’s a lot of tension and unresolved anger then falling into a negative cycle is much easier. As you’d probably expect, each of these cycles creates further distress in the marriage[v]. How To Break Out of Conflict Patterns Ok, now let’s talk about how to break out of these cycles. First by looking at the wider context of marriage then with some specific skills. Equalize Power Imbalances A study done in 1993[vi] argue that the demand-withdraw cycle of conflict is particularly likely if there is an imbalance of power within the marriage. For example, if the husband has more decision making power in the marriage then he will not be motivated to change anything, so will naturally withdraw when the wife raises an issue she wants him to change. He does not have to fight for his position because he already feels he owns it. On the other hand, if your wife has less power this means that trying to engage you in conflict may be the only way she can get her needs met. Developing a more equal relationship and a collaborative mindset can help resolve this. Resentment and Unresolved Issues If there are many grievances that have been left unresolved or if one spouse perceives the marriage as unfair in some way, then resentment is likely to build. Resentment itself is likely to make you as a couple use more negative conflict styles[vii]. Addressing these past issues and solving minor complaints before they build up can be an effective way to avoid unhelpful cycles. Just keep on top of things: don’t let them build. Consider Attributions We’ve talked about how attributions or interpretations can affect your marriage before. The meaning you attribute to your spouse's actions has an impact on what kind of conflict interactions you are likely to use. Interpreting their actions negatively can increase hostility and the likelihood of using negative conflict styles. For example, when your husband comes home late and misses dinner, if you as the wife interpret this as "he is thoughtless and doesn't care about keeping his promises” this makes falling into a hostile conflict cycle much more likely. Conversely, interpreting the same situation as "he was probably caught in traffic" is much less likely to lead to conflict[viii]. Working on challenging your negative attributions and trying to interpret your spouse's actions more positively can help you break out of negative cycles and choose different ways of responding. The idea here is to just mentally “pause” yourself for a minute before you respond, stopping to see if you’re really assessing the situation fairly, or whether you’re heading in a direction that will lead to conflict. Use Conflict Resolution Skills from EFCT Emotion Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT) is the treatment methodology of choice at OnlyYouForever for our marriage therapists. In fact, this approach is so effective I will not hire a marriage therapist unless they are trained in it. EFCT is very effective in helping couples identify and break out of these negative interaction cycles. Here are the key points as to how that works[ix]: Identifying the cycle and seeing it as the problem, rather than each other. Identifying and expressing the underlying emotions and unmet needs which are trying to be expressed through the conflict Each spouse accepting the other's experience and perspective. Express needs in relation to the original conflict, in order to restructure the cycle of interaction based on new perspectives and emotions. Form new ways of dealing with conflict based on these new perspectives As we touched on earlier, these are covered in more detail in today’s bonus content or if you really wish to learn how to do this on your own in your marriage head on over to our website and go to the marriage counseling link at the top of the page and one of our specialized marriage therapists would be happy to work with you. Essential Problem Solving Skills An alternative or complementary way to break out of negative cycles comes from a CBT perspective. This involves learning new skills to express your own needs more effectively, and getting better at supporting your spouse rather than making things worse for them. Some key points include: Learning ways to express stress and frustration more effectively, without coming across as hostile or blaming. Eg I/You statements: "When you do X, I feel Y" Learning to observe and recognize your spouse's emotional state: paying attention to verbal/nonverbal cues to identify when they are stressed or when you have upset them. Learning individual and joint coping skills: such as learning how to calm your spouse down/relieve stress when they are upset. Also learning how to manage stress yourself, so that you can respond more calmly during conflict and de-escalate situations. Becoming more aware of your thought processes. Learning to examine your assumptions, interpretations and emotions before you speak and act based on them. This gives you the choice of whether to act based on impulses which might escalate conflict, or whether to prioritize the marriage (i.e., the sense of ‘us’ vs. ‘me’) So those are all pretty useful things to be working on too. A study back in 1985[x] examined which of these approaches to conflict resolution (EFCT or CBT) was the most effective. They found that both are effective in reducing marital discord and conflict, and increasing intimacy, but that EFCT was significantly better. So learning to spot the cycles and understand the underlying needs/emotions is the best way to resolve conflict, but learning communication and coping skills can help too. References [i] C. L. Heavey, C. Layne, and A. Christensen, “Gender and Conflict Structure in Marital Interaction: A Replication and Extension,” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 61, no. 1 (February 1993): 16–27. [ii] Lynn F. Katz and John M. Gottman, “Patterns of Marital Conflict Predict Children’s Internalizing and Externalizing Behaviors.,” Developmental Psychology 29, no. 6 (1993): 940. [iii] Heavey, Layne, and Christensen, “Gender and Conflict Structure in Marital Interaction.” [iv] Frank D. Fincham, Steven R. H. Beach, and Joanne Davila, “Longitudinal Relations between Forgiveness and Conflict Resolution in Marriage,” Journal of Family Psychology: JFP: Journal of the Division of Family Psychology of the Amer

About Showing Honor To Your Wife (1 Peter 3:7)

Wed, 10 Oct 2018 11:00:37 +0000

There are a constellation of marriage-promoting behaviors packed into the Biblical instruction for husbands to honor their wives. Today, we’re launching from a simple phrase in the Bible that instructs husbands to show honor to their wives to demonstrate how a host of research-backed findings are encapsulated in this truth. Our podcasts are not sermons — I am a professional marriage counselor, but in serving my church community and affiliation I do get involved in a fair bit of preaching. Today, we’re going to be looking at how one Bible verse — actually, just a phrase or part of one Bible verse — can be unpacked into a host of marriage-promoting behaviors. It’s another example of how the Bible holds some practical, life-changing truth. In this case, the phrase is an instruction to husbands to give or “Show honor to your wife” and is found in 1 Peter 3:7. Respecting Your Wife Within marriage, honoring your wife is meant to be an unconditional act of showing value to her because of the place she has in your life. While respect is earned, honor is given. And in this case given because of her role, not because of what she does. The challenge then is to give her honor even when it is difficult and even when you do not feel she deserves it. I am not asking you to accept your wife’s misbehavior or to condone or support things she may do that are hurtful or destructive, but part of how marriage is sustained through commitment and loyalty is by this principle of honor. This means that even in difficult times and even with marriage difficulties that you interact with and treat your wife in a respectful, honorable way. Ways to Show Honor What does that look like? Let’s unpack this idea of showing respect a little more and look at how research supports this truth. Faithfulness Being faithful and loyal to your wife is an important part of honoring her. Obviously, this means not cheating on her: that would certainly not be honoring! But there's much more to faithfulness than just avoiding infidelity[i]. Husbands also honor their wives by: Avoiding "emotional affairs”: too much reliance on emotional intimacy with a woman other than your spouse[ii]. Not ogling other women: in real life, on TV, using porn etc. is likewise not honoring or being faithful to your wife, and will have very negative consequences for your marriage[iii]. Genuine faithfulness is about not placing anyone (or anything) else above your spouse (emotionally or sexually) and making sure your spouse gets "the best of you"[iv]. So one way to show honor is through faithfulness. Public and Private Praise Another way to show honor to your wife is through praising her: both praising her when you are alone and when you are in public. Private Praise is Honoring Giving praise and compliments to your wife, and expressing gratitude for what she does, are great ways to show honor. This should be a mix of specific compliments and recognition of what she does, and also praising and admiring who she is[v]. When giving praise, it is helpful to try to keep thinking of new things, rather than expressing the same things over and over, and express it in a way that is genuine rather than forced or rote[vi]. Expressions of gratitude and admiration are strongly linked to higher marital satisfaction, commitment, and overall happiness for both spouses[vii]. Public Praise is Honoring As Well Husbands should also talk about their wives to other people in a way that is honoring: both when the wife is present and when she is not. This not only is a blessing to your marriage and reinforces your positive perspective of your wife, but can also be helpful in preventing extra-marital affairs. Praising your wife in this way includes things like[viii]: Praising and speaking well of her to others Siding with her, not friends or family Siding with her in parenting issues, especially in front of the kids It also means there are certain things you are going to take up in private rather than public, in order to maintain your public honoring of her: Not complaining about her to friends/family Raising issues and concerns in private, not in front of other people. (This is reflecting in the Bible too, in Matthew 18:15) I got thinking about this “not complaining” part. It is an interesting one because it happens a lot and it is easy to do. I think the core issue with complaining about your wife to someone else is that, really, you are most likely just looking for validation of your perspective and someone to commiserate with you. Basically, that’s just throwing your wife under the bus because it doesn’t solve anything. If you guys are stuck on something, a far more productive approach would be to find a friend who you think can help, and both of you go to that person together and explain the situation as a problem between you, not just a flaw your wife has. If you do not have someone like that in your lives, seek them out. It needs to be someone who is on the side of your marriage, not just on your side. A qualified marriage therapist is a good option if you feel it is a deeper issue you need to address: certainly feel free to reach out to us at only you forever dot com too. When you offer public praise, it strengthens the relationship and also improves other people's perception of your relationship, which is beneficial for your marriage too. Understand and Seek to Meet Her Needs Just before the phrase instructing husbands to honor their wives is the phrase “dwell with her according to knowledge”. This is also very helpful towards this goal of honoring your wife because part of how your honor her is by really getting to know her and understand what her needs are. And then seeking to meet those needs. You’ll do this by: Listening to and taking an interest in her passions, worries, interests etc Being able to show empathy and validating what she feels even if you don't feel the same way Learning how to respond to her in a way that makes her feel supported and loved As you might expect, understanding and showing attentiveness to needs is strongly linked to marital happiness and is the strongest predictor of couples finding joy in their relationship[ix]. Serving Her is Honoring Her Finally, we have a parallel instruction in Ephesians 5:26, "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her." Just as the Lord Jesus was a servant-hearted leader, husbands can lead their marriage by putting their wife's needs before their own. Part of this is putting her practical needs before your own. But it can also involve what you say: for example, choosing not to respond angrily if she upsets you, and choosing to prioritize the marriage and her needs over your own in conflict situations. In that case, you’re emphasizing “us” before “me”. As well, in reference to how you respond: choosing to see the need behind the angry comments during conflict and putting those needs above your desire to retaliate is well documented as an effective way to resolve conflict and create intimacy[x]. This is another way that you can honor her and bless your marriage as a result. So, hopefully we have given you a lot to think about. As always, if you need help from one of our professional Christian marriage therapists, feel free to reach out to us! References [i] George P. Fletcher, Loyalty: An Essay on the Morality of Relationships (Oxford University Press, 1995). [ii] Ronald T. Potter-Efron and Patricia S. Potter-Efron, The Emotional Affair: How to Recognize Emotional Infidelity and What to Do about It (New Harbinger Publications, 2009). [iii] Tracy L. Tylka and Ashley M. Kroon Van Diest, “You Looking at Her ‘Hot’ Body May Not Be ‘Cool’ for Me: Integrating Male Partners’ Pornography Use into Objectification Theory for Women,” Psychology of Women Quarterly 39, no. 1 (March 1, 2015): 67–84, https://doi.org/10.1177/0361684314521784. [iv] Fletcher, Loyalty. [v] Kennon M. Sheldon and Sonja Lyubomirsky, “Is It Possible to Become Happier?(And If so, How?),” Social and Personality Psychology Compass 1, no. 1 (2007): 129–45. [vi] Sheldon and Lyubomirsky. [vii] Nathaniel M. Lambert and Frank D. Fincham, “Expressing Gratitude to a Partner Leads to More Relationship Maintenance Behavior,” Emotion (Washington, D.C.) 11, no. 1 (February 2011): 52–60, https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021557. [viii] Christopher R. Agnew, Social Influences on Romantic Relationships: Beyond the Dyad (Cambridge University Press, 2014). [ix] Alyson Fearnley Shapiro, John M. Gottman, and Sybil Carrere, “The Baby and the Marriage: Identifying Factors That Buffer against Decline in Marital Satisfaction after the First Baby Arrives,” Journal of Family Psychology 14, no. 1 (March 2000): 59–70. [x] Shelley Dean Kilpatrick, Victor L. Bissonnette, and Caryl E. Rusbult, “Empathic Accuracy and Accommodative Behavior among Newly Married Couples,” Personal Relationships 9, no. 4 (n.d.): 369–93, https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6811.09402.

I Am a Virgin and My Fiancee is Not

Wed, 03 Oct 2018 11:00:39 +0000

One of the concerns that often comes up in premarital counselling is from a couple where there are different amounts of sexual experience. Even apart from the moral concerns this may prompt are the fears, uncertainties, and doubts of what sexual intimacy may look like when you get married. For those of you that are new to this podcast, Verlynda and I are born-again believers but I’d say we are the non-judging variety, and we come to marriage with the belief that it comes as a gift from God, but we also believe that marriage is for all people, not just for Christians. As such, our podcasts are not preachy and they are usually not even very pastoral. We take an integrated approach between our Christian worldview and current research to bring you the best truth and wisdom for your marriage. But most of our readers are followers of Jesus Christ, and one of the Biblical values that we adhere to is that sex is reserved for marriage. The reason for that is not because God is prudish and likes to take pleasure away from people, but for a few reasons. First, we believe that God gets to set the rules. Second, we believe that the best sex happens in the marriage bed. Or should…that may not be your experience, but the research has shown that happily married couples are indeed having the best sex: moreso than singles or cohabiting couples. Finally, while sex in any context may bring pleasure, we are going to see again today that the only place where loving, consensual sex is most likely to be free of complications is inside marriage. So that’s just a little primer on where we are coming from on this episode. Let’s point out that if you’re virgins and not married, this is another reason why we recommend waiting for marriage. But if you’re coming to marriage and you’re not a virgin, we’re not here to shame you. There are likely to be some consequences but God is a God of redemption and grace. So we’re not here to shame or judge you, just to help you create a thriving passionate marriage. After all, none of us comes to marriage perfect. We all have brokenness. Let’s begin by acknowledging some of the struggles that may come in a situation like this. How Premarital Sex Can Impact Marriage A quick touch of background theory: in social psychology exchange theory is a commonly used way of understanding how people act. And exchange theory views relationships in terms of give and take. The basic premise is that people are happiest when the reward they get from a relationship is higher than what they have to put into it (the cost). When it comes to marriages, sexual satisfaction is determined by four factors: Reward (pleasure, intimacy) Cost (having to do things you don't want, differences in sexual desire or preference) Comparison of rewards (how the rewards of the current relationship compare to past relationships- is sex with your spouse more or less satisfying?) Comparison of costs (how the costs of the marriage compare to past relationships) Now, this is going to look a bit different depending on your past sexual experience, if any. For the virgin spouse there is no comparison to previous partners, so 3 and 4 don't apply: sexual satisfaction is totally determined by the current relationship. Anxiety about lack of sexual experience or about being compared to previous partners may contribute to the "costs" of the relationship for the virgin spouse and make sex less enjoyable initially. For a non-virgin spouse, satisfaction will be partly determined by how the current sex compares to previous partners. This can go either way: if sex was high in reward with previous partners then current sexual satisfaction may suffer, but if prior sex was higher in cost than the current sex (e.g., past partners wanted to have sex in ways you didn't enjoy, or weren't good at responding to your needs) then sexual satisfaction in the marriage may be higher. What we’re acknowledging here is that it is hard to get away from the comparison thing. But hold that thought…we’ll have some better news for you on that later. Premarital Sex Can Impact Current Sexual Functioning This is not the case for all, but for some it may be. Depending on the timing of when you get married, and when the non-virgin spouse first had sex, some kinds of sexual performance issues may be present. Both having sex at an early age (mid-teens) and not having sex until later (mid-twenties onwards) can lead to issues in men such as difficulty getting aroused, premature ejaculation and erectile dysfunction[i]. And you can imagine that for a virgin spouse, if his or her experienced spouse has difficulty getting aroused this is likely to increase their anxiety and fear of being compared to previous partners. It Takes Time to Align Experience and Understand Needs In this situation potential problems can occur due to a mismatch in your differing levels of experience. Your experienced fiancée may bring to the marriage bed an understanding of how to meet your needs. As the virgin, it’s normal for you to have little idea of how to meet your spouse's sexual needs. In fact, you may not even have much idea of what your own needs are either. This could make sex less enjoyable for both spouses, at least initially. But this is a difference that can pass. The non-virgin likely has a better idea of their own needs and preferences. This could make sex more enjoyable for them if they are able/willing to communicate their needs to their spouse. However, since the non-virgin already knows what they like, they may be less interested in finding out what their spouse's needs and desires are, and have sex-focused entirely on how they want it to be. So that’s something to be aware of if you’re on the non-virgin side of this. While we have mentioned some very real challenges I want to encourage you to look at the long view on this. Yes, it can certainly create some additional complexities and even fairly serious challenges at the start of marriage, but overall, one spouse not being a virgin has a small negative effect on the likelihood of having a sexually satisfying marriage. In one study, the researcher found that for every additional partner a person has before marriage, the odds of them being sexually satisfied during marriage decrease by 3.9%. So unless one spouse had a LOT of sexual partners before marriage it's unlikely to have much of an impact. Play the Long Game Research consistently shows that sexual satisfaction is highest among married couples. This is due to couples increasing in intimacy over time, and also getting better at understanding and responding to each other's needs and preferences over time. Commitment, trust and intimacy are typically higher in married couples than other relationships. All of those factors (commitment, trust and intimacy) positively affect sexual satisfaction. According to exchange theory, the tendency to compare your partner to others is negatively correlated with commitment levels. Once you are fully committed to a relationship (which would hopefully be the case by the time you get married), there is no longer any reason to compare your current partner to potential alternatives. So levels of comparing your spouse to previous sexual partners will normally be minimal, and will only get less and less over time. So overall, the potential problems caused by one spouse not being a virgin are likely only going to affect the start of the marriage. Strategies For Handling Different Levels of Sexual Experience Learn About Sex If you, as the virgin spouse, are concerned about your lack of knowledge and understanding of sex, learn about it! Premarital counseling that gives practical advice on sex has a positive impact on improving sexual satisfaction and reducing performance issues[ii]. As well, read some books on sex to educate yourself beyond the basics that you learned during health education in school. And, as always, learn to communicate with your spouse about sex as well. Be Sensitive If you are both Christians, it's pretty likely that your non-virgin spouse feels some level of guilt and shame about their past sexual experiences[iii]. So be sensitive when talking about it. That can be difficult to do if you see their experience as depriving you of something. But: are there ways you can view their experience redemptively? God has forgiven; can you get on board with that too? Emotional Intimacy Emotional intimacy is one of the reasons marital sex is better than non marital sex[iv]. So don't worry too much about your own lack of practical experience. Instead, focus on creating a healthy and intimate marriage. Good sex naturally follows from this! References [i] Theo G.M. Sandfort et al., “Long-Term Health Correlates of Timing of Sexual Debut: Results From a National US Study,” American Journal of Public Health 98, no. 1 (January 2008): 155–61, https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2006.097444. [ii] Bilgin Kıray Vural and Ayla Bayık Temel, “Effectiveness of Premarital Sexual Counselling Program on Sexual Satisfaction of Recently Married Couples,” Sexual Health 6, no. 3 (2009): 222–32. [iii] Sandra L. Murray et al., “For Better or Worse? Self-Esteem and the Contingencies of Acceptance in Marriage,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 32, no. 7 (July 2006): 866–80. [iv] Sherie Christensen, “The Effects of Premarital Sexual Promiscuity on Subsequent Marital Sexual Satisfaction,” All Theses and Dissertations, June 25, 2004, https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/138.

Infertility And Its Impact on Marriage

Wed, 26 Sep 2018 11:00:32 +0000

Infertility is the inability to conceive a child after at least 1 year of trying. Turns out about 10% of US couples experience infertility, and of those, about half will eventually conceive while the other half remain permanently infertile[i]. That’s actually a pretty high number: 1 in 10 couples struggle with this issue, 1 in 20 permanently face it. Challenges of Infertility As anyone who is going through this themselves will know, infertility can be a hard thing to live with. I want to begin by normalizing some of the strain that infertility puts on marriages[ii]: Meaning. Many couples see having children as a natural part of marriage, and being unexpectedly unable to do so affects their sense of meaning and purpose in life. Expectations. Similarly, much of society sees having children as the norm, so being unable may lead to disapproval from family and friends, and high levels of pressure to conceive. 83% of couples feel some form of pressure to conceive, most commonly from their spouse or parents, or from friends and other family members. Blame and guilt. The spouse who is experiencing the infertility problems may feel high levels of guilt and shame at the distress they are causing to their spouse Physical. Taking treatment for infertility can be physically demanding and can also lead to sexual performance problems. Financial. Seeking help from doctors can take up a lot of time and also cost a lot. These are real issues. But as far as your marriage goes, it is how you deal with these challenges that determines whether or not infertility will affect your marriage, and the quality of your life overall. Research shows that infertility can negatively impact marriage, but can also bring unexpected positives. 25% of women and 21% of men reported that their marriage had become stronger and they had been drawn closer together as a result of the infertility, and over half of couples can identify at least some benefits to their marriage as a result[iii]. This is the kind of thing that really gets me excited about marriage because here’s pretty much a major life blow and yet it’s in the context of a loving marriage that it can be reframed into some positives. We are going to talk about how to be sure that it turns out to be a positive in your marriage, despite the grief and loss associated with it. However, let’s talk about a couple of the negative consequences first just so we’re aware of some potential pitfalls. Possible Negative Consequences of Infertility Primarily we need to pay attention to the impact on marital and/or sexual satisfaction. Marital Satisfaction and Infertility Infertility sometimes has a negative impact on marital quality. This effect is strongest for women but can also impact men[iv]. Stress caused by infertility can increase marital conflict, reduce self-esteem, and reduce overall happiness and quality of life. Why is this negative effect stronger for women? A study in 1992[v] looked into this and found that for men, the stress of infertility was no different to other forms of marital stress and conflict. But for women, infertility created a different kind of stress that was more rooted in the woman's sense of identity and self-efficacy. Often women have a stronger desire to have children than their husbands, and hold motherhood as a strong part of their identity. So for men, infertility can be a stress that creates conflict and other burdens, but it often impacts women on a deeper level. Researchers also note that stress and marital discord become more likely the longer the infertility problems go on[vi], which is understandable. Infertility Can Also Impact Your Sex Life Research is very mixed on whether infertility impacts sex and sexual satisfaction in married couples. Different studies find that it has negative effects, no effect or even positive effects[vii]. Depending on the cause of infertility, some men can experience reduced sex drive, or sexual performance issues. This can then negatively affect sex for both husband and wife as the man feels pressure to "perform" rather than being able to enjoy sex. Some couples end up having sex that is purely "mechanical" and focused entirely on trying to conceive and lacking any enjoyment or intimacy[viii]. This is not sexy sex anymore, it’s just trying to get a job done. That’s a tricky place to be in because you get recommendations about certain positions and tilting hips and lying there for a while afterward… that’s pretty mechanical and so naturally it is going to be a challenge to keep your heart in it along with those mechanical components. Other studies[ix] found no effect of infertility on sexual satisfaction, while others report that increases in sexual frequency due to trying to conceive can actually increase satisfaction. Overall this suggests that while there may be some practical issues caused by infertility, by far the most important factor is the couple's attitude to sex and how they approach it. How to Turn Infertility Into a Positive For Your Marriage Think About How You Approach the Subject of Infertility The way couples talk to each other about the issue has a big impact on marital intimacy and satisfaction. On average, women desire to have a baby more strongly than their husbands and are more actively involved in trying to overcome infertility[x]. The more a husband desires to have a baby, is involved in trying to solve the infertility issue, and is willing to talk about trying to have a baby, the more supported his wife feels. If husbands are willing to talk and act in this way, wives often report feeling like their intimacy has increased as a result of the infertility problems. In behind this, you’ll likely be challenged with shame. The “I can’t perform” for men, or “I can’t provide” kind of shame for women. It’s OK to acknowledge that shame. That’s a delicate one because there’s some truth but then there is the need to remember that while having children is a huge thing for many, we are actually defined as persons by far more than just our reproductive capability. There are more parts to us than that: and we may need to affirm or remind ourselves or our spouse of those other parts that are so much appreciated. Talking About Infertility Infertility creates an issue in the couple's lives which "forces" them to talk about important issues like their stress levels and emotional state, and their long-term desires for their life and marriage[xi]. Infertility can therefore increase a couple's intimacy by increasing their ability to talk about important issues and become more comfortable with emotional disclosure. That’s a tangible benefit and one way this challenge can have redemptive positives linked with it. Different communication styles around the infertility issues were linked to high and low marital satisfaction. Styles linked to low satisfaction included[xii]: Secrecy: keeping the infertility a secret from other people Avoidant: throwing yourself into work or other pursuits to avoid facing the issue Passive: hoping the issue will get better on its own, not engaging with any treatment or not talking about it On the other hand, styles associated with increasing marital satisfaction: Active confronting: talking about the issue, the treatment process and how it makes you feel. Also engaging with others and talking/asking for help from people outside the marriage Emotional support: levels of emotions support provided by your spouse were linked to higher satisfaction, just like when dealing with any issue as a couple[xiii]. Meaning-based coping: trying to see positives in the situation and talking about finding meaning in other goals in life. We’ve been pretty real with you today because we fell into the “infertility” definition ourselves for a while, too. It took us a while to make our first baby and we’re so thankful for three girls now. I guess we are in the 50% that eventually conceived. But it was long enough coming that a lot of what we looked at today on the challenging side became pretty real for us. While not everyone will have the change in outcomes that we did, we hope that you will find some strength and encouragement in your marriage as you put in place some of the tools we’ve shared with you today. References [i] Manoj Monga et al., “Impact of Infertility on Quality of Life, Marital Adjustment, and Sexual Function,” Urology 63, no. 1 (2004): 126–30. [ii] Monga et al. [iii] Lone Schmidt et al., “Does Infertility Cause Marital Benefit?: An Epidemiological Study of 2250 Women and Men in Fertility Treatment,” Patient Education and Counseling 59, no. 3 (2005): 244–51. [iv] F. M. Andrews, A. Abbey, and L. J. Halman, “Is Fertility-Problem Stress Different? The Dynamics of Stress in Fertile and Infertile Couples,” Fertility and Sterility 57, no. 6 (June 1992): 1247–53. [v] Andrews, Abbey, and Halman. [vi] Nili Benazon, John Wright, and StÉPhane Sabourin, “Stress, Sexual Satisfaction, and Marital Adjustment in Infertile Couples,” Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy 18, no. 4 (December 1, 1992): 273–84, https://doi.org/10.1080/00926239208412852. [vii] Monga et al., “Impact of Infertility on Quality of Life, Marital Adjustment, and Sexual Function.” [viii] Monga et al. [ix] N. Bahrami et al., “Relation between Infertility and Sexual Satisfaction in Couples,” Journal of Qazvin University of Medical Sciences (JQUMS) 14, no. 2 (2010): 5–11. [x] Lauri A. Pasch, Christine Dunkel-Schetter, and Andrew Christensen, “Differences between Husbands’ and Wives’ Approach to Infertility Affect Marital Communication and Adjustment,” Fertility and Sterility 77, no. 6 (2002): 1241–47. [xi] Schmidt et al., “Does Infertility Cause Marital Benefit?: An Epidemiological Study of 2250 Women and Men in Fertility Treatment.” [xii] Schmidt et al. [xiii] A. Abbey, F. M....

How Working from Home Impacts Your Marriage

Wed, 19 Sep 2018 11:00:53 +0000

Are you working from home, or thinking about working from home? In today’s episode, we want to show you how working from home could be a real positive for your marriage — but there are a few potential downsides that you need to be aware of too. I’ve been working from home for a few years now, and Verlynda has been for much longer than I so we found this research pretty informative. So does being in the home more help your marriage, or make things harder? Basically, the research suggests that the effect of working from home on marriage/family life is very subjective, depending on the type of work, the circumstances at home, and the personality and actions of the individual[i]. There are both potential upsides and downsides, and it's mainly up to the individual couple to make it work. Work vs. Marriage We did a full episode on work-family conflict but just to recap that quickly, when you are working from home it can be difficult to have distinct boundaries between work and family. You have the ability to deal with some family and marriage responsibilities and privileges during your workday and you also may choose to address some work matters during family time. Sometimes you may even find yourself functioning in both roles simultaneously[ii]. Further, it is easy for stress to spill over from one domain to the other. This carries a potentially negative impact and you can find yourself in a situation where work and marriage are competing for a limited amount of emotional and practical resources[iii]. Downsides of Working From Home (& What To Do About It) The Isolation is Real If you work from home and your spouse does not, it can become very lonely and isolating since you rarely see anyone else during the day. WFH can also result in a smaller social network and less perceived social support since there are less natural opportunities to interact with others. This can potentially lead to over-reliance on your spouse to meet all your social needs. Individuals interviewed during a study in 2004[iv] compensated for this by being more intentional about developing social networks: for example by joining professional support networks of people in similar positions or being more intentional about connecting with friends and family. Certain personality traits, such as introversion, autonomy, and high levels of self-motivation are also helpful (but not essential) in dealing with the isolated nature of working from home[v]. There are definitely certain people for whom working on your own comes more naturally, but most people can still make it work. Where Do You Vent Your Stress? When working from home it is much easier for work-related stress to impact marital and family relationships, since both roles are happening in the same place, possibly at the same time. It is therefore very important that home workers learn to manage stress and learn the skills needed to handle their work responsibilities effectively. A study in this in 2000[vi] identified self-discipline as being the most important trait for successful home working so that you are pointing your stress in the right direction and adhering to healthy coping and stress-reduction strategies. The relationship could also go the other way: stress from the marriage (eg due to conflict) will have much more of an impact on work. Creating a stable, healthy marriage therefore also needs to be a priority for home workers. Caring For Young Children How do children affect this dynamic? Research in 2008[vii] found that for many mothers with young children, working from home could increase their stress levels. The demands of caring for young children significantly interfered with their ability to work and meant that they had no respite from either role since both were based on the home. Family structure could alleviate some of this stress in some circumstances. For example, if both spouse work from home then sharing the childcare could become easier. Likewise, if parents or other family members live nearby and are willing to help with childcare then this is not as much of an issue. Where Is Your Calm Place? Individuals who work from home often find it hard to relax and switch off from work, since the home environment and workspace are the same. This can make it hard to relax and connect with your spouse when at home. Here’s an anecdotal example from one study: "one of the women asked her colleagues ‘When you work outside of the home you come home to relax. Where do you go when you want to relax when you work at home?’ Their reply to this was laughter and calls of ‘Nowhere. Nowhere at all’[viii]" Often when folks drive home they have a mental process of leaving work behind and transitioning into family and home mode. When the difference between work and home is just doorway or a few steps away, it can be hard to get fully into family mode. Watch Those Working Hours The blurred boundary between work and home can also lead to working longer hours. 50% of individuals who work from home said that their spouses complained that they work too much and that this negatively affected their relationship[ix]. Many individuals found that having a dedicated workspace such as a home office was essential for getting around these two issues. Some individuals find that moving their home office to an outside shed or attic made it easier to differentiate work time from family time as there is more of a separation. Setting strict boundaries about when to work and when to focus on your spouse/family is also very helpful and perhaps even essential for some. Upsides to Working From Home (& How to Make The Most of Them) The Flexibility is Sweet Working from home is often practically easier and more comfortable due to less travel time, being in a familiar environment and having peace and quiet. Often WFH allows you to be more flexible in terms of hours worked, allowing you to find a good balance between work role and marriage/family roles. If something comes up, you can sign off your work for the moment and go deal with it. Or if the kids get home from school and there’s a crisis you need to hear about or a success that you want to celebrate, you can do that and then finish up work later. That’s really cool to be able to do. Better Relationships with Older Children I didn’t realize this was a common benefit, but it makes sense. Couples with children over 12 often reported that working from home improved their relationships with their kids[x]. Older children need less constant supervision and care (hopefully!), so parent's work roles aren't as badly affected, allowing them to enjoy spending more time at home with the kids without it affecting work. Many couples find that even though working from home occasionally means working more hours, it's worth it in order to be near the family more. More Support People who work from home often find that they are better supported than those who work in offices or public places[xi]. This is dependent on the state of the marriage and home life: people with a healthy marriage will find the home a very supportive environment to work from, but poor marital quality may make working from home harder. Increased Personal Development Working remotely requires the development of new skills and qualities such as good time management, self-motivation, autonomy and being able to set and work towards goals. There is a spillover benefit of developing these skills since all of them are also good for marriage and family life[xii]. Further, certain types of working from home, such as self-employment and running your own business, allow you to pursue your own personal goals with more freedom than working for a company. This ability to meet your own goals and values is linked to high life satisfaction and high marital satisfaction. Identity Development Benefits Finally, working from home helps individuals feel more like part of the family and helps them root their sense of identity in their marriage and their family. Research from 2000[xiii] found that working from home produced changes in the individual's identity such that they placed less emphasis on career goals and viewed work as less important while increasing a sense of family/marital closeness and viewing family as being more important. That’s definitely going to be good for your marriage! So I hope this episode illustrates that there are some potential downsides to working from home, and how to limit or avoid them. At the same time, there are plenty of advantages, for your marriage and for your own personal growth. If this is the situation you’re in, or you’re considering working from home, I’d encourage you to really take hold of these benefits and spend some time figuring out how to make it work for your marriage. References [i] Tracey Crosbie and Jeanne Moore, “Work-Life Balance and Working from Home,” Social Policy and Society 3, no. 3 (2004): 223–33. [ii] Crosbie and Moore. [iii] Kristin Byron, “A Meta-Analytic Review of Work-Family Conflict and Its Antecedents,” Journal of Vocational Behavior 67, no. 2 (2005): 169–98. [iv] Crosbie and Moore, “Work-Life Balance and Working from Home.” [v] Yehuda Baruch, “Teleworking: Benefits and Pitfalls as Perceived by Professionals and Managers,” New Technology, Work and Employment 15, no. 1 (March 1, 2000): 34–49, https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-005X.00063. [vi] Baruch. [vii] ERIN L. KELLY et al., “Getting There from Here: Research on the Effects of Work-Family Initiatives on Work-Family Conflict and Business Outcomes,” The Academy of Management Annals 2 (August 2008): 305–49, https://doi.org/10.1080/19416520802211610. [viii] Crosbie and Moore, “Work-Life Balance and Working from Home.” [ix] Crosbie and Moore. [x] Crosbie and Moore. [xi] Baruch, “Teleworking.” [xii] Baruch. [xiii] Baruch.

Do You Compete With Your Spouse?

Wed, 12 Sep 2018 11:00:50 +0000

Competing with your spouse: is it good, is it bad? Or like us — if you’re playing mini-golf — it’s just plain ugly! At least, as ugly as Caleb’s putting skills… Oh…snap! For some couples, competitiveness is just a bit of fun: even though it may feel like life or death when you’re at the final hole of the mini-golf course, it doesn’t really have much impact on your marriage. But for others, competitiveness is more of a lifestyle thing: you’re trying to compete with each other in all areas of life. Can competitiveness in any form be good for marriage? Two Kinds of Competitiveness There are two different forms of competitiveness as a personality trait.[i] The difference is to do with what motivates you to want to do well. Competing to win: that is about being highly competitive because you enjoy winning and beating other people. At extreme levels, competing to win is called hyper-competitiveness: “an indiscriminate need to compete and succeed at any cost[ii]”. Competing to excel: this is about being highly competitive in order to surpass your personal goals and grow as a person. In effect, competing with yourself. This also gets called personal development competitiveness. Obviously, these are two different kinds of competitiveness that have different causes and will impact marriages differently. While neither style of competitiveness is directly linked to marital satisfaction, each one creates behaviours and attitudes that do have a very real impact on marriage and on other relationships as well. Let’s look at each one in turn. Competing to Excel (Personal Development Competitiveness) Whereas competing to win normally involves being motivated to beat somebody else, competing to excel is simply about individual accomplishment and doing the best you can, irrespective of how you compare to others. Since this form of competitiveness is not dependent on other people losing in order for you to win, it does not lead to negative forms of competition and is positively linked to collaboration and communal connectedness[iii]. Wanting to be your best doesn’t stop other people from being their best too: in fact, it often helps them. Within marriage, this makes couples more likely to adopt a joint perspective and to resolve conflict in ways that benefit both spouses. Competing to excel is also linked to positive personality traits and behaviors which are good for marriage, such as[iv]: High self-esteem Lower rates of depression Higher positivity Higher resilience to adversity and the ability to cope with bad circumstances Higher desire to learn new skills and improve as a person Higher internal motivation, leading to better performance in areas such as work So that kind of competitiveness in marriage is not really something that will typically come between the spouses. It is healthy. And not all couples or even spouses within a couple will have the same level of competitiveness and that’s OK. Competing to Win Competing to win is a little more nuanced. There are still positives here but some potential issues. A desire to win and succeed is a basic human motivation. Some level of desire to win and do well is required to function in most areas of life as it provides motivation[v]. I mean, if you weren’t motivated to do well, you’d struggle to really get anywhere in life, right? Now think about this in a marriage context. Healthy levels of competing to win within a marriage are probably harmless. Likely fun, as well. Possibly even good for marital satisfaction especially if both spouses share it equally. To look at this in a bit more detail, a study in 2015[vi] examined couples who participated in competitive sports as a shared leisure activity. He found that couples who were evenly matched in skill level had high satisfaction with their leisure time, leading to high marital satisfaction. He concluded that these couples would enjoy the challenge of playing against each other and take satisfaction from their victories, as opposed to couples where one spouse always won easily. So for couples who take competition seriously, a bit of challenge is required for it to be fun. The same research also found that in couples where the wife had a much higher skill level than the husband, satisfaction with the leisure would be low, leading to lower marital satisfaction. This reflects the fact that men are often more competitive than women, so for these husbands, repeatedly losing to their wives would be a big deal. Sound familiar to anyone? We’re going to talk about hyper-competitiveness next but as you can see this can get a little nuanced. Hyper-Competitiveness in Marriage An extreme desire to win at any costs is often related to serious self-esteem issues. A study in 2011[vii] argued that hyper-competitiveness often stems from damaged parent-child relationships, in which the parent either neglects or abuses the child. This leads the child to have a neurotic need to prove their worth at the expense of others in order to maintain their self-esteem. As well, due to the underlying abusive parent-child relationship, the child comes to see other people as a threat. So this fosters a hyper-competitive need to win and assert their dominance as a way of coping with this anxiety (re. the threat). That’s not the only possible cause, of course. Another potential source of hyper-competitiveness is perfectionism[viii]. Being raised in a family where love and affection from your parents was dependent on whether you succeed or not can lead to a strong need to prove your worth in order to feel valued. You can see an adult coming from this kind of childhood holding onto the belief that they need to be the best in an attempt to bolster their sense of self-worth. Hypercompetitiveness is linked to a wide range of negative behaviors, attitudes and traits, all of which negatively impact marriage. These include[ix]: High levels of hostility and aggression towards others Willingness to exploit or manipulate others in order to win High need to control or dominate others Tendency to engage in manipulative "image management" to present a certain view of themselves Low in trust High in jealousy Low in forgiveness High in narcissism Low in self-actualization (ability to meet their own goals and needs) Low ability to provide emotional support to partner Willingness to inflict emotional pain on spouse As you might expect, relationships characterized by hypercompetitiveness are often highly dysfunctional, showing high levels of conflict. In fact, commitment in these relationships is often based on jealousy and possessiveness, rather than real love and affection[x]. Not healthy. What Do You Do If You Are Hyper-Competitive? The first suggestion is to work on better conflict resolution skills. This is something one of our therapists at Therapevo can help you out with. An interesting study earlier this year[xi] found that the link between hypercompetitiveness and distress was partly (not fully) mediated by negative problem-solving orientation. Within marriage, this means that a big part of the distress you are experiencing may be caused by hyper-competitiveness. That comes from having unhelpful conflict styles. If you have this unhealthy need to win and prove yourself then conflict can become about “winning” the argument and proving you are right, which isn’t a great way to build trust and find mutual solutions. So finding better ways to deal with disagreement will resolve a big part of the issue. Another suggestion is to deliberately move towards healthier competitiveness. See, unhealthy forms of competitiveness are often rooted in poor self-esteem, or anxiety or the belief that you need to win in order to be valued. Working on these issues within the marriage can therefore help you transition from hypercompetitiveness to the healthier form of competing to excel. We’ll dive deeper into this in the bonus guide but the basic idea is to pursue healing so that you come to your competitiveness from a place of fullness rather than deep neediness. References [i] David R. Hibbard and Duane Buhrmester, “Competitiveness, Gender, and Adjustment Among Adolescents,” Sex Roles 63, no. 5–6 (September 1, 2010): 412–24, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-010-9809-z. [ii] Bill Thornton, Richard M. Ryckman, and Joel A. Gold, “Hypercompetitiveness and Relationships: Further Implications for Romantic, Family, and Peer Relationships,” Psychology 02 (July 25, 2011): 269, https://doi.org/10.4236/psych.2011.24043. [iii] Hibbard and Buhrmester, “Competitiveness, Gender, and Adjustment Among Adolescents.” [iv] Hibbard and Buhrmester; Gábor Orosz et al., “The Four Faces of Competition: The Development of the Multidimensional Competitive Orientation Inventory,” Frontiers in Psychology 9 (May 22, 2018), https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00779. [v] Orosz et al., “The Four Faces of Competition.” [vi] Benjamin Dayley, “Marital Leisure Satisfaction: Investigating Comparative Skill Levels Within Marital Leisure Activities,” All Theses and Dissertations, July 1, 2015, https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/5481. [vii] Thornton, Ryckman, and Gold, “Hypercompetitiveness and Relationships.” [viii] Orosz et al., “The Four Faces of Competition.” [ix] Thornton, Ryckman, and Gold, “Hypercompetitiveness and Relationships.” [x] Thornton, Ryckman, and Gold. [xi] Jacob Yuichung Chan et al., “Asian Adults’ Hypercompetitiveness and Distress: The Mediating Role of a Negative Problem-Solving Orientation,” Current Psychology 37, no. 1 (March 1, 2018): 188–97, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-016-9502-7.

Why a Child Centred Family is Bad for Everyone

Wed, 05 Sep 2018 11:00:53 +0000

Is it better to put more energy into your marriage, or should raising your kids properly be your first concern? If you think pouring your everything into your little munchkins is the best way to do things, then this episode may be a bit of an eye-opener for you. We’re going to unpack the relationship between happy marriages and happy parenting and happy kids. And it may not be what you expect to hear. Think of Your Family as a System Let me start with a little bit of psychobabble here but I’ll keep it simple. I want you to think of your little family unit as a system. In other words, it is made up of some moving parts and some groups of parts. The whole family, dad, mom, and children, are one system. But there are subsystems within it. And these subsystems interact and influence one another and the family as a whole. For example, your marriage is a subsystem of your family system. The mother-son relationship is a subsystem. The reason why we need to talk about systems is because it helps us understand that one system can affect another, as well as the family as a whole. For example, the marital relationship can affect parenting relationships, and vice versa[i]. Since the whole family is one system, emotions and actions displayed in one of its subsystems can spill over into the others. For example, a husband who is good at attending to his wife’s needs will naturally be better at looking after his kids too, since similar traits and actions are involved. Equally, a husband who dislikes spending time with his wife and is hostile towards her will tend to be more hostile to his children too since the anger and resentment spill over[ii] For that reason, it’s impossible to think about looking after your kids without also making your marriage a priority. Marital Satisfaction = Parenting Satisfaction Here’s a quote from one study: "A satisfying marital relationship is the cornerstone of happy family life, leading to more positive parent-child relationships and more congenial sibling relationships.[iii]". Another study confirmed a strong link between marital satisfaction and "sensitive, warm and responsive parenting"[iv] (Pedro et al, 2012). This link is one way: marital satisfaction causes good parenting and good parent-child relationships, not the other way around. In other words, you cannot improve your marriage by improving your parenting. But you can improve your parenting by improving your marriage. I really think this is countercultural to a lot of what we see today where there is so much emphasis on pouring all the effort and investment into the children. What this research is showing, and we’ll learn more about this as we proceed, is that pouring effort into the marriage results in real benefits to the children. The reverse is also true: low marital satisfaction leads to poor parenting. Emotionally distant spouses are often less supportive of their children and display less warmth, while marriages high in conflict often lead to more anger directed at the children[v]. Where this is particularly tricky is if you kind of give up on your spouse and pour effort into your children hoping you can redeem things there. I get why folks do that but if it is at all possible, the marriage is what needs your attention. Stepfamilies Are a Slight Exception There is one exception here. Yes, normally good parenting flows from a well-functioning marriage. But in step-families, the relationship actually runs both ways: marital satisfaction leads to better parenting of step-children but forming a healthy relationship with the step-children also creates a healthier marriage. This is because in stepfamilies the step-parent typically does not have a pre-existing relationship with the children. Consequently, she or he has to work at developing a workable relationship with those children in the first stages of the marriage in order to create a stable household. We did a full episode on blended families a while back but it’s worth pointing out here as well. Why Does Focusing On a Good Marriage Lead to Good Parenting? It really comes down to three things: spillover, resources, and modeling. Spillover: as mentioned above, positive mood, emotions, traits, and behavior from the marriage will naturally spill over into the parenting relationships. The family is a system, remember. So one aspect functioning well naturally improves things in the others. Resources: an unhappy or conflict-filled marriage will be a drain on both spouse's emotional and mental resources. This will negatively impact the couple's parenting ability as they will have less energy and willpower to properly look after their kids, and will react more negatively to bad behavior. Conversely, a happy marriage increases the emotional resources both spouses have, enhancing their ability to deal with parenting challenges. Modeling: children observe how their parents behave and learn a lot about how to act based on this observation or "modeling". Children who see their parents treat each other with respect and kindness will learn that this is the right way to interact with loved ones. Let’s just pivot slightly to look at how different styles of parenting lead to greater happiness for parents and children. Your Parenting Style Matters Co-Parenting Is Good for Couples and Children Co-parenting is defined as: Showing agreement in how to raise the children, and Supporting each other when interacting with the children, especially when it comes to setting rules and discipline. Co-parenting is linked to higher marital satisfaction in that one spouse's co-parenting leads to feeling supported and higher marital satisfaction for the other spouse[vi]. Co-parenting is the best form of parenting with regards to the happiness of the parents, and it is also the best for the children as it creates a more stable and conflict-free household. In simple terms, this is just about having each other’s back. Standing together as a couple. And kids can sure figure out if you guys are not on the same page and they’ll exploit that. When you’re united on issues, it actually creates a safer more stable environment for them. But to do this, you need to work on creating a strong marriage. See, couples who are high in marital satisfaction are naturally better at co-parenting. "Happy couples feel positive feelings for each other, and this affection prompts them to support each other as parents and to work cooperatively in child rearing[vii]". So having a happy marriage typically leads to good parenting. Parenting Styles That Don’t Work On the other hand, low marital satisfaction leads to poor co-parenting and creates less effective parenting styles, such as[viii]: Conflicted parenting: parents disagreeing with each other on how to raise/discipline the children, leading to further unhappiness between the couple and tension between the children and parents. Triangulation: drawing the child into the marital conflict, for example by trying to get the child to side with you against your spouse. This again leads to worsening marital satisfaction and distrustful, unstable parent-child relationships. Over-Parenting Is a Problem This is one style that I wanted to break out and talk about on its own. Putting the children first in your marriage can have negative consequences for the whole family system. Being overly-involved in your child's life, over-protecting and investing all your time into looking after them is sometimes called "helicopter parenting" due to the idea of always hovering over your children. This style of parenting reduces the time and emotional resources you have available for your spouse, which will lower your marital satisfaction- therefore hindering your co-parenting ability and affecting the whole family. So ironically, by having your children’s best interest at heart you end up draining yourself and your marriage, which can only be bad for the kids. But even more eye-opening is the fact that this style of helicopter parenting also has negative effects on the children. Research shows that being too protective and intrusive into your child's life, despite the good intentions behind it, has negative consequences for them as a child and in their transition to adulthood. These include[ix]: Reduced overall wellbeing Higher use of medication for anxiety and depression Less self-confidence and higher dependency on others Poorer coping skills and less ability to deal with challenges Reduced engagement with school and college, leading to lower academic achievement If this is happening it is worth just taking a step back to really think about why. I think this could easily become a downward spiral: maybe your marriage hit some rough patches or you found yourself unhappy, you decided to pursue joy in your children. As you became more and more invested in them, they at first responded with joy and that was very rewarding. However, as time goes on, they need more and more from you because they become increasingly insecure and anxious because of the cues they are picking up from the distress in your marriage. Your spouse becomes less and less happy. You invest more and more in the children, things get worse in the marriage, the children are more and more aware of and upset by this…etc. If this is the situation you find yourself in, it may be best to redirect. Stop and work on your marriage. Sometimes what appears to be a set of parenting problems is really just evidence of a marriage problem that needs to be addressed. Well, think about what a gift you could give your children by doing the hard work and really making the effort of investing in your marriage. References [i] Martha J. Cox and Blair Paley, “Understanding Families as Systems,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 12, no. 5 (2003): 193–96. [ii] Marta F. Pedro, Teresa Ribeiro, and Katherine H....

Figure Out What Your Spouse is Actually Upset About

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 11:00:05 +0000

Ever get the feeling that your arguments as a couple are going nowhere? Or maybe you find yourself thinking, “There has to be a better way to solve conflict than this!” Well, there is: turns out there are some essential skills that work for both husbands and wives and can actually lead to deeper intimacy rather than lingering resentments. Figuring Out Why Someone is Upset Can Be Hard Let’s just acknowledge right off the bat that it is normal for married folk to struggle with figuring out what the argument is really about. Turns out there are several possible reasons for this[i]: Your spouse may not want to share all that they are actually feeling: due to fear of vulnerability. It can be hard for you to see what emotions they are conveying in the heat of the moment. Especially if you are trying to focus on your own thoughts and opinions. Conflict and arguments tend to move very fast, making it hard to go back and question (with curiosity) what your spouse was actually trying to say. Deeper or core issues often show up as distress about specific issues. It is hard to see past the superficial or triggering issue and get to that deeper layer and really solve the problem. During conflict, you may not even want to see what emotions your spouse is conveying. Both of you are so worked up that you just end up saying negative things and reacting to reactions, rather than actually trying to discern and resolve the deeper issue. All that to say: give yourself and your spouse some compassion and try slowing things down. It is hard to figure things out and it takes patience and commitment. Empathic Accuracy Matters One of the keys to unlocking the mystery of what your spouse is really upset about is this thing called empathic accuracy. Don’t worry, we’ll make this concept easy to grasp: empathic accuracy is your ability to accurately discern what your spouse is feeling, and why[ii]. The reason you need to get good at empathic accuracy is that this skill is central to resolving conflict, forgiving one another, and building overall marital satisfaction[iii]. This empathic accuracy is the skill of learning to understand one another…sometimes you often hear people talk about soul-mates as if it is some magic woo-woo pixie dust that gets sprinkled on a few lucky couples by the marriage fairy. Not so: if you learn to do this empathic accuracy thing, you’ll be well on your way towards that soul-mate experience with your spouse. It is a skill anyone can learn, and the research shows that empathic accuracy increased marital satisfaction because it prompts spouses to respond differently to one another. Instead of blundering about in emotional darkness, think what your marriage would be like if you were really attuned to your wife or to your husband. Dialed into what was going on and able to respond accurately and appropriately. Well, I hope I’ve sold you on empathic accuracy. Now: how to learn this skill? How To Develop Empathic Accuracy Emotional Validation The first technique you need to learn is emotional validation. This is simply expressing the empathy toward your spouse when they are upset or when you are in conflict. Follow me closely here: conflict is often triggered by incidental events or actions, but at a deeper level it is often driven or intensified by an underlying feeling of not being heard. For example, if a wife is upset by something her husband did or said, and he does not acknowledge this properly then she will become more upset. How do we fail to respond properly? We get defensive, we blame the other person, we dismiss or minimize their concerns, or we just don’t know what to do so we stonewall them. When that happens then your spouse will become more upset. At that point, the conflict is no longer about the inciting incident but about your spouse’s need to feel validated[iv]. This is such a key point because you can break out of this by learning validate your spouse’s feeling. Say something like, “I can see why you would feel that way. I would feel the same.” This is emotional validation and it is central to empathic accuracy. When you acknowledge that your spouse has the right to feel what they are feeling, that is a powerful way to resolve conflict and build intimacy[v]. Now: I know what you’re thinking. “But they shouldn’t be feeling that way!” Sometimes that is actually true — the feeling your spouse is expressing does not seem to match the facts. However: if there’s a discrepancy there it is only because you have not gotten to the deeper issue, or because they are responding based on a different set of facts than what you have. You do not have the same story: you have two different perspectives. When you’re willing to step away from defending your perspective and your feelings for a moment and see the issue through your spouse’s eyes, then you can do this thing we are calling "emotional validation”. Don’t React Negatively Empathic accuracy also requires you to learn that you can choose not to react negatively to your spouse’s hostility during conflict. This can be tough but it is certainly doable. I am sure all of us can think of times when someone went ballistic on us and we were able to keep our cool. Here’s a quote from one study: "To reduce tension and soothe heated feelings, partners must inhibit the impulse toward negative reciprocity, instead reacting in a positive manner. This type of behavior is termed accommodation.[vi]". Typically, our arguments as couples escalate because one person says something negative and then the other person responds in kind. When you choose not to react negatively, it makes room for you to see the real need behind the negative words. When you see that real need, you are in a much better place to respond positively. And as you might imagine, this goes a long way towards reducing conflict and also has the effect of improving your marital wellbeing overall[vii]. That happens because you go from misunderstanding to deeper understanding. This is where conflict in a marriage actually becomes productive because you’re handling it intentionally. Making Empathic Accuracy Easier Hopefully you are seeing that these are very doable strategies to help you figure out what your spouse is actually upset about the next time you are in conflict. It’s helpful to know that researchers have identified three factors that determine levels of empathic accuracy within couples. These are: Psychological femininity: women generally find it easier to be empathic than men, due to normally showing more emotional concern for others and having better social skills. However, just because women naturally find this easier, there is no reason that men can't learn these skills as well. They are not female skills, they are merely socialized into women culturally. Men can still learn them. Commitment: a link was also found between levels of marital commitment and ability to show empathic accuracy (for both men and women). It’s good to pause and make sure you have committed your heart to your spouse and to your marriage. Perspective taking: the ability and willingness to take your spouse's perspective and see situations through their eyes is also strongly linked to empathic accuracy, and therefore to good conflict resolution and higher marital satisfaction. This cannot be emphasized enough. Are you willing to pause and engage your spouse’s perspective on the matter? Practice Makes Perfect A 2005 study[viii] found that it is possible to increase people’s level of empathic accuracy, and their ability to express this empathy, through practice. So we want to underscore again that this is a skill you can learn. By intentionally working with your spouse over time, you will naturally get better at reading him or her and learning to identify the cues that reveal his or her emotional state. You’ll look for certain words, facial expressions and body language and begin to intuitively catalog those into a way of understanding your spouse more deeply. The researchers also noted that practicing empathy is easier when you get feedback from the person you are speaking to. That’s helpful. Simply asking your spouse to confirm what emotion they are feeling during a conversation lets you see if you are reading them correctly. In some cases, you may even consider (with permission) videotaping yourselves having a conversation, and then review the video together and write down what you think the other person was conveying emotionally and then compare notes. It may feel a little funny to do that, but that can also be an effective approach to really help you hone this skill of empathic accuracy. Remember: empathic accuracy is the key to figuring out what your spouse is actually upset about. References [i] Alan Sillars et al., “Cognition During Marital Conflict: The Relationship of Thought and Talk, Cognition During Marital Conflict: The Relationship of Thought and Talk,” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 17, no. 4–5 (August 1, 2000): 479–502, https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407500174002. [ii] Lauren M. Papp, Chrystyna D. Kouros, and E. Mark Cummings, “Demand-Withdraw Patterns in Marital Conflict in the Home,” Personal Relationships 16, no. 2 (June 2009): 285–300. [iii] F. Giorgia Paleari, Camillo Regalia, and Frank Fincham, “Marital Quality, Forgiveness, Empathy, and Rumination: A Longitudinal Analysis,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 31, no. 3 (2005): 368–78. [iv] Guy Winch, Emotional First Aid: Healing Rejection, Guilt, Failure, and Other Everyday Hurts (Penguin, 2013). [v] Winch. [vi] Shelley Dean Kilpatrick, Victor L. Bissonnette, and Caryl E. Rusbult, “Empathic Accuracy and Accommodative Behavior among Newly Married Couples,” Personal Relationships 9, no. 4 (n.d.): 369–93, https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6811.09402. [vii] Kilpatrick, Bissonnette, and Rusbult. ...

How To Get Your Husband (or Wife) Into Marriage Counseling

Wed, 22 Aug 2018 11:00:39 +0000

This has to be one of the most common questions I get emailed about. Turns out, if you can take a little time to understand why men or women react differently to the idea of counseling, then you can dial in your approach to help you and your spouse get the help you need! Researchers estimate that at any point in time, in America, around 20% of marriages will be experiencing significant distress[i]. That’s a lot! It speaks to how much of our struggle is hidden from sight and from family, In fact, 28% of divorcing couples do not confide in family members about their marital problems prior to divorcing. And 63% of divorcees do not attend any kind of relationship counseling prior to divorce. Further, couples who do seek help wait an average of six years before doing so[ii]. That needs to change: there’s help available. Unfortunately, popular media has made divorce appear cheap and easy and they fail to disclose the real emotional, relational, spiritual and financial costs of divorce. So today we’re going to be talking about how to get your spouse into marriage counseling. This isn’t just an ad for our own virtual counseling agency but a research-based discussion about how to overcome this challenge effectively without being manipulative or sneaky. Why Do Couples NOT Seek Help? First, there are practical concerns: things like feeling there is a lack of time and money. Sometimes it is just a lack of awareness that good help can be had. And, in some cases, if you’re in a rural area there may seem to be a lack of available services. Although the increasing number of virtual agencies such as hours has done a lot to fill that need. Second, there’s often a stigma around seeking help for your marriage. Especially for men. Men tend to act more self-reliant and more in control and so we’re less inclined to seek help regarding emotional issues. Researchers note that typical masculine beliefs such as self-reliance and emotional suppression are negatively correlated to a willingness to get help. So the stronger those things are in a guy’s character, the less willing he will be to get help. Typically. One study even found that most men would only consider marital counseling appropriate in situations relating to divorce or abuse[iii]. Obviously, we think there’s a lot of other reasons you’d want to consider counseling: hopefully before you get to a place where divorce is on the table. Of course, women are not immune to stigma either. Seeking marriage counseling can be seen as an admission that your marriage is failing. That’s a difficult admission. That requires you to recognize the seriousness of your problems and open yourself up to scrutiny. Some even fear that getting counseling may be dangerous to the relationship: by admitting how serious the problems are, you may feel that you are signaling the end of the relationship[iv]. So taking that step towards counseling is certainly courageous. There are other variables too. Women are much more likely to want to seek help than men. Interestingly, older couples are generally more willing to seek external help. That fits what I see in my practice: I think the statistic is that half of divorces (not marriages) occur in the first 7 years of marriage. I rarely see couples in counseling in the single digits of their marriage. And yet, that’s a great time to do counseling: taking the step of spotting your challenges early and getting help before they become massive issues can save you a lot of trouble later on down the line. There are also socioeconomic factors: couples who are more well off, and couples who are more highly educated are more likely to seek marriage counseling, presumably due to being more aware of the benefits it can offer, and having the financial resources to utilize it. Of course, money doesn’t have to be a limitation: learning to budget and making this a priority in your spending can help you overcome any financial barriers. Your marriage is definitely worth investing in! Stages of Help Seeking So let’s say one of you is keen to give marriage counseling a try, and your spouse is a little reluctant. I think it’s worth noting that there are stages people go through when seeking help. If you know what the stages are, you may see your spouse’s indifference to counseling as merely a timing issue. That’s a possibility, right? The three stages are: Problem recognition: realizing that the marriage has problems that need resolving. Treatment consideration: deciding whether to look for counseling Treatment seeking: looking for help and considering different types of help On average, women complete all three steps more quickly than men do, so often the wife is ready to enter marriage counseling before her husband[v]. So if your husband is engaged with this process and is actually thinking about the need for help, it may be wise to give him time and space to work through each step, and just recognize that it may take him longer. Try to Intervene Early I’m always the guy who, when the car is making some odd noise, is hoping it will just go away on its own. I live in denial of the “problem recognition” stage for too long! I think that happens around the counseling issue too. Of course, couples are often most motivated to seek marriage counseling when their distress is highest and their relationship satisfaction is lowest. This is because high marital distress is a strong motivator to get help, and until distress is high other issues may act as barriers to desiring help. Further, many couples only attempt counseling once divorce is something they are seriously considering[vi], and when their levels of hope for the marriage are at their lowest[vii]. While that is very motivating it is also a more challenging starting point. I would encourage even healthy, happy marriages, that it would be good to chat to your spouse on an upbeat day when you guys are getting along well and agree that counseling is something you’ll both commit to being open to. Open to when one spouse asks for it, and open to starting one before things get really tough. See, motivating your spouse to enter counseling earlier, before the marriage develops serious problems, makes restoring the marriage much easier. One way of doing this could be looking for less intensive forms of help which are more focused on supporting marriages, rather than helping couples who are already very distressed. For example, a study in 2005[viii] developed an intervention called the "Marriage Check-up" designed for couples who were at risk of developing marital problems but were not yet in high levels of distress. They found that by advertising the course as being educational and "available to all married couples interested in learning about their marriage", and making no mention of distress or conflict, they were able to attract a large number of at-risk couples who would otherwise not have considered marriage counseling. That’s one way to move towards counseling in a more step-wise fashion rather than just taking a big leap. We offer a similar checkup at OnlyYouForever. Another takeaway from this point is that if one spouse is trying to motivate his/her husband/wife into counseling, the way you phrase the request may be important. Talking about "learning about our marriage" and "checking-up on how things are going" and "learning new skills" rather than saying "we need help" or viewing counseling as a last resort may provide more motivation and get you into counseling before serious problems develop[ix]. Understanding Motivation Finally, we need to talk a little about understanding how to create and foster motivation. Normalizing Counseling To begin with, one simple observation is that people are more willing to attend counseling if they are made aware that the challenges they are facing are common[x]. This helps reduce the perceived social stigma around getting help. I know a lot of church and ministry leaders listen to our show: please, talk about getting counseling as a normal experience of human growth and development. The more we can normalize this, the lower the barrier to entry for others who have not yet tried working with a professional counselor. Knowledge of Counseling Services A study in 1991[xi] found that knowledge of the services available to couples, and prior experience of these services, were linked to higher motivation to seek counseling help. Many couples who are not motivated to get external help are simply unaware of the types of help available, or unaware of what counseling might involve. In this study, 21% of men and 29% of women had never heard of marriage counseling. So simply helping your spouse become more aware of counseling services can help them decide to seek help. Our episode on how marriage counseling works would be a good start. Pay Attention to Attitudes and Expectations Expectations are also a huge part of this. A study in 2007[xii] found that an individual's expectations of what marital counseling will be like, and how useful it will be, are the strongest predictor of how willing they are to attend. So it is important to manage expectations. There are several factors within this: Some individuals (often men) feel that asking for help in any situation is a sign of weakness, and self-reliance is better. This is linked to the stigma around seeking professional help with your marriage. Challenging this belief and helping them see that things would be better if they were willing to seek help can begin to resolve this. At some core level, we all understand this. In fact, I think that probably every superhero movie has in it a character who is a guide for the superhero. If I’m going to be a superhero husband, it’s reasonable to consider that I am going to need a guide. Then there are expectations of what will happen: individuals may be fearful of going to counseling due to fearing that they will be "

How To Handle Chronic Health Problems in Marriage

Wed, 15 Aug 2018 11:00:36 +0000

It seems like with chronic illness in marriage you either hear the extremes of horror stories or, on the other end of the spectrum, some very beautiful stories. I’ve heard of a wife getting a bad form of cancer, the husband deciding he just didn’t want to deal with that and bailing out on her. And then there’s a much-loved couple in our own church and she developed Alzheimer’s fairly young and his response has been to double down on his faithfulness and care for her, saying, “I guess it’s my turn to pull the wagon now”. Any kind of long-term illness can be extremely tough for married couples as one spouse struggles to cope with the symptoms and effects of illness and the other takes on a carer role, trying their best to look after their ailing spouse. It looks very different for each spouse, but for both it can be hard to know how to cope. Instead of focusing on individual things each spouse can do, it is helpful to think in terms of joint coping: both spouses taking responsibility for coping with the illness and sharing stressors and resources[i]. Joint Coping with Health Problems What you need to know is the way you interact and respond to each other's coping strategies is just as important as the strategies themselves. For example, the non-ill spouse needs to be able to see what kind of support the ill spouse (called the "patient spouse" in the research) is in need of at any given time: do they need practical support, problem-solving, or emotional reassurance? Coping as a couple is affected by two main factors: the patient and spouse's "appraisal" or understanding of the illness, and the coping strategies they use to deal with it. Appraisal of Illness How the patient and their spouse each view the illness will affect how well they support each other through it. There are three specific issues that we want to draw your attention to[ii]: Understanding of the Illness Do both spouses fully understand the nature, possible duration, and consequences of the illness? If an understanding of the illness differs between spouses this will naturally lead to different expectations of how much support is needed (e.g., if the spouse thinks the illness is not a very big deal then they will naturally put less effort into helping the patient spouse cope). So we want to be sure that both parties understand the scope and prognosis of the illness. Ownership of Illness Is the illness viewed as a joint problem, or as the patent spouse's problem which the other spouse may or may not be required to help with? Mismatches on this will again naturally lead to ineffective coping. This also raises the issue of togetherness: is the illness your problem or is it our problem? Broader Context How much support do you expect from your spouse, based on culture, family of origin etc? Were you raised to share all burdens between you, or to respect their independence and dignity by being more hands off? Again, different expectations here could lead to poor coping. Different appraisals or expectations in these areas can lead to poor coping with the illness, so couples should try to make sure they are on the same page regarding the nature of the illness and how much support is required/desired. Dealing with Chronic Illness in Marriage When you look at all the ways a spouse can support their patient spouse, they fall into two main categories[iii]: Problem-focused: providing practical support such as helping provide or facilitate treatment, assisting with practical needs or taking care of needs and responsibilities while the patient spouse is unable to Emotion-focused: providing emotional support to help the patient cope with the stress of the illness Problem-Focused Each of these styles of coping can be either helpful or unhelpful, depending on what you do. Helpful problem-focused coping is often referred to as "active engagement": both spouses taking an active role in discussions with doctors, researching treatment options, brainstorming ideas and solving all the little daily problems that the illness can throw up. This style of active engagement leads to improved mood, sense of self-efficacy and marital satisfaction for both spouses and reduced symptoms of anxiety and depression for the patient, but only when both spouses were equally engaged[iv]. Unhelpful problem solving could include taking too much control, forcing the patient spouse to try a certain form of treatment when they don't want to, underestimating the patient spouse's own ability to look after themselves, etc. Many ill spouses find that there’s a fine line between their spouse wanting to help, and wanting to take control. These domineering strategies often lead to lower marital satisfaction and higher rates of distress for both spouses, and can even increase the patient spouse’s symptoms and pain levels. Emotion-Focused Good emotion-focused coping includes normal marital communication things like listening, showing affection, self-disclosure, emotional responsiveness etc. Unhelpful emotion coping could include encouraging the patient spouse to avoid facing the reality of the illness or minimizing the seriousness of the illness. "Buffering"- where the one spouse hides their true worries and emotions due to fear of causing their spouse further distress- is also considered an unhelpful strategy. All of these can reduce marital satisfaction and increase distress. Levels of Spouse Involvement You’ve probably witnessed other friends/couples going through a health crisis. And like I mentioned at the start, there’s often some extremes we go to in times of crisis. Well, a research paper written in 2007[v] describes four levels of support the patient perceives that they receive from their spouse. Note these are about the patient spouse's perceptions, not necessarily actual levels of support Uninvolvement: patient believes they are coping with the illness alone Support: spouse offers some emotional/practical support but it is still mainly the patient spouse's problem to deal with Collaboration: taking joint responsibility, joint problem solving Over-involvement: patient spouse feels their spouse is too involved, taking control or being over-protective. Generally, collaboration is seen as the best way to cope, although some spouses may be happy just receiving support and not needing joint responsibility for the illness. But I think this is a good checkpoint to stop and have that conversation with your spouse to see if you are providing an appropriate level of support. You see, it’s quite easy for this to go a little haywire. If the patient spouse perceives that they are receiving no support from their spouse, and the spouse thinks they are providing lots of help, this becomes a case of "invisible support", where the patient spouse feels ignored or abandoned, and the other spouse feels unappreciated, leading to low levels of coping and marital satisfaction for both[vi]. Spouses, therefore, cope most effectively when they agree on how and what support is to be provided. Caregiver Self-Care Using helpful coping strategies, having the same understanding/appraisals, and finding the right balance of problem and emotion-focused support can reduce distress, pain, depression and even mortality rates for the patient spouse[vii]. These strategies also increase marital satisfaction and reduce distress for both the patient and their spouse. However, some research (not all) suggests that increasing the amount of care you provide for your spouse can increase the distress, depression, and anxiety you experience as a caregiver, so the non-patient spouse needs to find ways to cope with the situation too. This is something that can be pretty easy to overlook. So how are you coping? Here are some suggestions: Keep relying on your spouse emotionally: don't let the illness be a barrier to still confiding in and relying on your spouse. Remember that emotional support from the patient spouse is a strong protective factor for the other spouse[viii]. Also, feeling like they can no longer support you and meet your expectations is a major source of distress for the patient spouse[ix]. So it is good to give your patient spouse the opportunity to return some care to you as well. Outside social support: support from friends acts as a stress-reducing buffer during especially difficult times. Individuals with stronger support networks are much more able to cope with the demands of a chronically ill spouse[x]. Overall we hope this has been an encouraging episode for you. A chronic illness can be a major factor in your lives but it doesn’t necessarily have to lead to an unhappy marriage! References [i] Cynthia A. Berg and Renn Upchurch, “A Developmental-Contextual Model of Couples Coping with Chronic Illness across the Adult Life Span,” Psychological Bulletin 133, no. 6 (November 2007): 920–54, https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.133.6.920. [ii] Berg and Upchurch. [iii] Berg and Upchurch. [iv] Berg and Upchurch. [v] Berg and Upchurch. [vi] Berg and Upchurch. [vii] Lynn M. Martire et al., “Is It Beneficial to Involve a Family Member? A Meta-Analysis of Psychosocial Interventions for Chronic Illness,” Health Psychology: Official Journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association 23, no. 6 (November 2004): 599–611, https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-6133.23.6.599. [viii] T. A. Revenson and S. D. Majerovitz, “The Effects of Chronic Illness on the Spouse. Social Resources as Stress Buffers,” Arthritis Care and Research: The Official Journal of the Arthritis Health Professions Association 4, no. 2 (June 1991): 63–72. [ix] Berg and Upchurch, “A Developmental-Contextual Model of Couples Coping with Chronic Illness across the Adult Life Span.” [x] Revenson and Majerovitz, “The Effects of Chronic Illness on the Spouse. Social Resources as Stress Buffers.”

The Hidden Costs of Marriage Problems

Wed, 08 Aug 2018 11:00:21 +0000

Life gets really busy and difficult to manage sometimes, and as we encounter some challenges we can lose sight of the forest for the trees. Maybe we have some unexplained health problems or even problems at work and we wonder what is going on? Obviously, there are many potential reasons, but have you considered that your unhappy marriage could be an underlying issue? Today’s topic looks at problems caused by marriage problems. Obviously, the goal here is not to make you want to give up on your marriage, but rather, instead of thinking about solving your other problems so that your marriage will be better…what if you START with your marriage? Get into some good books or some marriage counselling with your spouse and get that sorted, and then see the cascading benefits of a happy marriage spill over into other areas. So hear us out as we go through various facets of life and see what resonates. This is meant to be an eye opener, so just be curious and consider how helping your marriage could be a huge benefit to other areas in your life. The first hidden cost of marriage problems for us to discuss is the area of mental health. Mental Health Is Impacted by Marital Woes Not surprisingly, research shows a strong link between marital problems and poor mental health. For example, a major study in 2007[i] examined over 2000 married individuals and found that marital distress was a predictor of high levels of anxiety, mood disruption, and substance abuse. It was also linked to specific mental health conditions including bipolar disorder, alcohol abuse disorder, depression and general anxiety disorder. For depression, it was found that the longer the marital problems go on, the higher the risk becomes. Again, we want to assert that the solution is not to get un-married! But rather to pursue the healing of your marriage! How do marital woes potentially contribute to mental health problems? Another study in 2005[ii] examined how marital distress can create mental health problems and found several mediating factors: Attribution style (see below — basically, you’re more likely to pay attention to negative things) Conflict style: especially demand-withdraw cycles and avoidance of conflict. These are normal patterns for distressed marriages. Attachment style: ambivalent or avoidant attachment. Not pursuing healing for attachment issues can impact mental health. The flip side of this is you can see that marriage becomes something of a crucible for personal growth. Getting these conflict, attribution and attachment issues dealt with can turn your mental health challenges around. Again, another reason to stay in your marriage and sort this stuff out. Really, if you just go for escape you’re going to carry the same issues to the next marriage. Physical Health Costs from Marriage Problems The impact of marriage problems extends into the physical realm as well. Research from 1997[iii] found that high levels of conflict and marital distress lead to various physical health problems, such as higher blood pressure and a weaker immune system. This effect was stronger for women than for men. One explanation for the gender effect is that women typically feel and express more negative emotions during conflict while men withdraw emotionally (known as the demand-withdraw cycle). It is this negative emotion and stress which causes the negative health effects[iv]. Of course, emotionally withdrawing isn’t going to be good for your marriage or your mental health, so we’re not saying that’s the better strategy here! Other research highlights other health concerns for couples with low relationship satisfaction, such as higher risk of cardiovascular disease and even the possibility of higher mortality[v]. Again this effect is stronger for women than men. Marriage Difficulties Influence Work as Well Conflict and distress in your marriage can spill over into other areas of your life, particularly work. Everyone has a limited amount of mental and physical "resources" to manage their different roles and stress in one area, therefore, affects your ability to function in another[vi]. This can lead to problems at work such as: Poor performance at work Higher absence due to sickness and stress Higher rates of burnout More conflict with work colleagues Unfortunately this lack of resources and increased strain can spill over into parenting as well. Marital Problems Impact Children, Too Marital problems, especially high levels of conflict and hostility, have a negative impact on children. Children whose parents display high levels of conflict often show problems such as anxiety, high levels of aggression, poorer emotional regulation ability, and lower levels of wellbeing overall[vii]. You see, parental conflict, especially if left unresolved, can damage a child's sense of emotional security. Because of the conflict, the child comes to feel unsafe with their parents or inside he or she will carry the fear that the family will split apart. This lack of security can affect children's wellbeing into their adult lives[viii]. So your marital issues, if poorly handled, can have long-term consequences not just for you but for your children too From Bad to Worse (Attributions) Here’s the tricky part. Once things are going badly, it’s easier for them to keep going badly. The state of your marriage affects how you interpret the actions of your spouse. In a distressed marriage, you are more likely to pay attention to negative things your spouse says and does while ignoring or misinterpreting the good things[ix]. When your perceptions of your spouse are already bad, you are more likely to interpret positive actions as being false or manipulative, or dismiss them as one-offs. At the same time, you will interpret negative actions as being deliberate, intended to hurt you and a true reflection of who they are as a person[x]. And this cycle keeps on going. Marital distress leads to negative attributions and interpretations. Negative attributions lead to further marital distress[xi] So unless you consciously work to break out of this negative interaction style, things will only get worse. The Cost of Divorce Ultimately, severe marital problems can reduce the stability of the marriage and lead to divorce. While divorce is often pitched in popular media as a good way to escape the consequences of marital distress, it has its own very substantial range of negative consequences. Many researchers finding that divorced individuals are worse off than those who choose to stay in distressed marriages even[xii]. The consequences of divorce include: Lower well-being and happiness More symptoms of stress and mental illness: one study[xiii] found the risk of depression to be 188% higher in divorced individuals than married More health problems Higher rates of unhealthy alcohol consumption Greater risk of mortality Poorer self-esteem Higher levels of loneliness and social isolation Divorce also has major economic consequences. Divorced individuals are generally less well off than married couples, experience greater economic hardship and have a lower standard of living[xiv]. I read once that the average divorcee experiences the loss of 77% of their net worth. Divorced parents also experience more difficulties in raising their children. Children whose parents divorce are at risk from a range of bad outcomes including lower self-esteem, lower academic achievement, lower well-being overall and behavioral problems[xv]. Are the negative effects of divorce temporary? Not always. Some people experience a dip in their wellbeing that can last 2 to 3 years following the divorce, but for others, the negative consequences of divorce put them on a "negative trajectory from which they might never fully recover[xvi]". We come back to the reason why put the effort into our marriage podcast that we do. We want to bring you honest, if sometimes difficult, truth from credible sources to help you recover, restore and rebuild your marriage because we believe that for almost all couples, that is indeed the best way forward. We also have a top-shelf marriage therapist employed in our virtual counseling agency who can help you do this work if you haven’t been able to restore things on your own. Just reach out to us through our website and we’d be very happy to help. References [i] Mark A. Whisman, “Marital Distress and DSM-IV Psychiatric Disorders in a Population-Based National Survey,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 116, no. 3 (2007): 638–43, https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-843X.116.3.638. [ii] Els L. D. Heene, Ann Buysse, and Paulette Van Oost, “Indirect Pathways Between Depressive Symptoms and Marital Distress: The Role of Conflict Communication, Attributions, and Attachment Style,” Family Process 44, no. 4 (n.d.): 413–40, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1545-5300.2005.00070.x. [iii] Tracy J. Mayne et al., “The Differential Effects of Acute Marital Distress on Emotional, Physiological and Immune Functions in Maritally Distressed Men and Women,” Psychology & Health 12, no. 2 (March 1, 1997): 277–88, https://doi.org/10.1080/08870449708407405. [iv] Mayne et al. [v] Linda C. Gallo et al., “Marital Status and Quality in Middle-Aged Women: Associations with Levels and Trajectories of Cardiovascular Risk Factors,” Health Psychology: Official Journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association 22, no. 5 (September 2003): 453–63, https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-6133.22.5.453. [vi] Alicia A. Grandey and Russell Cropanzano, “The Conservation of Resources Model Applied to Work–Family Conflict and Strain,” Journal of Vocational Behavior 54, no. 2 (1999): 350–70. [vii] Patrick T. Davies and E. Mark Cummings, “Marital Conflict and Child Adjustment: An Emotional Security Hypothesis.,” Psychological Bulletin 116, no. 3 (1994): 387. ...

When Your Spouse Constantly Criticizes: Holding Onto Self Worth

Wed, 01 Aug 2018 11:00:28 +0000

Feeling drained and hurt by constant criticism from your spouse? You're not alone. In this episode, we unpack the difference between a partner's bad day and a destructive pattern of emotional abuse. We'll explore the hidden reasons behind your spouse's critical behavior—from their own insecurities and perfectionism to underlying unhappiness in the relationship. Learn practical, effective strategies to protect your self-worth, build emotional resilience, and set healthy boundaries in a kind but firm way. If you're tired of walking on eggshells and want to build a more positive, supportive, and loving marriage, this episode provides the tools and insights you need to start today. Tune in for a hopeful conversation about reclaiming your confidence and improving your relationship communication.

Benefits of Marriage: 5 Research-Backed Benefits of a Happy Marriage

Wed, 18 Jul 2018 11:00:37 +0000

If you have ever wondered whether the work of building a thriving marriage is worth it, the research is clear. The benefits of marriage are real, measurable, and far-reaching. But there is one important catch that most articles on this topic skip past: those benefits do not flow from being legally married. They flow from being happily married. This distinction matters. A growing body of psychological research finds that marital quality, not marital status alone, is closely tied to nearly every benefit on this list. A happy marriage protects your health, extends your life, deepens your sense of purpose, and grounds your day-to-day happiness in ways that research finds are less consistent in single, cohabiting, and unhappily married groups. An unhappy marriage, by contrast, can do the opposite. So if you are in the trenches fighting for your marriage today, this is for you. We want to give you a clear, research-backed picture of what you are fighting for. Below are the top 5 benefits of a happy marriage, drawn from peer-reviewed psychology journals and our own years of clinical work with couples. We are working from the fifth benefit back to the first. What the Research Actually Shows About the Benefits of Marriage Most of the social science literature on marriage shares a striking pattern. When researchers compare married people to single, cohabiting, or divorced people on outcomes like health, longevity, life satisfaction, and happiness, married people generally come out ahead. But when those same researchers dig into what is actually doing the work, they find that the benefit comes from the quality of the relationship, not from the legal status itself. People in high-conflict, low-satisfaction marriages often fare worse than single people on the same outcomes. People in supportive, satisfying marriages reliably do better. The wedding ring is not the active ingredient. The friendship, attunement, support, and sense of being known by your spouse is the active ingredient. Keep that lens in mind as you read the rest of this article. Each benefit below is something a happy marriage offers you. Each benefit also tells you something about why working on the quality of your marriage is one of the most important investments you can make. #5: Personal Growth The research consistently shows that a happy marriage helps both spouses grow, individually and as a couple. This shows up on three different fronts. Personal Goals It is easier to meet personal challenges when you know someone has your back. Married people often report that the level of support they get from their spouse is the strongest determining factor in how well they achieve their personal goals [i]. Your support of your spouse makes a measurable difference in their life. With your support, your spouse feels secure enough, and has enough practical and emotional assistance, to aim for the things that matter most to them. So creating a happy marriage ends up setting the stage for helping each other achieve personal goals. It is not hard to see how a distressed marriage takes up so much energy that personal goals fall off the table entirely. Resilience A 2011 study [ii] found that overcoming stressful circumstances together early in marriage made couples far more able to deal with stress later in life. High marital satisfaction, especially good communication and support, helped couples build up resilience to stress, which in turn helped them adjust to major life events such as the transition to parenthood. Other research shows that high marital quality helps couples cope with difficult circumstances such as financial pressure and chronic illness [iii]. This is one of the things we see most often in our work. Couples who do the hard repair work after a fight, after a betrayal, after a job loss, do not just recover. They get sturdier. They develop a shared toolkit for the next stressor, and the next one after that. A happy marriage becomes a safe harbor where you recharge for whatever life throws at you next. Growing Together When your marriage is going well, you start to embody the traits you admire in each other. High satisfaction with your marriage, and with who your spouse is, naturally leads to admiration. When couples admire each other, they work to embody the positive traits they see in each other. In a well-functioning marriage, both spouses sharpen each other and help make each other better people [iv]. "As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another" (Proverbs 27:17). That is the principle at work here, and it shows up in measurable ways across decades of marriage research. Personal goals, resilience, and shaping each other for the better all reinforce each other in a happy marriage. Together they show how a happy marriage can fuel personal growth in unusually powerful ways. That alone is a significant reason to invest in the quality of your relationship. #4: Health Benefits of a Happy Marriage High marital satisfaction has measurable positive effects on both physical and mental health. The research finds this happens through several pathways [v]: Lower stress. Couples in a happy, low-conflict marriage tend to experience lower baseline stress, which is associated with lower blood pressure, reduced risk of heart disease, better sleep, greater resistance to illness, and stronger overall mental health. Practical and emotional support. A happy marriage gives you a built-in incentive to take care of yourself physically. Your spouse provides emotional support that buffers against mental health challenges, and rates of depression are lower in happily married couples. Combined resources. Married couples are often more financially stable than single people, which makes preventive care, healthy food, and physical activity more accessible. Higher baseline happiness. Greater day-to-day happiness and life satisfaction are themselves protective against mental health challenges like depression and anxiety. You can see how these factors begin to compound. In a happy marriage, physical health, mental health, financial stability, and emotional support can start reinforcing each other. None of this happens automatically just by getting married. It happens when both spouses invest in keeping the marriage healthy. #3: Longevity There is also a measurable impact on how long you live. When researchers look for the strongest predictors of a long life, the data consistently points back to the same place. Studies link marital satisfaction with longer lifespan and reduced mortality [vi]. This pattern shows up for both husbands and wives. Why? Researchers who looked into this back in 1995 [vii] argued that having a spouse with whom you share a strong bond can encourage healthier choices and more consistent self-care. People living alone often have less incentive to monitor their health and no one to flag concerning patterns. Rates of unhealthy behaviors like smoking and excessive drinking are also higher in unmarried (and unhappily married) people. Being happily married means your spouse will naturally check in on you, encourage healthy behavior, and offer practical support during illness. But it also creates an internal motivation. You take care of yourself because your life is bound up with someone else's, and you do not want to leave them prematurely. The emotional bond drives the physical health behaviors that compound into a longer life. Marital satisfaction also increases happiness and protects against the mental health struggles that themselves increase mortality risk. The link from emotional health to physical longevity is one of the most consistent findings in the literature. #2: Life Satisfaction and Purpose A happy marriage is more than the sum of day-to-day positive moments. It is also one of the strongest predictors of overall life satisfaction [viii]. Life satisfaction refers to whether you believe you have lived your life well, are happy with the choices you have made, and feel hopeful about the future. Pause and think about that. What are you anchoring your sense of a life well-lived on right now? Is it a financial outcome? Launching kids or grandkids into college? Some of those things are noble; some are merely material. The research suggests something else should sit at the core of how you measure your life: a happy marriage. For our readers who hold a Christian view of marriage, this lines up with the picture of marriage as a covenant that mirrors something larger about love and faithfulness, not just a contract for shared logistics. Marital satisfaction is also strongly linked to a sense of purpose and meaning in life. A 1996 study [ix] found that intimacy in marriage is the strongest predictor of both life satisfaction and a sense of meaning. This is one worth a self-check. Are you looking for meaning in the right places? It is easy to get distracted by goals that feel productive but are not actually load-bearing. We see this often in the office. People come in worn down by years of climbing some other ladder, only to realize that the relationships they neglected along the way were the thing that would have made the climb feel worth it. A happy marriage belongs at or very near the top of the list. #1: Happiness (and Its Ripple Effects) This brings us back to where we started. Marital happiness is very strongly linked to overall day-to-day happiness [x], and a good marriage is often considered the strongest single predictor of global happiness. One often-cited 1988 study [xi] collected data on more than 1,500 participants about their overall happiness and their happiness in specific areas, including marriage, work, finances, community, and health. Marital happiness was more strongly linked to overall happiness than any of the other factors studied. That is worth sitting with. Happiness in your marriage moves the needle on your overall happiness more than your job, more than your finances,...

How Much Joy Is in Your Marriage?

Wed, 11 Jul 2018 11:00:52 +0000

It’s hard to kick this episode off without thinking of that old Sunday School song, “I’ve got the joy, joy, joy down in my heart. Where? Down in my heart!” Joy is that feeling of great pleasure and happiness that fills us in a more lasting way than a situational happiness. It’s something we believe can be a huge blessing in marriage so we want to help you figure out how to start increasing the joy you feel today. Joy is considered one of the six "basic emotions", capable of being felt, expressed and recognized by anyone, regardless of culture. In case you were wondering, the others are sadness, anger, fear, surprise and disgust.[i] I call these primary emotions: what they look like may vary from culture to culture: e.g., think of how sadness is expressed in our culture vs. in some African cultures. Ours is fairly reserved and silent wherein some African cultures there is a very vocal, collective wailing when expressing sadness. Yes, there is this primary emotion but it may look different for different cultures. Joy is one of those primary emotions. Happiness vs. Joy Happiness and joy are sometimes thought of as the same. But research, philosophy, and literature often describe happiness as something temporary, to be chased after and experienced, while joy is something deeper and more long lasting[ii]. People often talk about "finding happiness" but being "filled with joy". Happiness is more situational: some things make you happy and some things make you unhappy. Joy is something you carry with you and bring into situations so that you can have joy even in unpleasant circumstances[iii]. One verse in the Bible that really points out the deeper nature of joy is Romans 14:17 "For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” (ESV). I think this underscores the point that it’s not so much a momentary experience … like, wow, that was an awesome supper, but more of an abiding experience that is grounded deep within the human soul. Joy in Your Genes? The depth to which it is rooted in our being is something that has even caught the interest of geneticists. Research shows that there may be a genetic component to long-term happiness. People are said to have "baseline" level of joy determined by their personality, genes or upbringing. Their daily levels of happiness can go up and down from here but will naturally return to this baseline level[iv]. Research also suggests that as much as 50% of your overall level of joy (lifetime happiness) is accounted for by your personality and genetics. Only 10% is related to your circumstances, and 40% is to do with the activities you choose to take part in[v]. I’m not sure how they arrived at those figures but this means that some people will naturally find it easier to experience joy than others. However, it is possible to increase your baseline level of joy, through developing positive personality traits and engaging in activities that increase your happiness, which we’ll look into in a moment. When you do so, your daily variations in happiness will all revolve around this new fixed point. So your happiness levels will be higher regardless of circumstances. In other words, we arrive with a certain baseline but we can still move the needle. And if you could move the needle on your joy starting from today, how would that impact your marriage? Increasing Joy Let’s now look at exactly how you can have more joy in your marriage. There are a few things to consider. Attentiveness Impacts Joy A study in 2000[vi] assessed 43 couples to find out what were the biggest factors affecting their long-term levels of joy. Two of the strongest predictors of joy were: Expressions of fondness Awareness of and attentiveness to the marriage and to the needs of your spouse So those are two great things to start working on in your marriage right away. Friendship Stimulates Joy One of the biggest reasons to be joyful in life is a happy, passionate marriage. A healthy marriage increases joy and life satisfaction overall, but lifelong happiness is twice as high in married couples who are also best friends as it is in other couples[vii]. Day-to-day and lifelong joy are also impacted by your spouse's sense of humor: humor that is playful and benign (ie not sarcastic or mean) and refers to shared experiences can increase levels of joy felt in the marriage[viii]. A study in 1998[ix] found that being involved in work and personal projects which fit with who you are as a person creates a sense of purpose and meaning for your life. This isn't the same as simply doing well in life: it's about working towards things that matter to you personally. This integrity is strongly linked to higher levels of happiness and life satisfaction. The most important aspect of this meaning is consistently being yourself: "Just as a book becomes meaningful when its characters and themes are coherently related, the defining characteristic of personal meaning is consistency among the multifarious elements of the self[x]". They also note that being supported in these goals and personal meaning projects is a strong predictor of life happiness[xi]. So spouses should definitely try to support each other's personal goals and aims, or better yet have shared goals you can work on together. Virtues Impact Joy A study in 2005[xii] found that practicing certain "virtues" or positive mental traits can lead to lifelong contentment and happiness. These include: Forgiveness Gratitude Self-reflection Optimism Those all look like good things to have in your marriage, right? Working on these attributes within your marriage will increase your personal wellbeing, as well as making your marriage much happier. Don't Chase After the Wrong Things Finding joy is also about what you’re not prioritizing and chasing after. Many people think that having more money, more possessions and a better lifestyle will increase the joy in their lives. But does money actually make you happy? Not really. Research shows that lack of money can make it harder to be content in life, but once a basic level of income has been reached, money has no more effect on life satisfaction[xiii]. Increases in wealth can create a temporary boost to happiness but have little effect on lasting joy. Wealth can even become an obstacle to happiness because you quickly get used to the level of money you have and start to desire more, so you end up never being satisfied[xiv]. So it’s a good self-check to make sure we have our sights set on the things that really do impact joy — not just following what the marketing world wants us to think will lead us to joy! What Are the Benefits of a Joy-Filled Marriage? Having more joy in your life is a good thing in itself! But high levels of joy and contentment with your life have a range of other benefits, including[xv]: More friends, more intimate relationships and greater social support (due to being more optimistic, easier to get on with and more fun to be around) Better ability to cooperate and work together Being more productive at work and at home, and higher income Having more energy Having greater self-control Better ability to cope with challenges Stronger immune system and longer lifespan Being more charitable and more willing to put spouse's needs first Joy. Don’t leave home without it. References [i] A. Ortony and T. J. Turner, “What’s Basic about Basic Emotions?,” Psychological Review 97, no. 3 (July 1990): 315–31. [ii] Meylysa Tseng et al., “‘ Searching for Happiness’ or" Full of Joy"? Source Domain Activation Matters,” in Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, vol. 31, 2005, 359–70. [iii] Tseng et al. [iv] Sonja Lyubomirsky, Kennon M. Sheldon, and David Schkade, “Pursuing Happiness: The Architecture of Sustainable Change.,” Review of General Psychology 9, no. 2 (2005): 111–31, https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.9.2.111. [v] Lyubomirsky, Sheldon, and Schkade. [vi] Alyson Fearnley Shapiro, John M. Gottman, and Sybil Carrere, “The Baby and the Marriage: Identifying Factors That Buffer against Decline in Marital Satisfaction after the First Baby Arrives,” Journal of Family Psychology 14, no. 1 (March 2000): 59–70. [vii] Shawn Grover and John Helliwell, “How’s Life at Home? New Evidence on Marriage and the Set Point for Happiness” (Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, December 2014), https://doi.org/10.3386/w20794. [viii] Melissa Johari, “Humour and Marital Quality: Is Humour Style Associated with Marital Success?,” Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive), January 1, 2004, https://scholars.wlu.ca/etd/170. [ix] I. McGregor and B. R. Little, “Personal Projects, Happiness, and Meaning: On Doing Well and Being Yourself,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74, no. 2 (February 1998): 494–512. [x] McGregor and Little. [xi] McGregor and Little. [xii] Lyubomirsky, Sheldon, and Schkade, “Pursuing Happiness: The Architecture of Sustainable Change.” [xiii] Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Reprint edition (London: Penguin, 2012). [xiv] Richard A. Easterlin, “Explaining Happiness,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 100, no. 19 (September 16, 2003): 11176–83, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1633144100. [xv] Lyubomirsky, Sheldon, and Schkade, “Pursuing Happiness: The Architecture of Sustainable Change.”

What To Do When Your Spouse Has Been Sexually Abused

Wed, 04 Jul 2018 11:00:20 +0000

There’s no doubt in 2018 that sexual abuse is a real issue and also one that is not uncommon. 16% of men and 25% of women have experienced some form of sexual abuse[i]. While a lot of the focus in recent months has been on bringing perpetrators to justice, what about the impact of sexual abuse on married life? Not only that, but how can you facilitate the healing and wholeness of your spouse if he or she has been sexually abused? As a society, we’re getting better at talking about sexual abuse and recognizing it as a serious issue that impacts a huge number of men and women. But the impact of sexual abuse on a person doesn’t go away once the perpetrator has been caught. Abuse carries on affecting a person for their entire lives and can impact all future relationships the abuse survivor forms, including their marriage. How Sexual Abuse Affects a Person I think it is important to talk about this part because there may be some of our readers who either know their spouse has been sexually abused but don’t really see exactly what the impact is, or maybe they see signs of sexual abuse but don’t know what the underlying wound is. Perhaps this may open a conversation that could help your spouse on their healing journey. A study in 2005[ii] studied a sample of 9000 American adults and found that prior sexual abuse as a child increased the risk of several issues in adulthood: Increased risk of alcohol problems: 19% of abuse survivors compared to 12% of normal population Increased risk of substance/drug abuse: 24% compared to 16% Suicide attempts: 4.1% compared to 1.5% Depression: 11.8% compared to 7.9% These effects are similar for both men and women: sexual abuse increases your likelihood of experiencing all of these issues. What I hope you see is that the increase over normal population validates the severe emotional distress that sexual abuse brings. Of course, the good news is that healing is possible. Even though history cannot be rewritten, it is possible to recover from the trauma of sexual abuse. Let’s look at some specific issues and behaviors that are often signs of sexual abuse. Helplessness and Sexual Abuse Helplessness is a very real impact that comes from sexual abuse. Experiencing sexual abuse is a traumatic situation over which a person often has no control. Or at least, they don’t have the adult wisdom and knowledge to have said “No” back when they were a child. The person may then learn a sense of helplessness which affects their expectations and judgment for years to come[iii]. Helplessness and perceived lack of control over your life can lead to alcohol and substance dependency, and are also a cause of (and symptom of) mental illness such as depression. Other Kinds of Trauma If childhood sexual abuse occurs in conjunction with others traumatic events in childhood, such as physical violence, neglect or being taken into institutional care, these all dramatically increase the risk factors for mental illness over and above what these factors individually would cause[iv]. How Past Sexual Abuse Affects Marriage I want to be careful when going through these issues. There’s a fine line between acknowledging the impact and, from that, honoring the difficult journey that survivors face versus really pathologizing all the effects of sexual abuse and making the survivor really feel like they are damaged goods. I guess in light of this I would say that we are all broken. While the abuse was not your fault and should not have happened, healing is your choice and something that you can make happen. So we acknowledge the past but also really want to honor the healing ability and resilience of survivors as well. Perhaps you are seeing some of these effects in your marriage. If so, think about what you might want to do to help yourself overcome these challenges and create a new chapter in your story that celebrates victory and healing. Marital Quality Research in 2005[v] found that childhood sexual abuse can increase the risk of marital problems as an adult: 7.8% of abuse survivors were experiencing marriage problems at the time they filled in the research questionnaire, compared to 4.6% of the normal population. Note this was only investigating current marital problems, so rates of having some kind of marital problems during the whole length of the marriage may be higher. Even so, it’s not like every person who endures abuse ends up in a struggling marriage. So don’t feel like you have to be experiencing these things or that you should necessarily expect them. Others have reported that survivors of abuse may experience lower marital satisfaction, lower stability (higher likelihood of divorce), higher rates of conflict and hostility, and higher levels of mistrust and feat of their spouse[vi]. Abused men/women may also find it hard to confide in their spouse and be vulnerable with them, leading to low intimacy. Sex Research suggests prior sexual abuse can affect current sexual functioning in one of two ways[vii]: Increased high-risk sexual behaviors, such as having lots of sex partners, being less likely to use contraception, and higher likelihood of taking part in prostitution Reduced sexual satisfaction: arousal disorders, difficulty/inability to orgasm Again, there’s help in both of those areas by seeing a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist or by seeing a sex therapist. Spouse Selection Past sexual abuse may also affect the kinds of partners an abuse survivor seeks out. Survivors of sexual abuse were more likely to marry an alcoholic than those who had never experienced abuse (12.5% of sample compared to 7.9%)[viii]. Moreover, women abused as children are much more likely to later be psychically or sexually abused by their husbands (49% of women abused as children, compared to 18% of general population)[ix]. That’s evidence of what we call traumatic reenactment, where the survivor recreates past scenarios in an attempt feel some greater agency or power in them, not realizing that s/he is taking his/her brokenness and actually breaking it some more. That’s hard to acknowledge but it is also something that a person can heal from and find new ways to feel a strengthened sense of self-efficacy or self-determination that are adaptive and wholesome. Parenting Sexual abuse as a child can lead to women viewing themselves as worse parents, and can also lead to more use of physical punishment when your children misbehaves[x]. So it is possible sometimes that the pain of abuse can be passed on to little ones. How Does Sexual Abuse Translate Into Marriage Challenges? Having looked at some of the ways sexual abuse impacts marriage, it is also useful to think about how those impacts are realized. What are the connections? Why does this happen? Learned Behavior Past trauma teaches people certain habits and ways of relating to people, which can impact the way they act and inform the people they choose to interact with. Survivors of childhood sexual abuse may be unconsciously drawn to find a spouse who will repeat these same cycles of abuse. Psychological Trauma Abuse may negatively impact a person's self-esteem and sense of control over their life, such that they see themselves as deserving of further abuse and as unable to prevent it. These are very subtle beliefs that may be active in guiding the survivor’s choices as an adult. Trust Being abused by a family member or other close individual is an extreme betrayal of trust- the abused person will then find it extremely hard to trust people in the future. This lack of trust often leads to emotional distancing or even defensiveness and outright hostility in all future relationships, including marriage[xi]. Just to be clear here: we are talking about how abuse impacts marriage. We are not talking about a permanent disability. Just acknowledging the impact and if you are reading as a survivor I want you to know there is hope and healing from the wounds of sexual abuse, so that even for something like trust, you can learn to gain the skills to know who you can trust and who is safe so that you can safely and wisely let your guard down when it should be down. Attachment Being abused by close family members as a child impairs the attachment bond those children are able to make. Children learn that those closest to them are capable of doing terrible harm to them and this becomes their expectation for all future relationships. Because they see abusive relationships as normal or as a "blueprint" for how relationships are supposed to function, they often end up choosing partners who conform to these expectations. Resiliency Factors for Survivors Now let’s look at some of the ways you can deal with all of this. Many survivors of sexual abuse go on to thrive in adult life: having healthy relationships, successful careers and well-adjusted personalities. A study in 2007[xii] identified several "resilience factors" which helped abuse survivors to recover and thrive: Ability to find emotional support outside the family, as well as within High self-esteem and the ability to think well of oneself Faith or spirituality External attribution of blame- believing the abuse was not their fault Internal locus of control (defined this in episode on assertiveness) So for spouses married to abuse survivors this gives them a good list of ways to help: providing emotional support, help with building self-esteem, engaging with faith together, helping survivors deal with issues of blame and encouraging them to feel in control of their lives. Pay Attention to Attachment A study in 1999[xiii] found that attachment style mediated the link between childhood sexual abuse and mental distress in later life. Attachment style accounted for almost of all of the effects of sexual abuse. Abuse as a child is likely to create an insecure attachment style,...

When Your Spouse Is a Chronic Liar

Wed, 27 Jun 2018 11:00:41 +0000

We have a tough topic today — and unfortunately, it’s also one that is all too common. What do you do when your spouse is a chronic liar? Well, we are going to try to come to this topic with accountability and compassion because trust is so vital to creating a happy marriage. What is Pathological Lying? There are a few terms that get used interchangeably here: compulsive lying, chronic lying, and pathological lying. Like some other psychological terms it can get thrown around too loosely. Somebody lies to you a couple times and it upsets you and you call them a pathological liar: that may not be an accurate assessment. But when you have frequent, compulsive telling of lies and false stories[i] this is a pathological lying disorder. Typically the lies told have three features: Continuous: the lies are told regardless of context or who is being spoken to, without any apparent benefit or motive and no thought of potential consequences Impulsive: the lies are not necessarily intended to manipulate people or gain anything. The person simply sees an opportunity to lie and does so. Compulsive: lies are often told automatically without any conscious decision. Those are a pretty serious set of criteria. That’s why I say we use the label too freely: there’s a much lower level of lying that is still problematic but strictly speaking, pathological lying should have all these components. Along with this you’ll often see that the compulsive liar, when challenged about his or her lies, may attempt to downplay what was said or may try to get out of it by telling more lies. They often get caught up in a web of increasingly unrealistic lies. It’s also helpful to know that someone who is a pathological liar may be mentally well adjusted in every other way, or they may have other difficulties such s personality disorders (especially narcissistic personality disorder), ADHD or memory problems[ii]. What Makes A Chronic Liar? Let’s talk about some possible causes. Not for the purpose of justifying the behaviour or asking you to be OK with it, but just to create a little compassion and hopefully even some possible treatment strategies. Brain Functioning and Lying Serious forms of chronic lying may be due to differences at the brain level. Neuroimaging of patients who show compulsive lying reveals impairments to the prefrontal cortex[iii]. These impairments could be caused by head injury, degenerative diseases, infection, epilepsy, or be present from birth. This impairment affects two important mental processes: Executive Functioning The first process, executive functioning, is about the ability to control and monitor your own thoughts, as well as control impulses and organize yourself Problems with executive functioning may look like difficulty with controlling the impulse to lie. If your executive functioning is intact, when the cop pulls you over you may be tempted to lie to him or her but your executive function kicks in and you realize, no my kids are in the car, I need to be truthful and do some good role modelling here. If your executive function is impaired you might not ever get out in front of that initial impulse. Sometimes people get upset with me when I point out the possible physiological basis for these kinds of issues — am I trying to excuse or to minimize something that is morally wrong? No, I am not. But if the person cannot stop and sincerely wants to stop and all you are doing to try to motivate them to stop is using moralistic interventions (impressing them with how wrong it is, how God hates lies, and Satan is the father of lies)... that’s all true but it is not going to actually help them stop if there’s a head injury. They need a different approach to try to achieve the same outcome. Although the symptoms are a moral issue, the cause may not be a purely moral problem: it could potentially be physiological as well (e.g., due to a brain injury). Theory of Mind The second process, known as theory of mind, is the ability to see that other people are conscious beings like you, along with the ability to view things from another person's perspective. Normally this develops in childhood and from then on you are aware that other people are living things with different thoughts and perspectives to your own. Impaired theory of mind can cause people to tell elaborate or unrealistic lies since they are unable to see that other people will instantly be able to prove what they are saying is false. These lies are often continued over a period of years. For example, a study in 2005[iv] mentions a man who swore under oath in court that he had taken part in covert operations for the CIA in Africa and had been awarded the Purple Heart Medal during the Vietnam War, none of which was true and was easily proven false. The man simply had no ability to control his impulse to lie, even under such serious circumstances, and no ability to see that from an outside perspective the lie was ridiculous. So you have these two mental processes: executive functioning and theory of mind. Impairments to the executive functioning cause a person to have difficulty controlling their impulses to lie while damage to your theory of mind causes an inability to see the effects of lying on other people. Difficulty distinguishing reality from fabrication may also result, and many pathological liars also suffer from some form of delusions, where they actually come to believe their lies to be true[v] (Dike, 2010). It Could Be a Lying Habit Another possible contributor to chronic lying is habits. Like many behaviors, lying can become a habit. Many children lie or invent elaborate fantasies as part of their games, or to avoid getting into trouble. If they are constantly rewarded for this (with attention, with entertainment or with escaping punishment) then it may form a habit which persists into adulthood. A study into chronic lying in 2010[vi] argues that a lying habit can be formed from the "reward" of simply telling a lie and getting away with it. For example a study in 2007[vii] describes a case of a 20 year old man who as a child "used to enjoy making fools of children in his locality and his neighbors about various matters; like telling his neighbor that officials from the electricity board are coming to check their meters for complaints of stealing electricity." As he became older the lies become more elaborate and started to include acts of fraud. So in this case lying for attention and for the fun of it was a mental habit that the man never grew out of. And once it’s established in your brain’s pathways it can be tough to break out of it. Trauma and Guilt Can Foster Lying Some pathological liars use their lies as a means to escape from stressful or unpleasant life circumstances or to avoid dealing with past trauma[viii]. They often then experience high levels of guilt about using lies to escape from reality, and so on some unconscious level start to believe their lies to be true, so as to stop feeling guilty. To understand this you have to really focus on the trauma piece. Think perhaps about a child who is experiencing trauma: severe, overwhelming, inescapable distress. A violent father. A chaotic home environment full of unmanageability and unpredictability. Or even a reasonable home but a series of traumatic hospital visits. One coping mechanism is dissociation: removing yourself from your body and becoming a spectator of your pain rather than a participant in it. That is taking a step back from reality. See how lying could fit into that as a dissociative coping mechanism? Or, perhaps the child felt very unsafe for some reason. He or she had to learn to self-preserve by becoming a good liar. Now the child is programming lying into his or her fight-flight-freeze response and so it becomes an impulsive, automatic response from their central nervous system. Then lying becomes nearly as instant and thoughtless a reaction as an increased heart rate. Trauma can help create this for sure. Anxiety and Lying This is sad. Compulsive lying disorder can also come from anxiety and low self-esteem. If a person thinks they are worthless or unimportant and fears being judged, they may get into the habit of lying to avoid having to be vulnerable and actually open up about themselves. So the lying comes to serve a protective function. Is There Hope for Chronic Liars? Yes, I believe there is. If they want help. However, there is a paucity of research on the topic. But let’s look at what we did find and also what I’ve seen in my clinical experience. Here’s one study which is a qualitative study so it has just one participant. However, in that study[ix], they found that treatment with both an antidepressant and therapy was effective in reducing compulsive lying behavior. This was apparent after 6 months of treatment. Also, if you see some of the items above: anxiety, low self-esteem, trauma, etc. and you take those core issues to a therapist who can address them then through healing those issues you may find you no longer need lying as part of your protective stance in life. The people I see who struggle with this actually feel really bad about their lies and they want to give their spouse the experience of them being a safe, trustworthy person. So if you are willing to do this deeper work I would certainly hold a lot of hope. Response Conditioning One aspect of the treatment in the study I just referenced was a kind of conditioning where patients were repeatedly told of the negative consequences of being caught lying (e.g., humiliation, losing their friends or being fired etc). Over time the compulsive liar learns to associate lying with this fear of negative consequences, and so learns to better control their impulses. There’s a connection that is made in the brain between the consequence and the impulse. This is something that I would certainly use brain spotting for in

How to Increase the Love You Feel Towards Your Spouse

Wed, 20 Jun 2018 11:00:00 +0000

Today’s topic is like a coin: one object with two sides. In this episode one side of the coin is increasing the love and the other side of the coin is increasing (or becoming more aware of) “the feel” of love. It’s not only deepening our love but become more aware of how and when we actually are aware of that feeling in our bodies. Who doesn’t want to feel more love in their life? In many marriages love becomes a fact, rather than a feeling: you know you love your spouse but you don’t feel it especially often. And that’s good: love should definitely be more than just a gooey feeling. But wouldn’t it be nice to have more of the feeling too? Learning to Label Love Let’s look at what happens when we experience emotions. Feeling emotions such as love happens in two steps. These are usually subconscious steps: Experiencing the sensations and bodily experiences. Don’t forget that a feeling is called that because you feel it. Sometimes it’s helpful to say it like this: love is an emotion. When you experience that emotion, you know you are experiencing it because you feel it in your body. Otherwise how would you know you are experiencing that emotion? It has to register in the body as a feeling. That then is your felt emotion. Next, you have to interpret and label that bodily sensation as a specific emotion. Usually, you do that based on the context and also based on starting to build a history of when you have experienced that bodily sensation before. So when I first meet with clients who are not very aware of their own emotions I often will ask, “What are you feeling in your body?” They’ll describe it very physically: tightness in my chest; tension in my neck; warm spot right here. Then I’ll ask, “And when have you felt that in the past?” The gears will start to turn and pretty soon we’ve started to catalog our feelings and become aware of them. This happens for both positive and negative emotions. So someone who starts to shake or experiences a rise in their heart rate when seeing a spider would interpret this as fear. Or someone who feels happiness and a warm glow when in the presence of their spouse will experience this as love for that person. So in order to increase feelings of love for your spouse you need to both experience the sensations, and then label them as love for your spouse. Let’s look at each step. Experiencing Love Experiencing positive emotions in the company of your spouse will cause you to feel more in love with them. Makes sense! This can include pretty much any kind of positive experience, such as[i]: Shared leisure activities Sex New and exciting experiences Romantic gestures Acts of kindness Having your emotional needs met It is good to pause and consider a list like that: notice those are behaviors. Feelings like love are often triggered by what we do, rather than what we think. How many of those do you extend to your spouse as part of your regular interactions? Those are positive experiences towards love. Note that you can also have negative experiences or emotions related to love too. Feelings of jealousy or rejection or frustration can also lead to feelings of love towards someone[ii]. If a clerk in a store brushes you off you may not be rattled, but if your spouse does this, a strong negative response on your part will likely (to some degree) indicate something of the fact that you care for your spouse. I have said to husbands in counseling: do you hear her getting louder? She is raising her voice because you really matter to her. If she truly did not care, she would not even bother with the effort. Putting Words to Love So if you are able to label love and to identify when you are experiencing it then the next important piece is to put words to it. Often, we say “I love you” reflexively or contextually rather than experientially. Meaning I say it because you just said it to me, or did something obvious to generate it. That’s not wrong. But it’s not a truly felt expression. It’s still really good — I’m not saying you’re faking it but just want us to notice how nuanced this can be. Sometimes we also say it contextually: it is the right thing to say in that moment. Again, I’m not finding fault. But we also want to learn to say it experientially: that is a beautiful thing too. Saying “I love you” as an acknowledgment of the felt experience of that moment. Being able to express that love is important in feeling it and believing it to be true. And you can bet your spouse will be able to tell when you say “I love you” and really feel it. Let’s be real: labeling emotions properly can sometimes be hard, especially for complex, sometimes turbulent emotions like love[iii]. Men often struggle with this more than women: I know it took me a long time to figure this out. But simply noticing when you feel positively about your spouse and verbally expressing this as love can help you get better at recognizing the feeling and help you experience it more strongly[iv]. Your Ability to Feel Love Everyone has the capacity to feel love. But it does come more easily to some of us. Some personal characteristics or traits can affect your ability to feel love. These include[v]: Self-perception: not thinking of yourself as a romantic or loving person reduces your capacity to feel love: both because you DO less romantic things and partly because your mind will feel love less strongly. You might consider thinking about that as a limiting belief you hold and if you want to retain that self-imposed constraint. Self-esteem: similarly, thinking that you are not lovable or not worthy of love will reduce your willingness to feel love, out of a fear of rejection. It is a way of protecting your own sense of fragility. Upbringing and past experiences: being raised in a family where love was talked about a lot and seen as a good thing will make it easier for you to identify, and experience love. Being raised in a family with an absence of love, or negative past experiences such as being betrayed by someone you loved, will reduce your willingness and capacity to feel love. Increasing Intimacy Creates More Passionate Love So let’s turn to some specific ways of increasing the love that’s being felt in your marriage. A study in 1999[vi] found that feelings of passionate love are highest while intimacy is increasing. So when intimacy is stable (whether high or low), passionate love may be low. But while intimacy is increasing passion becomes higher. So making a real effort to increase intimacy will lead to higher feelings of love. You’re probably wondering, well how do we increase intimacy? Common methods for increasing intimacy could include[vii]: Openness and disclosure Sex (please do not just focus on this alone!) Supportiveness Togetherness (thinking of yourselves as "we" rather than "I" and making choices for the benefit of both rather than one) You’ll find plenty of tips for raising intimacy by going back through our episodes here on Only You Forever. Let’s unpack that first one (disclosure) a little more because that’s a super tool for increasing intimacy. Individual and Joint Disclosure Increases Love Sharing your honest thoughts and emotions with your spouse increases intimacy, which increases feelings of love, especially if your spouse is good at responding to and affirming the emotions you disclose[viii]. That last bit is important: if your spouse is sharing their heart with you, really make an effort to listen, understand and validate what they’re saying. Here’s an interesting piece of research too. Think about a double date or think about those times when you’ve talked about your relationship with another couple. A study in 2014[ix] found that asking couples to discuss their relationship with another couple increased the feelings of love the spouses felt for each other. This effect was mediated by how responsive the other couple is to your disclosures. So having other couple friends who are good at listening to and supporting you can actually increase the love you feel as a married couple. How cool is that? Spend Time Together to Foster Love Spending time together increases intimacy and can increase feelings of love[x]. This is true of shared leisure and having exciting new experiences together, but is also true of sharing "quiet company[xi]" together. Simply being together and relaxing in each other's company is a great way to increase intimacy, leading to higher feelings of love. In fact simply making eye contact has been shown to increase feelings of passionate love. A study in 1989[xii] found that spending two minutes looking into each other's eyes increased couples reported feelings of passionate love towards each other. But then again, looking into someone’s eyes like that is an act of intimacy in itself too. Feeling Love and Being Loved Finally, let’s look at how reciprocal this love thing really is. Research in 2005[xiii] interviewed 81 people about what causes them to fall in love or feel loved. The most commonly reported cause of increases to your own feelings of love was receiving love and positive feelings from your partner. So feelings of love are reciprocal, which means that working on being a loving spouse will cause your spouse to love you more, which causes you to love them more. That’s pretty cool again that you can influence your spouse’s feelings of love just through your own initiative. Once again, I know we have given you some hope for your marriage! Keep working on feeling that love! It’s a beautiful thing... References [i] Ted L. Huston, Foundations of Interpersonal Attraction (Elsevier, 2013). [ii] Huston. [iii] Huston. [iv] Huston. [v] Huston. [vi] Roy F. Baumeister and Ellen Bratslavsky, “Passion, Intimacy, and Time: Passionate Love as a Function of Change in Intimacy,...

The Art and Science of Hugging

Wed, 13 Jun 2018 11:00:48 +0000

What is a hug without the squeeze? In America, they’ll tell you that’s like apple pie without the cheese. We prefer ice cream with our pie but we definitely like our hugs with the right amount of squeeze. Turns out, however, that hugging has been studied fairly carefully in the research! Hugging is Old School The word "hug" originates from the Saxon word "hog" meaning "to be tender to" and the old Norse word "höggva", meaning "to catch or seize[i]". Hugging has been around at least since Biblical times, for example brothers Jacob and Esau hugging when reunited in the book of Genesis. It is not just a modern phenomenon but something that is a long-standing part of human history. We’re going to have some fun and some research with this subject today — let’s look at some fun facts related to hugging. Fun Facts Tree Hugging Turns out there are some cultures who believe that hugging trees can help restore your body and mind. In remote areas of Finland, hugging snow-covered trees is used as a kind of meditation or spiritual practice to connect with nature. This is now becoming a tourist trade where people travel into the wilderness to hug trees. Not my idea of a romantic getaway, but whatever works for you. National Hugging Day January 21st is National Hugging day in the US and other countries, founded in 1986 to promote healthy expression of emotion. I’m going to have to mark that one down on my calendar. Self Hug Machines Got no-one to hug you? Never fear — science has your back. The "Sense Roid" is a recently invented machine that recreates the sensation of being hugged using a mannequin with pressure receptors and a jacket with artificial muscles that constrict to give the sensation of being hugged. The idea behind it was that hugs are better when you are hugging someone you are intimate with, and who are you more intimate with than yourself? So now you can get the benefits of hugging without needing other people. Maybe. Should You Hug Dogs? Good question. Research shows that while many pet owners like hugging their pets, most animals don't appreciate it. For example 8 out of 10 dogs show signs of distress when hugged, as it restrains them and prevents them from being able to get away. I guarantee that every dog owner reading this is now thinking “well my dog is obviously one of the 2 out of 10 who loves hugs!” Cultural Rules Hugging as a greeting varies a lot between cultures. In some places a hug with one or more kisses is the normal greeting for friends and acquaintance, in some countries any kind of physical touch would be an offence. In some countries such as France the rules on an appropriate greeting even vary between cities. Some examples (from most to least contact): Paris: Hug and four kisses Netherlands, Switzerland, Brittany: hug and three kisses Spain, Austria: hug and two kisses Belgium: one kiss Germany, Italy, UK, America: hug with close friends/family only Thailand, Japan: no physical contact. Just a bow! Got all that? Good. Don’t want to look like an idiot going in for too many kisses. Ok, let’s move on to the actual science of what makes hugging great. The Science of Hugging Hugging Releases Oxytocin Oxytocin is the brain's "love hormone" which creates attachment between spouses and increases feelings of affection, empathy and bonding. Oxytocin is released through hugging[ii]. Meaning that hugs don’t just feel great, they work to strengthen the bond between you and your spouse. Hugging Activates Pressure Receptors There are pressure receptors all over the body which respond to physical touch. When those receptors are gently activated by hugging, they prompt chemical changes in the brain such as reducing the stress hormone cortisol increasing endorphins and serotinin, as well as lowering heart rate and blood pressure[iii]. Very cool. Hugging Promotes Support and Belonging As well as these chemical changes there are more conscious psychological benefits to hugging. A hug helps your spouse feel cared for and valued, increasing your intimacy and promoting a sense of belonging. This is built into our minds from childhood through the physical contact we receive from our parents. Hugs can also be good ways to express emotions, such as gratitude, sympathy or affection. Together these factors create a huge range of benefits to regular hugs, including[iv]: Stress relief Improved immune system Pain relief Reduced symptoms of depression Reduced blood pressure Reduced feelings of fear, isolation and tension Enhanced self-esteem Muscle relaxation These benefits are felt for both the giver and receiver of the hug! Relational Benefits of Hugging A study from 2003[v] found that regular hugging was linked to: Greater relationship satisfaction Higher satisfaction with your spouse Greater feelings of love and affection Increased trust Improved conflict resolution ability Now remember the correlation vs causation — but hey, I’ll take any excuse to have people hug more! But: did you know that frequency and duration are important? Hugging: How Often and How Long? A study in 2008[vi] found that single instances of hugs or other forms of physical touch do not reliably produce these benefits. Similarly another study in 2005[vii] found that women who regularly hugged their husbands had higher levels of oxytocin and lower blood pressure than women who spent 10 minutes hugging in the research lab and were then measured for oxytocin levels right after. So the positive effects of hugging "are more powerfully enhanced by the cumulative effect of regular and repeated warm touch rather than a single exposure.[viii]". In other words, you have to build this into your daily interactions as a couple. But what if you guys haven’t been doing this or if you just aren’t great huggers? Maybe it was awkward in your family of origin or maybe even uncomfortable or inappropriate in the past and that has made you shy away from this. Well, we want you to respect your own body and your spouse’s but if your spouse is a safe person this is something that you can learn to do well. And this could become a very healing experience for you as well. That study from 2008[ix] also found that the benefits of hugging and intimate physical touch could be taught. The experiment taught participants about the chemical changes caused by touch, and asked them to practice warm physical touch (hugging, basic massaging while talking and affirming their love for each other) for 30 minutes 4 times a week. Participants who completed these exercises showed higher levels of oxytocin and lower blood pressure throughout the following days and weeks. This just goes to show that intimate physical touch is effective in helping couples remain happy and stress-free during day to day life. And even if you’re not naturally good at it, you can learn. If you haven’t been real strong in the hugging department we’d love for you to try this out and let us know how it goes! References [i] Lena M. Forsell and Jan A. Åström, “Meanings of Hugging: From Greeting Behavior to Touching Implications,” Comprehensive Psychology 1 (January 1, 2012): 02.17.21.CP.1.13, https://doi.org/10.2466/02.17.21.CP.1.13. [ii] Kathleen C. Light, Karen M. Grewen, and Janet A. Amico, “More Frequent Partner Hugs and Higher Oxytocin Levels Are Linked to Lower Blood Pressure and Heart Rate in Premenopausal Women,” Biological Psychology 69, no. 1 (2005): 5–21. [iii] Tiffany Field, “Touch for Socioemotional and Physical Well-Being: A Review,” Developmental Review 30 (December 1, 2010): 367–83, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2011.01.001. [iv] Field; Forsell and Åström, “Meanings of Hugging.” [v] Andrew K. Gulledge, Michelle H. Gulledge, and Robert F. Stahmannn, “Romantic Physical Affection Types and Relationship Satisfaction,” The American Journal of Family Therapy 31, no. 4 (July 2003): 233–42, https://doi.org/10.1080/01926180390201936. [vi] Julianne Holt-Lunstad, Wendy A. Birmingham, and Kathleen C. Light, “Influence of a ‘Warm Touch’ Support Enhancement Intervention among Married Couples on Ambulatory Blood Pressure, Oxytocin, Alpha Amylase, and Cortisol,” Psychosomatic Medicine 70, no. 9 (2008): 976–85. [vii] Light, Grewen, and Amico, “More Frequent Partner Hugs and Higher Oxytocin Levels Are Linked to Lower Blood Pressure and Heart Rate in Premenopausal Women.” [viii] Holt-Lunstad, Birmingham, and Light, “Influence of a ‘Warm Touch’ Support Enhancement Intervention among Married Couples on Ambulatory Blood Pressure, Oxytocin, Alpha Amylase, and Cortisol.” [ix] Holt-Lunstad, Birmingham, and Light.

What is Love Addiction?

Wed, 06 Jun 2018 11:00:35 +0000

Today’s episode is going to be one that will be a complete light-bulb moment for some of our listeners... or else more of a fascinating-and-helpful but not especially relevant episode for many others. Love addiction is a real issue in some marriages, often with devastating consequences. What makes it particularly tricky to understand is that it’s like normal love between couples, but stuck in that early infatuation stage. Love Addiction I don’t know if you’re like me but I like being in love. A lot. With Verlynda. And you hear the term “love addiction” and it’s easy to think — whoa? I might have that! But love addiction isn’t the strong, committed, healthy and life-giving love that married couples pursue. It’s really about being addicted to or obsessing over falling in love and the “rush” of new relationships. People with love addiction constantly chase the excitement, romance and passion of the first stages of a romantic relationship. And then when this initial intense pleasure wears off, they become less interested in maintaining the relationship and often leave in hopes of recapturing that intense passion with someone else. The brain has to make sense of this, of course. So love addicts will often believe that what they are searching for is true love, and so they hope to find a spouse with whom they can maintain these intense feelings of romantic love forever. However, since the brain is not wired for this, this is an unachievable outcome. Consequently, if they choose to stay in a relationship, love addicts will become dissatisfied and may possibly go to extreme lengths to try and recapture the “magic” of the early relationship stages. Research estimates that between 5 and 10% of the adult population suffer from love addiction to some degree[i]. The High of Love Feelings of romantic love in the first stages of a relationship release chemical such as dopamine and adrenaline in the brain. This creates feelings of intense pleasure and energy as well as sexual arousal. These are the same chemicals released during sex and when abusing drugs such as cocaine and heroin[ii]. Romantic love activates the unconscious reward system in the brain. This motivates a person to want to keep experiencing more. It also causes people to intensely focus their attention on the source of the pleasure (in this case the romantic partner). It also creates feelings of obsession and a desire to pursue the partner[iii]. Please understand: this is part of normal, healthy love in the development of a new relationship. Being totally infatuated with your partner and desiring to spend time with them is a good thing, right? It is not a problem in itself. It only becomes a problem when a person chases these feelings and views them as more important than the relationship itself. If you end up exclusively pursuing the intense feelings of passion, arousal and excitement that come at the start of a relationship, then the chemical processes of love can create behavior cycles very similar to other forms of addiction where the addict gets hooked on the rush of feel-good chemicals. They come to see romance and love as the only ways they can experience this feeling. Of course, this could be a subconscious realization. Typically the intense stage of romantic love only lasts up to 18 months before being replaced with the less intense "companionate love". So continually chasing this feeling and being dependant on it leads to very unhealthy, immature relationships, or to the person repeatedly breaking off their relationships in search of new ones. When Love Addiction is Harmful Some researchers argue that even normal, healthy love has a lot of similarities to addiction[iv]. Love produces feelings of intense pleasure, motivates a person to keep seeking contact with the source of this pleasure (the other person), can create feelings of obsession and can cause feelings of sadness when the object of your desire is not available. This probably sounds familiar to a lot of people. And all of this is very similar to patterns found in addiction. Now: there’s no need to freak out here. This only becomes harmful when it interferes with the person or their partner's well-being or safety. Some signs that love has become a harmful addiction include: Desire for love interfering with your ability to function in everyday life Desire for love interferes with your ability to form healthy relationships Desire for love causes you to ignore other basic health and wellbeing needs If you feel a great deal of anxiety or distress when you are not with your spouse You find yourself creating possessive or abusive behaviors You begin to see negative consequences such as poor mental health, breakdown of relationships with friends/family, loss of interest in anything else or relationship instability for either the addict or their partner Don’t take those signs out of context or alone — be thoughtful in your application of this. The last point there as an example could apply to all sorts of different potential root issues. So to clarify further, let’s look at some of the common characteristics of a love addict’s relationships. Characteristics of a Love Addict’s Relationships Relationships where one (or both) partners are love addicts are likely to be[v]: Lacking in intimacy and trust due to being solely focused on romance and not on companionate love Clingy, suspicious and jealous Manipulative Using sex as a substitute for love - desiring or initiating sex with the hope of receiving love Likely to resort to extreme lengths to get the fix of chemicals caused by love: addict will often view this as trying to "fix" the relationship Highly unstable - the addict partner may simply leave when the passionate love fades High likelihood of affairs- to meet the need for excitement and romance which it's not possible to sustain in a long-term marriage Attachment, Rejection and Trauma Let’s talk about possible causes of love addiction. Maybe you are wondering, why am I doing this? Or you have a spouse who appears to be a love addict and you are looking for some way to make sense of how they found themselves in this place. Love addiction is sometimes linked to insecure attachment and attachment disorder. We’ve talked about attachment in the past — attachment is the science of love. Insecure attachment is one type of attachment that is born from how our own parents or primary caregivers showed love to us as babies and toddlers. Growing up with insecure attachment can lead to the obsessive feelings, dependency and intense need for love and acceptance that can cause someone to become addicted to feelings of love. Love addiction can lead to very unhealthy relationships based solely on trying to maintain feelings of passion at the expense of trust and intimacy. Research suggests that some people who develop love addiction do so as a way of coping with past trauma (such as a previous abusive relationship, or experiencing abuse from parents as a child). The love addict uses their relationship as a way to "reenact" and relive the trauma they experienced in an attempt to heal unresolved wounds. As such they may continually seek out emotionally unavailable or even abusive partners to try and meet their need for love and approval. Research shows that being rejected in love still creates feelings of addiction in the same way that mutual requited love does. Being rejected or thinking about a former partner you still love activates the same reward and obsession areas in the brain, while triggering both happy and sad memories and creating feelings of intense longing[vi]. For a love addict, being rejected or breaking up with partners continues to feed the cycle of addiction, even as it creates intense distress and unhappiness. This is worth noting too since the breakup can be part of the addiction (instead of just focusing on the pursuit of love). Treatment for Love Addicts This isn’t something that’s going to just go away. Love addiction should be treated by a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist. This is a specialization for those of us working in the field of sex addiction. First the addict needs to admit that they have this issue and commit to getting help. Treatment involves breaking the habits and cycles of addiction, and then "picking up the pieces" of the relationship and the addict's life[vii]. There are various treatment methods and approaches, some of which are similar to treatment for other addictions, such as the twelve step model. As part of getting help, addicts may also need to treat the underlying issues such as attachment disorder, past trauma, negative self-worth and beliefs, or any other painful issues which the person is using love addiction to avoid facing. Really diving into these issues and pursuing deeper healing helps to break the back of this addiction and free you up to enjoy healthy love. One specific issue of treating love addiction is that the addict may fear that once treated, they will be unable to experience the thrills and excitement of love anymore. The addict's spouse can help with this by showing them that healthy, long-term love is always better than the unrealistic fantasy of love addiction. Really if you’re focusing solely on the superficial rush of chemicals then you’re missing out on a lot of what proper love has to offer. Couples can then move from an "immature" love based solely on the chemicals in the brain, to a "mature" love based on trust, commitment and intimacy[viii]. We talk quite a bit more about the difference of these two things in the bonus guide that we have made available to our patron’s for this week’s episode. Definitely check that out if you want to learn more, or if you’d like to talk to us about how love addiction might be impacting your marriage feel free to reach out to us. References [i] Earp et al.,...

How to Be Assertive With Your Spouse

Wed, 30 May 2018 11:00:52 +0000

Sometimes assertiveness gets a bad rap in our culture. As if it’s a domineering or bossy attitude. Not so: in reality, healthy assertiveness is a really helpful tool for marriage communication because it can reduce conflict and increase the quality of your marriage. What is Assertiveness? Assertiveness can often get confused with other, less positive traits, so let’s start with a nice simple definition. Assertiveness is the ability to honestly and effectively express your needs and desires[i]. The opposite is passivity: letting things happen to you, not stating your needs and backing down easily. What about aggression though? Assertiveness is different to aggression: assertiveness is about using self-confidence and verbal techniques to state what you want, rather than resorting to threats or intimidation. What does assertiveness look like? Recent research identifies multiple parts of effective assertive behavior: Courage: self-confidence, boldness to state your needs and "stick to your guns", being direct but non-aggressive, having belief in your own ability and strong social skills[ii]. Authenticity: honesty and genuineness, rather than being manipulative or artificial. It is coming out and stating what you want directly rather than using coded language or suggestions or vague hints. Assertiveness is based on an honest awareness of yourself and respect for the other person[iii]. Autonomy: able to make your own decisions, being self motivated and also flexible. Empathy: the ability to express your own needs while also being aware of the needs of your spouse or others[iv]. It is not necessarily (and should not be) selfish. Factors Affecting Assertiveness There are a few traits and factors that can affect your ability to be assertive. Locus of Control Who has control in your life? Locus of control refers to what people see as being the main controlling and decision-making factors in their lives. Someone with an internal locus of control believes that they can make their own choices and results in life are determined by their own actions and efforts. Someone with external locus of control believes their outcomes in life are mostly up to luck, fate or the influence of other people. A study in 1979[v] found that assertiveness was linked to an internal locus of control in married couples: spouses who believe they are in control of their own outcomes in life will naturally develop the social skills needed to influence others, while believing you have little control over your own life leads people to become passive. If you think things are just done to you or for you without any sense of personal agency that is a very passive orientation and assertiveness will seem foreign to you. Trust That same study also identified trust as a variable that influenced assertive behavior in married couples. Spouses who had an external locus of control (those who thought that other people had a strong influence over their lives) and who had high levels of trust that their spouse would act in the best interests of the marriage tended to be low in assertiveness. They interpret this to mean that people who have high trust that their spouses are acting in the interests of the marriage would have no NEED to act assertively. If you have a great marriage where you’re both working for each other’s benefit then sticking up for your own needs isn’t as essential… but it’s still a useful skill to have up your sleeve. Relationship Focused Couples who adopt a relationship-focused mindset early in the marriage (making decisions together and prioritizing their relationship over individual gains) are better able to learn positive communication skills such as assertiveness[vi]. Although as noted above, if both spouses are thinking in the best interests of the marriage there may not be much need to act assertively. But they will still have these skills if needed. Beliefs Your ability to be assertive is partly based on your beliefs about yourself. Someone who believes they are not worthy of respect or being heard will struggle to act assertively. Assertiveness training aims to develop positive beliefs in people, such as[vii]: You have the right to dignity and self-respect You have the right to say no You have the right to express your emotions You have the right to ask for help Assertiveness Techniques Let’s look at some straightforward steps to communicating assertively without coming across too aggressive. Nonverbal Assertiveness Eye contact: direct contact, but not staring, or else you come across like you're trying to intimidate. Body posture: Facing your spouse straight on. Standing tall but relaxed Hands: gestures to support what you are saying. Relaxed, not hands on hips or arms folded watch for aggressive or attacking postures Tone of voice: expressive, warm but firm. Not cold, harsh or too loud. Verbal Assertions Direct stating of needs and why/how they haven't been met. Not evasive or passive aggressive. "You said you would help tidy the house today but you didn't." Showing understanding of your spouse's position but sticking to your position. "I know you're busy and that you don't like cleaning, but I needed this done so that I could have space to cook" Explaining your emotional position: "I feel frustrated when you don't stick to things you've promised to help with" Offering a solution: "Can you help me do it now, and promise to keep on top of it in the future?" Sticking to your position, without feeling like you have to back down or have an answer to every objection they raise Benefits of Assertiveness So what are the advantages of having this skill for your marriage? You may be surprised by just how far this goes. Needs More Likely to Be Met Assertively (but non-aggressively) making requests of your spouse makes you more likely to get a positive reaction. So you'll be able to have your needs met more effectively while minimizing conflict. Makes sense, right? You may have even heard your spouse asking you for assertiveness in other words such as “Can you just tell me what you want? And I’ll do it.” or “Just say what you need!" Marital Quality A study 2013[viii] found that training both spouses in assertiveness produced a long-term increase in marital satisfaction. When the assertiveness training is given as part of a more comprehensive couple communication skills course, the effect is even bigger. Another study in 1984[ix] studied married couples where only one spouse received training on assertiveness. After the training, these couples reported higher levels of trust and intimacy and had better perceptions of the relationship as a whole. This was true for both spouses, suggesting that assertiveness in one spouse can have benefits for both. So having one or both of you be able to effectively express your desires and needs is good for everyone. Preventing Physical Abuse Here’s another important point. A study in 1987[x] studied physically abusive husbands and non-abusive husbands. Abusers were found to have a higher need for control AND lower assertiveness. So they needed to exert control over their wives but lacked the verbal skill and mental awareness to do so, and so resorted to physical violence. So training on assertiveness can help them reduce physical aggression. Personal Benefits The benefits of good assertiveness aren’t limited to your marriage; it’s a skill that will help you out in all areas of life. Effective assertiveness skills produce various personal benefits which can improve your marital functioning, such as[xi]: Reduced stress Improved mood Better at solving problems- leading to improved mental health due to not having unresolved conflict hanging over you Less likely to be distracted by negative emotions during discussions As you can see, assertiveness has widespread benefits for your marriage and for yourself. We’d encourage you to start practicing assertiveness today! Talk about this episode with your spouse, tell them that you want to learn to be more assertive and ask them to hold you accountable as well. References [i] Smith, Stress Management. [ii] Abbassi and Singh, “Assertiveness in Marital Relationships Among Asian Indians in the United States.” [iii] Abbassi and Singh. [iv] Smith, Stress Management. [v] Doherty and Ryder, “Locus of Control, Interpersonal Trust, and Assertive Behavior among Newlyweds.” [vi] Animasahun and Oladeni, “Effects of Assertiveness Training and Marital Communication Skills in Enhancing Marital Satisfaction among Baptist Couples in Lagos State, Nigeria.” [vii] Smith, Stress Management. [viii] Animasahun and Oladeni, “Effects of Assertiveness Training and Marital Communication Skills in Enhancing Marital Satisfaction among Baptist Couples in Lagos State, Nigeria.” [ix] Gordon and Waldo, “The Effects of Assertiveness Training on Couples’ Relationships.” [x] Dutton and Strachan, “Motivational Needs for Power and Spouse-Specific Assertiveness in Assaultive and Nonassaultive Men.” [xi] Smith, Stress Management.

Is Therapeutic Separation a Good Idea for Your Marriage?

Wed, 23 May 2018 11:00:55 +0000

If you and your spouse are in serious trouble, someone has probably suggested a separation. Maybe the conflict has gotten relentless. Maybe one of you has pulled back so far that nothing seems to reach the other. Maybe there has been a betrayal. Whatever brought you here, the question of separation is real, and it deserves a clear-eyed answer. A therapeutic separation is not the same as deciding your marriage is over. Done with intention and structure, it can be one of the most powerful interventions a struggling couple can make. But it can also backfire. The difference comes down to how you approach it. Here is what you need to know. What Is a Therapeutic Separation? A therapeutic separation is a fixed period of physical separation during which both partners agree to postpone any permanent decisions about the marriage. You live apart, but the separation is not a step toward divorce. It is always set up with restoration as the goal. The key word is therapeutic. This is not two people needing space indefinitely. It is a structured intervention with specific goals, agreed-upon parameters, and continued counseling for both partners throughout. Marriage and family therapist Patrick Ward, whose framework has informed how many clinicians think about this, describes it as a period during which couples choose to live separately with deliberate, agreed-upon goals, often documented in a therapeutic separation agreement developed with a therapist. That has to be a sincere commitment from both people. A therapeutic separation only works if both partners are genuinely in it to restore the marriage, not to audition life without their spouse. How Is It Different from a Trial Separation? "Trial separation" and "therapeutic separation" are often used interchangeably, but they are not the same thing. A trial separation usually means the couple has decided to live apart without a clear structure or shared goal. It can easily become a slow drift toward divorce. A therapeutic separation is more deliberately designed. It includes a written agreement that defines the length of the separation, the goals both partners are working toward, boundaries around communication and contact, and how children and finances will be handled. Both partners commit to continuing therapy during this period. It is that structure that makes it therapeutic rather than simply time apart. When Does a Therapeutic Separation Make Sense? A therapeutic separation is not the right first move. It is typically considered when a couple has been trying to work on the marriage while living together and the environment itself has become counterproductive to healing. Common situations where it becomes appropriate include extreme or persistent marital conflict where daily interactions are doing the marriage more harm than good; patterns of harmful behavior such as severe addiction, abuse, or control that make the home unsafe; one partner refusing to accept the reality of a serious problem; and situations following significant betrayal where the injured partner is so destabilized that genuine therapeutic work is nearly impossible while living together. If there is active abuse in your home, a different approach is needed. Separation may still be appropriate, but the structure described in this article assumes a basic level of safety for both partners. If that does not apply to your situation, please look at our episode on recognizing abusive behavior first. How to Prepare: What a Therapeutic Separation Agreement Includes The preparation stage is where most couples either set themselves up for success or undermine the whole process before it starts. Sit down with your therapist before the separation begins and work out a written therapeutic separation agreement. This document should specify how long the separation will last. Most therapists recommend somewhere between two and six months. Shorter than that often does not allow enough time for genuine individual change. Longer than six months and couples tend to build separate lives rather than working toward each other. The agreement should also cover how often you will communicate, whether you will have scheduled contact, how parenting will work if children are involved, and how finances will be handled during the separation. Both partners should specify what they are personally committing to during this period in terms of individual therapy, recovery work, or specific goals they are working toward. These are not minor details. Couples who skip this preparation consistently report more conflict during the separation and less clarity at the end of it. The practical work of sorting out logistics in advance frees both people to focus on the personal work that actually needs to happen. If this feels like a lot of structure for what you expected would be a break from each other, that tension is worth noticing. A therapeutic separation is not a break. It is concentrated, intentional work that happens to take place while you are not sharing a living space. What Therapeutic Separation Actually Does for Your Marriage When it is well-designed, a therapeutic separation does several things that are genuinely difficult to accomplish while two people are living together in ongoing conflict. It interrupts the cycle. Persistent conflict creates a pattern of reactivity, defensiveness, and emotional flooding that becomes the default mode of relating. Living apart breaks that pattern long enough for each person to come back to themselves and to therapy with something other than raw reactions. It calms the nervous system. This matters more than most people realize. When a relationship has been in prolonged crisis, both partners are often in a state of chronic activation, hypervigilance, or emotional shutdown. Real therapeutic progress requires some degree of regulation. Separation creates the physiological conditions that make that work possible in a way that constant conflict does not. It removes the tendency to take each other for granted. Many spouses, once separated, begin to see clearly what they had and what they stand to lose. The actual experience of life without your partner, even in a structured context, is almost always different from what people imagine it will be. It can also function as a useful crisis point. Sometimes couples in serious denial need the separation itself to break through. When it has always been possible to simply wait things out, some people do exactly that. A structured separation says, clearly, that waiting is over. I recommend therapeutic separation regularly as part of how we approach sex and porn addiction recovery at our practice. When a partner has disclosed an addiction, the betrayed spouse is often so triggered and destabilized that genuine couples work is nearly impossible in the same space. A structured separation gives the person in recovery the containment needed to focus on their recovery work, and it gives the betrayed partner the safety and quiet to begin processing what has happened. That is not abandoning the marriage. That is taking it seriously enough to work on it properly. If addiction is part of what you are navigating, our sex and porn addiction counseling team can help you understand what that structured approach looks like. The Risks You Need to Weigh First A therapeutic separation is not a safe option by default. It carries real risks, and you need to know them going in. The most common risk is that couples use the separation to avoid the marriage rather than work on it. If you spend the entire time ruminating over your spouse’s failures, building a case against them, or surrounding yourself only with people who validate your grievances, the separation accomplishes nothing. When you reunite, you will fall back into the same patterns with more resentment and less motivation than before. Be deliberate about who you spend time with during this period. The people closest to you will naturally support you, but that support needs to be oriented toward the marriage, not away from it. Have that conversation explicitly. Ask them to support you as a person without talking you out of your marriage. There is also the risk of infidelity. Physical separation creates opportunity and vulnerability. If either partner is not genuinely committed to restoration, the separation period can accelerate a move toward someone else. And some couples simply drift. Without the active structure of the agreement and ongoing therapeutic work, two people can build such separate lives during the separation that reunification becomes harder, not easier, with each passing week. What the Research Actually Says About Success Rates People want to know whether this actually works. Here is what the research shows, honestly. A 2003 study found that about 50 percent of couples who separate get back together temporarily, including couples who enter a therapeutic separation with the specific intention of staying married. Of those who reunite, roughly half divorce later. This means approximately 25 percent of couples who separate remain together long-term. Those numbers are not encouraging on their face, but they need context. The couples in the highest-risk category are those who separated without structure and without doing the actual personal work during the time apart. The researchers noted clearly that the couples most likely to stay together were those who used the separation for genuine self-reflection and personal growth, not just as a time-out from conflict. Here is the clinical reframe: if your marriage is at the point where therapeutic separation is on the table, doing nothing is not a stable alternative. Without meaningful intervention, the likelihood of the marriage failing is already very high. A well-structured therapeutic separation meaningfully improves your odds rather than threatening them. There is also this....

How Your Parent’s Alcoholism Affects Your Marriage

Wed, 16 May 2018 11:00:25 +0000

Adult Children of Alcoholics — did you know that was a thing? ACOA’s are what we call them for short. If you’re an ACOA it means you had at least one parent with a history of alcoholism, or possibly even a grandparent. The issues you faced as a child can continue to affect the entire family, including the way you relate to others in your life today. Background to ACOA An alcoholic parent or caregiver affects the entire family. Their addiction, the way alcohol makes them behave, their absences and mood swings will all have an impact on you growing up. Being raised in this kind of environment means each family member has to learn to adapt and react to the alcoholic's behavior. You have to learn strategies to cope with the chaotic family environment. These coping strategies often stay with the children into adult life and affect how you may now relate to others as an adult. An ACOA can therefore show unhelpful ways of relating to other people, based on the way they had to relate to people as a child. This includes issues such as an excessive need for control, over-reliance on the opinion of others, emotional distance, lack of trust and difficulties being open and vulnerable. These are all strategies which may have helped them survive in a household with an alcoholic parent but as adults lead to "rigid, controlling behaviors that interfere with individual growth... and the formation of healthy relationships[i]”. ACOAs can also show personal problems caused by the difficulties in their family of origin, including[ii] : Substance abuse Mood disorders such as depression Low self-esteem Underachievement in work/education Alcoholism’s Effects on Marriage So your parent’s alcohol struggles can continue to affect you long after you leave the family home. Let’s look at how this specifically relates to marriage. Attachment is Impacted by Alcoholism As a young child, having alcoholic parents affects the attachment bond you have with your parent, which goes on to form a blueprint of all future relationships the child will have[iii]. Alcoholic parents often display erratic and inconsistent parenting, sometimes being loving and supportive, other times being absent, rejecting the child's needs or even being abusive. This leads to an "insecure" attachment style between parent and child, where the child deeply desires love and affection from their parent but doesn't always find it, leading them to believe they are not worthy of love and support from others. This attachment style continues into adulthood and affects the ACOA's adult relationships, including marriage. A much higher proportion of ACOA have insecure attachment styles as adults than in the normal population[iv]. Because their parents were so inconsistent, the ACOA has learned that they cannot rely on or trust the people they love the most. "As a result, COAs learn from an early age not to trust people and experience persistent fears of abandonment. Thus, although ACOAs may desire love and intimacy, they are likely to be afraid that relationships in their adult lives will be as hurtful as their early relationships[v]". Reading that quote closely you can see the fear that is embedded into one’s belief system based on what you experienced as a child. It often creates insecure attachment. Insecure attachment as an adult is strongly linked to marital problems, including[vi]: Lower intimacy Increased conflict and poor conflict resolution skills Lower stability Less displays of emotion and vulnerability Satisfaction with Marriage These issues are bound to affect the quality of the marriage. A study in 2008[vii] interviewed 634 newlywed couples for the first 4 years of their marriage. A link was found between parental alcoholism and marital satisfaction, but it was dependent on gender: husbands only reported lower marital satisfaction if their mother had been alcoholic, and wives only had lower satisfaction if their fathers had been alcoholic. Why is that? Well, research suggests that children learn a lot of the skills for interacting with the opposite sex from their opposite-sex parent. So if this relationship with the mother/father is impacted by alcoholism, the child will struggle to learn healthy ways to relate to the opposite sex[viii]. This gender effect also points to attachment as the root of the problem: if for example a young girl desires the love and attention of her alcoholic father, but the father is absent, abusive, distant or inconsistent, this becomes her expectation for all future relationships with men, including her future husband (and same for boys with their mothers/wives). That’s quite a legacy and it shows how what you see happening today is actually about what happened in your family of origin. Alcoholism Fosters Abuse Both husbands and wives show higher levels of physical aggression if their mother had alcohol abuse problems[ix]. Again this is a learning issue. Maternal alcoholism is a cause of, and response to, conflict within the family. So children of alcoholic mothers learn to relate to their spouse in the same aggressive way they saw in their family of origin. ACOAs Experience Less Stability A study in 2002[x] found that marriages of ACOA are less stable than those in the normal population, and that increased emotional distance between the spouses is a likely mediating factor in this link. Alcoholism in Your Parent Impacts Your View of Yourself As we mentioned above, alcoholism in your opposite sex parent can lead you to see others as being untrustworthy and to expectations of loved ones letting you down. Alcoholism in the same-sex parent can affect your view of yourself. For example, husbands with alcoholic fathers report having less positive views about themselves, and believe they are less worthy of love and support from their spouse. Quite the legacy. So, what to do about it? How To Combat the Impact of Alcoholism Address Personal Problems Many of the personal issues ACOAs experience, such as mood disorders, substance abuse, and low self-esteem can negatively impact your marriage. Seeking help to deal with these personal problems (for example by seeking treatment for mood disorders) can therefore improve the marriage. As you might expect if you’ve listened to our podcast, a healthy marriage can also help people overcome these issues! For example, love and support from your spouse can help you overcome mood disorders and low self-esteem. Watch for Issues Around Control Growing up in a family with an alcoholic parent creates feelings of powerlessness and lack of control in the child: their alcoholic parent is sometimes loving to them (when sober) and sometimes absent or abusive, and as a child, there's nothing you can do to control this. It’s just very out of control. Some ACOAs therefore over-compensate by having a need for total control in their marriage in order to feel safe. This often creates an inability to relax, fear of vulnerability, taking on too many responsibilities themselves, and difficulties trusting other people, leading to lower marital satisfaction for both spouses[xi]. Working on building trust in your marriage and sharing out control and responsibility can therefore improve things for both spouses. Work On Attachment Most of the marital problems caused by a history of alcoholism in your family of origin can be traced back to the attachment issues[xii]. Insecure attachment styles are formed in childhood but can be changed as adults. Which is great news. Working on increasing intimacy, trust, communication skills, and vulnerability can help you redefine how you view yourself and your relationships so that they are no longer defined by your parent's alcoholism. Marriage can also create a safe space for you to process traumatic memories from childhood and re-evaluate those experiences so that they stop impacting how you act as an adult. Strengthening your marriage and processing the trauma from your family of origin can help you create a secure attachment style with your spouse, where you feel safe being vulnerable and feeling confident you are worthy of love and respect. That is a very different place to be in than to live in constant insecurity and with the need to exert control over so many variables in response to all that feels out of control. I hope that this has given you a lot of hope. And I also hope that it has really validated how real the impact of parental alcoholism can be on the children — even when they grow and become adults and marry safe, caring spouses. Alcoholism leaves a profound legacy but — thankfully — one that can be overcome. References [i] Denise Beesley and Cal D. Stoltenberg, ‘Control, Attachment Style, and Relationship Satisfaction among Adult Children of Alcoholics. (Research)’, Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 24.4 (2002), 281. [ii] Jill N. Kearns-Bodkin and Kenneth E. Leonard, ‘Relationship Functioning Among Adult Children of Alcoholics’, Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, 69.6 (2008), 941–50. [iii] Kearns-Bodkin and Leonard. [iv] Kearns-Bodkin and Leonard. [v] Kearns-Bodkin and Leonard. [vi] Judith A. Feeney, ‘Attachment Style, Communication Patterns, and Satisfaction across the Life Cycle of Marriage’, Personal Relationships, 1.4 (1994), 333–48 . [vii] Kearns-Bodkin and Leonard. [viii] Kearns-Bodkin and Leonard. [ix] Kearns-Bodkin and Leonard. [x] TONI TERLING WATT, ‘Marital and Cohabiting Relationships of Adult Children of Alcoholics: Evidence from the National Survey of Families and Households’, Journal of Family Issues, 23.2 (2002), 246–65 . [xi] Beesley and Stoltenberg. [xii] Michelle L. Kelley and others, ‘Retrospective Reports of Parenting Received in Their Families of Origin: Relationships to Adult A

So Your Spouse Has ADHD

Wed, 09 May 2018 11:00:29 +0000

Here in North America we’ve become pretty conversant with ADHD as a culture. How it impacts kids at school, in the home, and so on. But it’s time to start the conversation around how ADHD impacts marriage. Did you know that your marriage can be a place that fosters a reduction in the problematic symptomatology of ADHD? What is ADHD? Just in case this is a new term for you, ADHD is a mental health condition normally diagnosed in childhood. ADHD impacts the brain’s executive functioning ability, so that people with ADHD show reduced decision making ability, attention control, impulse control and memory. Impairments to concentration, low impulse control and difficulty regulating your emotions can also lead to social and communication problems in people with ADHD[i]. Here are the specific diagnostic criteria from the DSM, which is the mental health handbook for diagnosing disorders. Often fails to give close attention to details or makes careless mistakes in schoolwork, work or other activities Often has difficulty sustaining attention in tasks or play activities Often does not seem to listen when spoken to directly Often does not follow through on instructions and fails to finish schoolwork, chores or duties in the workplace Often has difficulty organizing tasks and activities Often avoids, dislikes or is reluctant to engage in tasks that require sustained mental effort Often loses things necessary for tasks or activities Is often easily distracted by extraneous stimuli About 3% of the adult population are diagnosed with ADHD. A further 16% show sub-clinical levels of ADHD: they have some of the symptoms but not enough to meet the criteria for diagnosis[ii]. Up until fairly recently ADHD was thought to only affect children, so there are likely a lot of adults with ADHD out there who are currently undiagnosed and therefore unable to work out why they think and act in a way that's so different to other people. Everyone gets a bit distracted sometimes, or acts impulsive and disorganized. But if these are common features of your daily life and they significantly impact the way you function, it might be worth booking a discussion with a doctor or mental health professional just to see if ADHD has been affecting you without your knowledge. The fact that ADHD is undiagnosed in so many adults means that this is a potential factor in marital distress that may be unrecognized in many, many cases. How Does ADHD Affect Marriage? Common Challenges The symptoms of ADHD can create difficulties in marriage. Some of the more common challenges include[iii]: Being forgetful and disorganized: failing to meet commitments or remember to do things Inattentiveness to your spouse's emotional state and needs Difficulty attending to or communicating effectively with your spouse Emotional overreactions: saying or doing things impulsively which hurt the marriage Then there’s the whole issue of perception or interpretation by your spouse. Your spouse may come to see your ADHD inability to stick to commitments or remember agreed on actions as a sign that you don't care about the relationship. Further, ADHD also impairs communication and listening skills, reducing intimacy and potentially leading to conflict. Marital Quality Sometimes these issues can impact the quality of a marriage, for either the spouse with ADHD or the other. A study in 2004[iv] compared couples where one spouse had ADHD to control couples where neither spouse had ADHD. They found that marital satisfaction was often lower for the spouse with ADHD than in control couples. But people married to someone with ADHD did not differ in marital quality to the control groups. So having ADHD may decrease your own marital satisfaction but does not necessarily impact your spouse as much. "The ADHD adults’ perceptions of the health of their marriages and families were more negative than their spouses’ perceptions.[v]" However, more recent research shows that the spouse married to someone with ADHD can also suffer, especially when the ADHD affects intimacy levels. A study in 2017[vi] found that when intimacy was low, spouses of people with ADHD reported lower marital satisfaction than control couples. Remember that studies often have problems with replicability. We are not asking anyone to have a problem with their marriage because you or your spouse has ADHD. If anything, we just want to normalize that it is possible that you may face extra challenges or it is possible that things are going fine. That’s ok too! How To Help Your ADHD Spouse Usually when we’re talking about marriage issues we’re really keyed in on everyone taking responsibility for their own stuff and that’s always a good principle. But: there are some things to be aware of that give you some leverage in the marriage as the spouse of someone who experiences ADHD. If you want to come at this from the other direction and find out what you can do as an adult with ADHD to support your marriage, check out our bonus guide. Mediating Factors Around ADHD and Marriage Research identifies several mediating factors which determine whether ADHD will negatively affect marriage quality. Working on these specific issues will reduce the effect ADHD has on marriage: Intimacy. ADHD can reduce intimacy for the non-ADHD spouse by impairing communication and listening skills, and this then negatively affects marital quality. Finding other ways to increase intimacy can reduce this effect. Emotion regulation. ADHD makes it harder to control how you feel and express emotions. A study in 2015[vii] found that this emotion regulation difficulty was a strong mediating factor between ADHD symptoms and relationship quality. So practicing healthy expression of emotions can reduce the impact of ADHD. This can look like a daily check-in with each other on feelings. Sharing one positive, one negative feeling every day. Conflict resolution tactics. Research in 2010[viii] found that the conflict resolution style of the non ADHD spouse was a strong mediating factor between ADHD and relationship quality for both spouses. Since people with ADHD show poor impulse control and emotional control, they can sometimes be prone to creating arguments and conflict. Having a spouse who is also prone to using hostile or aggressive conflict styles will create a very volatile marriage where satisfaction is likely to be low. A spouse who can use more positive conflict resolution skills will be able to create a happier marriage environment for both spouses. ADHD and Negative Beliefs The problems experienced by people with ADHD often lead them to form negative beliefs about themselves and their lives. These include things like[ix]: Self-mistrust: e.g., "I cannot rely on myself" Failure: e.g., "I let other people down" Instability: e.g., "My life will always be chaotic, so why bother trying to fix it?" Dependence: e.g., "I cannot cope without other people helping me" Shame: e.g., "I am useless" Since people with ADHD are very impulsive and quick to act, they will often act based on these beliefs before they really think it through. This often creates negative and self-defeating behavior (e.g., thinking you are a failure, believing that you will never be able to hold down a job and so giving up on job hunting). The spouse can therefore help by spotting when their ADHD spouse is acting based on negative beliefs, challenging these underlying beliefs and encouraging them to act in a more positive way. Make sure you ask their permission to do this. But eventually this form of support will help improve the beliefs the ADHD spouse has, leading them to think and act in more positive ways[x]. Help Them Slow Down Spouses can also help their ADHD husbands/wives to slow down, think things through and fight their natural tendency to be impulsive. For example they can help with: Setting goals: deciding on specific things they want to work towards as a couple, rather than continuously jumping from one thing to the next. Spouses can also help by helping break these goals down into a step by step process and keeping their ADHD spouse on track with it. Regular "check in” times: help keep the ADHD spouse grounded and focusing on the right things Encourage regular practice of skills and coping strategies: e.g., time management and daily planning strategies to help them stay focused throughout the day, and mindfulness and meditation exercises to "train" their ability to focus and control their thoughts[xi]. I hope this has given you hope! All of us bring dysfunction and baggage to our marriages — even if there’s not a label for it — but it’s great to know that a lot of the same basic principles still apply: working on intimacy, using good communication skills and conflict resolution skills. As always, if you’d like help from one of our marriage therapists feel free to reach out through our website. _________________________________________ References [i] Fatma Gül Cirhinlioğlu and others, ‘Mediating Role of the Conflict Tactics between ADHD Symptom Levels and Dyadic Adjustment’, Child Psychiatry & Human Development, 2010. [ii] Cirhinlioğlu and others. [iii] Arthur L. Robin and Eleanor Payson, ‘The Impact of ADHD on Marriage’, The ADHD Report, 10.3 (2002), 9–14 . [iv] L. Eakin and others, ‘The Marital and Family Functioning of Adults with ADHD and Their Spouses’, Journal of Attention Disorders, 8.1 (2004), 1–10 . [v] Eakin and others. [vi] Shiri Ben-Naim and others, ‘Life With a Partner with ADHD: The Moderating Role of Intimacy’, Journal of Child and Family Studies, 26.5 (2017), 1365–73 . [vii] Kristin N. Lopez, ‘Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Symptomatology in College St

How To Get Your Abusive Husband Into Therapy…Safely

Wed, 25 Apr 2018 11:00:48 +0000

If your husband is abusive it can be really, really difficult to get him into therapy for help. And yet, this leaves the wife in a very difficult place — not only because of the abuse — but because usually the burden of mending the relationship and the problems are placed on her. That’s part of the abusive dynamic. So how do you get past the control and manipulation? How do you convince an abusive husband they need to get help? How do you approach them about the issue when any confrontation could get dangerous very quickly? The trick here is that in these kinds of situations the blame has been laid for too long at the feet of the abuse survivor. So it is really challenging to safely and effectively motivate the abuser to seek help. Before we get into this, remember that our episodes should be considered a self-help tool and do not replace individual counseling or direct support from professionals, or even law enforcement in your area as may be required in a situation like this. If your situation is severe you should be pursuing emergency help and establishing safety before you consider trying to intervene on your spouse at all. Barriers to Confronting Abusive Husbands I want to start by acknowledging why it can be so hard to confront an abusive husband. I’m going to speak directly to wives in this situation but also want to acknowledge that there can be husbands out there too, and their wives are abusive, and this is also a very challenging and complex situation for you. The first issue is the most obvious and that is that your physical safety could be at risk or even the safety of your children. In extreme cases your life may be at risk. If that’s your situation you need a safety and escape plan. Another possibility is that the constant cycle of abuse in your marriage has worn you down to the point where your self-esteem is completely eroded. The humiliation, the lack of control and the isolation — those can lead to feelings of worthlessness and even that you should just accept the abuse since you won’t ever be able to make it stop[i]. Control is also an issue here. If there’s been isolation, or loss of identity, or fear of violence, or financial control or other kinds of restrictions it can make it very hard for you to take action. Of course there is also the manipulative thinking imposed by abusers so that you may even believe the abuse is your own fault (Chang et al, 2006) And then there’s trauma bonding. Abusive marriages often create a sense of dependency in you where your low self esteem and sense of powerlessness makes you feel that you need your abusive husband in order to survive[ii]. In this situation you may not confront your husband or try to convince him to get help for fear that he may leave. Or, you may have no power to actually convince him since he believes you will never actually leave him. This is really tough stuff. Finally, hopelessness comes into play. Long-term abuse can lead to a tangible sense of powerlessness and hopelessness. Many abused wives experience symptoms of depression and mental illness. You may therefore believe that there is no hope that your situation will improve, and so make no effort to seek help. What Can You Do? There are a few options to consider here. Police Action In the case of physical abuse, police intervention can act as a strong deterrent and also provide motivation for future change. A study in 1995[iii] looked at police intervention into domestic abuse, and found that being arrested and prosecuted after committing domestic violence significantly reduced the likelihood of future events. This is likely because after arrest, the abuser is often required to undergo mandatory therapy, court-ordered counseling or some other form of intervention[iv]. So as a way of getting your husband into treatment, police action is a drastic but effective strategy. I get that this is a tough decision to make — it really exposes what is happening in your marriage to the public but it’s also worth considering that him getting caught can be a gift of grace to help him face issues that he may not otherwise find the space to face. During Reconciliation Abuse has a cycle to it: typically, a honeymoon phase, then walking on eggshells, then the outburst, then reconciliation and then the honeymoon again. It seems that possibly the best time to motivate an abusive husband to seek help and engage in it is during reconciliation. That’s a good time to try and hopefully he will engage in a program where he will stay committed to it and stick with hit. Separation Another way to motivate your husband into treatment is to consider a therapeutic separation. If you had any concern for your safety or the safety of your kids at all you would want to initiate this through an escape plan. What I see in abusive marriages is that the husband is often most motivated to seek help and to engage in therapy when the wife is separated from him. Then there’s no covering up what’s going on, there’s nobody to manipulate, just the obvious truth that a problem is there and hopefully he can see that he is the one who needs help. It’s really critical for people supporting a situation like this — be they friends or family or church members — you may want to see the marriage healed, but the abusive mindset has to be corrected before any marriage counselling should even begin to happen. Don’t rush that part — the wife needs time and space to regroup and then if the husband is in therapy she also needs as much time as she requires to gather evidence through slowly increasing levels of interaction to see if he truly has had a change of mind and is safe to be with again. Counseling Interventions So what kind of therapeutic interventions are available, and what are they like at getting abusive husbands to change? There are a couple psychotherapy models that are used in this case. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is one approach where abusive husbands can learn better ways of coping with their anger and healthier ways of relating to others. CBT for barterers also teaches them empathy and challenges them to change either underlying beliefs about women or themselves. This is an especially critical component of recovery. There’s also the Duluth Model. I’m not familiar with this but I understand it is an educational intervention based on feminist principles. This method teaches respect for women and challenges the ideas that men have the right to exert power and control over their wives. It also aims to reduce the behaviors that focus on power, control and dominance and increases the behaviors which relate to equality and fairness. Are they Effective? A pretty important question to ask before you try and get your husband into therapy is, “does it work?” To answer this, a study in 2004[v] conducted a meta-review (a study of other research studies) to determine if these treatment methods were effective in motivating abusive husbands to change. It was found that both intervention types reliably produced "small but significant" reductions in abuse. Both therapy types were relatively similar in their effect, and both produced effect sizes which were only slightly better than the effect of being arrested and prosecuted without getting treatment. So unfortunately therapy isn’t the magic cure-all you might hope it was: it can help but probably won’t be the slam-dunk you want. Despite the overall modest effect of these interventions, some specific factors have been identified which motivate a man to enter, and stay in, treatment. These include: Creating a supportive and collaborative alliance within the couple: you want to encourage your husband into help, rather than forcing him. Confrontational and hostile tactics reduce the abusive husband's motivation to change. Being aggressive with him also reinforces his belief that relationships are built on anger and forcing people to do what you want. But showing support for him and viewing him as in need of help rather than deserving of punishment enhances the outcome of interventions[vi]. Obviously this is a very hard perspective to take of the man who is abusing you, but if you can separate the man you love from the abuse he is carrying out, he has a better chance of permanently stopping. The content of the first introductory session in the intervention was also important in convincing abusers to actually want to seek help. A study in 2008[vii] found that programs which have a day-long "orientation" session which teaches practical skills as well as developing the husband's feelings of compassion were more successful in motivating the husbands to stay in the program. So if you’re looking into different interventions and therapy options, that’s something to ask about. Is Your Husband Ready to Change? Choosing your moment carefully is very important when you’re trying to get your husband the help he needs. According to the trans-theoretical model of behavior[viii], any major change to your lifestyle or actions happens in a cycle of five stages. For an abusive husband it would look like this: Pre-contemplation stage: the husband not believing he has any need to change, or that he is not capable of change Contemplation: husband recognizes the need to change but doesn't yet take any action Preparation: husband decides to change and begins making a plan to do so Action: your husband gets help and begins to change his behavior Maintenance: after treatment your husband attempts to maintain his new behavior Which stage the abusive husband is at determines how motivated they will be to attend therapy, and how successful they will be in different therapy types. A study in 2003[ix] found that men in the contemplation stage show little change in levels of empathy, communication skills and levels of abuse as a result of treatment, but men in the preparation stage and action stage showed posi

Is Your Wife Nagging Too Much? It Could Be Your Fault!

Wed, 11 Apr 2018 11:00:10 +0000

Nagging is our subject for today. We’ve got some insights for you today! For example, did you know that there is a good reason why wives nag more than husbands? And that it is not actually because there’s something wrong with the wife? This is like mythbusters for marriage! Nobody likes being nagged by their spouse. And no one likes having to nag their spouse over and over about something. But, as we’ll see today, there are often some real and honest reasons behind nagging, and getting to the root of them will definitely benefit your marriage. What is Nagging? Nagging is "pestering others with demands, pleas, and/or requests for compliance when they are not doing what we would like them to do[i]” Typically, in order for something to be qualified as nagging it needs to have a negative effect on the target of the nagging too. It usually needs “to annoy by constant scolding, complaining or urging[ii]”. So typically it is a persistent attempt to persuade or request something but it is not overtly aggressive in nature. Usually what happens is nagging is prompted when someone fails to comply with a request (there’s a hint for the myth busting part of this episode…we’ll get to that below), so the request is made again. Nagging in Marriage Within marriage, nagging is motivated by a desire for your spouse to change some aspect of themselves or their actions. So it is therefore different to complaining or simply venting emotions. Common topics for nagging within marriage include[iii]: Household task completion Money Personal habits Appearance Health Children Amount of love/affection displayed Work or work/life balance Time spent together So how does it actually work or what does it look like? A study in 2008[iv] describes the process of nagging, and why it can become common: One spouse (the "initiator") makes a request for a specific action from their spouse The other spouse (the "responder") refuses the request, for whatever reason: perhaps they aren't motivated to do it, they weren't paying full attention to the request, the request wasn't worded clearly or the responder didn't agree that it needs doing. The initiator must now choose either to persist with the request or to abandon it. For the interaction to be considered nagging, the initiator would choose to persist in making the request The responder now chooses either to comply with the request or continue refusing Steps 3 and 4 continue until either the initiator gives up or the responder complies with the request So you have this back and forth, perhaps over ten minutes or maybe over several days, of a request being met with a refusal. Sound familiar? Nagging can become a common behavior because it is very likely that the responder will eventually succumb and do what the initiator is asking. They’ll do what is being asked just to shut their spouse up, in other words. If this happens then the initiator has been "rewarded" for nagging by getting what they want. So the behavior is reinforced: therefore they become more likely to use nagging in the future. In the mind of the initiator, more nagging=more likely to get what I want. Do Wives Nag More than Husbands? The general stereotype is that wives are more prone to nagging than husbands, and the majority of people believe this to be true. But what does the research say? A study in 2006[v] tested whether this was actually the case and found that women are more likely to nag both men and other women, whereas men are more likely to only nag other men. So in the general population, nagging is equal between sexes, but within a marriage the wife is more likely to nag the husband than vice versa. But, here’s the myth busting part where us guys kind of have to hang our heads and stop pointing the finger at our wives: a study in 2014[vi] found that in most marriages women are more likely to comply with a request the first time they are asked than men are. So women being more nagging is in good part down to the fact that men have less need to nag. So if your wife is constantly nagging you… maybe you need to consider whether part of the problem is your own attitude to helping her out. Responses to Nagging The other part of this we have to look at is not only the nagging itself but also how we respond to nagging. Reactance. A study in 2006[vii] found that in married couples, frequent nagging leads to an increase in reactance: the responder getting annoyed by the repeated requests. Again… sound familiar? Nagging creates anger at the fact that they are being nagged and makes them less likely to comply with the request. The more frequently a spouse is nagged, the more resistance they are likely to show. Attribution. Frequent nagging also causes a shift in the responder's attribution of what the problem is. The first time a request is made, the responder may feel guilty that they have not met their spouse's needs or have let them down in some way. But the longer the nagging goes on, the more the blame shifts to the initiator of the nagging: the responder starts to think that their spouse is the problem, not them. Escalation. These two processes of angry reactance and shifting attribution create a cycle of escalation. When nagged, the responder becomes less and less motivated to comply, causing the initiator to keep making their request in increasingly strong terms. Both spouses become more angry and less motivated to "back down". Eventually this creates a "stalemate" where nagging keeps occurring without getting anywhere, or sometimes it can boil over into more severe arguments. Effect on Marital Quality. A study in 2014[viii] found that low levels of nagging are linked to higher levels of marital quality. This effect was found for husbands and not wives: probably due to the gender differences noted above. This is not saying you should maintain a low level of nagging — it is pointing out that the less nagging, the greater the correlation to improved marriage quality. What is so helpful about understanding response patterns is that whether you are initiating the nagging or responding to it, either one of you has a chance to start to shift the pattern in your marriage. How To Stop Nagging Respond to the Issue First Time Around This first one might seem a bit obvious. Once nagging has started, complying with the request reinforces nagging as a valid way of getting you to comply. NOT complying leads to conflict. So the best thing to do is to deal with the request properly the first time it is mentioned. We’ll look at this thoroughly in the bonus content. We’re not saying you have to give in to your spouse every time they ask you something, just that if you’re going to say yes or no you should do it right away and get the discussion done. Or even if you cannot get to it right away, tell your spouse when you will do it: make a commitment and follow through. Behavioral vs Verbal Noncompliance Here’s a subtle but important issue to take note of. When your spouse makes a request, you can refuse in one of two ways: Verbal noncompliance: simply saying no, and/or giving your reasons why you will not comply. Behavioral noncompliance: not complying with the request without definitively stating that you won't do it. For example simply ignoring the request, or saying that you will do it but then not actually complying, or putting off the request by saying you'll do it later. Research in 2006[ix] interviewed 101 married couples and found that behavioral noncompliance was much more likely to lead to nagging. Without a verbal expression of what you intend to do, the initiator doesn't know if you intend to help or not, leading them to repeat the request. If you don’t actually definitively say yes or no, you leave things open. You’re probably familiar with this kind of thing: telling your wife you’ll take the trash out tomorrow, and then saying the same thing the next day, and the next… So verbally stating that you will not comply (and giving a good reason) is less likely to lead to nagging than leaving things uncertain. I’m not saying be a brute and just tell your spouse to take a hike. I’m just saying: be assertive. If you are not going to do it, be open and honest about it and have a discussion: why is this important to your spouse and not to you? What’s at stake? Understand the Motivation Nagging is often driven by a desire for your spouse to change, but this desire for change can be based on your care and love for your spouse. For example nagging your spouse about their health or the choices they make because you care about their wellbeing, or nagging your spouse to be more open with you because you care about creating intimacy in the marriage[x]. Many people report that while they find their spouse's nagging annoying, they recognize that they do it because they care. So recognizing the real and positive motivations behind the nagging can help the responding spouse to be more willing to listen, and may help the initiating spouse to phrase their requests in a more positive way. Sometimes this is something that is coming out of a wholesome space right? But maybe because of how requests were modelled in your family of origin, you default to nagging. Or, you default to hearing a request as nagging even if it really isn’t. Getting in touch with the care, the concern, the love — and then seeing the request through that lens — that really can help. The other part of that may also be tweaking the language or body language or tone of voice slightly to really make sure you’re avoiding the negative trigger associated with nagging. So: there you have it. We actually just busted another myth: that people nag because there’s something wrong with them. Maybe your spouse is nagging you because there’s something right about them! Figure that out. It may mean having a conversation that says “I can

How Admiration Creates a Stable, Happy Marriage

Wed, 04 Apr 2018 11:00:00 +0000

Today we are going to unpack the virtue of admiration. By the way, did you know that admiration has a dark side? I had no idea until we tackled this subject too, but it does make a lot of sense! If you’ve ever read the Song of Solomon in the Bible I think you have a pretty clear example there of how admiration is so helpful for fostering love and affection between lovers. What is Admiration? I imagine everyone knows what admiration is, generally. But actually describing it might be a little harder. Sometimes it can be hard to differentiate admiration from other similar positive emotions in marriage. Here’s a helpful quote from a study we reviewed: “Admiration is a feeling of delighted approval of the accomplishment or character of another person[i]” A lot of the time admiration comes from pleasant surprises: when someone does something or shows characteristics that prompt feelings of fondness, awe, approval and respect[ii]. I think that we can also benefit from being intentional about admiration though, and seek to notice and focus on those attributes in others and in our spouse in particular. But there are other emotions linked to admiration. These include[iii]: Gratitude: thankfulness for someone's actions and who they are. Strongly linked to feelings of admiration and often naturally follows on from it. Both have positive effects for relationships Elevation: researchers describe this as a specific form of admiration felt in response to "witnessing an act of virtue or moral beauty". It’s like when you see your spouse do something especially incredible you “elevate” them in your mind. Envy: now this is the dark side of admiration, where instead of approving of the qualities of others, you feel bad about your lack of these qualities. Or you desire to take those qualities for yourself. Envy is desiring the good others have rather than just admiring them. You see, admiration is wholly focused on the other person, while envy is more introspective Joy: feelings of admiration are physically and psychologically similar to feeling joy. We often experience these together. Admiration Impacts Marriage Stability and Satisfaction Here’s a neat, long-term study. Shapiro et al[iv] interviewed 43 newlywed couples and then observed them for 6 years of their marriage. They found that the key qualities which predicted a stable, happy marriage were: Fondness and admiration expressed. Expressed is the keyword there: not just felt. Awareness of your spouse's needs and their world Amount of unity expressed through use of phrases including "we" and "us" rather than "I" These factors were strongly linked to both marital satisfaction for husbands and wives, and marital stability. Using these factors they were able to predict stability/divorce 6 years later with 94% accuracy. How fascinating is that? From one conversation the researchers could predict the trajectory of a marriage with almost total success. By the way — we worked really hard in designing our content for our marriage retreat to build these three items up in the couples who attended. Buffering Fondness and admiration were also seen as a buffer which protected couples from the stress of major life events such as the birth of the first child. This was especially true for husbands expressing admiration for their wives: "The fondness and admiration system in a couple's relationship can be thought of as the glue that holds the relationship together... The more fondness for his wife the husband expresses, or the more glue he puts into the relationship, the more satisfied the wife is with the marriage.[v]" (Shapiro et al, 2000) Inspiration Admiration for someone can inspire you to want to be a better person yourself. This kind of inspiration “involves the transcendence of the ordinary preoccupations or limitations of human agency[vi]”, meaning that admiring and being inspired by someone motivates you to push yourself beyond what you would normally think yourself capable of. Feelings of elevation (admiration for moral excellence) motivates you to be more like your spouse, increases your desire to help those around you, and increases our appreciation for the good things you have in life[vii]. I thought this was a brilliant piece of learning from the research, too. You would think admiring others only builds them up but it has this reflective impact that inspires you to become more and to push yourself towards better things, too. Finally, researchers have also found that inspiration creates a sense of connectedness between admirer and admired, and can increase openness levels between them and even increase the energy and enthusiasm you feel when together[viii]. All good mojo for marriage, right? How To Create More Admiration in Your Marriage So we’ve seen some of the benefits of making admiration a key part of your marriage. So how do you turn this into a reality? Build Your Admiration System You might think this stuff maybe sounds too lofty and out of reach. Let me give you a very concrete example of how you can start to make this work today, and of course, if you want to go deeper — get the exercise that we have created to go with this episode. Remember: admiration is part of a cycle that brings couples together and helps them resolve problems[ix]. So, here’s a simple process to illustrate how you can develop a positive cycle of admiration. Notice how achievable this is: One spouse is experiencing difficulty or some of their needs aren't being met The other spouse notices this The other spouse attempts to meet the needs The first spouse notices this attempt to help them The first spouse expresses this admiration for their husband/wife's ability to meet their needs This forms a cycle where the expression of admiration motivates the admired spouse to continue finding ways to meet the admiring spouse's needs, leading to further admiration. Boom. Easy, right? There’s a couple things more that we want to note, just to give you a leg up on this. Awareness of Needs Work on becoming more aware of your spouse’s needs. This is not hard to do. Expression of admiration and awareness of your spouse's needs work together to strengthen a marriage. Remember: these are two of the predictors of stability in a marriage. You can work on them simultaneously to make all this easier. Awareness of your spouse's needs means you notice when they are stressed or upset, and you express more admiration and affection to help them cope. "If the husband is aware of the stress the wife is going through, for example, he may respond by putting more glue into the relationship or expressing more fondness or admiration toward his wife.[x]". The wife then notices that her husband is making a particular effort to help her, which strengthens the marriage and helps reduce the stress she is under. So, to express admiration effectively just slow down and observe your spouse more closely so that you can become aware of your spouse's needs and how s/he is coping with the stresses of life[xi] (Shapiro et al, 2000). Meeting Needs Now that you have got the awareness thing going, the next step is to start thinking about how to better meet those needs. This requires an awareness of your spouse's inner world. You see, in order to receive admiration from your spouse you have to be able to meet his or her needs[xii] (Harley, 2011). If you feel for yourself that you are not being admired enough, it could be because you are not meeting your spouse's needs properly. This is counterintuitive. But it is really empowering too, because it gives you something to do to change this problem that you are facing. To be admired you have to do things which are worthy of admiration. Start by becoming aware of what your spouse’s needs are. Next, determine if those needs are being met. If not, seek to meet those needs. The normal consequence of this kind of interest and effort in your spouse is admiration from your spouse. Expressing Admiration There’s a sense in which I want to say, do not make this into too large a project. Like an event. Instead, admiration and respect should be expressed often and simply in small, everyday moments. Don’t go for epic moments…just nurture this in the everyday life of your marriage. This helps build the fondness and admiration cycle, strengthening the marriage[xiii]. Part of this is learning to form a "habit" of admiration where spouses are constantly "scanning" the environment to notice things to admire about each other. And don’t think this is just for happy marriages. The mental habit of looking for the good things to admire can help distressed couples too, who may be more prone to only noticing the bad things their spouses do. So whatever the situation is in your marriage: admiration can help. Give it a shot. Let us know how it goes! References [i] Niels van de Ven, Marcel Zeelenberg, and Rik Pieters, ‘Why Envy Outperforms Admiration’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37.6 (2011), 784–95 . [ii] Sara B. Algoe and Jonathan Haidt, ‘Witnessing Excellence in Action: The “Other-Praising” Emotions of Elevation, Gratitude, and Admiration’, The Journal of Positive Psychology, 4.2 (2009), 105–27 . [iii] Algoe and Haidt. [iv] Alyson Fearnley Shapiro, John M. Gottman, and Sybil Carrere, ‘The Baby and the Marriage: Identifying Factors That Buffer against Decline in Marital Satisfaction after the First Baby Arrives’, Journal of Family Psychology, 14.1 (2000), 59–70. [v] Shapiro, Gottman, and Carrere. [vi] Ven, Zeelenberg, and Pieters. [vii] Algoe and Haidt. [viii] Ven, Zeelenberg, and Pieters. [ix] JOHN MORDECHAI Gottman, ‘Gottman Method Couple Therapy’, Clinical Handbook of Couple Therapy, 4.8 (2008), 138–64. [x] Shapiro,...

How To Get Your Flirt (Back) On… When You Have 3 Kids, a Dog and a Mortgage

Wed, 28 Mar 2018 11:00:55 +0000

Can you remember what it was like to flirt with your spouse before you were together? The fun and excitement of figuring out you were into each other… don’t you wish you could bring that spice into your relationship now that you’ve been together for years? Well, that’s exactly what we’re going to look at today! What is Flirting? Here’s a simple definition: flirting is any behavior with has the potential to be seen as sexual[i]. Actually I think that’s just a sexualized definition of flirting. I think flirting can be suggestive of romance without needing to lead to sex. I say that for the benefit of Christian singles and married folk alike. Flirting is often more nonverbal than verbal: smiles, touch, eye contact and so on. It is often playful and ambiguous: you may not be quite sure if you’re being flirted with or not and that’s all part of the fun. And let me just say, that while I don’t want to take flirting away from singles who are looking for a marriage partner, in this episode we are talking about a couple who are flirting between themselves. Now it’s hard to imagine that researchers could investigate something like flirting without sucking all the fun out of it but one researcher noted that flirting is often used to achieve one of six main goals[ii]: Sex motivation: flirting to initiate sex Relational motivation: flirting to increase intimacy in an existing relationship Exploring motivation: testing a potential marriage partner’s interest in a relationship (this one is definitely for the singles rather than the married couples!) Fun motivation: flirting simply to have fun Esteem motivation: flirting to increase your own self esteem Instrumental motivation: flirting to gain some form of reward from the other person. Other than the exploring option, I think we can look at all of the others and say that flirtation in marriage can and should be a normal part of our interactions. It may look different than the flirting that happens outside of marriage, but between a husband and wife it can really just be a normal part of marital interaction and can really be used to reinforce the sense of togetherness in the marriage[iii]. One researcher actually noted that long-term marriages use a particular style of flirting called authentic flirting. It has one of those holographic stickers on the side. No, just kidding. No, this study in 2017[iv] suggests that authentic flirting is not aimed at having fun or experimenting or trying to get something from your spouse: it is simply an expression of love. Here’s a quote: "Authentic flirting is defined as an affectionate, creative, or playful action for connecting emotionally and sexually with another person. The motive is to see and be seen lovingly by a partner through expressing spontaneously a combination of curiosity, play, humor, or flirting gestures for increased emotional intimacy.” So let me just say on that point: just because your wife flirted with you doesn’t mean you need to expect anything in bed. If flirting in your books only exists as a signal that you are going to have sex tonight, you are actually missing out on a lot of other fun flirting. It is truly a very diverse and flavorful way of expressing love. Don’t make your wife afraid to flirt. Flirting and Marriage On that note, sometimes there are barriers to flirting in marriage. Barriers to Flirting in Marriage One of those barriers could be just what we mentioned: your spouse may want some flirting just to be for the joy of it. But you sexualize it every time. Leave some room for your spouse to be utterly exhausted and still feeling like throwing some flirt your way without creating expectations that he or she is going to be too tired to meet. Another challenge that can come up is if the passionate love in our marriage declines over time. It is normal to experience a more stable, companionate love after the first 18 months of marriage but this doesn’t mean you have to lose the fire. We looked at this in an episode on how to date your spouse again. And then the other barrier is the simple fact that life happens: children, increased work pressures and so on. That can make it hard to have energy for flirting or to feel unburdened enough to do so. Marital Benefits of Flirting While some of these things can get in the way, I want to encourage you today to think about the upside. A study in 2007[v] found that flirting in married couples could serve as a helpful relationship maintenance strategy. You can use flirting to: Reaffirm your love and attraction to your spouse Increase intimacy between the two of you Just have fun together Show positivity Manage and reduce conflict Flirting in married couples also serves a purpose not seen in flirting outside of marriage: the desire to create a "private world" between you and your spouse. This is done by using words or actions which you would only use with your spouse. So it can take on this really neat exclusive aspect: like an inside joke. Flirting was therefore linked to higher marital satisfaction, for both men and women[vi]. However, the outcomes of flirting do vary depending on the motivation behind it, and we’ll get to that below. Ways of Flirting When Married Ok, so how does flirting look when you’ve been married ten years and you’ve barely got time to speak to each other, let alone get your flirt on? As mentioned above, flirting in married couples is often aimed at creating a joint private world. Flirting using language or actions you only use with each other, or flirting in a way that draws on your shared history together can achieve this, leading to a stronger bond and better marital satisfaction[vii]. So just be thinking about how you can develop those areas in your marriage. Flirting in marriage should also try to be a natural part of the daily routines of the family, and integrated with the rest of your daily interactions[viii]. So instead of setting aside specific times for flirting and romance it should be a natural part of your interactions together, and fit around other responsibilities. This is especially true if there are lots of demands on your time, due to kids, work etc. It really probably will do better as something spontaneous — that surprise element is always fun. Send a text message if you think of it at work. Whatever it takes. Similarly, a study in 2017[ix] writes that marital flirting doesn't have to be planned out or carefully planned, and should instead be "spontaneous and playful", taking advantage of any time you have together. Flirting in this sense can become automatic, like a habit, and therefore doesn't require any extra time or effort- it just happens. Remember that flirting in married couples looks different and has different outcomes depending on the motivation behind it. It’s not going to look the same as when you guys were dating. For example, research in 2012[x] found that flirting driven by esteem motivation (flirting to increase your own self esteem) is negatively correlated with relationship satisfaction. Flirting as a way to manage conflict was also negatively correlated with marital quality, so trying to flirt your way out of arguments can be a fail. I would qualify that by saying that there are times that you can effectively defuse conflict through the use of humor — as long as you’re only defusing and not constantly deflecting. You still need to solve the issue — but humor along the way can make it easier. One of the studies we looked at thought that two good ways of flirting as married couples were display flirting and attentive flirting. Who knew, these are on top of the six kinds we mentioned earlier! Display Flirting This means overt displays of affection or sexual interest, such as: Direct sexual comments and compliments Boasting/showing off Acting, dressing or talking in a seductive or romantic way Big romantic gestures to impress and seduce Display flirting is often based on sex motivation, or the desire to have fun and create a shared world. This kind of flirting creates greater feelings of romantic love. It also (hopefully) increases sexual satisfaction, leading to higher marital satisfaction. Attentive Flirting This is flirting which is focused on the spouse, rather than yourself. Such as: Gifts Compliments Romantic touch Acts of service/gestures of "chivalry" or attentiveness to spouse's needs This style of flirting is driven by motivation for intimacy, fun and desire to strengthen the relationship, but could also be driven by instrumental motivation: desire for the spouse to do you favors in return. If done with a good motivation to reaffirm your love/attraction for your spouse this style of flirting increases marital satisfaction and also strengthens commitment. Researchers also noted that women are much more likely to use this attentive style of flirting than men. They also note that women and men often have similar standards in what they want from marriage, but men more often report having hose needs met than women do. So husbands should aim to get better at this to help meet their wives emotional needs. Guys: you probably have the display flirting down pat…work on the attentive flirting. References [i] Brandi N. Frisby and Melanie Booth-Butterfield, ‘The “How” and “Why” of Flirtatious Communication Between Marital Partners’, Communication Quarterly, 60.4 (2012), 465–80 . [ii] David Dryden Henningsen, ‘Flirting with Meaning: An Examination of Miscommunication in Flirting Interactions’, Sex Roles, 50.7–8 (2004), 481–89 . [iii] Frisby and Booth-Butterfield. [iv] Tarin Olson, ‘An Exploration of Authentic Flirting Within Romantic Marriage - ProQuest’

Sarcasm in Marriage: Why It Hurts More Than You Think (and How to Stop)

Wed, 21 Mar 2018 11:00:46 +0000

You came home tired. Your spouse forgot the thing you asked them to do. You smiled and said, "Oh, perfect." Two words. Light tone. Funny, almost. And the look that crossed their face for half a second told you exactly how those two words landed. Sarcasm in marriage is one of those habits that sounds harmless when it leaves your mouth and lands like contempt in your partner's nervous system. The research points in a sobering direction. Sarcasm aimed at a spouse often functions as contempt, and contempt is one of the strongest signs that a marriage is in trouble, not because of any single comment, but because of what sarcasm actually is underneath the joke. Here is what we want you to see in this article. Most of the time, when sarcasm shows up in marriage, it is contempt with a smile attached. It is one of the four communication patterns that John Gottman's research links to divorce. It hurts the person on the receiving end more than the person delivering it imagines. And the path out is not better delivery, sharper timing, or learning to raise your eyebrows in the right way. The path out is learning to say what you actually mean. Why We Use Sarcasm (Underneath the Joke) If sarcasm is so damaging, why do any of us use it? There are reasons, and they are worth pausing on, because the function of sarcasm is what makes it so easy to keep doing. Sometimes we use sarcasm to deliver a criticism while looking like we are not really being critical. We tuck the criticism inside humor because we believe it will land softer, or because we think it makes us look less rude when we say it[i]. The agenda is the same as a direct complaint, but the wrapping makes us feel better about delivering it. Other times sarcasm is the response to a criticism. It lets us dismiss what our spouse just said while still looking calm, even amused. The eye roll says: I am too far above this to engage with it. Sometimes it is a way to express annoyance in a more socially acceptable form than losing our temper. When you make a cutting remark, your peers may laugh and find you funny rather than recoil when you raise your voice. The aggression is the same. The cost to the relationship is what shifts. Occasionally sarcasm is used to defuse conflict. The intent is genuinely to lighten things. But because it carries an edge, this almost never lands the way the speaker intends. Underneath all these different uses, one theme remains constant. Sarcasm is often a way to express negative emotion while not having to be vulnerable about it. It is more polite because it is more indirect, with the actual meaning left for the listener to interpret. And it creates a small layer of relational distance between us and the person we are speaking to, which is part of why it feels safer for the speaker. If you have ever told yourself your sarcastic comments are just supposed to be funny, the honest question is whether they might also be doing something else. Of course you would reach for a tool that makes hard things feel safer to say. That is a normal human move. It is also the move that, in marriage, tends to do exactly what we did not intend. What Sarcasm Looks Like in Marriage Sarcasm is often easy to miss and easy to misinterpret. So before we go further, here are the common signs researchers have noticed[ii]: Exaggerated tone of voice, or a deliberately flat, monotone delivery Blank expression Raised eyebrows Eye rolling Exaggerated fake smile or smirk False sympathy ("wow, that must have been so hard for you") Expressing the opposite emotion of what your words are saying ("I'm so glad you did that") These are the surface signals. But what is happening underneath those signals matters more. Sarcasm Is Contempt, and Contempt Predicts Divorce John Gottman's research identified four communication patterns that, when chronic, predict divorce with unusually high accuracy. He called them the Four Horsemen: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. Of those four, contempt is the most corrosive. And in marriage, sarcasm aimed at a spouse is one of the most common everyday forms of contempt[iii]. Contempt is what shows up when you stop treating your partner as a peer and start looking down your nose at them. It often has a cool, slightly amused quality. It distances you from the other person while the words sound almost light. Other researchers describe sarcasm as a form of rejection or dismissal, because it undermines what your spouse just said rather than engaging with it[iv]. Either frame names the same thing. Sarcasm is the move that quietly tells your partner: I am above this, and I am above you. The other thing the research has consistently found is that sarcasm hits harder than the speaker thinks it does. A series of studies on how sarcasm is perceived found that the person saying it tends to rate it as relatively mild, while the person hearing it rates it as more hurtful and more aggressive than a direct comment would have been[v]. The reason is straightforward. Sarcastic comments often highlight the gap between what someone did and what they should have done. "Thanks for your help with that" said to a spouse who did nothing draws attention to the failure in a way that feels more cold and calculated than a frustrated outburst would[vi]. Anger looks impulsive. Sarcasm looks deliberate. Deliberate hurts more. The clinical version of this is simple. Anger fires the listener's threat system, and they can recover. Contempt fires the listener's attachment system, the part of the brain that tracks "am I safe with this person, am I valued by this person, do they see me as an equal." And that one is much slower to recover. Is Sarcasm a Form of Emotional Abuse? This is one of the most common questions people search after a hard week with a sarcastic spouse. The honest clinical answer is: it depends on what is underneath it and how chronic it is. Occasional dry humor between two secure, connected partners is not emotional abuse. Two people who trust each other, who repair quickly when something lands wrong, who use a wry tone now and then about life in general rather than about each other, are usually fine. Chronic sarcasm aimed at your partner's identity, capacity, or worth can move onto the abuse continuum. When the running pattern of how you address your spouse is to make them the punchline, when they cannot bring up a concern without it being turned into a mocked phrase, when their attempts to be vulnerable get met with a smirk or an eye roll, the cumulative effect is not just bad communication. It is a form of emotional contempt that erodes their sense of being safe with you over time. The clinical marker we watch for is whether the sarcasm targets the relationship's hard moments (a missed task, a forgotten errand) or whether it targets the person (their intelligence, their body, their parenting, their job, their family). The first is a communication habit worth changing. The second is doing real damage. Pair it with chronic dismissal, and you are no longer just looking at a sarcasm problem. You are looking at a pattern of contempt that needs clinical attention. A short note if sarcasm is paired with intimidation, threats, control of your money or your movement, or fear for your physical safety. That is a different conversation than this article is having. If that is your reality, please reach out to a domestic abuse line in your area or get in touch with us, and we will help you find the right support. How Sarcasm Damages a Marriage Over Time The research on what sarcasm actually does to a marriage over years, not days, is sobering. Overall satisfaction drops. Studies on humor in marriage have found a strong link between marital dysfunction and "negative" forms of humor, which is the category sarcasm and harsh jokes at a spouse's expense both fall into[viii]. The relationship is correlational, and it appears to run both directions. Sarcasm contributes to dissatisfaction, and dissatisfaction makes sarcasm easier to reach for. That creates a slow downward spiral of "less satisfying communication that ultimately results in a less satisfying relationship[ix]." The same research found that sarcasm hits harder in already-struggling marriages. Couples who feel secure with each other may hear a sarcastic comment, register the playfulness, and not feel as threatened by the edge. Distressed couples register only the aggression. The shared history a married couple has, which would normally make humor land safely, can also make sarcasm feel more normal than it should and let it become an unseen destructive force inside the marriage[vii]. So the marriages where the partners can least afford another hit are exactly the ones where every sarcastic comment lands like a real one. Conflict gets worse, not better. Some couples reach for sarcasm as a way to manage conflict. Research consistently shows this does not work[x]. Benign or playful humor can de-escalate a conflict when both partners feel relatively safe with each other. Sarcastic humor in the middle of a fight tends to be ignored when the relationship is in good shape and to escalate the fight when it is not. Stability erodes. The classic 1993 work on marital interaction found that displays of contempt, sarcasm included, predicted that both spouses were seriously considering divorce or separation[xi]. That is the long arc. Most marriages do not end on the day a contemptuous comment lands. They end somewhere down the road from the thousandth contemptuous comment, when one or both partners has finally stopped expecting anything different. One of the things we see in couples work is that the partner on the receiving end often becomes quieter, not louder, as the sarcasm pattern goes on. They stop bringing up concerns because they know how concerns get met. By the time they come into the office, they are not asking how to fight better....

So Your Husband Ogles Other Women…

Wed, 14 Mar 2018 11:00:34 +0000

Ogling or objectifying the bodies of others by staring with obvious sexual interest can be an easy habit to get into. Especially in a culture that objectifies women. It’s also something that recovering porn addicts have to work really hard at to break. But: there are plenty of non-addicts that deal with this too, so let’s break this down and figure out how to break free of this habit. I think the first thing I want to note here is that while this activity or habit of checking people out can become almost mundane and very normal for a person, we have to realize it really is a betrayal event for our spouses. So it can be generating a lot of ongoing pain and hurt for one person while the other person is like “What? I was hardly even looking!” Why Do Men Ogle? Why is this such a common problem? The short answer is that our culture socializes us to look at women this way. In fact, both men and women are socialized to see women as objects to be viewed and admired[i]. Don’t believe me? Just look on Instagram…if a man or woman posts a photo of him/herself posing — it gets a ton of comments. Even though this is seen as a positive when it’s women complimenting each other…it is still objectifying. Men are taught to look at women in this way, and women are taught to think of and display themselves accordingly. This socialization happens through advertising, films, television and all the media that almost exclusively portrays women with ideal body shapes. And they emphasize their physical appearance over their personalities and qualities as a person. The effect of this is that men are trained to view women as sexual objects. In that context, ogling and “checking out” women becomes acceptable. We say things like “I was just looking!” to minimize and defend the behavior. And then the fact that so many people buy into this worldview is also used as a defense — as if you aren’t personally making a choice to check out other women, you’re just conforming to how everyone else acts. But just because something is commonplace, that doesn’t in any way mean it isn’t harmful. This objectifying of women has a dehumanizing effect. A rather alarming study from 2014[ii] found that when thinking about women in terms of their physical appearance, men would use less human words to describe them, and assign fewer human traits to them than they would to men. This effect can even be seen at the neurological level: focusing on women's bodies activates the same brain areas that are activated when looking at inanimate objects[iii]. How frightening is that? Men looking at women think of them as less human. Of course, you can only imagine the moral challenges this brings because we hold a different moral standard for what we do to an object versus what we would do to a human being. The Effect of Ogling on Women A common defense made is that nobody is being hurt. We are “only looking”. But the research shows that objectifying gaze has tangible, negative effects on the target of the gaze. Even the perception that one might be the target of objectification can have a negative effect. These effects include[iv]: Increased body shame and dissatisfaction with your own appearance Increased body surveillance — monitoring and worrying about your own appearance Internalizing the beauty standards of society and trying to live up to them Increased belief that looks are all that matter Reduced concentration, cognitive ability and performance (e.g., at work or in sports) Increased “self objectification” by women: thinking of themselves in more objectifying terms and being constantly preoccupied with how others will see you Acting less individually and more in line with expectations. For example, talking less and not standing up for yourself[v] What is really sad is that you begin to get the picture that as you objectify people they begin to internalize that view, and begin to believe this about themselves as well. Women affected in this way actually start acting more like objects, even when the gaze is “complimentary” (making a positive impression about a woman’s appearance). Along with this, women begin to believe that their physical attractiveness is more important than their qualities as a person. As you can imagine, this can lead to unrealistic standards of beauty which can lead to shame when they fail to live up to those unachievable standards[vi]. If beauty is all that matters, and you’ll never be as beautiful as the airbrushed models on TV and in fashion ads, what does that leave you with? Does this happen to men? No: this was actually tested and the effects are found for women being gazed on by men, but not the other way around[vii]. This highlights our responsibility as men to break this habit and to challenge our culture about how we view and look at women. Literally. How Ogling Affects Marriage Of course this does have a significant impact on marriage. It really is a betrayal and this objectification can happen both through ogling or other means like porn use. Here are some documented negative effects on wives if their husbands display these objectifying attitudes[viii] : Sadness and negative emotions Increased body shame Internalization of unattainable beauty standards Reduced self esteem Greater likelihood of having eating disorder symptoms caused by body shame Other researchers have found the same thing. For example, a study in 2011[ix] found that highly objectifying views in the husband predicted self-objectification in the wife. Wives will see themselves how husbands look at other women. Naturally, this impacts the marriage, creating reduced sexual satisfaction for both the husband and wife and reduced relationship satisfaction. By the way: if you are wondering how it reduces sexual satisfaction…it reduces women’s self esteem and it reduces intimacy. Self-esteem is necessary for desire…if you’re lost in your own insecurities it is going to be hard to feel a lot of desire. Also if you feel like you are actually just part of a larger harem of women but you happen to be the one your husband has physical sex with (rather than virtual) then of course there is a reduction in intimacy that’s going to happen. It is also really important to note that reduced sexual satisfaction does not lead to husbands engaging in more ogling or objectification in this context[x]. So a husband ogling other woman is not because he is not getting enough sex. What I mean is that withholding sex does not cause ogling. That may be used by him to justify ogling but I would challenge guys to be very careful about going down that road. At the same time, there are some spouses in a lot of pain because sex is being withheld from them: I do not want to dismiss that pain, but just to gently challenge you to think about how you may be choosing to adjust your own moral values as a result. I’d encourage you both: if you guys have a legit sex problem, go ahead and tackle that, but don’t try to justify ogling by blaming it on your spouse. Ogling is a Betrayal of Commitment Don’t forget that in all of this I’ve been calling ogling out as a betrayal event. Marital commitment is made up of three components: satisfaction with the relationship exclusivity vs. attention to alternatives investment in the current relationship You can see how increased attention to other women really erodes commitment. It is a betrayal. A few episodes ago when we looked at the dark realities of the porn industry we created a bonus guide that helps men deal with this objectification and ogling issue. So for this episode we’re coming at it from the other side. This week our bonus guide is for wives who find themselves influenced by popular thought and although it is painful to admit — you’ve really objectified yourself as well. Not necessarily in an immoral way, but you’re noticing you spend a lot of time on body image and concerns there rather than thinking of yourself as a whole person and focusing on personal growth. What To Do About Ogling Understand the Damage It Causes Despite the damage ogling and objectification do to women (both the target and the wives of ogling husbands), many people are resistant to the idea that it needs to stop. Men see it as "normal" or "harmless" and in some cases even women are taught that being the object of male attention is desirable[xi]. I think this needs to be a conversation in your marriage if it is a problem. For wives, make your husbands aware of the personal impact of their ogling behavior on you. For some, that may provide motivation to change. And I want to challenge men out there too — I am challenged by lust as much as the next guy. Character is what you are when nobody is watching — when you can ogle someone do you? I have to stay on top of this…it is an easy habit to get into and in the summer time or in a mall or going past some billboards it takes a concerted effort to bounce your eyes. And yet, if all of us were intentional about this I believe it would actually begin to change our culture and make it a safer place for women and also safer for our marriages too. Change How You See Women Ogling and being drawn to look at attractive women's bodies may be an automatic or nearly unconscious process, and so can be hard for men to stop. However, we can choose to focus instead on other aspects of women: seeing them as equal human beings rather than objects to be viewed. This is really about how you think about women now. Over time this will make you less likely to think of women as objects and you will be able to "catch" yourself when you are drawn to start ogling. To demonstrate this effect, a study in 2014[xii] found that focusing on women's physical appearance caused men to see them as being less competent, less warm and less capable of making moral decisions. Seeing women as objects and seeing them as having

Is Your Career Ruining Your Marriage?

Wed, 07 Mar 2018 11:00:33 +0000

Balancing work and family can be a tricky task for any marriage. In fact, sometimes it can seem like it’s impossible to really satisfy either area: either work is going to be unhappy if you put too much emphasis on family, or family is going to be unhappy if there’s too much emphasis on work. Or: both will be unhappy! This is really hard to figure out! Work-Family Conflict Work and family are probably the two biggest demands on your time and energy. When both your career and your family responsibilities are competing for the same hours in the day it can easily lead to conflict in one area or the other. Work life and home life run into issues usually in one of two ways: When the demands of work interfere with your ability to manage family life, or When the demands of marriage and family life interfere with the ability to manage work This can go two ways and consequently there are different causes, different consequences and ways of coping[i]. If you pay attention, what you will usually notice is that stress is caused in one area and then most prominently felt in the opposite area: for example, stress caused at work is felt most strongly in the marriage, and vice versa[ii]. This can be hard for your marriage because you have something outside the marriage that’s bringing stress in. Also, just to be clear, this can happen in dual-income families or it can happen in single-income families: all you need is a demanding or successful job, some long hours or a lot of travel. Competing Roles It is good to be compassionate with ourselves here because having a career and being a spouse/parent are two very different roles to hold simultaneously. On top of that, these two roles can compete for the same time and emotional energy[iii]. When that happens there are two processes that can cause conflict between these roles: Spillover: where stress and difficulties in one role spill over into the other (e.g., stress at work leading to conflict at home) Congruence: where there is a separate factor affecting both home and work equally (e.g., poor conflict resolution skills) Basically you can either bring stress from one role into the other, or you can bring some other factor with you that’s causing stress in both roles. A tight deadline at work creates stress at home, but a bad attitude creates stress everywhere you go. Not Enough Resources What happens is we all have a limited amount of resources such as energy, time, money, knowledge, emotional effort etc. When you do not have enough resources to take care of all the roles this creates tension. Or maybe you have to use an excessive amount of resources trying to balance the roles[iv]. Think about it: is this happening to you? Are you stretching yourself too thin? Further, work-family conflict can also occur when behavior resources are carried over from one role to another inappropriately. For example: someone who is stressed at work may try to use the same authoritarian management style at home. That’s never going to go well. Then you get conflict in the home[v]. These are all dynamics that we need to be aware of in order to solve work-family conflict. So is Work the Problem? Or Family? High demands at home naturally pull your resources away from work, and conflict at home reduces your capacity to handle conflict at work[vi]. Here is a helpful way of figuring out where the stress is and what the impact is: Factors Consequences Work Interfering with Family Stressful or high pressure working conditions Conflict with colleagues at work Long hours and physically/emotionally tiring work Inflexible working hours Having to do work you don't find meaningful or engaging Dissatisfaction with family life Marital tension, leading to conflict Higher overall life stress Symptoms of depression and anxiety Reduced physical health- such as high blood pressure, sleep disturbances and increased susceptibility to illness Higher likelihood of turning to destructive behaviors such as smoking, poor eating and substance abuse Family Interfering with Work Marital conflict Number of hours spent on household labor Childcare, especially having multiple young children Financial instability Caring for elderly parents as well as children Major events which could drain your resources, such as sickness, injury, financial Poorer performance at work More days off work due to sickness and stress Higher rates of burnout Increased likelihood of leaving the job and high turnover rate between jobs Ways to Reduce Work-Family Conflict Research on reducing work-family conflict has focused on ways employers can reduce the conflict for their employees, and on issues you as individuals can work on to reduce the conflict as well. Let’s take a quick look at both. Things Your Employer Can Do Many employers offer services to address work-life balancing issues. These include: Flexible work hours Options to work from home Ability to work part time Extended maternity/paternity leave Paid family leave On-site childcare Assistance finding childcare and other support Which of these are actually helpful? In 2008[vii] some researchers conducted a meta-review of studies examining which of these services actually help reduce WFC. Results were very mixed: some studies show that flexible work arrangements like working from home and on-site childcare can improve work-life balance and reduce conflict, while others show little effect. Some studies even show that these arrangements can increase WFC. For some people working from home meant taking the stress of work home with you rather than reducing the stress. The research does show that these services work for some people, so whether they are useful or not is probably a matter of personal preference and individual circumstances. So if your employer offers these kinds of services, try taking advantage of them and see what works. Remember that employers have a responsibility to minimize the stress your job causes, so if these services aren’t offered, could you ask for them to be set up? Things You Can Do Now let’s look at what you can do to redress this balance. This is the most important part, really, because you can’t control what your employer and your job demands are like, but you can always take steps to learn new skills and look at news ways to manage. Managing Resources Like we saw above, conflict between work and marriage is due to a strain on your emotional and practical resources. This means you can reduce the conflict by learning to manage your various resources more effectively. We really dive into this in the bonus content, so give that a really good look if you want to figure out how you can pull all your different strengths and resources together to make things easier. Time Management Skills Having good time management skills reduces both work and home stress, and prevents stress from one area spilling over into the other[viii]. This is a great option, by the way, because these are simple skills that anyone can learn. And they’ll help in pretty much every area of life. Self Esteem Self esteem has an interesting relationship to work-family conflict. According to a study in 1999[ix], self esteem is not correlated to work-family conflict and does not help prevent it. However, high levels of self esteem are negatively correlated with all the bad outcomes work-family conflict normally produces, such as stress, marital conflict, poor physical health, poor performance at work etc. So working on building your self esteem doesn't stop work-family conflict from happening, but it does stop it from having any negative effects on your marriage or work life. Self esteem isn’t the easiest thing to work on but it’s about learning to be comfortable with who you are, and developing the skills and knowledge to act with confidence at work and at home. Settling Boundaries How are you at setting boundaries? A study 2009[x] identified some simple strategies people used to create boundaries between work and home, which reduced work-family conflict: Enlisting Help: using other people to help protect your home times from work demands, such as having work colleagues screen calls while you are away, asking colleagues to help with work to reduce stress, or asking your spouse to act as a "buffer" to control which aspects of work are allowed to come home with you. Prioritizing: only allowing the really essential work demands to interfere with home life and leaving the non-urgent stuff until you are back at work. Controlling work time: setting clear time boundaries as to when you are at work, and when you have to leave. Holidays: taking regular time off to recover from work stress. Sometimes creating healthy work-life boundaries is about standing up for yourself and choosing to make your marriage and family a priority over work. Which leads us on to the final point. Priorities This is one to think about carefully. According to Role theory[xi] individuals with multiple competing roles will naturally lean towards one, developing a primary role and seeing the other role as secondary. People then come to "specialize" in their primary role by getting better at it and investing more time and effort in it. This often negatively impacts the secondary role(s). This is reflected in the fact that people who choose to spend more hours in work and engage more in their work life experienced reduced quality of marital life, and vice versa[xii]. In this sense, individuals with competing roles may simply need to choose which one is their priority: their job or their marriage. If they choose to prioritize the marriage they may need to accept that there will be some detrimental effects to the job, or vice versa,...

Loyalty in Marriage: Why It’s the #2 Predictor of a Lasting Relationship

Wed, 28 Feb 2018 11:00:14 +0000

Loyalty in marriage is one of the most powerful predictors of a long-lasting, stable relationship. In one study that followed 147 couples who had been happily married more than 20 years, loyalty to the spouse came in as the second strongest predictor of long-term stability. That makes loyalty one of the most important features of building a marriage that actually lasts. But here is where it gets interesting. Most of us, when we hear the word "loyalty," default to a fairly thin definition: don't cheat. Don't betray. Stay faithful. That is not wrong. It is just the floor, not the whole house. The clinical and research literature gives us a much richer picture of loyalty in marriage, and the gap between what we settle for and what loyalty actually offers is, in our experience, one of the quietest reasons marriages plateau. Today we are going to walk through what loyalty really means, why the research keeps finding it at the top of the predictor lists, and how to handle the three places it gets tested most often. What Loyalty in Marriage Actually Means The philosopher George Fletcher gave us one of the most useful frames for this. He distinguished between minimum loyalty and maximum loyalty[i]. Minimum loyalty is what we usually mean. It is the baseline: not having an affair, not lying, not betraying your spouse's trust. It is defined entirely by what you do not do. Stay inside the lines. Don't cross them. Maximum loyalty is a different thing entirely. It is about "becoming one" with your spouse through long-term commitment, partnership, and devotion. Where minimum loyalty is about avoiding the major taboos of marriage, maximum loyalty is about investing yourself into something deeply. You can see how those are not the same. Avoiding harm and creating something are two different muscles. Maximum loyalty, in Fawcett's research, gets built through five things[ii]: A shared vision for life: wanting the same things from life, valuing the same qualities, agreeing on the issues that matter. Joint life goals: parenting, community work, faith practice, business ventures, anything you are both pulling toward. Generosity: investing in your spouse through affection, time, gifts, acts of service. Fairness: sharing workloads and taking joint responsibility for the relationship. Openness, vulnerability, and honesty. This is what John Gottman calls "shared meaning" in his Sound Relationship House model. It is one of the features Gottman sees in marriages that thrive over time. And what is striking, clinically, is how rarely couples talk about it directly. They will talk about chores, about sex, about the kids. They rarely talk about whether the life they are building is one they both actually want. There is one more layer to maximum loyalty that often gets overlooked. Loyalty also implies a commitment to your own growth inside the marriage. To bring more of yourself. To be challenged to develop as a person. Fowers writes about this as bringing a "richness and vitality that may otherwise be dormant" into the marriage[iii]. So loyalty is something developed both inside yourself and between the two of you. It is not just about how I treat my spouse. It is also about whether I am still becoming someone worth being loyal to. Why Loyalty Predicts a Lasting Marriage A loyal marriage tends to be a strong one. The research lines up across decades of studies. Here is what loyalty actually does. Loyalty Is the Hidden Mediator of Marital Satisfaction The clinical mechanism here is fascinating. Rosen-Grandon and colleagues ran a study in 2004 that looked at whether positive marital behaviors, things like affection, agreement, intimacy, and sex, actually produce satisfaction on their own[iv]. They do not. What the study found is that all of those positive behaviors only translate into satisfaction when love and loyalty are present as mediators. In other words, you can check every good-spouse box and still feel empty if the underlying loyalty is not there. This is the same idea the apostle Paul lands on in 1 Corinthians 13, which is the most well-known chapter on love in the Bible. You can do all the right things, and if love is missing, it amounts to nothing. The research is making the same observation about marriage specifically. It is a useful self-check: am I checking the boxes, or are the things I am doing actually saturated with love and loyalty? The spouse on the receiving end can feel the difference. And here is the other direction this finding points. For couples who value loyalty and see devotion as a priority, simply being happy with the loyalty their spouse already shows is enough to produce high satisfaction, independent of any other factor[v]. That is worth stopping on. If loyalty is genuinely being shown to you in small daily ways, noticing it can become part of how the system strengthens. We often see in our practice that couples will overlook real loyalty for years because they have stopped looking for it. The #2 Predictor of a Long-Term Marriage Fenell's 1993 study followed 147 couples who had been happily married for more than 20 years and asked what predicted that outcome[vi]. Loyalty to the spouse came in second. The number one predictor was seeing marriage as a lifelong commitment. We point this out because it is easy to miss what the data is actually saying. Loyalty is not a nice-to-have. It is one of the major predictors of whether your marriage makes it to the long-term version of itself. And the related concepts in the top 10, things like close friendship and companionship, are all on the same spectrum. They are all describing variants of "I am for you, and I am staying." How Loyalty Buffers Against Fear This study is one of the most interesting things in the literature. Florian, Mikulincer, and Hirschberger asked participants to think about frightening existential issues, like death and mortality, and then measured how they reported feeling about their spouse[vii]. What they found was that thinking about death actually raised people's reported commitment and loyalty to their spouse. And those thoughts of commitment, in turn, reduced their fear of death. The researchers concluded that a strong, loyal relationship reduces the fear of death because in a loyal relationship your sense of self has expanded to include the other person. So if you die, part of your "self" continues. Here is how they put it: "Unlike most other threats, the threat of death is inescapable, and support from close others cannot remove the threat itself. In this case, perhaps, the affirmation of one's importance in others' lives engenders feelings of meaning that render the prospect of death more tolerable"[viii]. What we read in this, clinically, is that loyalty also creates legacy. It is leaving something behind that endures past the span of your own life. People who are deeply loyal to each other become participants in something larger than themselves. That is one of the gifts of a faithful, long marriage that often does not get named. Loyalty Makes Vulnerability Safe Vulnerability and loyalty are deeply linked, and the link runs in both directions. When you are in a loyal relationship, one that emphasizes partnership and togetherness, you can express vulnerability and be received well. That is the part most people expect. What may be less obvious is how loyalty changes the way couples fight. Duba and colleagues found that high underlying loyalty allows spouses to "use positive affect, positive emotions such as humor, to maintain calmness and flexibility, attack the issue and not the spouse, and notice opportunities for repair attempts rather than focusing on each other's negative traits"[ix]. This is what Sue Johnson's work on Emotionally Focused Therapy has shown about secure attachment in marriage. When the loyalty is solid underneath, conflict does not feel like a threat to the bond. It feels like something the two of you are working on together. The fight is not about whether you are still us. The fight is about figuring out the issue at hand. That is a fundamentally different experience. When Loyalties Compete Even when you and your spouse genuinely value loyalty, real life will put it under pressure. Three situations come up over and over in our work with couples. The first one is not common to all marriages, but the last two are essentially universal. Loyalty Conflicts in Stepfamilies In blended families, loyalties can pull in different directions: between your new spouse and the children or family from a previous marriage[x]. When you are trying to make this work, it can be hard to know which side to come down on. Do you support your spouse, or your kids? The research is fairly clear on the answer, even though it lands hard. Pasley and colleagues found that creating a stable marriage and a stable home is the single best thing you can do for the children's adjustment to the new family. So when it comes to discipline, rules, and household norms, presenting a stable partnership with your spouse is often what gives children the stability they need. Building new family rituals and a new family dynamic helps too. The whole package becomes the family the kids are growing up inside. What we see clinically is that the parents who navigate this best are the ones who refuse to treat loyalty to the spouse and loyalty to the children as competing claims. They are committed to the whole system. Of course you would feel pulled when your child is upset with your new spouse. That is the most natural response in the world. The work is treating that feeling as data about a family system that still needs integrating, not as evidence that you have to pick a side. Work and Marriage Loyalties also get divided between family life and a career, sometimes in ways that look like normal life but feel like betrayal underneath[xii]....

Defensiveness in Marriage

Wed, 21 Feb 2018 10:02:55 +0000

I do not think that there is a human being on the face of our planet right now who does not struggle at least a little bit with defensives. Some of us struggle a lot. And defensiveness in marriage is definitely going to make you unhappy and dissatisfied with your marriage. Turns out, it’s not an easy one to overcome either—but today we’re going to show you how. This week we are gonna call you out and expose this gremlin running around in all our marriages called Defensiveness. I know what you’re thinking…”I’m not defensive!!” But, that’s the problem right there. How Defensiveness Works The Bible says that "A brother offended is more unyielding than a strong city, and quarreling is like the bars of a castle.” (Proverbs 18:19 ESV) Or we could say a “Wife offended” or “Husband offended”… Once you hit that point where there’s an attack, there’s a known flaw, there’s known issues then it is really easy to become defensive. So we have some cool stuff to start with because we are really going to break down this defensiveness thing — you have to know the enemy in order to defeat it — and the enemy is not your spouse, the enemy is the defensiveness that happens between you. Defensiveness happens when four things line up[i]. What I really like about this is that if you take any of these out, you begin to undermine defensiveness in your own life. So the four things are: A self-perceived flaw which you refuses to admit Sensitivity to that flaw (e.g., you are embarrassed or even ashamed about it) An attack by another person (doesn’t have to be a huge attack — could just be a blunt observation) The attacker seeing the same flaw which the defender does not want to admit Defensiveness Could Be a Personality Trait The first two items above are more characteristic issues: they enter into that area of ways of thinking and/or personality traits. I have a flaw — I do not want to admit to it — and I am sensitive about it. That’s getting into that character realm of things. Often we might feel quite inadequate around a flaw or at least insecure about it. We certainly do not want to admit it to others and we may not even really admit it to ourselves. In order to become defensive, that real or perceived flaw has to relate to something that is an important part of my own sense of self or self-worth, and my identity[ii]. It’s like a closely guarded secret that you’re trying your hardest to hide from everyone— maybe even yourself— so when it’s brought to light you instantly try to shoot it down. So we get defensive in situations in which our identity is threatened. A classic example is an addiction — even take it on the lighter end of the scale, like a phone addiction. For me to be defensive, go through the four parts: I perceive it but do not want to admit to it I am sensitive — I do not want it pointed out You point it out to me with a harsh edge on your voice because it is a problem that is coming between us You see the flaw, and I know that. And then I am beginning to think, I am an addict. I am a bad husband. Good husbands do not have this problem. I stake a lot of my self-identity on being a good husband and father. Now we have all the ingredients for defensiveness. So how does this get talked (or fought!) through in a marriage? Defensive Communication in Marriage There are two sides to defensive communication: the defensive reaction, and the action which caused it. We need to separate these. Just think carefully about how you either trigger defensiveness in your spouse, or how you respond to your spouse when you are feeling defensive[iii]. Let’s start with the first. How to Trigger Defensiveness In Your Spouse Here are some sure-fire ways to put your spouse into a defensive mindset: Use words or tone of voice that evaluates or judges the listener (“I see you are on your phone…again”) Attempt to control or coerce the listener (“If you don’t put that down I am going to freak on you.”) Strategic or manipulative communication (targeting, needling or guilting over it) Neutral speech that conveys a lack of concern (#hairflip you’re on your phone again) Implications of superiority Dogmatism or certainty in your own opinion Any behavior that your spouse deems threatening or punishing Loud or rapid speech Frequent interruptions or corrections These last 2-3 are typical of conflict scenarios: you’re shouting and demanding in every way you can think of but nothing is getting through, and the angrier you get, the more defensive your spouse gets. What You Likely Do When You Are Feeling Defensive And here’s how you’re likely to react when you’re in defense-mode: Dismiss your spouse’s concerns (“what, I’m just looking for a place to eat tonight”) Denying or minimizing your own responsibility (“People from work keep asking me for stuff”) Shifting blame to the attacker (“If you’d be a little friendlier I wouldn’t have to use my phone for an escape”) Making excuses (“Why? Other people use their phones way more than me!”) Justifications of your actions (“This is how I make a living, OK!”) How Defensiveness Impacts Marriage This is one of those “you can win the battle but you’re going to lose the war” scenarios. Defensive styles of communication lead to increased sensitivity and escalation of the conflict, as the attacker feels like they are not being heard and the defender keeps trying to deflect responsibility[iv]. Where this really hits a marriage in the gut is it is sending a signal to your spouse (when you are defensive) that s/he is not getting through to you. Basically it is an abandonment or rejection signal. It is saying you are alone in what you think because you cannot get through to me. Or it is saying I do not care what you think, go away. And you thought you were just being defensive! Researchers have noted a couple important things about why defensiveness really never has anything positive to offer your marriage: Defensiveness in one spouse also makes the other spouse more prone to defensiveness, creating a destructive cycle that perpetuates itself[v]. Couples who frequently engage in defensive communication report fewer positive feelings for each other and experience lower marital quality and satisfaction[vi] Ok so that’s how defensiveness works to wreck marriages. Now let’s explore how to stop it. Reducing Defensiveness Owning Your Flaws The built-in objection within defensiveness is that we do not want to be flawed people. Nor do we wish to be seen by the most important people in our lives as being flawed. If you can change your perspective of marriage to one that includes seeing your marriage as a crucible for personal growth, then you are going to be receptive to the complaints that your spouse makes. So when she says, “You’re on your phone too much” you can respond differently. You choose to be married because you wish to grow, and your spouse just offered you some feedback that could trigger growth. So instead of becoming defensive, you are now in a position to embrace the feedback even if it hurts. Remember, one of the core components of defensiveness is a self-perceived flaw which you refuse to admit. When you admit and own the flaw, you are no longer in the position of being defensive. Part of this is based on the perspective that we are all broken as human beings. So when someone points out one of my flaws, they may do so in a hurtful manner, but because I know that I am already flawed my identity is not threatened. So there’s an attack but there is no sensitivity because I’ve already embraced my brokenness. Now, I may choose to set a boundary on people who consistently point out flaws in a hurtful way because they are toxic or unhealthy — they’re corrosive — but when it is someone who cares and is normally respectful I can much more readily embrace the feedback. Believing in Self-Determination If you’re from a Christian background like us, you may get a little nervous around the idea of self-determination, which is the ability to make decisions without relying on others, and doing things out of your own free will rather than being coerced and manipulated. We believe in the will of God, but we also believe that God has given to every person the ability to make their own choices. I believe in free will. In this context, then, you can make choices based on the values that matter to you. As opposed to being forced into things by other people. So take my phone example, and our definition of how defensiveness happens: someone points out a flaw which you are sensitive to and refuse to admit. Defensiveness says that you can choose to deny the flaw, conceal what is sensitive and try to protect yourself. Self-Determination says that you have chosen to enter marriage, you are invested in the health of that marriage and in the care of your spouse. With this mindset you see the problem as a challenge to be faced together rather than something that needs to be denied, minimized or hidden[vii]. When you see yourself as capable of addressing something rather than as a victim or someone with an unchangeable character flaw, that is a more empowered position to act from. When you see your marriage as part of this in the sense that this is where you get to be seen, warts and all, then you will be even less defensive. In that way, you’re acknowledging this is what you signed up for: refinement, growth, and challenges. People who show this kind of self-determination generally experience better emotional wellbeing and better relationship satisfaction overall[viii]. Being confident in your ability to face challenges together helps you move past defensiveness and strengthens your marriage across the board. References: [i] Glen H. Stamp, Anita L. Vangelisti, and John A. Daly,...

Don’t Let Resentment Sink Your Marriage

Wed, 14 Feb 2018 15:26:08 +0000

Resentment is what happens when you are treated unfairly and you begin to feel angry and bitter. Resentment can be directed at your spouse, at God, at your life: but if it begins to play a significant role in your marriage, that’s going to make home a pretty tough place to be. Proverbs 12:25 says that anxiety makes the heart heavy and as I thought about the subject of resentment it occurred to me that resentment can be a form of anxiety. You don’t see this in any diagnostic manual, but it has the same ruminating characteristic of repeatedly mulling over past grievances, with a lot of negativity. We all end up with resentment at different places and times in our marriage. We don’t want to be getting after you about it, but rather we want to help you understand how it happens, why it doesn’t help and what to do differently! Resentment often strikes us when we feel that we have been treated badly. Especially if it’s in a way we did not deserve, but it can even happen when good things happen to others which you feel they did not earn[i]. That starts to look a lot like envy. In marriage it often occurs when you feel you have been unfairly wronged and so it might bring about a desire to get even by holding onto a grudge and remaining bitter[ii]. Major Sources of Resentment in Marriage Unresolved Conflict If you struggle with poor conflict resolution and a fairly frequent inability to solve disagreements this often leads to a buildup of resentment and anger[iii]. You get this buildup of annoyances and hurts which might be individually small but if left unforgiven and unaddressed can start to look pretty big. This slowly building resentment then negatively impacts marital satisfaction for both partners. It is also helpful to note that certain styles of conflict are specifically linked to creating high levels of resentment, especially the competitive style of conflict where each spouse is trying to "win" the argument rather than reach a joint solution[iv]. Unless arguments are properly resolved and forgiven, resentment at the initial transgression which caused the argument will continue to impact the marriage. I often tell the couples I am providing counseling to that how much you argue is not nearly as important as if you resolve those arguments. Underlying resentment about past grievances can then fuel future conflict and impede conflict resolution in the future, creating a negative spiral[v]. If you’re still angry about something from last week then this week’s annoyance is going to seem even more infuriating. And then when you’re arguing you start to throw in all the little things from the last few days that have annoyed you, and the whole thing blows up. Don’t worry, we’re going to show you what to do about all this in just a moment! Perceived Unfairness Believing that your spouse is acting unfairly often leads to feelings of resentment which can create conflict and reduce marital satisfaction. This can occur over all kinds of aspects of life, such as: Division of household labor: believing that you do more work than your spouse or that the work is split unfairly leads to resentment, especially for wives[vi]. Emotion work: similarly, feeling that you are doing all the emotional work to maintain the relationship (you’re the one doing all the maintenance behaviors like expressing love, confiding and intimacy etc) or feeling like you put more work into the emotional side of the marriage than your spouse does can also create resentment[vii]. Secrecy: feeling that information is being kept from you by your spouse can also lead to resentment[viii]. Lack of perceived support: feeling unsupported and thinking that your spouse is not helping you through difficulties also leads to hurt and resentment. For example a study in 2000[ix] examined marital satisfaction in couples where one spouse had a serious illness and found that a lack of support and concern or a refusal to help led to feelings of resentment which reduced marital satisfaction. All these factors are also affected by attributions: whether you think you’re spouses actions are intentional, or driven by who they are as a person or just by circumstance. Believing that your spouse's unfair actions were intentional or driven by who they are as a person makes the ensuing resentment more severe[x]. We did a whole episode on how to stop when you’re misinterpreting your spouse so make sure to go back and check that one out if this sounds familiar. So perceived unfairness leads to resentment, and resentment leads to lower marital satisfaction. However, low marital satisfaction can also cause perceived unfairness. A study in 2001[xi] studied married couples' levels of satisfaction at 3 points over several months. They found that dissatisfaction with the marriage at time 1 predicted perceptions of unfairness in relation to issues like division of labor at time 2. This then predicted conflict, resentment and dissatisfaction at time 3. So, if marital satisfaction is already low (for whatever reason) then spouses tend to scrutinize their marriage more harshly and perceive aspects of it as being unfair, leading to resentment and conflict. In other words, resentment becomes the lens through which you view all of your marriage and through which you see and interpret your spouse’s actions. Now, how do you deal with resentment? How to Deal With Resentment Towards Your Spouse We want to give you three things to look at here. Moving Towards Fairness Addressing the reason for the perceived unfairness can prevent resentment from building up. It is important to identify the unfairness and then address it if you believe it is important to you. Working on a fairer division of labor or more emotional support or whatever the perceived injustice can also remove the underlying resentment and improve marital wellbeing. Simple enough, right? Resolve the issue, remove the resentment. Forgiving Your Spouse Forgiving your spouse for the thing which offended you means choosing to let go of the resentment and not let their past actions dominate your present emotions. Forgiveness is not the same as condoning your spouse's behavior, or letting them off the hook for doing something that upset you. Rather it is choosing not to hold on to the resentment and releasing the person from being indebted to you. Like I said, we’ve got some high quality detail on this in our bonus download for our patrons, but here is a very helpful quote from a research team: "As the person decides to forgive and so proclaims, several important things happen. First, the forgiver has crossed an important line… He or she has moved from a position of resentment to one of not letting the resentment dominate the interaction. Although the one who forgives may still feel resentful, the person chooses not to let it be a controlling factor. Second, the decision and proclamation show that the forgiver is consciously aware of his or her new position. The forgiver, in other words, is not abandoning resentment because of taking some memory-loss pill or simply letting time run its course. Instead, the decision is a defining moment regarding who the forgiver is (“I am one who forgives”),who the forgiven is (“He/she is worthy of respect”), and what their relationship may be like as a result of this decision.[xii]" Forgiveness has very strong links to marital wellbeing, commitment and satisfaction, and is especially linked with better ability to resolve conflict and prevent the negative cycles of resentment and conflict[xiii]. That’s why this is the focus of our bonus guide: forgiveness is a huge lever that you can pull to move you out of resentment and towards contentment. Gratitude Helps, Too This is really interesting: gratitude and resentfulness are often considered "mirror images" of each other[xiv]. Both arise in response to a person's actions towards you and both invoke a desire to reciprocate or get even, either in a positive way (gratitude) or a negative way (resentment). Resentment therefore forms a cycle of conflict and negativity while gratitude starts a cycle of positivity and thankfulness. Gratitude and resentment as personality traits are negatively correlated: being high in one makes you naturally lower in the other[xv]. So working on increasing your feeling and expression of gratitude will cause your tendency towards resentment to decrease. Being a generally grateful person is also highly correlated with being easily able to forgive, which also helps remove resentment[xvi]. An attitude of gratitude always helps! References: [i] N. T. Feather and Rebecca Sherman, ‘Envy, Resentment, Schadenfreude, and Sympathy: Reactions to Deserved and Undeserved Achievement and Subsequent Failure’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28.7 (2002), 953–61 . [ii] Robert A. Emmons and Michael E. McCullough, The Psychology of Gratitude (Oxford University Press, USA, 2004). [iii] Frank D. Fincham, Steven R. H. Beach, and Joanne Davila, ‘Longitudinal Relations between Forgiveness and Conflict Resolution in Marriage’, Journal of Family Psychology: JFP: Journal of the Division of Family Psychology of the American Psychological Association (Division 43), 21.3 (2007), 542–45 . [iv] A. P. Greeff and T. de Bruyne, ‘Conflict Management Style and Marital Satisfaction’, Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 26.4 (2000), 321–34 . [v] Fincham, Beach, and Davila. [vi] Daphne Stevens, Gary Kiger, and Pamela J. Riley, ‘Working Hard and Hardly Working: Domestic Labor and Marital Satisfaction among Dual-Earner Couples’, Journal of Marriage and Family, 63.2 (2001), 514–26. [vii] Stevens, Kiger, and Riley. [viii] Catrin Finkenauer and Hana Hazam, ‘Disclosure and Secrecy in Marriage: Do Both Contribut

How Marriage Counselling Works

Wed, 07 Feb 2018 11:00:26 +0000

Today we want to lift the hood on the world of marriage counseling and look at one particular approach and how it works. If you’ve ever been curious about what happens in the counseling room or are considering counseling there’s a lot more to it than you might think! The Mystery of Marriage Counseling The world of counseling may seem like a mysterious or even intimidating place to those who know little about it. There’s a stigma around mental health itself, and although a distressed marriage is not a mental health problem, we rarely talk about our struggles as a couple. We like to appear like we have it all together and I think us church-going folk are even more prone to this. But then you do hear the horror stories when things don’t go well and people open up. Some terrible advice comes from people who call themselves counselors. So then when it comes to choosing a marriage counselor it can be pretty scary because your marriage is a big deal and you don’t want to the wrong person trying to help you with it! Basic Marriage Counselor Criteria Now I want to say that this article is not an extended advertisement for our services, but the things I am going to tell you are important facts you need to know, whether you decide to work with someone from my counseling practice or find a local counselor. The first thing is that not all counseling degrees are created equal. When a person is earning their Master’s degree in order to become a therapist, their school and the degree program they choose will generally orient itself around a particular school of thought. Of course, there are a plethora of flavors. But when it comes to marriage counseling you should know that there are a number of universities around North America that offer marriage and family therapy programs specifically. These kinds of degrees have less focus on specific mental health problems like anxiety disorders or even addictions, and they focus very much on relationships, how humans interact, how children learn to love and relate to others, on marriage dynamics and on family systems. So when you choose a therapist the first thing you should filter on is their education: do they have a degree that specializes in marriage and family? And usually you’ll see this in the letters after their last name in that either their degree will look like MAMFT (Master of Arts in Marriage and Family Therapy) or their certifying body will supply MFT credentials like LMFT (Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist). If you’re not sure, ask about the person’s training. The second thing you want to look for is whether the therapist has a specific approach to marriage counseling that is evidence-based. “Evidence-based” means that they are using a treatment approach which has been tested and tried through research and peer-reviewed journals. Surprisingly, there are only a handful of marriage approaches that have been rigorously tested in this way, and so if you want to give you marriage the best chance of success you would do well to ensure you are selecting a counselor who uses an evidence based approach. Otherwise you’ll have no idea whether what you’re being told actually works or not. Probably the two most popular evidence-based counseling approaches are Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (sometimes called EFT or EFCT) and the Gottman Method. I have taken specific training in both of these, on top of my MFT degree, as has my colleague in my practice, Jesse Schellenberg. They are quite different but very complementary. Both of us favor EFCT as our preferred approach: about 90% of couples show significant improvements using this approach and we’ll talk more about success rates in a moment, but 90% is incredible. How EFCT Works Key Principles Now, I am going to work hard to break the scientific jargon and psychobabble into English here but there are some key principles in this approach to marriage counseling that are important (Gurman et al, 2015[i]) Collaborative alliance: meaning the couple needs to be coached to become allies in working through their difficulties and working together to discover solutions. The onus is on the therapist to facilitate this. When you take this approach to marriage counseling, the relationship between the couple becomes the "client" or the target of the therapy, rather than each individual spouse. And I am very explicit with couples about this: I tell them, “I am not on your side or your side, I am on the side of your marriage." Person centered: In its secular form, this approach views people as being essentially good, and capable of making good and healthy choices. The bond and attachment between the couple is viewed as being essentially good and healthy. In this view everyone has the capacity to have a happy, healthy marriage and the ability to break free from conflict and unhealthy patterns. Now as Christians we own the problem of sin so I prefer to look at it in the sense of acknowledging that people are created in the image of God, which is one source of goodness, but because of sin we act in ways that are self-serving and self-preserving, rather than loving our neighbor/spouse as ourselves. So I think about it differently but it still invokes the same interventions. Since we’re made in God’s image we all have the capacity to reflect him in our marriage. It’s just sometimes a bit of struggle getting there. A Christian approach to EFCT also argues that the marriage bond is a universally positive and valuable connection that has the capacity to heal and strengthen individuals. Both EFCT and the biblical worldview see marriage as a powerful place for individual growth[ii]. Patterns of reacting: According to EFCT thinking, problems arise when individuals get "stuck" using certain ways of responding and interacting with each other, such as anger or fear of rejection. Often couples will already be somewhat or very aware of this, saying things like, “We always get stuck on the same issues." These emotions form unhelpful patterns of acting as a couple, which need to be understood and deconstructed. Expanding emotional responses. Emotions are the main focus of the therapy as they guide how the couple interacts. "Emotion guides and gives meaning to perception, motivates and cues attachment responses, and when expressed, communicates to others and organizes their response[iii]". The therapists helps couples to analyze their emotional responses to conflict and find new ways to express themselves in order to help them move forward. For example if a couple often show anger to each other they can work on expressing the underlying fear or vulnerability which is causing the anger. Positive change comes from expressing new, softer emotions and expressing yourself in new ways, not necessarily from uncovering past trauma or working on old issues. Goals of EFCT We have three goals. First, we want to create a safe, collaborative alliance between the spouses where they are both willing to work on their difficulties. This, by the way, is why we do not do marriage counseling when there is an abusive husband in the picture. That issue needs to be resolved first, because there is no emotional safety for the wife, so making her more vulnerable puts her at greater risk for violence or abuse. This is a very common mistake made by therapists who do marriage counseling without being specifically trained in it. Second, we want to expand the range of emotions which guide the couple’s interactions. Often they are not aware of all that is going on in their hearts, leading people to act in ways that aren’t helpful just because they can’t get at the root of the problem. EFCT does an incredible job of building emotional intelligence. Thirdly, we work to restructure the couples’ interactions in a more positive and responsive direction. Meaning, they respond to each other positively and with care and sensitivity. We end up creating a positive interaction cycle. The Marriage Counseling Process How do we reach those goals? In EFCT there are nine main steps[iv] and we’ll go through them pretty quickly: Identifying the conflict issues within the marriage. “What brings you to counseling?" Identifying the negative interaction cycle: figuring out how and why the couple are getting stuck. This requires a very skilled therapist so that you can see exactly what is happening. Uncovering the unacknowledged emotion relating to the couple's attachment bond which is underpinning the cycle of interaction for each partner. So, finding out what’s really driving the problem: fear, lack of trust, rejection and so on. Re-framing the initial problem in terms of the cycle of interaction and the underlying needs. Couples need to see that this cycle has been unknowingly created and that both spouses have fallen "victim" to it in the marriage. This is where you reframe the cycle as the enemy, instead of your spouse being the enemy. Helping individuals to connect with the attachment needs of parts of themselves they have been ignoring. For example the need for reassurance or comfort, or a sense of shame or unworthiness. Encouraging each partner to accept the other's experience and perspective. Helping each spouse express their needs in relation to the original conflict, in order to restructure the cycle of interaction based on new perspectives and emotions. With these new perspectives, discovering new solutions to old problems. Developing new, better cycles and patterns of behavior. So that’s a very brief rundown of the aims, principles and basic steps involved in EFCT. Let’s talk about the effectiveness of EFCT — how well does this approach work, and what are the specific things that make it work well? Effectiveness of EFCT Marriage Counseling EFCT has been shown to be highly effective in alleviating marital distress in couples[v]. You see different results in different places but on the

So Your Spouse Has Mental Health Problems

Wed, 31 Jan 2018 11:00:08 +0000

I am excited about this episode today. We all dread mental health issues but today you’ll find out that there is a lot of hope for marriages where one spouse has significant mental health problems. Mental health is a huge problem that affects millions of people around the world. Disorders including depression, anxiety, bipolar and others impact many more people than you may think and can cause real pain and distress. Living with a long term mental illness is hard, and so is being married to someone with such a disorder. So today we want to look at the reality of how mental health impacts marriages, and what you can do to support your spouse if you are in this situation. How Mental Illness Impacts Marriage We need to be realistic about the impact of mental illness on marriage. Mental illness in one spouse often has a negative impact on wellbeing and marital satisfaction for both the mentally ill spouse and the other[i]. This is normally stronger for the mentally ill spouse but both spouses to feel the effects. What we’d like to share with you is that for both the ill spouse and the healthy spouse, there are specific mediating factors which can account for much of the marital distress, and therefore be used to help keep marital satisfaction high even when dealing with severe mental issues like mood disorders, anxiety disorders and substance abuse disorders. Attributions Mental health disorders (especially mood disorders like depression or bipolar) affect how you interpret your spouse's actions and what you attribute them to[ii]. This attribution effect is important to be aware of. Mental health disorders cause people to attribute their spouse's actions more negatively. They can also cause people to attribute negative behaviors to being stable parts of their spouse's personality rather than being isolated one-off incidents. This tendency to attribute things negatively leads to lower marital satisfaction over time. Levels of depression themselves do not lead to lower marital satisfaction: all the changes are due to this attribution issue[iii]. Remember our recent episode on attribution and misinterpretations in marriage? We talked about how the way you interpret your spouse’s actions can either set you on an upward or a downward spiral. Mental illness can, if you aren’t careful, make you more likely to see everything as negative, which then alters the way you act and feel. So we really have to watch the attribution piece and thoughtfully counteract that. Negative Thoughts and Views People with mental illness will hold more negative views about themselves, and about their marriage. Mental illness can affect perception so that the mentally ill spouse pays more attention to negative events and disregards the good things that happen. Mental illness can also cause people to have more negative expectations about the future[iv]. All these negative beliefs and expectations can influence the way people act and cause them to withdraw and hide away. Interpersonal Difficulties Anxiety, depression and personality disorders can all lead to impaired social skills,[v] such as expressing more negative views, difficulty expressing emotion, reduced problem-solving ability, a high need for reassurance and difficulty accepting and believing the reassurances offered. The cycle of repeatedly asking for reassurance or seeking comfort and the refusal or inability to accept comfort can eventually lead to rejection. These issues can create interpersonal problems within marriage over time as the non-ill spouse has to constantly reassure and comfort their mentally ill partner without getting as much support in return. Also without getting appreciation for the effort required to support the ill spouse. To help with this, training in communication and social skills can lead to improvements in symptoms of mental illness, and improve marital functioning at the same time[vi]. Once again the point here is that it isn’t the mental illness itself that’s causing the marital problems, it’s a specific issue that’s caused by the illness but has a very practical solution. So there’s hope there. Dealing with a Mentally Ill Spouse So how can you support your spouse through mental illness? If your spouse has some kind of long term mental illness you may feel powerless to help them, but it turns out that you as the spouse are perfectly positioned to help them through it. Here are a few ideas. Positive behaviors. A study in 1998[vii] identified five key positive behaviors which can be used to support a mentally ill spouse: Enjoyable time spent together Positive listening Tangible/practical assistance Self esteem support Intimacy and confiding These behaviors help the mentally ill spouse feel supported and can reduce symptoms over time. So these simple things which should be a part of any healthy marriage can actually reduce the burden of mental illness. We go into more detail on each of those five in our bonus guide so definitely check that out. Accept the issue. While there are definitely things you can do to help your spouse, expecting the mental health issue to just vanish is going to make things much worse. Expecting or putting pressure on your mentally ill spouse to change creates a higher risk of marital distress[viii]. It can be difficult to understand what your spouse is going through since there are no outward signs of illness, but it’s important to understand that mental health issues are just as real and serious as physical ones. Change is possible but it has to be a very gradual process and challenges and setbacks are likely, so expecting or needing your spouse to recover is likely to turn mental illness into a bigger marital problem. Conflict and problem solving. A study in 2002[ix] surveyed 22 couples where the wife suffered from an anxiety disorder such as agoraphobia. They found that husbands in these marriages were often more critical of their wives and less likely to use positive problem solving skills. These couples also showed higher rates of negative nonverbal behavior and longer "negative exchanges" (arguments). This then led to higher marital discord. So working on good conflict resolution and communication skills can certainly make the mental illness less of an issue. Similarly, a study by Coyne et al[x] found that arguments with your spouse are a risk factor for the onset of depressive disorder, and having a spouse you don't feel you can turn to or confide in also leaves people vulnerable to depression. So you want to work hard at maintaining a posture of approachability and helpfulness. Compassion and reassurance. As we saw above, mentally ill people often need regular reassurance that they are still valued and cared for, but struggle to accept reassurance and comfort when it is offered. This is because people with anxiety or depression suffer from both negative emotions (sadness, worry, hopelessness) and negative thoughts and beliefs about themselves (thinking they are worthless or that other people don't like them). So they need reassurance to comfort the emotional side of the illness, but the thoughts and beliefs they hold make it hard for them to believe that they are really loved and supported[xi]. Spouses should therefore continue to offer reassurance and comfort whenever needed and try not to get frustrated when the person continually asks for support. Continually affirming that your ill spouse is loved and valued can slowly change their perception of themselves and help change their negative beliefs over time. However, spouses need to be careful to show support and validation to their spouse, but not to their ill spouse's negative views and beliefs about themselves. Normally showing that you understand and agree with your spouse’s views and perceptions is a good thing, but when your spouse holds very negative views of themselves due to mental illness, showing agreement with these views can reinforce them and end up being harmful[xii]. You want to try and lift your spouse out of their negative thoughts and beliefs, not wallow in them alongside them. Supporting Yourself While Your Spouse is Mentally Ill The other side to this is making sure that you are ok while your spouse is mentally ill. A happy spouse will go a long way to reducing the impact of mental illness, and just because you are the “healthy” one that doesn’t mean you don’t have needs that should be met. So let’s look at some issues that you need to think about. Attributions. Mental illness can cause people to say or do things they would never do otherwise. For example, illness may make people more easily angered, more prone to self destructive behavior or less willing to engage with their spouse. Spouses should attribute these things to the illness, not to their spouse. Thinking that negative behaviors are deliberately performed by your mentally ill spouse and intended to cause harm creates higher distress within the marriage[xiii]. So learning to separate your spouse from the things the illness causes them to do or say can protect you from distress. A simple question you can ask yourself is, “Is this the illness speaking or my spouse speaking?" Stigma. Mental health is often poorly understood or stigmatized by society, which can lead to the other spouse feeling isolated or unable to share about the difficulty of supporting their mentally ill spouse[xiv]. Friends and family may, for example, be unable to understand and accept mental illness and instead refer to it in other terms such as thinking the mentally ill spouse is just stressed, or that they just have a weak or anxious character. The non-ill spouse may also come across the attitude that they are in some way responsible for their spouse's condition. Being aware of these issues and choosing to selectively confide in a few trusted friends can help you get the support you need without feeling isolated or s

How To Be A More Grateful Spouse

Wed, 24 Jan 2018 11:00:02 +0000

When you become aware and appreciative of that which is valuable and meaningful, that is called gratitude. Gratitude needs to be expressed, and what we notice in our marriage is that we tend to experience it more than we express it. So we thought we should think more about that. Gratitude is a powerful thing. Being mindful of all the good things in your life can change your whole outlook and make you a happier, more contented person. This is especially true in your marriage. It might not always be easy to be thankful for your spouse and your marriage, but if your marriage is struggling them making gratitude a part of your daily thinking can really turn things around. Benefits of Gratitude Research finds that expressions of gratitude have positive effects on marital satisfaction[i] . This works as both a long term way of building satisfaction over time, and also as a "booster shot" where gratitude produces short term increases in satisfaction[ii]. You probably already knew this: gratitude is good for your marriage. Let’s unpack how and why it helps, and then look at ways to increase the amount of gratitude we all show to our spouses. Gratitude and Relationship Strength A study in 2010[iii] surveyed 137 couples for how often they expressed gratitude to their spouse. In a follow up study they asked spouses to express gratitude to each other, with a control condition of thinking grateful thoughts without expressing them. In both studies they found that expressing gratitude increased the expresser's perception of the "communal strength" of the relationship. Regularly expressing gratitude increased this sense of joint strength and commitment over time. Expressions of gratitude towards your partner are also linked to more positive perceptions of them[iv]. This was specifically true for the expresser of gratitude, not the person receiving it. So if you are unhappy because of the lack of gratitude you may actually need to try expressing it more rather than requesting it more! The other crucial point is that the effect was only found for expressing gratitude, not just thinking it. So being grateful for your spouse is not enough to benefit from this increased relationship strength: you have to express it. Commitment and Reciprocity Now there is a reciprocal component to gratitude. Expressions of gratitude towards your spouse leads to them feeling appreciated and valued. Feeling appreciated then leads to them appreciating you more. So expressing gratitude strengthens the relationship for both the expresser and the receiver of gratitude. Increased appreciation leads spouses to be more sensitive to each other's needs and over time leads to higher levels of commitment[v]. The simple act of giving voice to the things you value about your spouse brings you closer together and helps you see each other in a better light. Gratitude also helps couples grow closer together and become better at responding to each other's needs. Expressing gratitude for actions that really matter to you, or things that show that your spouse has been especially thoughtful helps to solidify those actions and helps your spouse to notice that their actions were appreciated. Put simply: if you say you like something your spouse did, they are more likely to do it again! Expressing gratitude therefore creates and "upward spiral" where positive actions are reinforced and both spouses end up feeling closer together[vi]. You both end up benefiting. This is what we have talked about before when we encourage you to reinforce what you want more of. That positive cycle or upward spiral is a powerful force for good in your marriage. Interpretations Another study in 2009[vii] surveyed 166 people and found a link between trait gratitude (being a grateful person generally) and a sense of “coherence”: the belief that life is meaningful and that you are able to cope with it. Being a grateful person helps you see life as having value and meaning. This is why the Bible teaches us to be thankful people — it actually helps us cope with life and make sense of it. "Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” 1 Thessalonians 5:18 ESV But there’s another piece to this. The mediating factor between gratitude and coherence is positive reframing: the tendency to interpret your spouse's actions positively and focus on positive aspects of the relationship rather than negative. Increasing your gratitude enables you to interpret your spouse's actions more positively, which increases commitment and relationship satisfaction, among many other benefits. We looked at attributions and interpretation and how they can benefit your marriage in a recent episode, and gratefulness taps into the exact same process. Gratitude Impacts Conflict Resolution There are even more benefits to feeling and expressing gratitude. For example, expressions of gratitude are linked to better ability to resolve conflict, and a greater confidence in your ability to solve disagreements peacefully[viii]. Gratitude leads to more positive feelings about your spouse, which leads to feeling more comfortable expressing concerns about the relationship. And this comfort lets you talk about tricky subjects constructively rather than getting defensive or pulling away. Buffering Against Distress Expressions of gratitude can protect couples from suffering as a result of hardships and distressing circumstances. For example a study in 2015[ix] found that expressions of gratitude between couples prevented financial distress from negatively impacting their marital quality. Just having high levels of gratitude built into your marriage helps you appreciate the good times and can make the hard times more bearable. It’s amazing to think of this powerful buffering effect in marriage. Personal Benefits Feeling and expressing high levels of gratitude also has numerous personal benefits, such as[x]: High levels of optimism Better ability to progress towards personal goals Feeling better about your life overall Improved mental health Greater willingness to help people Fewer negative health symptoms All of this good stuff will naturally have a positive impact on your marriage too. How to Increase Gratitude in Marriage So if you weren’t sold on gratitude being a good thing, hopefully you’re on board now. So how do you bring more if it into your marriage? You and I can work on developing gratitude as a trait and as part of our personality by regularly thinking of things we are grateful for (either about our spouses or about life in general) and expressing these thoughts. Remember that expression is key: you might think your spouse is the best thing in the world (hopefully you do!) but unless you let them know then it isn’t going to do much good. This is where we need to take this from just being theory to “how can I actually make this part of my life?" Specific factors in increasing your "attitude of gratitude" include the following[xi]: Find new things to be grateful for, rather than just appreciating the same traits/actions in your spouse all the time. Gratitude should be expressed in a genuine and natural way that fits with your personality and values, rather than being forced or rote. When starting out, don't do it too regularly. An interesting study from 2007[xii] found that people who were asked to express gratitude once a week showed higher wellbeing after 6 weeks, but participants asked to express gratitude 3 times a week did not. For those asked to do it more regularly, it may become harder work to think of things to be grateful for, and therefore become an obligation or chore rather than being genuine. I think that’s the idea of intermittent reinforcement — it’s more powerful if you give your dog a treat occasionally when he sits down than to give him a treat every time. If it’s too strong or if it’s forced or if it becomes ritualistic — all these things take away from gratitude being a genuine, simple act. But expressing gratitude toward new things and keeping it real turns it into a positive habit which makes it much more likely to influence your thinking and actions and your marriage. Prayer Increases Gratitude Another useful consideration is your faith. Speaking from a research based perspective, religious faith has been shown to increase gratitude. More specifically, thankfulness is encouraged in Christianity and when we attribute good things in our lives to God this helps create a sense of thankfulness. Prayers of thankfulness are an important part of this. A study in 2009[xiii] found a strong link between the frequency of prayer and levels of thankfulness. They found that frequency of prayer predicts gratitude 6 weeks later, suggesting that prayer causes gratitude, rather than grateful people praying more often. In the app I use for prayer I have this occasional item that comes up where I compel myself to stop and think of three things I am grateful for. Like we saw earlier, I do not want this to be a daily routine. When it’s intermittent it kind of throws me off balance from routine prayer and really challenges me to pause and consider what new, or current, or prominent blessings I need to be showing gratitude to God for. It’s an exercise I enjoy and that I’d recommend to you as well. Gratitude is such a wonderful thing and anything that helps you experience it more is definitely worth your time. So start thinking of ways you can express more gratitude in your life and in your marriage! References: [i] Nathaniel M. Lambert and Frank D. Fincham, ‘Expressing Gratitude to a Partner Leads to More Relationship Maintenance Behavior’, Emotion (Washington, D.C.), 11.1 (2011), 52–60 . [ii] Sara B. Algoe, ‘Find, Remind, and Bind: The Functions of Gratitude in Everyday Relationships’,...

Help! My Spouse is a Narcissist!

Wed, 10 Jan 2018 11:00:41 +0000

We all carry at least a little narcissism in our hearts. We all show a few traits that belie underlying pride and entitlement. But what happens in marriages when narcissism is a defining feature? And how can spouses of narcissists learn best to cope with this issue? Ok let’s get into the topic of narcissism — which, actually, can be one that feels pretty hopeless. But this is the first time I’ve really examined how to work with a narcissistic spouse and I am glad that there is hope. It can be very difficult to live with narcissism and no doubt some of our listeners today feel the reality of this: but there is hope. What Does Narcissism Look Like? Narcissism either comes as a personality trait or traits — when we look at those you’ll probably notice that we all exhibit some of these characteristics at least on an occasional basis. For example, showing a sense of entitlement in your marriage — like you deserve to have something done for you by your spouse — but this does not necessarily mean that you have Narcissistic Personality Disorder, or NPD. NPD is a whole level above narcissistic traits. So let’s look at these traits vs. having a diagnosed personality disorder. Narcissistic Traits Narcissism as a personality trait is defined as: Belief in one's own superiority A sense of entitlement and a need for admiration from others Displays of dominant, controlling or manipulative behavior and a disregard for the needs of others So generally seeing yourself as above other people is the central issue. Narcissism does not always produce a universal sense of superiority but leads to narcissists thinking they are better in certain areas which they value. They may value their looks, success, wealth or some other form of ability but overlook areas where they might be considered lacking. Narcissists are often prone to extreme jealousy and have very fragile self esteem as their sense of worth is directly tied to their ability to feel and be seen as superior to others[i]. As soon as that superiority is threatened their sense of who they are starts to fall apart. Now just remember that any time we talk about abnormal psychology that it’s easy for any one of us to freak out and think — “Wow! That is me! I am so messed up!!” Especially for something like this. If you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, as Verlynda and I are, and you understand that the Bible talks a lot about pride and you see the pride that exists in your life as I see the pride in mine, it can be easy to go from thinking we have the normal set of pride issues that come with our broken humanity to thinking that wow, maybe I have a huge personality problem. Stay calm. Think this through. Talk to the people who know you best and who will be honest with you. Take, for example, beliefs in one’s own superiority. Here’s a good example - I’m the guy who tries to nail the best parking spots when I go to the store. As close to the door as I can. I don’t park in any handicap spots — don’t worry! But when I nail an awesome parking spot there’s some major gloating that happens! But just because I do a few things like that, which involve the belief in one’s own superiority (“who’s the mac daddy for parking spots??”) or a sense of entitlement (“I deserve an awesome paring spot”) it does not mean I am a narcissist. Narcissistic Personality Disorder I think all of us display narcissistic behaviors from time to time. A much smaller subset of the population would exhibit regular narcissistic traits or have narcissism as a more central part of their personality. That would make that person more challenging to be married to. NPD on the other hand is the most severe situation. This disorder affects about 8% of men and 5% of women. The DSM definition of NPD includes: Pathological personality traits such as antagonism, grandiosity, and attention seeking Impaired individual functioning due to unreasonably high standards and the need for approval from others in order to form a stable identity, Impaired interpersonal functioning due to a lack of empathy and intimacy So here we’re dealing with a sense of superiority so strong that it impairs the person’s ability to relate to other people, and also affects their own inner world due to the intense pressure to live up to their own impossible standards. Characteristics of those with the disorder include: An insatiable appetite for the attention of other people. Behaving as if they deserve special treatment. Commonly exaggerating their achievements, talents, and importance. Finding it difficult to maintain healthy relationships. Having fantasies regarding their own intelligence, success, power, and good looks. If they have to take advantage of others to get what they want, they will, without regret or conscience. Responding to criticism with anger, humiliation, and shame. One question you may be wondering about is “can narcissism ever be a good thing?” It sort of makes sense to think that loving yourself and having high self esteem may yield some benefits. Does that end up being the case? Well, narcissistic personality disorder (and to a lesser extent sub-clinical narcissism) is occasionally associated with moderate levels of distress, depression and anxiety for the narcissistic individual, but sometimes linked to high levels of functioning and mental wellbeing. So yes, it can be a bit of a mixed bag for the narcissistic individual. However, narcissism is consistently linked to very high levels of distress for those around them[ii]. To put it another way: "the mind of a narcissist is like a sports utility vehicle. It is great to be in the driving seat, but fellow motorists must watch out, lest a collision with this mobile fortress demolish their more humble hatchbacks.[iii]" So those are the characteristics generally, but we want to help specifically with narcissism and marriage. Now we’ll move on to looking at how these traits impact marriage so you can make sense of why your marriage is the way it is. Narcissistic Traits and Marriage Narcissistic traits lead to relationship dysfunction over time, but not initially. A study in 2016[iv] interviewed 146 newlywed couples over the first four years of marriage. They found that narcissistic traits in either husbands or wives predicted a sharp decline in marital quality over time and an increase in marital problems such as conflict. The effect of wives' narcissism was stronger than the effect of husband's, and specific traits of entitlement and exploitative behaviors were the strongest factors. Effects of wives' narcissism may be stronger because men are expected to act more self-interested and boastful than women, so narcissism is seen as more normal in men and more problematic in women[v]. Before these problems start to kick in, narcissistic relationships may initially function well, for both the narcissist and their spouse. At the start of the relationship the narcissist sees the relationship as a way of enhancing themself and increasing their own happiness, while seeing little cost or investment to the relationship. The narcissist will probably be good at presenting themselves positively and may come across as confident and charismatic, therefore leading to higher satisfaction for the spouse at first. Over time the Narcissistic traits start to become harmful to the partner, while the narcissist themselves are required to invest more into the relationship over time, which they will not be motivated to do[vi]. And so the relationship starts to deteriorate from both ends. Later into the relationship, narcissism can have some specific effects, which we’ll look at now. Beliefs and Goals Narcissists often have very specific beliefs and goals when coming into a relationship. They will aim to choose to marry someone who enhances their own status, power or self-image, so are often drawn to people who are attractive and successful. They will also pick spouses who are very attentive and affectionate towards them to enhance their own self esteem. Here’s an interesting observation: despite being drawn to socially desirable spouses, narcissists do not see their spouses as being especially desirable. In one study narcissists rated their partners as being no better than average on measures of attractiveness and desirableness, while rating themselves as higher than average[vii]. Intimacy Narcissists are interested in self-enhancing behaviors and attitudes more than they care about communal interests. They are therefore most interested in their own needs and in seeking sensation and excitement, while valuing their own traits of power and dominance. They are less interested in traits and actions which benefit both them and their partner, such as intimacy, warmth and concern, often seeing relationships as a way of enhancing their own pleasure at the expense of the partner[viii]. This “all about me” attitude reduces relationship quality and levels of intimacy for the spouse of the Narcissist. A real and passionate connection to someone only comes when you care about them as much as (or more than) yourself, and for a narcissist that just isn’t going to happen. Sex The lack of intimacy (and lack of interest in intimacy) described above negatively impacts sexual satisfaction. No surprise there. Narcissists are also usually more interested in physical pleasure than the emotional connection of sex, seeing sex as a means of personal pleasure[ix]. Which ironically ends up making sex less enjoyable since the emotional connection is missing. Going through these details you can really see that this is a different way of seeing the world. Yes, all of us married folk pursue sex for pleasure but really we have this drive for connection and for being with someone and for being seen and known and loved and appreciated. But for the narcissist it is almost like a more reductionist approach where

What Makes Christmas Merry for Marriages?

Wed, 20 Dec 2017 11:48:46 +0000

Merry Christmas!! Or, at least, that’s the way it is supposed to be. But does it always work out that way? Read on and we’ll tell you why it might — or it might not! Christmas is a time for coming together as a family and celebrating. Right? While lots of people probably have very merry Christmases, many will also find the holiday season stressful and difficult. Having a merry Christmas as a couple doesn’t happen automatically— you have to be aware of a few things and work together at it. Do Most People Have a Happy Christmas? Turns out that 75% of people are generally satisfied with their Christmas experience[i]. I don’t know if it’s the skeptic in me but I wonder if that is overstated. Perhaps the data was collected by a guy in a green suit. Less than 10% of people report significant levels of anger and sadness. That’s good to hear. And about half of people report some level of stress during Christmas. Not too bad. But there’s some pretty interesting facts to learn as we go through this that are good to think about as we come up to this holiday. A study in 2002[ii] interviewed 117 individuals to determine the specific factors that contributed to making Christmas holidays stressful or enjoyable. Here’s what they found: Emphasizing family and spending time together was linked to greater happiness Emphasizing religious beliefs was linked to greater happiness Lower happiness and greater stress was reported when spending money and receiving gifts were the most important aspect of the holiday. Giving gifts and consuming in a way that was environmentally friendly was linked to higher happiness Men generally reported being happier and less stressed at Christmas than women- possibly because much of the responsibility for the shopping/cooking Christmas dinner etc falls to the woman. This quote sums up their findings nicely: "In sum, the materialistic aspects of modern Christmas celebrations may undermine well-being, while family and spiritual activities may help people to feel more satisfied[iii]" Christmas Gifts Obviously this is starting to highlight what we already know: that gifts and materialistic expressions should not be the main focus of Christmas. But what is really interesting is if you try to limit the amount of money you spend and you limit your gift giving, this is also linked to lower happiness over Christmas[iv]. In fact, another study in 2008[v] found that spending a higher proportion of your income on others than yourself predicted higher levels of happiness. This, of course, gives evidence to the truth claim of Scripture that it is more blessed to give than receive (Acts 20:35). So it shouldn’t be the main focus of the season, but gift giving can be a great way to show love and have fun together. Gift giving should be[vi]: An expression of love Valuable- not necessarily in terms of cost but in the thought and effort that went into the gift Altruistic and not focussed on obligation or creating a feeling on indebtedness in the receiver Ideally contain some symbolic meaning, such as giving someone a gift to indicate that they are part of the family or giving a gift that will have special meaning to the receiver Tailored to who the receiver is, not based on your own preferences. So no giving your wife a gift that you secretly want for yourself! How does the present buying process break down in a typical marriage? Women normally spend more time on gift shopping than men and often take overall responsibility for the first buying process, seeing it as "work". Men often take less of an active role in this and feel the need to buy presents for fewer people or see it as "woman's work"[vii]. So husbands, you could definitely make the holiday season less stressful for your wives by being more willing to be involved in the gift buying, by starting buying gifts earlier (rather than leaving it till Christmas eve!) and by getting gifts for more people rather than just close family. Christmas Traditions Traditions during holidays and occasions like Christmas are a form of "family ritual". We talked about the important place rituals have in the family in our episode on blended families. The unique way your family does things at Christmas takes on a symbolic meaning for the family and "contributes significantly to the establishment and preservation of a family's collective sense of itself[viii]". Rituals and Christmas traditions should be[ix]: Repeated regularly Involving actions and doing things: not just thoughts or words Involving special or stylized behavior, where actions are given a different meaning to their daily norm Evocative: featuring an emphasis on presentation to create something that the entire family can be attentive to. Just taking the time for those little details like the decorations on the tree to give everyone a sense of joint accomplishment. Rituals at Christmas are unique to individual families, helping them feel connected to each other and develop a sense of family identity, but there are also some common aspects to the way most people celebrate Christmas, like the turkey, the tree, the pudding and so on. Getting on board with these common symbols helps the family feel connected to their wider society at large and feel like they have a place in their culture and heritage[x]. You can see this comes back to creating a sense of belonging. Let’s talk about three key features of Christmas traditions: stability, meaning and agreement. Stability Repeating Christmas traditions year after year helps create stability in the family: there’s predictability and that sense of common bonding there. It gives the whole family something specific to look forward to. At the same time, rituals should not become too "rigid" or set in stone and need to be flexible to accommodate changes. For example they should be able to adapt to include new family members[xi]. Rituals should also not be so strict or rigid as to feel imposed or followed out of obligation: to be successful they need to be voluntarily acted out and enjoyed by the whole family[xii]. I think a good rule of thumb here is the rituals should serve the family and not vice versa. They are special but not necessarily sacred. Except that Christmas pudding Verlynda makes for me every year with that lemon sauce…that is definitely sacred. Spiritual Meaning Christmas is, first and foremost, a Christian holiday. Remembering that can help everyone enjoy the season more deeply. A study from 2001[xiii] interviewed 120 married couples who had been married for 9 years on average, and found a strong link between marital satisfaction and the spiritual meaning attributed to their family rituals. Incorporating faith traditions into family rituals helped couples (and families) affirm and strengthen their relationships and connect their values to their actions. When you attach spiritual meaning to holidays and act based on this, it increases marital satisfaction over and above simply having faith. It is the idea of enacting faith here: not just being hearers but doers also. So make sure the real meaning doesn’t get lost amid the presents and the chaos. Agreement Typically, the Christmas traditions you create as a married couple are determined by how you did things in your family of origin. Couples who come from similar backgrounds may think that they will do Christmas in similar ways and then end up in conflict over all the little details they do differently. Silly little things like when you open presents, or how you open them— all at once or in turn— can become a reason to feel like your traditions aren’t being respected. Couples should therefore discuss their plans in advance to avoid this uncertainty. There was one funny quote around this… you can hear the frustration I think. One woman who participated in one of the original studies on rituals[xiv] stated that "people should not be allowed to get married until they've discussed Christmas." Why You Need To Get Christmas Traditions Right Successful rituals and traditions have positive effects for married couples in that they can protect the couple's marital satisfaction against the effects of stress and difficulty[xv]. So long as you get that perfect Christmas pudding it can be worth all the stress, right? High participation in ritualized family celebrations led to increased well being, satisfaction with life and "family climate" or overall mood within the family. And investment in creating positive traditions which the whole family can participate in leads to stronger attachment bonds for married couples and greater closeness and relationship quality within the family[xvi]. Positive traditions also have benefits for the children: A study in 2002[xvii] found that participation in family traditions increased satisfaction with the family for teenagers, which in turn protected them from mental health difficulties and behavior problems later in life. So you can really see that a lot of good can come from learning to make Christmas merry. Now we need to end on a strongly positive note so let’s talk about in-laws!! Family of Origin vs In-Laws Each family has their own way of doing things at Christmas, so conflict can arise when new couples have to figure out how they want to do things, or when spending Christmas with one spouse's family. Even little things like what you eat for dinner can create feelings of "disloyalty" to your family if you do them differently when with your in-laws[xviii]. Of course, conflict can arise over which family to spend Christmas with, especially if both spouses have positive memories of Christmas with the family. This requires you as a couple to demonstrate flexibility and give-and-take. If one spouse does not have happy memories of Christmas from growing up, this can create internal guilt or tension at not wanting to spend ti

Pornography and Sex Trafficking

Wed, 13 Dec 2017 11:00:23 +0000

Today is a difficult episode about the hardcore realities of the pornography industry. How is this marriage related? Well, pornography is a leading cause of divorce nowadays and one of the myths that we need to debunk as we fight this cancer is that viewing porn is a victimless activity. Around 1/2 of marriages have at least one pornography-using spouse. Objectification is a big part of using porn: seeing the actors as sex objects. We’ve looked before at how watching porn impacts your marriage, but there’s another side to it too. Some people may watch porn thinking that it’s harmless fun, made by willing actors having the time of their lives. So I want to convey something of the human cost of the real people involved in creating pornography so that we all understand that viewing porn is not a victimless or harmless activity. Quite the opposite. Human Trafficking and Abuse So you need to know that pornography relies on trafficked victims to create its content[i]. In fact, major centers for human trafficking such as St. Petersburg in Russia and Budapest in Hungary are also large producers of pornography. Many women that are trafficked for prostitution in these circumstances are also forced to make porn. Even what you may consider ‘legit’ or at least, legal jobs like porn acting, modeling or stripping in clubs can also be an entrance point into the sex industry. Women that start in these roles are often pressured or forced into prostitution or other illegal activities[ii]. Research and first-hand accounts show that in the sex industry, control, intimidation and violence are commonplace. Around 71% of women in the sex industry are not "free to leave" the industry, either due to being physically withheld or trafficked, or else unfree to leave until they have paid off debts[iii]. 50% of American women in the industry reported regular or daily violence from their agents, handlers or pimps and 90% reported verbal abuse. Pornography is also sometimes used as a means of control: threatening to expose the pornographic videos they have made was a way of keeping women in the sex industry[iv]. In other instances women were totally unaware their pictures were being spread in magazines or online. The picture research paints is that once you’re in this world of sex and porn, whether you entered it willingly or not, getting out of it again is difficult and dangerous. And once you’re involved many men and women find themselves forced into situations and acts they would never have agreed to. They find control slipping away from them and into the hands of people who would exploit them for all they’re worth. And you, the viewer, have no idea what circumstances the videos you are watching were made under. Sexually Transmitted Diseases STDs are a major problem among porn actors, and one of the main concerns actors report about their work[v]. In the US porn industry Chlamydia rates are 14.3% (compared to between 0.6% and 3% for the general population) and gonorrhea rates are 5.1% (compared to less than 0.1% in the general population)[vi]. Reinfection rates within a year are 26.1%[vii]. Other STDs are not routinely screened for so prevalence rates are unknown. HIV can also be spread within the porn industry due to the high number of sexual partners actors are required to have and given that safe sex using condoms is rarely practiced. For example there was an outbreak in Los Angeles among porn actors in 2004, where 65 men and women were infected with HIV in a single month. Screening processes used in the industry failed to stop the disease spreading[viii]. Safety standards in the industry are poor and often violate health and safety regulations. For example actors are required to pay for their own screening tests and made to sign a waiver releasing their employer from responsibility if they contract HIV or an STD[ix]. Safe sex using condoms is uncommon, and risky or extreme sexual acts are treated as commonplace. "Unsafe sex in pornography sends the explicit message that condoms and other prophylactics are unnecessary barriers to pleasure, all the while putting performers at risk of disease transmission[x]". So consumer demand is really driving these actors to put their personal health at great risk. And this is only talking about the physical consequences. Objectification Both male and female porn actors are objectified by the films focusing solely on their bodies and sexual performance, while portraying the actors as purely interested in sex and not giving them any kind of personality or character outside of wanting sex[xi]. This constant objectification takes its toll on actor's wellbeing and self esteem. Jenna Jameson, one of the most successful porn stars in the USA, describes this effect in her own autobiography. "These guys don't care about seeing a show. They just wanted to see some skin. So much for my delusion of actually being respected". Later she writes how this creates a numbness and a "sickness" in her soul: "I never take the time to feel the effects of my choices. Maybe it's because I would be ashamed, maybe afraid. I realize I have avoided my pain as long as I can remember... As life goes racing by me, all the while my soul goes on with sickness. Yes, sickness. It feels like I'm ailing. Because the one that should be nursing it is too busy trying to succeed and be accepted.[xii]" This objectification also effects the viewers and their relationships. A study in 2015[xiii] interviewed 171 women about their partner's porn use. They found that porn use directly predicted sexual objectification within the relationship and caused the women to internalize the beauty standards upheld in porn. This internalization led to higher levels of body shame for the women. Porn use and objectification also predicted anxiety about the relationship, reduced self esteem, and higher likelihood of eating disorder symptoms. We talk more about body image and sexual function in episodes 88a and b. The Reality For Porn Actors Now we’re going to dove deeper into what life is really like for porn actors, using real stories taken from books, interviews and documentaries on the inner workings of the porn industry. Just a warning that if you are a recovering sex or porn addict this could be quite triggering. So only proceed with reading if you are safe to do so. Male Porn Actors Performance pressure. Men are often paid by the scene, or by their ability to perform some very specific sexual acts reliably in front of the cameras. The pressure on the male actors can be pretty agonizing. We read of one scenario where you have an actor and an actress thrust into the same production with zero relationship with each other, several cameras, lights, other people doing sound and filming and set props and they are completely exposed and vulnerable. If he cannot perform, his career is over. And this is a woman he is being forced to act intimately with but with whom he has no relationship and quite possibly no real interest. It’s so base: it’s reduced to completing the physical act while pretending that it is a deeply fulfilling experience and then you have all the pressure of film production on top of this. There’s a lot of pressure and real struggles. They are being forced to perform day in and day out without any regard for the human connection that is so central to sexuality, and without any regard for the sacredness of their own souls and bodies. Intimacy is reduced to two people just getting their bodies to work and while they may portray notions of passion or interest or love those are just acted. They don’t feel that. And so there must be a huge impact not only on their bodies but on their souls as well. Aggression. Men in low-brow porn are encouraged to display aggressive, misogynistic and violent attitudes. In one firsthand account[xiv] the author meets actor "T.T. Boy", who said the following in an interview: "I was a shy little kid when I started, and now I'm just a guy who wants to …” he reverts to obscene, self-gratifying language about how he uses porn actresses to satisfy his own eroticized rage while encouraging the women he works with to fear having to work with him. When he addresses these actresses there is an utter disregard for their personhood. Other industry observers note the uncaring, abusive sexual self-expression and the unbridled aggression therein as being the standard way of thinking for many male actors. As a child T.T. Boy was raised by his violently abusive father and made to work on the family plantation. He was expected to keep working on the plantation all his life, and told by his father that he would never find work elsewhere, and that not even McDonalds would take him. Porn was the only work he could find. Despite the abuse he suffered, he idolized his father as a "powerful man" and as an adult he would physically abuse his own girlfriend, while seeing himself as protecting her[xv]. Again a real human behind the aggression: in need of care and nurture and healing and yet in this industry he will be used until discarded and then what? He’s acting out of the abuse and hurt he experienced while further abusing and hurting women who are already broken. It really is an industry of pain and horror and abuse that is self-escalating, creating more and more abuse and wounding. Female Porn Actors Escaping poverty. Many women enter into the porn business due to a lack of alternative, due to poverty and financial pressures as well as lack of other employment options. Some also use it as a means of escaping oppressive conditions in their home countries and become trafficked as part of the sex trade, or else end up in the business after immigrating to the US due to being unable to find another way to work[xvi]. "It is not sufficient, however, to say that poverty was a precipitating factor. With most women, it was a poverty that was preyed upon by recruiters,...

Loving Your Spouse’s Kids

Wed, 06 Dec 2017 09:25:05 +0000

Families involving stepparents and step children are always tricky. And yet they’re a very common kind of family unit in today’s society. So how do the marriages look in these blended families? As we look into this we’ll see that a happy marriage and a happy blended family are very closely linked. How Common are Blended Marriages? Over half of marriages every year are second marriages for one or both spouses, and 65% of those are bringing kids from the previous relationship[i]. 80% of blended families feature the biological mother and a step-father, rather than featuring a step-mother, or being "complex stepfamilies" where both spouses bring children from a prior relationship. Let’s look at some of the common issues and challenges that couples in these families face. Forming a blended family or stepfamily presents challenges to the marriage, including: Negotiating parenting roles The stepparent forming a new relationship with the child The divorced parent still having some control/responsibility for the children's upbringing, affecting the decision-making process for the new couples Negative appraisals of the family and the step-parent role from society or your social circle. In a lot of ways stepparents are looked down on or seen as not-quite parents, and the very fact that you’re in this situation can lead people to think that the original family has failed in some way, which is a lot of added negativity from outside that really isn’t going to help. How couples navigate these challenges becomes a big part of how they function as husband and wife. "Researchers note that stepfamily functioning and couple functioning are inexorably linked, suggesting that it is difficult to create a happy second marriage without also creating a workable stepfamily[ii]. This is a dynamic that two people entering their first marriage without children do not have to navigate. Luckily, research emphasizes that couple functioning in stepfamilies is significantly determined by the same processes and factors that affect any other marriage: communication skills, empathy, values and beliefs etc. But there are some specific factors and issues within blended families that do need special attention. Bottom line: the usual skills apply, and a few more on top. Establishing Norms As blended families are a fairly new concept relative to traditional first marriages there aren't as many norms and established ways of functioning. The “family” has been around as long as human civilization, but the “blended family” is a pretty new idea. So while families have thousands of years of convention and wisdom to lean on, blended families are a bit more in the dark. For example there are set norms for looking after and disciplining kids, managing finances and decision making in first marriages, but there's no "set" or expected way of doing things in a blended family[iii]. Couples in blended families have to figure things out for themselves. This can create uncertainty over roles and lead to conflict, especially over complex issues like combining your assets/finances as you get married or looking after step children as well as your own children. These are tough issues to deal with and it can feel like you’re the only ones struggling with them. So: it would be good for couples to explicitly discuss these issues and agree on how to manage responsibilities, finances and childcare[iv]. Doing so eliminates that uncertainty and helps couples work together on creating their own set of norms for their family. And I imagine this could actually be quite liberating: having no set way of running a family imposed on you, so getting to set the rules yourself. Just make sure it’s a joint process. Getting the family part right will make things much better in your marriage too. Agreement on parenting and family roles is associated with lower rates of conflict and higher marital satisfaction[v]. Social Support Step-families typically receive less social support from their extended family than first marriages and often feel stigmatized. This disapproval from society and from family/friends can negatively impact marriage in a lot of ways, which we looked at in our episode on what to do when your folks don’t like your spouse. This is certainly true of blended families as well. A study in 2001[vi] found that lack of support from family and friends was a specific factor that led to lower marital happiness for wives in second marriages. Step families also have to deal with a lack of recognition and formal support from society. For example there is often less practical support available to step parents and less formal or legal recognition of the relationship between a child and their step-parent. Simply understanding and validating these experiences and difficulties can be beneficial to couple's wellbeing[vii], so couples could try to find support from other couples in similar situations, or from formal support groups or counseling. All the methods used for coping with social circle disapproval from episode 159 also apply here. Managing Expectations Couples need to understand that forming a new family dynamic will take time and effort. It won’t happen overnight, and thinking that it will can be damaging for everyone involved. Expectations that you will be able to instantly establish great relationships with step kids or that you'll naturally fall into a good dynamic are linked to lower marital quality[viii]. How long should it take? It’s bound to be different for every family, but research suggests that stepfamilies often go through 1-2 years of "disorganization and turbulence" before stabilizing and starting to function as a new family over the next 1-3 years[ix]. So couples need to be realistic about this. Flexible Family Dynamics Because of the complex nature of families involving stepchildren and former partners, having a flexible definition of what "the family" is becomes important. Research shows that individual relationships within the family are more important than forming a single cohesive family unit. For example, focusing on the one-on-one relationships between the stepfather and stepchildren, or between the new couple, are more important than focusing solely on functioning as a family[x]. So there’s a lot of extra work to sort out these other roles. That’s why you need to lower expectations and understand that this all takes time. Ritual Behaviors All families have rituals: regular routines or behaviors which are important to them as a family and become representative of the family's identity. For example, how you celebrate Christmas or birthdays, bedtime routines, mealtime routines or traditional days out and so on[xi]. These little routines and unique ways of doing things are very important for creating a sense of family identity and stability. Making new rituals as a blended family is an important part of learning to function as a family. A study in 1998[xii] interviewed 53 blended families about the importance of rituals. They found that rituals were successful in creating family unity when they included members of both the old and new family (eg family gatherings involving the stepchildren and the new couple's biological children, or a stepfather going to sports games with his stepson and biological son). These rituals encourage bonding between individuals in the blended family while emphasizing the importance of both old and new family members. Bringing in rituals from the old family but adapting them to include the entire blended family was also important in building a sense of unity as a family. So it’s about making sure everyone is included and taking elements from the old family if they can still be used in the current family. Rituals failed to lead to family unity when they felt imposed or compulsory or involved treating members of the old and new family differently (eg activities where the biological children are included but the stepchildren are not, or where biological children are punished for not participating but stepchildren aren't). So there is quite a bit to navigate in this area. This is a conversation that you need to have and need to do well. Relationship with Stepchild The relationship between a happy parent-child relationship and a happy marriage is interesting here. In first marriages, a happy, well-functioning marriage leads to happy children and positive interactions between parents and children. In a blended family, the effect is the other way around: establishing some kind of workable positive relationship with the stepchildren is the key to creating a stable and happy marriage[xiii]. Once you have that stability and basic level of trust between parent and stepchild that allows you to function day to day, the marriage starts to strengthen and grow. I have to confess I had no idea this was the case so it was really interesting for this to come out in the research. Are there any specific parenting styles that step parents can utilize? A study in 2003[xiv] found that stepparents report the highest satisfaction with their family life and marriage when they initially take a secondary role in parenting: acting warm and supportive to their stepchild and supporting their spouse in discipline issues but not taking a leading role in discipline until a stronger bond with the child has been established. Stepfathers in particular need to be careful to avoid being authoritarian and distant and should take an active interest in forming a relationship with the step children before assuming any kind of disciplinarian role. The age of the children is also an important factor: if the kids are very young when the new family is formed then the step parent can expect to form a strong parental bond with them over time. If the children are adolescent then forming a bond that is as strong as a biological parent-child bond probably isn't going to happen,...

A Husband’s Guide to Spiritual Leadership

Wed, 29 Nov 2017 11:00:38 +0000

One of the things I hear a lot of wives calling their husbands out on is spiritual leadership. Even in marriages that aren’t particularly distressed. This isn’t a subject we’ve tackled before so I thought it would be good to look at so that we can give husbands some help on how to move forward in this area of married life. This is a tricky topic for a lot of guys. I know in our marriage for the longest time the “spiritual leadership” would look more like Verlynda prodding and me obliging, which is no criticism of her but just reflects my own reluctance. When I talk to guys about this, there are a lot of reasons why we do not show spiritual leadership, including issues like: Not knowing what to do can be a challenge It can feel like a huge task and one that you’re not qualified for. You don’t know where or how to start It feels awkward. Spirituality is often a private relationship with God and now you are being called to live that out in front of others. Perhaps the spiritual leadership you saw as a child was unattractive because it was dry or hypocritical or just unpleasant Then there’s the huge issue of just feeling like I don’t have it all together enough to lead myself, how am I supposed to lead you? I just mention these to help people understand there can be a lot of reasons why it is hard to do this whole spiritual leadership thing. I’m sure a lot of people reading this will be struggling with the same issues or hang-ups. I think a big one is just feeling like you’re being called to be something that you aren’t. Not many guys wake up in their marriage one day thinking, “OK, I finally feel like a spiritual leader today”. But that doesn’t exclude you from being able to do it. So let’s unpack this and then give some guidance. Why Spiritual Leadership? Spiritual leadership might be something that God calls each man to in their marriage and their family, but there are also a range of practical life benefits to taking this seriously. A study in 1999[i] looked at nearly 100 married couples and examined the effect of joint spiritual activities compared to individual spiritual activities and beliefs. They looked at how this impacted marriage and found that the benefits of joint spirituality included: Closer integration of faith into the marriage More perceived benefits to the marriage, for both the husband and wife Less conflict More verbal collaboration Better ability to discuss agreements This came from shared activities like prayer, worship, spiritual discussion, mission or charity work and church attendance as a couple. So it’s great to note that doing these things that seem unrelated actually has these tangible benefits inside of marriage. Getting Started With Spiritual Leadership I think the biggest barrier to getting started properly is the belief that you have to have it all together before you can show spiritual leadership. I know this is an issue for me: I’d like to feel like I am an expert before I try something. I guess that’s part perfectionism, part shame-based self-identity, but most importantly it’s about having impossible standards. I mean, if you stop and think about it, in terms of the Christian faith if you wake up one morning and think to yourself, “I am definitely qualified to be a spiritual leader!” At that moment, you are probably DIS-qualified! We’re never called to have it all together and we’re never going to be perfect. So instead of thinking that you have to lead this from a place of accomplishment and expertise, why not approach it as a shared journey together? So instead of doing this because you have it all together spiritually, why not do this because you’d like to bring your wife and children with you as you figure out how to grow spiritually? As part of this, you need to believe that God is actively at work in your marriage and that marriage, including yours, is sacred[ii]. So He is invested in this journey of growth and discovery as well. Holding that fact in your head and knowing that God is with you can be a powerful thing. What happens here is a subtle but important shift from needing to model accomplishment or perfection towards realizing that you just need to model curiosity, humility and discovery. Real leadership is about getting past yourself and getting past focussing on your own limitations and believing that there is a higher purpose and send of meaning for your life and your marriage[iii] and then stumbling towards that as a couple. You don’t need to get it perfect all the time because now instead of asking you to be something, we’re just talking about initiating something. Spiritual Leadership Requires Authentic Love One thing all of us husbands are doing every day is learning how to love our wives better. Things change. Life changes. We change. Circumstances change. We’re in this constant state of flux and what I notice — maybe because this has really been us lately (the change thing) — is that it is easy for my fuse to shorten and I stop loving Verlynda the way she should be loved. But this is a good thing, right? The change, I mean. Because now marriage becomes a crucible for refining the quality of love I am showing you. Because when I snap at you I have to both apologize for that and then stop and pause and really self-reflect about what is going on inside of me that I would be willing to snap at the most important, the most valued person in my life. The behaviour doesn’t make sense, right? And yet, at some level it does. And I’m asking, am I not taking care of myself? Am I not meeting your emotional or practical needs somehow? Something is off if my behaviour is off[iv] So spiritual leadership again is not about being perfect but about catching those imperfect moments and taking them back into the presence of God and asking for sanctification. It becomes a way of identifying areas I need to grow in and then taking those to God The Prayer Life of a Spiritual Leader Praying with your spouse is important — and very difficult. Again, referring to our own spiritual experience it took me a long time to figure out why it was hard for me to pray with Verlynda. I think that when husbands pray with their wives they are faced with an existential dilemma. Prayer demands that we be completely vulnerable in order to be authentic. And that’s not easy. So the dilemma is: do I pray in a comfortable way, which is going to be shallow and not feel very authentic? Or, do I just not pray? Either I feel like a heel for not being authentic or I feel like a heel for not being a spiritual leader! And meanwhile, our beloved wives are prodding and prodding us so on top of this we get this pursue-withdraw cycle going on. What’s happening? We are afraid of vulnerability. And it wasn’t until I realized that what I didn’t want was actually what I most needed that I decided I was just going to have to man up and put my big boy pants on and start honestly praying with my wife. And initiating this rather than waiting for her to prompt me. One of the outcomes of that is we get to be more vulnerable together, and vulnerability leads to emotional intimacy and emotional intimacy in bed together at the end of the day…well…there may be some unspiritual motives there too. Unless, of course, you believe that God is interested in your sexual intimacy as well!! So I would really encourage you to push through on the prayer front. If it’s possible given work schedules etc, go to bed together and either kneel beside each other or hold each other as you pray, and learn to be real in front of God together. It is a beautiful thing. I know we’ve had some pretty tender moments because of taking this challenge on. Where To Go From Here Once you are loving each other well and you are praying together, then what you’ll find is you have room to talk about the bigger picture things in life. Things like vision and service and purpose. Before God, and with his help, how are you going to create legacy together? What are your long-term plans or goals? How do you want to impact your local community or your faith community or the global community? As the spiritual leader you can play a big part in these things, and in deciding how you and your wife are going to impact the world together. References: [i] Annette Mahoney and others, ‘Marriage and the Spiritual Realm: The Role of Proximal and Distal Religious Constructs in Marital Functioning.’, Journal of Family Psychology, 13.3 (1999), 321. [ii] Mahoney and others. [iii] Louis W. Fry, ‘Toward a Theory of Spiritual Leadership’, The Leadership Quarterly, 14.6 (2003), 693–727. [iv] Fry.

How Pornography Impacts Marriages

Wed, 22 Nov 2017 11:00:22 +0000

I’ve run across a number of couples lately — mainly younger couples — who are watching X-rated movies or pornography in order to “spice up their sex life”. It is not uncommon in our world to think that pornography has something to offer your marriage, but today, we’re going to take a look at what the research says porn really does for, or, more precisely, to your marriage. So I am going to come at this as if I was talking to a younger couple, maybe newlyweds, and they’ve watched some porn together and they feel like it turns up the heat in the bedroom. But I need you to understand, as the reader, that as a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist part of my counseling work is actually helping couples recover from the impact of pornography on marriage. I cannot begin to describe to you the depth of hurt experienced in the hearts of betrayed spouses and in the hearts of pornography addicts, too. Like bad enough for suicide to be on the table. You should know that I am not a fan of pornography. While it certainly can produce heightened arousal, even if we were to push aside the moral implications of the sexual abuse and trafficking of men and women in that industry, the consequences of using pornography in your marriage are significant and very serious. So while I want to be non-judgmental and this post definitely isn’t aiming to shame anyone, there are some serious warnings to heed here. Porn Impacts Marital Satisfaction Research consistently finds that frequent porn use is linked to lower relationship satisfaction for all kinds of romantic relationships[i][ii]. Porn use is particularly damaging for marriages compared to dating relationships[iii], and this effect gets stronger over time so that the longer you are married and using porn, the more it damages your marital satisfaction.[iv] So something that may seem like harmless fun for dating couples or newlyweds is only going to cause more and more problems the longer you’re married. Which direction is this effect? Does porn decrease marital satisfaction? Or does decreasing marital satisfaction fuel porn use? A study in 2004[v] found that an unhappy marriage can be a predictor of frequent porn use. That’s probably entitlement coming out, although it may also be a coping mechanism—if I act out with porn, I can stay married and stay air "faithful”. But other research shows that porn use can cause marital problems: A recent study in 2017[vi] surveyed married couples for porn use and marital quality in 2006 and then again in 2012. They found that porn use in 2006 predicted lower marital quality in 2012. In fact it was the strongest predictor of low marital satisfaction. So while the effect can go both ways— porn as a symptom and a cause of marital problems— "experimental research suggests that it is porn use that more often negatively affects couples’ outcomes than vice versa[vii]" How Porn Impacts Relationships So let’s look at the specific ways porn is damaging to marriages. Commitment According to a theory called the Investment Model, commitment in relationships is comprised of 3 elements: satisfaction with the relationship, attractiveness of available alternatives and investment in the relationship[viii]. We just seen that satisfaction is impacted by porn use. Porn use also increases your attention to attractive alternatives to your spouse, thereby lowering commitment to your spouse. Because you are looking at a wide variety of attractive alternatives to your spouse in the porn, you are likely to become less satisfied and committed to a single spouse and more desiring of variety. This is one of the beliefs implicit in a worldview that accepts pornography: that a variety of sexual partners is more fulfilling than one sexual partner. Even if you consider yourself faithfully married and you consume porn just to spice things up, you are, by virtue of your actions, also implicitly agreeing that being involved in other people’s sexual activities is necessary to provide greater sexual fulfillment in your marriage. I would really challenge you on this. If you believe that sex is purely an animalistic urge, like hunger, and that it is not related to the intimacy of body, soul and spirit between two people, where they are joined and become one, then that animalistic urge really has no boundaries. But if you are reading this today because you believe marriage is the ideal place for two people to become profoundly intimate, which is the journey of a lifetime, and includes emotional, spiritual and sexual intimacy, then pornography use has no place in that paradigm. Because to use porn is to say that the two of you are not enough. Which, in turn, is really pointing to the fact that you are not comfortable with yourselves. There is a fundamental disacceptance of who you are: of one or both of you, either interpersonally or intrapersonally. And you are using pornography as a coping mechanism to distract from this reality. Now: I believe marriage is a crucible for personal growth. So if you take your coping mechanism out, you have to deal with what is in front of you. And that’s a good thing: although it may be painful, it is a worthy thing. You will grow, you will be sanctified through confronting rather than coping. But porn is preventing this growth from happening. You’re really selling yourselves short on creating a soul-mate marriage. Self-esteem Another study in 2012[ix] found that husbands frequently using porn lowered their wives’ esteem, especially when the wife perceived the porn use to be problematic. Wives believed their husband's use of porn was in some way their own fault and caused by their own unattractiveness. Here’s a quote from the study: "In her eyes, his involvement implied that she must be physically unattractive, sexually undesirable, worthless, inadequate as a wife and as a woman, and weak and stupid for not taking a very strong stand against the pornography use.” This reduced self esteem went on to reduce relationship quality and sexual satisfaction. So you can see the horrible effect it has on your wife’s image of herself when you turn to porn for satisfaction rather than her. A lot of guys, especially, don’t realize what pornography use does to their spouse. Trust and Attachment Now, I have been speaking about couples using porn openly, but if you are using it secretly, perhaps with the thought of enhancing your marriage you need to know you are creating a betrayal event. It is just a matter of time until that explodes. Use of porn, and also the act of deception and hiding your porn use from your spouse, damages the trust and attachment bond in marriages[x]. This creates a "fault line" or a crack in the bond, which often then widens as the wife becomes distant from her husband after discovering his porn use and the attempts he made to cover it up. Couples often then become estranged due to feeling emotionally unsafe in the relationship. You’re creating a situation in your life that you don’t want your wife to be a part of, and that will erode at the trust between you. Intimacy High porn use lowers intimacy between couples and perceived closeness, especially for women whose husbands are problematic porn users. We saw how a husband’s porn use changed his wife’s self image, but it also affects her image of him. Discovering their husband's porn use changed their view of the relationship, often leaving women feeling betrayed, and thinking that their husbands are no longer interested in them sexually or invested in their relationship[xi]. This discovery also changed wives’ views of their husband, reducing their respect for him and seeing him as selfish and objectifying of women. Pornography’s Influence on Stability and Infidelity Due to the fact that porn use erodes commitment by increasing the amount of attention paid to potential alternative partners (as we saw above), high porn use is linked to lower relationship stability and to higher rates of infidelity[xii]. It is like you are opening a window in your mind that eventually opens doors in your life to things you never thought you would do. See, frequent porn users are already in some way getting sexual fulfillment from sources other than their spouse, so it follows that they would have a higher acceptance of the idea of sex outside of marriage. A study in 2014[xiii] found that viewing internet porn or X rated movies predicted both extramarital affairs and divorce. Even when couples only watch porn together as part of their joint sexual activity, rates of infidelity are higher than for couples who never watch porn[xiv]. So even making this a joint activity is risky. Sexual Satisfaction is Damaged by Pornography Consumption Male porn use is negatively linked to sexual satisfaction for both husbands and wives[xv]. As with marital satisfaction, this effect gets stronger the longer a marriage with porn use goes on[xvi]. Porn use also damages intimacy, and lowers self esteem for women, both of which reduce sexual satisfaction. Porn interferes with sex because it changes how couples think about sex. It affects couple's sexual scripts- their beliefs about how they and their spouse should act during sex. A study in 2007[xvii] surveyed men and women about what they think is important in great sex, and on what they think is important in pornographic depictions of sex. The more porn people watched, the more similar these two lists were: people who were frequent porn users believed that their sex should be similar to what is portrayed in porn. You can see how that would be unhealthy, right? Since porn sex is all about performance and totally ignores intimacy and emotional connection, people whose sexual scripts are highly influenced by the porn they watch will miss out on this, which will make their sex much less satisfying. So even the belief that porn can spice up your sex life is actually misinformed. You’ve been told a lie....

Why You Keep Misinterpreting Your Spouse (and How to Stop)

Wed, 15 Nov 2017 11:00:12 +0000

You know the loop. You said something perfectly ordinary. Your husband (or your wife) heard something else entirely. You tried to clarify. He defended. You got more frustrated. He got more sure he was being attacked. By the time you came up for air, neither of you could remember what the original disagreement was about. You were just arguing about the arguing. If you keep finding yourself in this cycle, here is what is actually happening when your husband misinterprets everything you say. Two things are running at once: a cognitive bias called the fundamental attribution error, and a nervous system that is already braced for threat. Either one alone is hard. Together, they create the loop you are living in. Once you can see both layers, you can actually interrupt the cycle. This article walks through both: the attribution piece (which decades of marriage research have mapped in detail), and the nervous system piece (which most articles on misinterpretation skip entirely). Then we will get into what changes when you stop trying to fix the misinterpretation in the moment and start changing the conditions that create it. What's Actually Happening When Your Husband Misinterprets You Misinterpretation in marriage is rarely a vocabulary problem. It is rarely a matter of "he just does not get me." Most of the time, two distinct processes are at work simultaneously, and they reinforce each other. The first is cognitive: a mental shortcut your brain runs to make sense of behavior quickly. The second is physiological: your body's threat-detection system biasing what you hear before you have a chance to think about it. When your husband misinterprets your tone, he is not just choosing the wrong meaning. His nervous system is offering him a meaning that fits the threat his body is already responding to. And when you assume his sharp reply means he is angry at you (rather than tired, hungry, or stressed about something at work), you are doing the same thing. This is why "just communicate better" advice almost never works in a marriage that is already inflamed. You are not failing at communication. You are running into a built-in feature of the human brain in a body that is already on alert. Both layers need attention. We will start with the cognitive one because it is the easier of the two to see. The Fundamental Attribution Error This is one of my favorite things to talk about, and it shows up in every couple I have ever sat with. The fundamental attribution error is something we all do. When I attribute your actions to a flaw in your character, rather than to an environmental factor, I commit the fundamental attribution error[i]. The trouble starts when I explain your actions by your character, but explain mine by my circumstances. For example, let's say you and I are both out working at our respective jobs one day. I get home late. You get home really late. I am upset because you are usually home before me and I had to make supper and do a bunch of extra stuff. Here is how the fundamental attribution error plays out: I think to myself: she is never home on time, she is so disorganized (a character attribution). You ask me why I was late. I tell you, "Well, traffic was really bad" (an environmental attribution). We were in the same situation. But you have a character flaw, while I was just caught in some circumstances outside my control. Or take a couple in conflict. They both say a few unkind things to each other. Name calling, the works. She thinks, "He has an anger problem" (attribution to character). She feels bad about her own behavior, but tells herself, "If he were not such a jerk, I would not have to talk like that to get through to him" (attribution to circumstances). I am not defending the unkind speech here. The point is that this happens in healthy marriages and in conflictual non-abusive marriages alike. It is not a sign you are a bad person. It is a sign you have a brain. Why Do We Do This? We fall into this trap because personality is easier to judge than circumstance. Personal characteristics are easier to identify. They help us understand a person and predict their behavior. These characteristics feel more stable in a person, and so it is easier and faster to make snap judgments based on someone's nature than to look for circumstantial explanations[ii]. Character judgments also make behavior feel predictable. Your brain likes being able to make decisions quickly based on information that is readily available. So rather than weighing all the possible factors that might have influenced your spouse's actions, it is easier to just attribute the action to his or her character. Easier, but not necessarily helpful for your marriage. Why Your Nervous System Makes This Worse Here is the layer most articles on misinterpretation never mention. Attribution bias is not just something happening in your thoughts. It is happening in a body that is constantly scanning for threat. When your nervous system is regulated, you have access to curiosity, perspective taking, and benefit of the doubt. When your nervous system is activated, you do not. Your threat-detection circuitry takes over, and it does not deal in nuance. It deals in fast pattern matching. The slightly raised eyebrow becomes contempt. The "we need to talk" becomes an attack. The neutral question becomes a setup. Hypervigilance is the technical term for what happens when your nervous system has learned that the relationship is unsafe. The brain can develop a preference for the worst-case interpretation because, somewhere along the way, that interpretation seemed necessary often enough that the body learned to default to it. This is not weakness. It is a protective adaptation. But it makes accurate interpretation almost impossible. Sue Johnson, who developed Emotionally Focused Therapy from attachment science, calls this attachment activation. When you do not feel emotionally safe with your partner, even small ambiguous signals get coded as evidence that you are alone, that you do not matter, that the connection is in danger. The interpretation that arrives in your conscious mind is already pre-tilted by the time you start thinking about it. When we worked with couples in the office, this is the pattern I would see most often. One partner spends ten minutes carefully explaining what they actually meant. The other partner sits there and cannot take any of it in. They are trying. They want to hear it. But their body is in fight-or-flight, and the part of the brain that processes nuance has gone offline. Then the explaining partner reads the blank face as stubbornness. Now both nervous systems are activated, and we are off to the races. This is why simply trying harder to interpret each other accurately almost never works in a marriage that is already strained. It is very hard to reason your way out of a stress response when the part of you that handles nuance is not fully available. The body has to come back online first. We will get to how in a minute. Attributions Shape Satisfaction and Behavior You need to know that this whole attribution process in marriage is governed by how happy your marriage is. You will interpret events and actions according to your existing beliefs about your spouse, whether good or bad. If your spouse acts in a way that does not fit your perception of the marriage, you will discount or explain away the action. As a side note, this is how a perfectly intelligent spouse who believes she is married to a committed husband can explain away evidence to the contrary, only to be completely flabbergasted months or years later when she discovers his betrayal. I am not telling you this so you go on a witch hunt. I am telling you so that, if you have been in that situation, you know you are not stupid or blind. You are just a normal spouse. It is not a defect to presume on the trustworthiness of your partner. There has been a lot of research on this attribution process in marriage. Two researchers[iii] looked at twenty-three previous studies on attributions in couples. They found that when marital satisfaction was high, partners attributed their spouse's positive actions to stable personality factors. "He brought me flowers because he cares about me and is a nice person." "She tidied the kitchen because she is organized and selfless." Attribution to character, in a positive direction. By the same token, in a happy marriage, partners attributed negative actions to external factors, viewed them as unintentional, or saw them as isolated incidents that did not reflect the spouse's real personality. "He only said that because he had a tough day at work." "She did not clean up today because she has had a rough one. She normally keeps the house spotless." When marital satisfaction was low, the pattern flipped. Partners assigned their spouse's negative behaviors to enduring characteristics. They saw negative acts as intentional, motivated by negative emotions, and stable across all situations rather than specific or isolated. "He said that because he wanted to upset me, and because he is a spiteful person." These same partners also interpreted positive actions in a more negative light. They saw them as less deliberate, more isolated, and more likely to be motivated selfishly. "He only gave me flowers because he wants to have sex later." These attributions affect two things: satisfaction with the marriage, and behavior in the marriage. Negative Attributions Cause Lower Satisfaction What is important to know is that this is not just a bad habit you should figure out sometime. Negative attributions can lower marital satisfaction over time[iv]. Low satisfaction leads to negative attribution, and negative attribution over time further reduces satisfaction. The opposite is also true. High marital satisfaction leads to positive attributions and lighter weight on negative events, which feeds further satisfaction....

Fighting For Your Military Marriage

Wed, 08 Nov 2017 11:00:16 +0000

A few days after this episode is released is Veteran’s Day or Memorial Day. We wanted to acknowledge our servicemen and women who serve our country and that of our neighbor, the USA, and to thank you for helping make it possible for us to live lives of freedom and meaning. If you’re not a veteran I would encourage you to take in today’s episode regardless to better understand some of the sacrifices and challenges our military members face on the home front. It’s hard to imagine a marriage with more strain on it than that of a serviceman or woman and their spouse. I have to confess I thought looking into these marriages was mostly going to be negative — that we’d see a lot of challenges and not a lot of upside. And yet, of course, we’ll see that human resiliency is a beautiful thing and that there are a lot of positive, hopeful things happening in military marriages as well. Marriage and Military Deployment Of course there are a lot of challenges faced by both the serving soldier and the spouse who remains at home. These can include mental health issues, for example, Rates of depression are 12% among active service members and 13% among those who have returned from duty[i] Rates of PTSD are 2% among returned service members Wives who are left at home suffer from increased rates of depression, sleep disorders and acute stress[ii] Military service undeniably puts strain on a marriage, through the emotional roller-coaster of separation and reuniting, and the fears of losing your loved one each time they are deployed. This unfortunately leads to some of these marriages becoming unstable, resulting in divorce rates of 53% among military couples, which is higher than for non-military couples[iii]. So these are serious challenges, but it’s not all bad news. Despite the challenges of military service some couples report that it strengthens the marriage. A study from 2013[iv] interviewed 118 military couples and found that 44% of them reported "better relationship dynamics" upon reuniting, while 35% reported more destructive communication and 21% reported no change. Almost half of the couples in this situation were able to draw some positive from it, whether that’s from the strong bond they feel for each other, the sense of pride and purpose their service brings, or the support they receive from those around them. 93% of couples were able to identify at least one positive change as a result of the deployment, for example increased confidence and autonomy for the wife, or a new sense of purpose for the husband or a greater appreciation for family life upon return. So even in the midst of extremely tough circumstances couples can still find things to be grateful for. And that’s pretty awesome. If you are a couple in this situation, or you know someone who is about to face their first deployment, it can be useful to know what to expect. So let’s look at the emotional cycle of deployment and how couples typically react to each stage of the journey. Emotional Cycle of Deployment Couples typically go through five stages when one spouse is deployed to active service for a long period of time[v]. Pre-Deployment Stage This is the time from receiving orders to deploy to then actually leaving. It can be weeks or months. What to expect: The wife staying home may experience denial or high levels of fear, or even anticipate losing their spouse for good. They may also feel anger at their soldier husband for leaving, leading to conflict in the marriage. This is going to be a very stressful time so all kinds of emotions are to be expected. The soldier may become emotionally and physically distant as he starts training and bonding with his squad mates. The soldier is, in some sense, mentally already deployed, and already looking ahead to the challenges facing him[vi]. Both spouses may come into conflict and stress over trying to get their affairs in order, for example the husband doing all the important DIY tasks before leaving, or both spouses sorting out finances, wills, childcare etc. Couples often have a strong desire to make the most of the time before the soldier leaves, for example by having the "perfect" Christmas or birthday. And this ends up putting even more pressure on them in an already stressful time. They may also experience fears and doubts about whether the marriage will survive, and possibly about infidelity while the wife is at home. I would add from non-military marriages that there is a fairly normal thing that happens when couples know they are going to be separating due to travel or work: they tend to pull back and may even almost seek conflict. It just helps create the distance while the other spouse is still around, perhaps in the hopes of reducing the pain of loss when the spouse leaves. Couples can cope with this by ensuring conflicts are properly resolved before the soldier leaves and ensuring they separate on good terms. Having conflict hanging over them can interfere with the wife's routine and can make the soldier unfocused, which could be dangerous for him when on duty. Talking about their expectations of what the separation will be like is also important[vii]. Deployment Stage Stage two is the first month of separation. What to expect: Spouses can expect a huge range of emotions following the departure of their military spouse, from numbness and grief to relief at no longer having to appear strong and supportive in front of your deployed spouse. Worries about security in relation to finances, childcare and other concerns are common. During this time, staying in contact by phone or Skype is helpful for both spouses, although not always possible. Conflict can make the stress at this stage much worse so this first month sounds like it must be really hard. Sustainment Stage This is the period of continued separation from the first month onwards. What to expect: During this time the spouse learns to find support from other sources, such as support groups, family or church. S/he learns that s/he is able to cope with difficulties as they arise and make important decisions by alone[viii]. Continued communication with the soldier is important to help them stay connected but can also cause conflict. Phone communication is always more prone to misinterpretation and distortion since you’re relying on voice without any clue to your spouse’s facial expressions or the context they’re calling from. If you cannot use video during your calls you don’t have body language and all those non-verbal cue to rely on as when you communicate in person. Hopefully by this point you’re both settling into something of a routine and learning to cope with the challenges you’re facing. Continued communication is so important here. In a previous episode on long distance relationships (and military couples definitely fall into this category) we saw that staying in face to face contact where possible was good for keeping your bond strong, and talking about all the little details of life together was also important. Re-Deployment Stage This is the last month before the soldier returns home. What to expect: Both spouses will obviously feel intense anticipation about reuniting. Expectations will definitely be high. At the same time, the at-home spouse may feel apprehension about giving up independence or about whether the deployed spouse will have changed and whether you'll get along upon reuniting. S/he has basically been running the house entirely alone for several long months and changes to the house or to the family routine may cause worry that the military spouse may not approve upon his or her return. At this point it may be harder to make decisions as you become acutely aware that the soldier will be returning soon. Do I make the decision? Do I wait for him or her to get home? As with the months before leaving, looking forward to your happy reunion is definitely a good thing and you should take comfort in the fact that your separation is nearly over. But managing your expectations is also important. You’ve been apart in very difficult circumstances for a long time: things aren’t going to go back to normal right away. Post-Deployment Stage Reuniting can be a very joyful and happy experience, creating a "honeymoon period" where all seems to be going great. But reuniting also has its own challenges. The soldier spouse may have changed significantly during the time away. This can include positive and negative elements[ix]. Here’s some examples from the research: They may be disillusioned with their own beliefs and values due to the horrors they have experienced, leading to apathy and an erosion of the soldier's sense of self. On the other hand they could come back with their faith in their country and their purpose stronger than ever. Soldiers will definitely have gained new skills, as well as physical and mental strength. Learning to suppress emotions: soldiers are trained in suppressing their fears and emotions in order to survive in combat. Now when they are home, showing this vulnerability, which is required in a marriage, is just the opposite of what helped them to survive when deployed. Reactiveness: soldiers need to learn to react quickly and with extreme violence to any perceived threat. Again this is an essential skill for wartime but not at all helpful upon return. Soldiers are drilled to see all situations in terms of potential threats, victims and bystanders, and this is a mindset that will take time to break out of. Reintegration can be hard as the soldier readjusts to the role of husband and parent, while coming to terms with the trauma of warfare. Family dynamics may have changed as the at home spouse has had to take all the responsibility for the house, children and finances. The at home spouse may also resent the loss of freed

Wife Foreplay: How Much Does She Really Need?

Wed, 01 Nov 2017 11:00:00 +0000

Many studies place average preferred or helpful foreplay time somewhere in the 15 to 25 minute range, but there is wide variation from woman to woman. The number that actually matters is not minutes. It is the presence behind them. Research lands in that ballpark, and yet a lot of marriages with plenty of foreplay are still missing the connection that makes it work. Here is what the research says about how much foreplay your wife really needs, and here is what shifts when foreplay becomes connection rather than performance. Before we go further, hold this in your head: emotional factors predict female sexual satisfaction more powerfully than mechanical ones. A foundational study from 1993[i] showed what most couples already sense. Closeness, intimacy, and marital satisfaction predict her satisfaction over and above sexual frequency or length of foreplay. So if foreplay feels mechanical, the question is not how to do it longer. The question is what is happening between you in the rest of life. How Much Foreplay Does Your Wife Need? The honest answer is that there is no universal number. The studies converge in the 15 to 25 minute range as a useful average, but individual women vary widely. Some reach orgasm with five minutes or less. Others still do not reach orgasm after twenty minutes or more of foreplay[ii]. When researchers asked men and women what their ideal foreplay duration was, both groups reported anywhere from "less than five minutes" to "more than thirty minutes"[iii]. There is a huge range. So duration is one piece of the puzzle. The other pieces are the kind of foreplay, her arousal pattern, the safety she feels with you, and what is happening in her body before sex even starts. We will work through each of these. If you are looking for a quick benchmark, plan on twenty minutes. But know that twenty minutes of going through the motions is not the same as twenty minutes of being together as people. That difference is most of what this article is about. Why "Responsive Desire" Changes the Question One of the most useful things we have learned from sex therapy research is that desire works in at least two patterns. Rosemary Basson, a Vancouver-based researcher and physician, mapped this in 2000 in what is now called the Basson model of female sexual response. Her work names two different paths into desire. The first is spontaneous desire. You are sitting on the couch and out of nowhere your body says, "I want sex." This is the pattern most movies and most teenage years run on, and it is the assumption baked into the question "how come she doesn't initiate." The second is responsive desire. You are not feeling it at the start. But your partner is warm, the kids are settled, the day is winding down, and a few minutes of unhurried physical closeness happens. Your body warms up. The desire follows. Many women, and a meaningful number of men, run primarily on this second pattern, especially after the early years of a relationship. Why this matters for foreplay: if your wife experiences desire responsively, the question is not how to get her to feel like spontaneous desire would have her feel. She may not feel ready when foreplay begins. She is not supposed to. Her arousal builds during the foreplay, and her desire follows the arousal. If her starting state reads to you as a verdict on whether she wants you, you will both end up frustrated. If you read it as the normal beginning of her own responsive cycle, you can stay present and curious through the unhurried beginning without taking her starting point personally. This reframe often matters more than technique because it changes how both of you read what is happening. Accelerators and Brakes: The Dual-Control Model Emily Nagoski, in her book Come As You Are, popularized a framework called the dual-control model of sexual response. Two systems run in parallel inside every body. The first is the sexual excitation system. Think of it as the accelerator. It notices everything that is sexually relevant in the environment and activates arousal. The second is the sexual inhibition system. Think of it as the brakes. It notices everything that is threatening, distracting, or off-putting and shuts arousal down. The familiar question "how do I turn her on?" tends to focus on the accelerator alone. But for many wives, particularly those whose desire is responsive, the brakes are carrying more weight than the accelerator does. The mental load of running the household. An unresolved conflict from earlier in the day. The sense of being on alert for the kids or the next thing on the list. Financial stress. A recent comment that landed wrong. These all press the brakes. And no amount of physical technique overrides a fully engaged brake system. What this means in practice is that arousal is not just about engaging the accelerator. It is also about an environment where her body has space to ease off the brakes, and that environment is something the two of you build together rather than something one of you performs for the other. A fairly shared kitchen counter five hours earlier matters, not as a way to earn anything later, but because the home is hers as much as yours, and a wife who experiences her marriage as a real partnership has more bandwidth in her body for everything she cares about, including her own desire. Resentment from Tuesday afternoon shows up in Wednesday night's bedroom because resentment is a brake that does not turn off on a schedule. "She just needs to relax" points to a real mechanism, but the mechanism is mutual: both of you live inside this environment together, and both of you shape it. If you want practical movement here, ask her, gently and outside the moment: "What weighs on you during the day? What helps you feel settled and like yourself again?" The answers will be specific to her, and they will rarely be about technique. They will probably be about partnership, mental load, and being known. What the Research Actually Shows About Duration The 15 to 25 Minute Range Several studies link more time spent in foreplay with a higher probability of orgasm[iv][v]. The relationship is not perfectly linear, but on average, for women who are already reaching orgasm at least sometimes, more foreplay correlates with more reliable orgasm. The 15 to 25 minute range is where most of that benefit shows up. Past 25 or 30 minutes, the curve flattens. One detail in the Miller and Byers research is worth pausing on. Both men and women reported that their ideal foreplay duration was longer than what they were actually experiencing. Wives significantly underestimated how long their husbands wanted to spend in foreplay. Husbands were fairly accurate in estimating their wives' preferences, but both partners believed in cultural scripts that said men want sex to be short and women want it long. Even when those scripts were not true of their own marriage, the scripts were shaping what they actually did[vi]. That is one of the cleanest examples we know of how a conversation that is not happening reshapes the most intimate part of marriage. When Duration Doesn't Help For women dealing with sexual dysfunction, the duration story breaks down. A study by Huey and colleagues looked at 619 women reporting sexual dysfunction and found no link between length of foreplay and orgasmic response[vii]. If something else is wrong, more time does not fix it. This is why the assumption "she just needs more foreplay" can be a dead end. If she has not reached orgasm with her current partner across many tries, more minutes is unlikely to be the answer. The work is somewhere else, often in the brakes side of the dual-control model, in the emotional connection, or in a medical or hormonal factor we will get to below. When Foreplay Isn't Working: Clinical Roadblocks If foreplay duration is generous, the clinical frameworks above are accounted for, and orgasm is still rare or absent, the next layer to consider is roadblocks. There are three categories worth knowing. Hormonal and Medical Factors Arousal is not just psychological; it is deeply physiological. Antidepressants, particularly SSRIs, frequently blunt orgasmic response by interfering with serotonin signaling. Hormonal shifts, perimenopause, postpartum recovery, breastfeeding, hormonal birth control, and thyroid issues can all change what her body is capable of in a given season. Pelvic injury, surgery, and chronic pain are also significant[viii]. A frank conversation with her physician about side effects of medication, hormonal levels, and pelvic health is one of the most underused interventions we recommend. Trauma, Hypervigilance, and the Nervous System If your wife has a history of sexual trauma, even one she has not framed as significant, her nervous system may have learned to read intimate touch as a threat signal. The body's autonomic state during sex matters. A woman whose body is on alert has very different access to arousal than a woman who feels settled and safe. Clinically, this is the difference between a sympathetic, mildly hypervigilant state and a parasympathetic, ventral vagal state. This is not weakness or unwillingness. It is biology doing what it learned to do. The path forward is usually trauma-informed work, often with an EMDR therapist or an attachment-based couples therapist who knows how to help the body experience the bedroom as safe. The same is true, in milder form, for ambient stress. A wife who has been on emotional alert for hours does not flip a switch into arousal because the bedroom door closes. The nervous system needs runway. Pursuer-Distancer Dynamics The relational pattern beneath many foreplay struggles is what Sue Johnson and emotionally focused therapy have called the pursuer-distancer cycle. One partner pursues sexual connection. The other partner, feeling pressured, distances. The pursuer, reading the distance as rejection, pursues harder. The distancer,...

What To Do When Your Folks Do Not Like Your Spouse

Wed, 25 Oct 2017 11:00:30 +0000

What do you do when your family and/or friends do not approve of your spouse? As it turns out, there are a number of strategies to help with this, but the most important is just doing a good job of taking care of your marriage, regardless of what others think. It’s a tough situation to be in: you’re fully committed to your marriage and love your wife to bits, but her parent don’t think you’re good enough for her. Or your husband’s friends make it quite clear that they don’t like that you spend so much time together. Marriages don’t exist in a social vacuum: this kind of social disapproval is bound to have some kind of effect. Social Disapproval and Marriage When you’re faced with disapproving friends and family, does it draw you closer together as a couple or pull you apart? Popular culture often talks about a "Romeo and Juliet Effect" where family disapproval intensifies love. This is based on a famous study by Driscoll et al[i] in 1972, who found that feelings of love increase as levels of perceived interference from parents increase. However, almost every subsequent study into this has found the opposite effect: interference or disapproval from family and friends has negative effects on relationships including lowering relationship satisfaction, reduced relationship stability, reduced commitment, lower feelings of love, higher levels of criticism and less positive appraisals of your spouse[ii][iii]. I was a little surprised by this research, to be honest. It has been my anecdotal observation—this is more watching dating relationships—that when parents disapprove it tends to bind the couple together more strongly. They not only have their newfound love but they also have a common enemy. Then again, these studies are looking at long term relationships and when I think about that context, I lean more towards the reality that if you have a lot of negative info about your spouse coming from friends and family, that can easily shape your perception of your marriage. If there’s an upside to this, it is that approval from your social network has positive effects such as improved perceptions of your spouse, greater feelings of love, and greater stability for the relationship. Overall, the positive effects of approval from the social circle are stronger and more consistently found than negative effects of disapproval[iv]. I do think there is a warning here for all of us: just to be careful about how we approach other struggling marriages. I think this research shows that when couples are struggling they really need our support, not our criticism. It is easy to stand outside the marriage and point out all the problems to the person you’re close to, but are you really helping the couple? You could do a lot more for their marriage by being there for them and showing that you believe in and support their marriage, rather than helping them pick it apart. Why Does Approval Matter? You might be wondering why these effects appear. Why should other people’s opinions matter? Well, every opinion you hear from your friends and family has the potential to, in some way, influence your own thinking. Approval from your social circle helps create a stronger identity for you as a couple: when other people see you as a well-suited couple and approve of this role, this helps you form a joint sense of self and identity. Approval from others also reduces uncertainty about the relationship, while disapproval increases uncertainty. This uncertainty about whether you should really be together alters your perceptions of the relationship and your behavior changes accordingly[v]. Imagine this: you have a disagreement with your spouse about something minor. It would be fairly natural to want to discuss this with a close friend, or a family member. If that person already has a negative opinion of your spouse then that’s going to affect how they respond to your concerns, and the advice they give to you about it. Whether or not you choose to heed their advice, their opinion is now in your head. The more often you hear such opinions the harder it will be to ignore them. Which Is More Influential: Parents or Social Circle? A study from 2012[vi] found that for most couples disapproval from the social circle was more detrimental to the relationship than parental disapproval, in that it significantly influenced how much participants reported liking their partners. However, parental disapproval was a strong predictor of relationship quality when the study participants were more reliant on their parent's resources, such as their financial provision or their opinions. So for younger couples who are still in some ways reliant on their parents, or couples who have very close relationships with their parents, the approval or disapproval from parents is more influential. It’s All About Perception Once again we come back to perception. The research shows that the perception of approval is more important than actual levels of approval in determining relationship wellbeing and stability[vii]. This suggests that disapproving friends/family aren't directly responsible for impacting your marriage- it's the doubts and negative opinions they create in your own mind that do the damage. That reinforces my earlier warning: be supportive if your sibling or child is struggling in their marriage. I know you might want to get your mama bear on if you see something you don’t like in the marriage, but try to be a voice of support and care rather than criticism. What To Do When Family/Friends Disapprove So we’ve seen how the opinions of those around you can impact your marriage. Now let’s look at what you can do in this situation. Reduce the Impact Through Commitment Commitment is very important in any marriage but becomes even more so in this situation. A study in 2008[viii] found that commitment to your spouse mediates the link between social disapproval and reduced relationship stability. So remaining very committed to your spouse and building on your intimacy and bond can reduce the impact of disapproving friends/family. This isn’t quite the same as the Romeo and Juliet effect where disapproval improves your relationship, but a strong bond and enduring love for each other can survive regardless of this social disapproval. Watch What You Say Disclosure influences others’ opinions. Obviously, disclosures about your spouse to your parents or social circle can affect their opinions of the spouse (and your perceptions of their opinion). A study in 2014[ix] found that increased overall level of disclosure and increased positive disclosure (revealing good things about your spouse) have a positive impact on parent's perceptions of your relationship (perceived and actual opinions), while increases in both positive and negative disclosures has a positive impact for friends. Overall, then, telling your friends and family more about your spouse is a good thing: hopefully, they will start to get a better picture of him/her and come to see them the way you do. Sharing both the good and bad aspects of your relationship with your friends is good, but with parents, you might need to be a bit more selective. Parents are perhaps a so much more invested in wanting to look after you that any mention of your spouse’s negative traits will set them off. Be Aware of How You Are Seen Be aware of how you come across as a couple. A couple's social circle will pick up on cues between the couple that give an indication as to how they are functioning as a couple, for example spotting "red flags" that indicate conflict or picking up on nonverbal cues that indicate tension. These then affect the observer's opinion of the relationship[x]. I am a little torn on this suggestion, to be honest. I see where the researcher is going and we want to help couples reduce disapproval. At the same time, I am always asking folks to be authentic and show up in whatever situation and be real. At the same time, I think that when your marriage needs work and you know it, then that is a situation where you guys as a couple also need all the support from your family and social network you can get. So do not give them a reason to become negative voices unnecessarily. Just be aware of how you come across and perhaps even promote disapproval in others at a time when approval would be more beneficial. Remember too that if negative opinions are already in place, they are going to color how actions are seen. If people already disapprove of your spouse then they may be more likely to interpret things more negatively. Something that seems harmless to you may be interpreted very differently by an observer if they are already questioning the suitability of your spouse. So just be aware of how you might be seen by others who hold different views about your spouse then you do. Side With Each Other Here’s something you can do in the moment when there’s conflict arising between your spouse and your family. We touched on this sort of thing in our episodes about successful in-law relationships. A study from 2010[xi] found that conflict between wives and mothers in law was a leading course of decreased marital satisfaction. But for the husband, taking the wife's side in the conflict and using problem-solving strategies to reduce conflict mediated this link and buffered against problems caused by conflict. In the face of conflict, it’s really important to stay united. Develop Autonomy Being dependent on your parents or social circle for resources (and by resources I mean anything from financial and practical support to emotional guidance) exacerbates the effect of relationship disapproval. If you’re reliant on your parents for money or on your friends for approval then their opinions are going to have a much bigger impact on your marriage. Working on becoming more independent and less reliant on your parents/friends will make their opinions less of a determinin

Long Distance Marriage – Do’s and Do Not’s

Wed, 18 Oct 2017 11:00:45 +0000

Does your marriage involve one spouse working away from home? Or travelling a lot? Maybe you are a military family or you commute to another city for work or do camp work. Let’s talk about some of the challenges and also some ideas to make the most of this situation! It can be tough being separated from your spouse for long periods of time. And when this happens regularly, due to work or some other circumstance, your marriage is bound to be affected in some way. But that change doesn’t necessarily have to be bad, and with the help of our list of do’s and don’ts you can make sure you stay connected to your spouse no matter the physical distance between you. What is a Long Distance Marriage? Who knew, but long distance couples account for over 1 million couples in the USA[i] and this number is continuing to grow. There are a few flavours of this: Couples where one spouse goes away for weeks or months at a time for work. Military couples would be an example of this. In Canada we see a lot of this related to the oil industry where camps are set up in northern areas, and husbands go North to work like 3 weeks in one week out kind of thing There are also dual-commuter couples where both spouses travel away for work or education And there are couples who live in different geographical locations on a semi-permanent basis due to work or other factors If you don’t fit into any of those groups, another definition of a long distance relationship (LDR) is simply that the couple are "unable to see each other as often as they like, due to time or distance constraints[ii]". So how does being in a LDR affect your marriage? There are mixed results from the research on this one, but most find that there are no concrete differences in terms of satisfaction or commitment between long-distance and close-distance relationships[iii]. This means that spending long periods of time apart doesn’t automatically spell doom for your marriage, and making the relationship work is largely up to the individual couple. So let’s get into the do’s and don’ts of long distance relationships. Do’s and Don'ts Don’ts Do Not Have Unrealistic Expectations If you are in this situation you are probably already aware of some of the common challenges faced in long distance relationships. These include: Increased financial strain from travelling Difficulty forming new relationships and friendships in your separate locations and balancing these with your marriage Difficulty assessing each other's emotional state or the state of the relationship Try to be aware of these challenges and other issues like loneliness: it then becomes a conversation about something you both experience. Can you discuss this without feeling guilty? Have you chosen to see this as something that gets between you, or can you share the burden together? Those are expectations that come into play when you are apart. What about when you are together? Avoid putting too high expectations on the time you do spend together: couples often expect their limited time together to be perfect: intimate and romantic and all these wonderful things and can be distressed when this doesn't turn out to be the case. Do Not Be Negative Those expectations can easily lead to negativity in thought or emotion. A study from 2007[iv] found that negative affectivity (displays of negative emotions) were linked to relationship instability. This effect was stronger for men than women, and also stronger for long distance couples than for geographically close couples. Being far apart makes those negative comments much more of an issue, because it could be days or weeks before you get to speak to each other again, so you’ll have all that time to stew over every word. Obviously arguments and disagreements will happen in an LDR, like in any marriage, but just be careful that they don’t sour your entire experience of time together. If you fight, make sure you make up quickly to stop it having a lingering effect. Commitment is of course essential in a long distance marriage, but a stressful or dysfunctional LDR can create a negative sense of commitment or "moral burden". This is where couples stay together out of obligation but gain no satisfaction or joy from the marriage[v]. So working on sources of stress and conflict is especially important in LDRs to avoid this state of seeing the marriage as a burden. You can see that perspective and perception become very important in a LDR right? Do Not Idealize the Relationship Would you say that a long-distance relationship is more, or less, likely to break up than one where the couple see each other every day? Interestingly, some research shows that LDRs are actually more stable than geographically close relationships (GCRs)[vi]. Part of this is because distant couples tend to idealize each other and their relationship: they see each other/the relationship in unrealistically positive terms. This includes characteristics like reminiscing on past positives and having an over-inflated view of how much you agree and share values. One one hand, this can be a good thing, as it promotes stability while you're away from each other. The geographically distant spouse may idealize his or her spouse because it protects from feeling uncertain about the marriage. Holding the marriage in very high regard, perhaps even unrealistically so, motivates you to stay in it and guards against infidelity. However, this over-inflated view of your spouse can make things harder when you reunite as you suddenly realize that the relationship isn't as good as you thought. Because of this effect of having your bubble burst when you reunite, LDRs often become less stable when they come back into close proximity[vii]. Suddenly you’re reminded of all the little flaws in your spouse that you didn’t come into contact with while you were away, and it’s easy to start wondering whether your marriage is really as good as you were imagining. Some level of focusing on the positives and reminiscing about good times may be healthy and ensure a stable, faithful relationship. But too much can lead to disillusionment when you are reunited. So balance is important. Do’s Reduce Uncertainty I love reducing uncertainty in relationships. It solves so many things. Physical distance is just one thing that can create uncertainty about the future or stability of your marriage. Now, if you both have chosen to do this long distance thing then you cannot change that at the moment. Here’s what you need to know: uncertainty leads to higher levels of jealousy and lower levels of trust. Other factors influencing uncertainty include emotional distance (how willing you are to open up), levels of conflict, perception of rival partners, and frequency/quality of sex. So when physical distance is high you can reduce uncertainty with the relationship by compensating in the other areas[viii]. I mean by discussing these things together and by engaging in maintenance behaviors (which are positive actions to strengthen the relationship) in order to reduce uncertainty. Those behaviors are critical to the success of your marriage in this situation and that is why we carefully go through them in the bonus guide that we have made available to our Patreon supporters. Focus on Positive Aspects For example, planning your next visit home to give yourselves something to look forward to, or even using the increased sense of autonomy for personal growth[ix]. You may have more spare time: how can you see that as an opportunity to leverage so that you bring an even better version of yourself to the marriage? Plan time Together Effectively Make your time together count. Plan your weekends or visits together so that you get maximum enjoyment out of them, and allow space for showing affection and reaffirming your bond[x]. Talk About the Little Things We looked at creating purpose and meaning in marriage in a recent episode, where couples find their joint sense of identity and meaning in life through the way they relate to each other and their shared history. Couples often find their sense of joint meaning through regular interaction about the day to day details of life[xi]. So long distance couples should talk to each other about the mundane stuff as well as the big important matters. This helps you stay connected at the ground level: you’re still apart of each other’s lives from the little details all the way up to the big decisions. Keeping in touch about day to day things also helps maintain a more grounded view of the relationship and prevents over-idealization. It also lets your spouse really see into your daily life and brings them into your world. This helps them feel safer and more secure in the relationship too. Who knew that talking about your daily life was such a powerful force in your marriage? Face to Face Communication I thought this was really cool. A study in 2001[xii] examined 311 individuals in close and long-distance relationships. They found that long-distance couples who were in regular face to face contact (eg though Skye or by periodically returning home) were significantly less uncertain about the future of their relationship, significantly more trusting and were better at using positive maintenance behaviors like reassuring each other and sharing out tasks. Face to face contact while separate also predicts stability once the couple is reunited[xiii]. So this really is something you need to be making time for. Continue to Find Meaning A fascinating study from 1997[xiv] identified two types of commitment found in LDRs: enthusiastic commitment (levels of satisfaction and happiness with the relationship) and moral commitment (investing in the meaning of the relationship and believing it ought to continue). One is the day to day level of happiness the relationship brings you; the other is about a much deeper sense of purpose. ...

How to Beat Empty Nest Syndrome

Wed, 11 Oct 2017 06:23:30 +0000

At that moment the final child leaves the family home, you and your spouse go through a transition from parenting to empty nesters. For some, perhaps wives more than husbands, this is almost like postpartum depression as you are confronted with the grief that comes from a loss of a major stage in your life. So today we’re going to be talking about Empty Nest Syndrome: the impact, the causes and how to support your marriage through this transition. What Is Empty Nest Syndrome? It is more often associated with women but for both parents, ENS creates a transition in life and a change in roles and responsibilities[i]. This change can be challenging to go through. Sometimes there are feelings of loneliness, depression or distress that come when the final child leaves the family home[ii]. I remember seeing this when I came to pick Verlynda up to move from Vancouver Island, where she was living with her folks. She was the last child. And I was totally unprepared for the grief that I saw. I guess I was inconsiderate: it had not occurred to me that this would be difficult for Verlynda’s mom. Empty Nest: Good or Bad for Happiness? I would tend to think that if you have a good relationship with the last child leaving home, even if you are looking forward to the independence and no more making lunches and the freedom of having an open conversation with your spouse in your home and all that…there’s still some grief at the time of depart. But, is it a positive or a negative for most people, overall? Most research shows that for the majority of people, children leaving home is good for marital satisfaction and can also be good for overall life satisfaction. A classic study from 1975[iii] reports that 71% of couples consider their post-parenting lives to be as good as or better than their lives with children in the house, with only 6% of women and no men reporting that their lives are universally worse. A slightly more recent study by White & Edwards[iv] surveyed 402 parents and found that children leaving produced significant improvements for martial happiness regardless of the characteristics of the children or parents. Similarly, another study finds that children leaving the home improves psychological wellbeing for parents and Mitchell & Lovegreen (2009) found that only a minority of parents experience a negative "empty nest syndrome”[v]. Who knew, right? Do you think our 11 year old is ready to live on her own? Popular wisdom paints the empty nest phase as one of the loneliest and hardest times in a parent’s life. But for a majority of parents, this clearly isn’t the case. So what are the benefits of the last child moving out? The researchers found that children moving out allows for increased "alone time" as a couple, more intimacy and spontaneity, greater freedom, and improved financial conditions[vi]. The general picture here is that it gives you more time and resources to spend on each other, rather than on the kids. All of this can positively impact marital satisfaction. However, contact with children is still important. While marital satisfaction may increase after children leave, overall life satisfaction only increases when the parents remain in frequent contact with the children[vii]. That’s a very interesting caveat. Your marriage may improve, but without the kids still in your life, the net gain to your overall life satisfaction isn’t much. This makes perfect sense because you’ve invested so much in your children. Staying in touch allows you to maintain the value of that connection you’ve created. So the empty nest stage can, if you keep in regular contact with the children, be good for marriage. However, it is also possible that children leaving the home can be a crisis time for marriages due to the sudden changes in routine and identity this stage creates[viii]. Some research finds that the empty nest phase of marriage is often the least satisfying, and has the highest rates of divorce and conflict[ix]. Part of me wonders if, represented in that research, are the folks who hold the marriage together (consciously or unconsciously) for the sake of the children. Then the children leave. Then the motivation for civility is removed. It’s worth noting that all changes to happiness (both positive and negative) were only found when the last child had been launched- when the house was truly "empty"[x]. Let’s go deeper on this and see what is really at the root. Why do these changes occur, and why do some people take the empty nest phase in their stride while it wrecks the marriage for others? And what about when kids leave but come back; the so called “boomerang effect”? How does that impact marriage? What Causes Empty Nest Syndrome? Role transition. Roles in marriage and in family are an important part of psychological wellbeing as they provide stability and a sense of meaning. Losing direct contact with children may affect the role of a parent, resulting in distress[xi]. If we draw a great deal of meaning from daily parenting, and then we’re suddenly not parenting every day…that is a big adjustment. This would also explain why maintaining close contact with the children after they leave would reduce the distress caused by them leaving- it lessens the change in role and identity for the parent. Inability to Function as a Couple. Some couples may have focused for so long on being parents that they have forgotten how to function and be intimate as a couple[xii]. This can be especially true for women, who may have invested all their time and energy into raising the kids and end up without much of an identity outside of being a mother. In a sense, a time of rebirth follows. There’s pain and joy in that process and the expansion of personality… that’s a lot going on. Relationship to Children. Parents who have "overgiven" of themselves and consistently placed their children's needs above their own will often feel empty nest syndrome the hardest, as they will suddenly be faced with a void and have little idea how to meet their own needs. Relational Turbulence. Relational Turbulence Theory[xiii] states that any time of transition in a relationship, such as getting married, having your first children, children leaving home etc, creates "conditions ripe for upheaval, turmoil and tumult”. During these stressful periods, couples experience higher levels of uncertainty about themselves, their relationship and the future. As they try to figure out this uncertainty and their new roles they may come into conflict. They become more susceptible and reactive to interpersonal issues that were already present in the marriage. Meaning: if the relationship is going well before a big transition (like children leaving), they will be likely to make the transition successfully, help each other figure out new roles, and become happier as a result. But if things were going badly, the transition may exacerbate existing problems and partners may come into conflict over roles rather than helping each other. So according to this theory, times of stress and change can bring out both the best and worst characteristics of a marriage. During these times you’ll be especially responsive to both the good and the bad. Now another modern issue, especially with the price of housing in some parts, is the Boomerang Effect — Children returning home. How does this impact marriage? Boomerang Effect- Children Returning Home The numbers of young adults returning to their parent's homes has increased in recent years[xiv]. They come home because of major events or turning points in their own lives, such as leaving higher education or losing a job. Or, the economic downturn in many western countries means that finding employment after graduation is not guaranteed, causing many young adults to have to go back to the family home[xv]. How does this impact marriages? Overall the negative effects on the parents of children moving back in are fairly minor, provided certain conditions are met. A rather revealing study from 2002[xvi] found that children returning home did not produce any mood changes for the parents, but did reduce frequency of sex in the first year after the child returns. That would be a funny conversation to have. “You can move back in but this means your mother and I won’t be able to have sex on the couch anymore, you know.” That’s a good reason to make them pay rent, right? It’s gotta cost them something too! Another study by Mitchell[xvii] found that such arrangements were not typically associated with distress and conflict but did stress a few key items that were necessary to make this dynamic work well: Autonomy for the children, Mutual exchanges of support The children forming adult roles and responsibilities Similarly, Aquilino & Sharpe[xviii] found that most parents were satisfied with their living arrangements when children returned home and described mostly positive relationships. However, the level of parent-child conflict was very strongly related to satisfaction for the parents. Level of conflict was, in turn, linked to the child's unemployment and/or level of financial dependency. The overall picture is that kids returning home doesn’t have to wreck your marriage (although it may knock your sex life a bit!) provided that the children understand they are expected to be fairly autonomous and start relating to you as adults. Perhaps you as the parents might need to be aware of this, too. I think it was good to have this research just to balance the picture. It may not all be rosy. So the boomerang thing is an interesting sidebar. Let’s get back to empty nest syndrome, and what you can do about it. Ways to fight the Empty Nest Syndrome Before it occurs: Devote time to intimacy in your marriage and to looking after yourself as well as your children, so that these practices are in place for when the children leave ...

What is Trauma Bonding?

Wed, 04 Oct 2017 11:00:32 +0000

This is not a very well known term: trauma bonding. But if you are in an abusive relationship, or are supporting someone else who is in one, or if you experienced abuse as a young person then you will find this information to be a vital key in unlocking your recovery journey. The issue of trauma bonding is a fascinating subject but also very difficult for those who are implicated in this kind of situation. Today we’re going to be looking at what it is, how it develops, how it can impact marriages and finally what you can do about it. Trauma Bonding Explained Trauma bonding is the formation of powerful emotional attachments in abusive relationships. These bonds are seen to develop in a range of situations including abusive marriages, and also in abusive families, in hostage situations and in cults. It occurs where the abused or mistreated individual feels positive regard for their abuser[i], feels like they need the abuser or continually returns to the abuser despite the harm they do[ii]. It is often characterized by a sense of being unable to live with the abuser and being unable to live without them. It’s sometimes referred to as Stockholm Syndrome after a famous bank robbery in Sweden in 1973, in which the hostages began to develop feelings of trust and affection for their captors. Given that the context of this website is marriage, we’re going to be talking about this in relation to abusive marriages. However, if you’re in a different kind of situation; maybe you experienced childhood sexual abuse, you will be able to better understand that from what you learn today. So this is a very difficult subject. And in fact, relationships with trauma bonds often look like addictions. Just the idea of continuing to do something (being in the relationship) despite knowing the negative consequences, and sacrificing all other aspects of your life for the relationship, has close parallels with the behavior of drug or alcohol addicts[iii]. Like addictions, trauma bonds can therefore be a lifelong struggle as the abused person continues to fall into the same cycle over and over. Bystanders such as a sibling who sees you in an abusive marriage can look into your situation and wonder why you don’t leave. Well, the research we look at today should help give some understanding as to why leaving is so difficult. Why Do Trauma Bonds Form? Abusive relationships are formed though a kind of "social trap" where the trauma bond makes it hard for the abused partner to leave the relationship. Here’s an example of how it may go. The first instance of abuse in a relationship is seen as an isolated incident and the abuser's attempts to reconcile and make amends end up strengthening the relationship bond. They are usually really good at winning the abused spouse back, at convincing them it was an isolated incident, often even convincing them it was their fault for inciting the anger that was involved. And this works. The repeated incidents of abuse shift the abused spouse's beliefs towards thinking that it must in some way be their own fault for causing or allowing the abuse. Here’s a quote: "By the time the woman realizes that the abuse is inescapable, the traumatically produced emotional bond is quite strong.[iv]" Factors Contributing to Trauma Bonds From the research, we identified five factors that contribute to trauma bonding in abusive relationships[v]: Power Imbalance A power imbalance in a relationship can produce negative self-beliefs and low self-esteem in the subjugated individual. In the oppressed or abused spouse. This power imbalance makes them feel like they "need" the more powerful spouse because they are not capable or strong enough to live without them. They come to internalize the more powerful individual's view of them as being weak, and the abuser therefore comes to see themselves as even more powerful, which increases the imbalance of power, forming a cycle of dependency. The sense that you need the more powerful spouse strengthens the attachment bond you have with them. So the power dynamic is key to understanding this. The abused spouse sees him or herself through the abuser’s viewpoint: as needy and dependent. This feeds the power imbalance and perpetuates the problem. Intermittent Abuse In cases of trauma bonding abuse occurs intermittently, not all the time. Instances of abuse are separated by periods of positive behaviour sometimes called the "contrition” phase or the honeymoon phase, where the abuser promises to change and reaffirms their love. They often treat the abused spouse like royalty during this phase. Over time the abused spouse is repeatedly subjected to abuse and then reconciliation and relief when it stops. This cycle of building tension, then abuse, and then calm, loving reconciliation strengthens the bond for both abuser and abused. The reconciliation or contrition phase makes the abused partner more likely to stay in the relationship, as during this time the abuser is often especially loving and kind in order to make up for their abuse. This can start to play tricks on the abused spouse’s mind, distort their perception of their abusive spouse and even alter the abused spouse's memory of the abusive instances and reduce the perceived likelihood of abuse happening again. “He’s such a loving husband, how could he ever hurt me? Was it really as a bad as I thought at the time? Maybe I brought it on myself in some way.” And so on. A study from 1993[vi] investigated this, interviewing 75 women who had left physically and emotionally abusive relationships. They found that attachment to the abusive husband, lowered self esteem and levels of trauma experienced were all strongly inter-connected. Attachment was strongly predicted by the level of intermittent abuse and the level of power imbalance in the relationship prior to leaving. So both the power imbalance and this cycle of intermittent abuse and reconciliation were strongly connected to a sense of attachment to the abusive spouse. This attachment bond was weaker but still present 6 months after leaving the relationship, showing that the trauma bonding effect can be long lasting and hinting at why many abused women return to their abusive husbands. So this trauma bond is very real. It is measurable. Core Cognitions Another study[vii] identified 3 additional factors that contribute to trauma bonding: "Core" cognitive components are these core beliefs or ways of thinking about the abuse that are so typical of an abusive marriage. They are: blaming yourself for the abuse rationalizing or justifying the abuser's behavior minimizing its significance You can see how those thoughts keep you invested in that trauma bond rather than help you see it for what it is and choose to move away. Psychological Damage There’s also psychological damage occurring in a relationship like this. Consider the depression often involved, the lowering of self-esteem and the interpersonal difficulties that come. These psychological effects of the abuse create a sense of helplessness that can contribute to the abused spouse feeling dependent on their abusive spouse. That’s the “I can’t survive without you” part. Love Dependency This is the belief that your very survival is dependent on your partner's love and support. So you have to work hard, you have to invest into the relationship to earn this. Now you’re really buying into the trauma bond. These 3 factors are separate but interlinked, and can reliably predict levels of abuse in relationships. Taking this one study, the more you have of these core cognitions, the psychological damage and the love dependency, the higher the level of abuse. And of course, the intermittent abuse and the power imbalance identified in the previous study also contribute to the issue. So that’s what a trauma bond is and how it can look in an abusive marriage. Now we need to look at what to do about it. As an aside, we go into much more detail on abusive marriages and how to safely find recovery in that situation in our episodes on this subject: Is My Husband Abusive? [1 Of 3] Can Abusive Husbands Change? [2 Of 3] When To Leave (Or Stay In) An Abusive Marriage [3 Of 3] Definitely check those out. For this post, we’re really going to focus in on the trauma bonding itself and what to do about that, and not so much on what to do about an abusive marriage in its larger context and implications. What to do About Trauma Bonding Four things. Understanding the Issue For women with abusive husbands (or any other form of abusive relationship) who want to leave the relationship, this bond may make it difficult. If you want to stay, it could make achieving change difficult. Because after the initial fear and danger of an abusive attack have subsided your feelings of attachment will typically resurface and cause you to downplay the severity of the abuse. As we saw before, this is such a powerful effect that it can even cause you to reinterpret your memories and give justification to your abuser’s actions. At this point when the attachment has resurfaced you’re going to want to remain with the abuser or return to him and it makes you less likely seek help or independence or safety. Understanding how this bond forms and understanding how it is maintained may therefore help you know what to expect. You can expect to feel the attachment come back to the forefront once you get back to the honeymoon phase. But knowing how this all works should move you towards a more realistic view of the relationship. And from that vantage point where you are more informed you will be better equipped if and when you make a decision to leave for your own safety. For those that are helping abused spouses make a decision like this, Dutton & Painter (1993)[viii] recommend repeatedly providing factual reminders of the severity of the abuse to

How Does Wealth Affect Marriage?

Wed, 27 Sep 2017 11:00:39 +0000

I don’t know about you, but for me, it’s easy to fall into the “if…then” trap when it comes to money. If we had an extra 400 dollars a month, then dot dot dot. Or, If we had a 5 bedroom home instead of a 3 bedroom home then dot dot dot. And when we start doing this if...then thing, it begins to impact our marriage. Money is definitely top of the worry list for a lot of couples around the world. I know how hopeless it can feel about changing your financial situation, so I want to encourage you that we have some good news. The great news is not some get-rich-quick scheme. No, it’s that you can shift your marriage so that you can move away from that hopeless feeling, regardless of your financial situation. So let’s jump in. How Financial Issues Impact Marriage Before we get to the solution we need to spell the problem out. Not surprisingly, research finds that financial strain does impact marriage by reducing marriage quality and also reducing the stability of the marriage[i]. What’s fascinating is you can actually put a number to this. The direct link between financial strain and reduced marital satisfaction accounts for up to 15% of the total variation in marital satisfaction[ii]. If you are struggling financially or unhappy with your financial situation, you are far more likely to see your entire marriage as not working. I think this is good to point out because in this situation you have a pretty specific issue but you’re extrapolating it to a much larger one. For me, that’s a checkpoint. As in: stop and think about it. Because what we just identified is that you may only have a money issue. But you’ve made that into a marriage issue. I think it begs the question, is that necessary? Yes — financial strains impacts marriage. But how much power have you given to that issue? So money can be made into a bigger issue than it really is. But: just to continue the thought of how marriage is impacted by finances: financial issues also impact marriage indirectly through the way they change how you act. Financial strain due to unemployment, debt, low income or other issues increases stress and depressive symptoms for both spouses. This, in turn, reduces the amount of social support, warmth & affection which the spouses show to each other and increases the level of negative communication: things like anger, criticism or dislike. This behavior reduces marital satisfaction, and this reduced satisfaction increases depressive symptoms, creating a destructive cycle[iii]. So the way money makes you think and talk to each other ends up having a worse impact on your marriage than the money problem itself. Other research supports this: A study from 2008[iv] entitled “Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness, but it Helps” compared low income and medium income couples. Low-income couples had higher levels of psychological distress and also scored lower on measures of marital adjustment. And as we all know, financial difficulties are also one of the main reasons couples give after divorcing for why their marriage broke down[v]. Conversely, high income is directly linked to high marital satisfaction, and also indirectly influences it by reducing pressure and stress within the marriage[vi]. Now I know at this point it sounds like we have a simple formula: increase the moolah, increase the marriage mojo. But just stay with me for a bit longer. Financial Satisfaction I’d like to look at financial satisfaction. Financial satisfaction is not about having more money. It’s about being satisfied with the money you have. Now financial satisfaction is strongly linked to marital satisfaction[vii]. As I mentioned, financial satisfaction is not the same as simply having lots of money, although it is negatively correlated with financial strain. There are other factors which influence financial satisfaction in marriage, including: The perception that you have enough money and are coping. Smart financial decisions: families and couples who pay bills on time, live within their income and avoided unnecessary debt have a higher sense of self-worth, respect for each other and the family, and have less tension in the marriage[viii]. Feeling in control of your finances and being self-sufficient (as a couple) is linked to a higher quality of life[ix]. So being smart with your finances, making the best use out of what you have and believing that you have enough are all good for your marriage irrespective of your actual account balance. Having control over spending and financial decisions is another important factor in financial satisfaction. While most married couples have joint accounts and pool their finances, in most marriages, the reality is that one spouse is more likely to control the pool of money more than the other[x]. Only 1 in 5 marriages had truly equal control of money and spending between spouses[xi]. Equal sharing of finances is strongly correlated with financial and marital satisfaction[xii]. This is especially true for low-income couples. Independent finances or a lack of financial control reduces intimacy, hinders conflict resolution and overall lowers marital satisfaction, especially for women. Women married to men who withhold control of finances or keep some of the money to themselves often become suspicious that their husbands are not fully committed to supporting the family, or are possibly being unfaithful[xiii]. So it’s possible that one of you may be successfully handling the money, but because of the control aspect, it may reduce marital satisfaction. This is bound to work differently for different couples but a marriage where one spouse has sole say over money matters doesn’t sound like an intimate, trusting relationship to me. It’s great to note that there are ways of handling money so that, even if you have a low income, you can still find satisfaction in your marriage. In other words, you don’t have to make more to be happier. Rather, you can change how you relate to what you already have. Ways to Prevent Finances Negatively Impacting Marriage So satisfaction with your money and being sensible with it does more for your marriage than actually having lots of disposable income. That being said, the challenges of money on a lot of managers are very real. So here are some ways to reduce the strain finances can have on your marriage. Communication One of the main ways that financial difficulty impacts marriage is by creating stress and depressive symptoms, which lead to dysfunctional communication[xiv]. We touched on that earlier. So by learning and practicing communication skills, you can mediate the effect financial strain is having on your marriage. I think this is a good point to consider because at the end of the day not all of your stress is just about the finances. It’s also about how you relate to each other in the midst of those financial issues. So a good part of what you’re facing may not even be financial issues as much as a communication style problem. And again: while the financial issues may seem large and insurmountable, learning communication skills is something you can start on right away so that you can figure out how to navigate through that financial issue together rather than as opponents. Equality I recommend you adopt a system of equal access and decision making regarding finances. Why? This increases intimacy and reduces problems with trust and conflict in your marriage[xv]. If you’re the spouse that’s been holding onto finances — is it time to take a step back and say, “Sorry, my bad, I’ve been too controlling. I would rather have you as my ally than as a sparring partner. Can you help me find a way to do this together?" Spending Time Together Several studies found that quality time together is another mediating factor between financial strain and marital strain. As in, finances only harm your marriage because they reduce the amount of time you can spend together. Interesting hey? One study from 2007[xvi] surveyed 497 couples and found that financial pressure creates an increase in negative behaviors as a couple (such as conflict) and reduces positive behaviors such as quality time together. So actively working against this and making time for each other can reduce the strain finances place on your marriage. The basic idea here is that you know you have a stress point in one area of your marriage — and that point is not going to go away right away — so you’re going to compensate for that by strengthening another area of your marriage. Along these same lines, a separate study by Dew in 2008[xvii] examined levels of debt in newlywed couples and found no direct link between debt and marital satisfaction. Instead, debt negatively impacted marriage because it interfered with the couple's expectations of what marriage would be like, in that it increased arguments and reduced time spent together. Does that make sense? Debt is not the marriage killer…it’s the way you’ve handled it that may be putting all that strain on your marriage. So again, working on good conflict skills and spending time together would reduce the negative impact of debt (and presumably other forms of financial strain) on marriage. Financial Management Skills Formal financial management strategies such as goal setting, budgeting, saving and record keeping help reduce financial strain, while also reducing arguments about finances. Much of the conflict around money comes from couples having different ideas on how to spend or manage their money, so as one researcher put it "Financial management skills may reduce the chance for marital disagreements, while the lack of such skills may actually create crisis situations.[xviii]". In other words, your mishandling of money, just due to a lack of education in these areas, could be a source of conflict. Again: the answer is not winning the lottery or some unattainable goal (waiting for your rich,...

Q&A on a Disconnected Marriage and Shared Leisure

Wed, 20 Sep 2017 11:00:39 +0000

In today's marriage Q&A episode we'll be answering questions from our supporters and using them to shed insights that you can relate to any marriage. We'll be looking at the question o shared leisure activities, and rebuilding trust when you feel disconnected from your spouse. Join us for more insight into building a thriving, passionate marriage!

Q&A on Boundaries and PISD

Wed, 13 Sep 2017 11:00:27 +0000

So what if you’re good friends with another couple and the wife there is a little too attentive to your husband? Or, another patron is asking: what if both my spouse and I are experiencing PISD (post infidelity stress disorder)? Today we’re going to be handling two questions from our much-valued listeners of our podcast. This first question from Chewy relates to boundaries with other married couples. Here’s the full question: Can you talk about boundaries with other married couples? My best friend began to make jokes that were borderline sexually inappropriate. Pun on words type humor that I don't necessarily find humorous but a few times my husband would join in and banter. He is very word-y and so I felt like this was a threat to our relationship. At times I've felt that my friend envied our relationship and especially my husband's attention to me and his financial provision for our family. I have also felt that my husband has appreciated her attentiveness and appreciation of his actions. I feel that she is just more immature in her faith and Christian walk but have begun to wonder how often we should be in community with her and her husband. I have also seen her be more attentive to another mutual married guy friend. I feel for her because I think her actions come from a hurting place. My husband seems to be vulnerable to words of affirmation in general because that tends to be his love language and I am more practical. I don't praise as often because I'm busting my butt just as much as he is! Working full-time and managing a lot of household tasks like schooling and budgeting. I want to be more vocal in my appreciation because I think he needs it but I can't manage to do so without feeling fake. I say things like "Thank you" "I really appreciate your help" "I love that you can XYZ to help me" but I feel like he wants more praise in the way of "You are my hero" "I don't know how you can xyz" or more over the top type comments that I can't seem to say without feeling like I'm worshiping him. My husband and I experienced a difficult few years due to other circumstances (I talked to an old boyfriend via Instagram and it was clear this old flame still felt attentive towards me - my husband went on a revenge track to show me he was attractive too we have since with the help of your podcast worked through this phase) and feel that he may have been vulnerable to her attention more than he normally would. We have talked these instances through multiple times but now I'm wondering how do we balance a healthy mix of time for just him and I to rebuild our bond and strengthen our marriage with time for our two families to be together. We both have small children and are in very similar phases of life but their family has a dysfunctional marriage at least more so than ours or maybe just different. I've tried encouraging and it seems to help but I can't help but feel that I'm just not sure what healthy in this case should look like. Our kids very much enjoy being together and our families have fun when hanging out. How can I tell if we have crossed into dangerous territory or if I'm just being over sensitive? I will say that my husband is more passive and isn't necessarily the one instigating shared time, it more comes from my friend and her husband seems to go along with it. We are all Christians and looking to raise our kids with good examples. I have felt a tension between feeling like I need to limit shared time and also being a good friend. I am more of a homebody and prefer to just hang with my husband who also would be okay doing the same but I know we need community time as well. Help! And here’s question number 2, from MarkyMark, in relation to Post Infidelity Stress Disorder, which we devoted a full episode to back in March: Can you please discuss how to proceed if both partners are experiencing PISD simultaneously? Listen to the podcast for Caleb’s answer to these two questions!

Do I Have to Care About My Spouse’s Hobbies?

Wed, 06 Sep 2017 11:00:05 +0000

This is a question that comes up more often than I would have expected. We’ll address this issue of shared interests but at the end of the post I am going to go a whole layer deeper and tell you what really matters for couples that are focusing on this issue. Some couples seem to spend all their time together and have exactly the same interests. Others seem to have nothing in common and their leisure time is a constant battle between their individual preferences. If you’re in the latter group you may be wondering to what extent you are expected to join in with your spouse’s interests and hobbies. So we’re going to examine this issue and how it can impact marriages. Clarifying Shared Leisure or Interests Whether we’re talking hobbies or shared leisure or shared interests, it’s helpful to clarify that in order for something to truly fall into this category the activities need to be[i] Expected to be enjoyable by BOTH spouses Freely chosen by BOTH spouses That might sound obvious but often the contention comes in right here because either one person is not enjoying it, or one person does not feel like they were part of the decision. This is a challenge for being honest with each other and with ourselves: don’t call it shared if it’s not. It’s OK if you’re happy to do something with your spouse because he or she enjoys it and you just enjoy being with them. Just make sure it is fair: so that somehow that imbalance is reciprocated even in other ways. I think it’s also good to point out that shared activities can be joint or parallel. Joint are interactive and undertaken together. Parallel are undertaken together but not interactive. For example, going to a swimming club: you’ll change separately, you won’t interact while swimming etc. But it’s still a joint activity. I think this is helpful to note because it begs the question: are you wanting more activities together or more interaction? If you only want the latter, it may be that you’re focusing on the wrong problem. More on that later. Shared Interests and Marriage Satisfaction Spending free time together and having shared interests is linked to increased marital satisfaction[ii]. Having shared interests is a sign of high levels of intimacy as it shows that the couples are choosing to spend their free time together. Shared leisure also predicts higher self-reported feelings of love for your spouse and less conflict in the marriage[iii]. So, at least initially, this seems to be a good thing, right? However, it's slightly more complicated than just shared free time equals marital satisfaction. For starters, the interests really do have to be shared: a study from 2002[iv] studied couples over 10 years for changes in shared leisure and its effects on marriage. They found that involvement in interests that the husband liked but the wife disliked was "both a cause and a consequence of wives' dissatisfaction". Forcing or expecting your spouse to care about the same things as you isn’t going to be good for your marriage. There are a whole range of other factors that play into this other than simply how long you spend on what activity, and who enjoys it. Here are some of them[v]: Satisfaction with the leisure time (both of you finding it enjoyable) is correlated with marital satisfaction. This satisfaction with the joint leisure time is a more important predictor of marital satisfaction than the amount of time spent in such activities. Marital satisfaction is linked to the percentage of free time spouses chose to spend with each other, rather than the total number of hours. That’s a very nuanced but interesting detail. It’s saying this: if you have 2 free hours a week, and you spend one of that with your spouse, that’s 50%. If you have 8 free hours a week and you spend 2 of those with your spouse, that’s 25%. Spouse’s with the 50% ratio will be more satisfied with their marriage than the 25% spouse who is getting double the time. So even when couples are busy, spending their limited free time together is good for the marriage. Satisfaction with amount of leisure time: the extent to which both spouses are happy with the amount of time spent in joint leisure is linked to marital satisfaction. So couples who spend little time in leisure together may still be happily married as long as they are both happy with the amount of joint leisure. This is more about meeting expectations or wants: are you getting enough of what you want. Similarity of interests was linked to higher marital satisfaction. Having similar interests makes it easier to find activities you'll both enjoy, motivates you to do things together and means you are still likely to enjoy activities that your spouse chooses. Interaction: the rate to which couples interact during their shared leisure was linked to marital satisfaction. So taking part in activities that allow direct interaction with the spouse was good for the marriage. Activities that encourage lots of communication between spouses were also linked to marital satisfaction. Decision making: a link was found between marital satisfaction and the extent to which the individual spouse was involved in choosing the joint leisure activities. But here’s the problem: individual spouses had the highest rates of satisfaction when they had the most control over choice of activities. They did NOT report that equal decision making was the best: both spouses want to have the most control. So obviously for this to work in marriage there needs to be some give-and-take. So there are some of the issues that you need to think about. Are you happy with the amount of time, and the amount of interaction you get during your leisure time? Do you feel like you get enough of a say in choosing what you do? Interestingly, no gender differences were found for any of the above effects: they’re all important for both men and women. Interracial Couples Let’s look at an interesting side note here. Shared leisure was uniquely important for cross-cultural couples who often face additional challenges from language and communication differences and lack of shared culture. Shared leisure time allowed these couples to positively work on communication and actively establish shared interests and form a shared identity[vi]. We’ve looked in detail at cross-cultural marriages previously and this just adds a little extra bit of info you can use. So you could consider this like an intervention on your marriage: specifically for strengthening your shared identity and communication. So we’ve seen how shared interests can be good for your marriage if done right. Now let’s think about the activities themselves more. Just to help give a deeper understanding of how the nature of the activity impacts marriage. And then, as promised, I want to show you that deeper part, the thing that really matters and what quite possibly may be the real issue that you're stuck on as a couple if you can’t come to an agreement in this area. Types of Shared Leisure There’s a helpful distinction highlighted in research done by Dayley in 2015[vii] which distinguishes between what they call core and balance activities. Core vs. Balanced Activities Core activities are the day to day leisure activities couples take part in that don't have much of a cost in terms of time or effort and are usually based in the home. Balance activities are the ones that are more out of the ordinary and require more investment of time and resources: things like skiing, camping etc. Here’s what this researcher noted: Core activities lead to closeness and familiarity, help facilitate communication and lead to the development of roles within the couple. Enjoying core activities together is a prerequisite of enjoying balance activities. Balance activities promote development as a couple and improve negotiation skills and flexibility. This relates to the idea of shared experiences, and how trying new things together can strengthen you as a couple, which we looked at in our recent episode on learning to date your spouse. Both kinds of activities are important for marital satisfaction. Today’s bonus guide will help you make sure you have a good balance of both. Competitive Activities This might be a contentious one. In sports and other competitive leisure activities the relative skill levels of each spouse become important. Both spouses need to be of a similar skill level in order to make the competition rewarding and engaging[viii]. Common sense right? If tennis is our shared activity and twice a week you get out there and crush me, how long is that gonna last? There’s some funky gender bias here too. Tell me what you think about this...In a study of 657 couples, marital satisfaction was highest for couples who were of similar skill levels in their chosen activities and couples where the husband had a higher skill level: couples, where the wife had a higher skill level, were significantly less satisfied[ix]. However, spouses who were less skilled than their spouse but still reported enjoying their joint leisure scored very high on marriage satisfaction scales. Suggesting that being happy spending leisure time with your spouse even though you always lose is indicative of a strong marriage. I’m not sure I agree with that conclusion. I wonder if in this case you are simply deriving more enjoyment from the time together and winning or losing doesn’t mean as much to you. Shared Leisure at Different Life Stages Not surprisingly, couples experience a decline in the amount of joint leisure time during the transition to parenthood, followed by a gradual increase after the wife's return to work. This decline did not impact marital satisfaction[x]. However, shared leisure before parenthood was predictive of higher levels of love and lower levels of conflict 1 year later. So it’s good having this in place heading into parenthood,...

Coping With Age Gap in Marriage: What Actually Helps

Wed, 30 Aug 2017 11:00:46 +0000

If you're sitting across the dinner table from a spouse who is fifteen years older or younger than you, and tonight, again, you're feeling that quiet pulse of distance that you can't quite name, the question that keeps surfacing is some version of: is it the age? If you've been Googling some variation of coping with age gap in marriage at 11pm, you're not alone. That search is one of the most common ways readers find this article. Here's the short answer before we go any further: in our work with mixed-age couples, the age gap is rarely the actual problem. It's usually the stage on which older, more familiar dynamics become visible. Power asymmetry. Life-stage misalignment. The pursuer-distancer dance. Different generational scripts for what marriage is supposed to look like. These dynamics happen in same-age marriages too. They just tend to show up at higher contrast when the age gap is wide, which can make the gap itself feel like the cause. So this article is going to do three things. First, give you the actual research on age-gap marriage, which is more hopeful than the viral statistics suggest. Second, name the clinical dynamics underneath. And third, give you the specific moves couples use to cope with an age gap in marriage in a way that protects the connection rather than putting the gap on trial. Is the Age Gap Really the Problem? Here is the reframe we keep coming back to with couples in our office. You can't change the age gap. It is what it is. If you spend years focusing on the one variable you can't change, you end up feeling more and more stuck. What we've found is that couples make real progress when they stop putting the age difference on trial and start working on the dynamics the gap surfaces. Those dynamics, in our experience, are usually some combination of power and fairness, communication and conflict patterns, life-stage alignment, and trust. All of which are workable. None of which require you to be the same age. That's the clinical reframe. It also happens to match what the research says. Age Gap Marriage Statistics Let's start with what the research says about age-heterogeneous couples, meaning couples with a larger-than-usual age gap. About 10% of marriages have an age difference of more than 10 years[i] and there are more of these kinds of marriages now than in 1980. So these marriages are not uncommon and are on the rise. As you might imagine, men are more likely to be married to a younger spouse than women[ii], and this percentage increases with age. The share of men married to younger spouses is lowest in the 20 to 24 age range at 35%, rises to 67% by age 40, and reaches 73% by age 70. Broadly speaking, researchers have found similar patterns across many western cultures and in many non-western cultures, with exceptions like the Philippines and Costa Rica, where women marrying younger men is more common[iii]. The men-marrying-younger-women pattern has remained relatively stable over recent decades, while the rate of women marrying younger men has been slowly rising. For second marriages and marriages later in life (age 50 and up), there is more diversity in age gaps between spouses than in younger couples[iv]. Age-heterogeneous couples are also more common in Black marriages and in couples with lower socioeconomic status[v]. One more recent data point worth knowing about. A 2024 Pew Research analysis found that a growing share of US husbands and wives are now roughly the same age, which is a meaningful shift in the cultural baseline. That doesn't mean age-gap marriages are vanishing. It means the social context around them is changing, which we'll come back to under "Social Effects." So the statistics are useful background, both for those of us not experiencing such an age gap (Verlynda and I are just over two years apart, with her being younger) and for those of you who are. But the real question is what that gap actually does inside the marriage. What the Research Actually Says About Age Gap Marriages It turns out that's a harder question to answer than it sounds. The findings on age difference and marital satisfaction are very mixed. The most useful summary line is from one researcher who concluded that age-dissimilar marriages are "more alike than dissimilar to coeval marriages[vi]." "Coeval" just means of the same age. In plain English, the inside of an age-gap marriage tends to look a lot like the inside of any other marriage. That said, the research does name some real challenges. Let's walk through the different findings so you can see what they're pointing at. Older research[vii] often found that marriages with large age gaps had lower marital quality and satisfaction, and were less stable than couples of similar ages. The usual explanation hinged on similarity. Being similar in values, upbringing, and socioeconomic status tends to be predictive of marital satisfaction. Cultural values shift over time, so couples of significantly different ages may have grown up inside different normative frameworks. That can show up as lower agreement on big-picture questions and, in turn, lower overall satisfaction[viii]. It's worth noting, as we covered in our episode on whether opposites attract, that the picture is more nuanced than "different is bad." Here's where the clinical layer matters. From an attachment perspective, what age difference can do is amplify the volume on two questions every couple is already asking each other under the surface, all the time: Are you there for me? and Am I good enough for you? Sue Johnson, who developed Emotionally Focused Therapy, frames these as the bedrock questions of attachment in adult relationships. They don't disappear because you marry someone your own age. They just get a little quieter. An age gap can make them louder, because the gap gives both partners more places to wonder. The 32-year-old with a 50-year-old spouse can quietly wonder whether she'll be there for him in twenty years when his health declines. The 50-year-old can quietly wonder whether he can keep up with her ambition. Neither one usually says any of this directly. They argue about something else. And then there's research that simply doesn't find the satisfaction gap. A study by Vera et al[x] tested couples on marital satisfaction and conflict frequency and found no effect of age difference for either. A case study by Pyke & Adams in 2010[xi] looked at eight successful marriages where the husband was 10 or more years older than his wife. Common features of these marriages included: Sharing of household tasks Shared interests and leisure time Shifts in responsibilities, work, and childcare across different life stages Similar faith and values Some of these couples had been remarried and had previously been in unhappy marriages where gender roles were highly enforced. In reaction to that, their new marriages were far more gender-neutral in terms of sharing of housework, paid employment, and the balance of power, despite the husband being much older. Often this was a process of discovering that traditional gender roles didn't have to apply. Having seen or lived inside those scripts before, these couples felt free to do something different. One couple in the study had a strong Christian faith and was happy with the husband being the head of the relationship, while still giving the wife meaningful autonomy in areas like finances. Both spouses were content with that arrangement because it worked for them. The researchers' summary line is worth holding on to: "it does not appear that people are simply a product of the era into which they were born but can change radically in their lives.[xii]" Older spouses are not as set in their ways as people sometimes assume, and the presence of a younger spouse can be one of the things that helps them keep adapting. What we want to draw out from the Pyke and Adams findings is this: the usual ingredients of a successful marriage are also the ingredients of a successful age-gap marriage. Communication. Negotiating roles. Commitment. Trust. A shared sense of fairness. None of this is unique to mixed-age couples. The work is just sometimes more conscious because the gap makes the work harder to ignore. Why Age Gap Marriages Can Surface Power Imbalances Age difference can also surface a power imbalance, which can increase tension and conflict. The classic framing here is Resource Theory, which posits that the spouse who brings more resources to the marriage tends to exert greater control over its direction. The older spouse is often further along in their career, has more accumulated life experience, has more financial stability, and so, by virtue of "bringing more to the marriage," can naturally end up making more of the decisions. It can also run the other way. If youth and attractiveness are the resource, the more youthful spouse can hold disproportionate sway over the older one[ix]. Here's the clinical add-on that we think is more useful than Resource Theory by itself. Bowen's concept of differentiation of self gets at the same thing from a different angle. Differentiation, in short, is your capacity to stay yourself in close relationships without either dominating the other person or losing yourself in them. When there's a power imbalance, low differentiation in either spouse tends to make it worse. The higher-resource spouse can drift into running things. The lower-resource spouse can drift into outsourcing decisions and then resenting it. Neither one chose this on purpose. It's just where the path of least resistance leads if no one is paying attention. Couples who do well with an age-gap marriage tend to be paying attention. They notice the power asymmetry, name it out loud, and then build deliberate counter-practices. Joint decision-making on big things. Equal weight in disagreements even when one spouse has more "expertise." Active recognition of what the younger or less-resourced spouse brings, which is rarely just youth. ...

The Purpose of Marriage: How Couples Build Shared Meaning Together

Wed, 23 Aug 2017 09:15:48 +0000

The purpose of marriage, from a clinical perspective, is to build a shared meaning together that gives both of your lives more weight than either of you could carry alone. It is not the wedding, not the romantic feeling, not even the intimacy. Those are real, but they are downstream of something deeper. The purpose of marriage is the slow, sometimes invisible work of two people building a shared identity, a shared story, and a shared sense of impact on the world around them. That is why couples who lose their sense of purpose often describe the same thing in our practice: not that they fight more, but that they cannot remember why they are still together in the first place. The argument is downstream. The shared meaning is the load-bearing wall. This article walks through what shared meaning actually looks like in marriage, where it comes from, and how couples build it on purpose rather than hoping it shows up by accident. What "Purpose of Marriage" Actually Means in Therapy When researchers and clinicians talk about purpose in marriage, they are usually pointing at one specific thing: shared meaning. John Gottman built an entire level of his Sound Relationship House model around this concept. He called it Shared Meaning, and he placed it at the very top of the house, above trust, above conflict management, above friendship. The idea is that strong marriages do not just coexist. They construct a shared interpretation of life together: shared rituals, shared goals, shared symbols, a shared sense of what matters and why. That is what people are really looking for when they ask "what is the purpose of marriage?" They are not usually asking a definitional question. They are asking a load-bearing one. They want to know whether marriage is supposed to feel like this. Whether it is supposed to be this hard. Whether the two of them have lost something they were supposed to have. The clinical answer is that shared meaning is not a feeling. It is a construction project. And couples who do not realize that often spend years waiting for it to arrive on its own. Meaning Starts With Your Shared Story Every couple creates a shared story of their relationship: how they interpret the events that brought them together and what they believe about where they are going. Just over a year before this article was first written, Verlynda and I were preparing to leave on a year-long trip in our travel trailer. Having to create that vision for ourselves, and then explain it to other people, forced us into a process we did not realize we were in. Every time someone asked, "Why are you doing this?" we had to answer. And every time we answered, the story got a little more solid. Any major life transition for a couple does this. So does the early stage of marriage itself. You are bringing two individual identities together and creating a new, jointly developed meaning that helps you make sense of your relationship and makes the future feel a little more stable[i]. The work happens whether you do it consciously or not. The question is whether you are doing it well. One study looked at the stories newlywed couples told about how they met and dated. The content of those stories, and the shared meaning embedded in them, was a strong predictor of marital wellbeing[ii]. Three patterns stood out: Storytelling process. Couples who told their stories collaboratively, with high agreement on the details, were the couples whose marriages held up well over time. Disagreement and conflict during the storytelling itself often suggested the couple had not yet built a strong sense of shared meaning. This is where you can actually watch purpose forming or failing to form: in whether the couple's history feels synchronous when they tell it. Storytelling style. Telling the story as a narrative with a sense of drama, rather than a flat list of events, also predicted wellbeing. The animation reflected investment. Couples who were genuinely interested in their own history were the ones who had something to invest in. Story content. Attributing tensions or difficulties to factors outside the couple, rather than blaming each other, indicated cohesion and was linked to high wellbeing. Framing the story primarily around conflict and barriers, on the other hand, was linked to lower satisfaction. If the entire story of your relationship is defined by turmoil, it tends to keep generating more. What I take from this clinically is straightforward. Couples who carry some sense of providence, destiny, or "we were brought together for a reason" tend to have a more meaningful story behind why they exist as a couple. That sense of meaning becomes a platform from which they can begin asking the next question, which is how they want to impact the world together. Whether you frame the source of that meaning as faith, fate, or simply a deliberate choice, the platform itself matters. And in our work with couples, the pattern we keep seeing is that the couples whose first-date stories diverge significantly are often the same couples who, ten or fifteen years later, sit in our office describing a marriage that has lost its center. The early disagreements over "how it really happened" turn out to be early signals of the same shared-meaning collapse they cannot name today. Four Forces That Shape Shared Identity Shared story is the foundation. There are four other forces that act on shared identity once it forms. Family of origin. How involved your family of origin remains in your married life has real consequences for marital satisfaction[iii]. Even as you build shared meaning together, you have to stay in touch with your individual identity and history. The critical move is that both spouses agree on what the right level of involvement is. I am not talking about enmeshment. I am talking about a healthy, marriage-centered approach to family relationships where both of you are reading from the same playbook. Flexibility. Each spouse comes into the marriage with their own identity, sense of purpose, and expectations about what the marriage should mean. A couple's ability to construct a shared meaning depends heavily on their flexibility, because the construction has to be collaborative[iv]. Rigid expectations on either side do not survive the collision with another person's actual life. Romantic versus companionate love. Couples whose shared meaning was based on positive relationship qualities like intimacy, satisfaction, and commitment were significantly more likely to have stable, satisfying marriages. Couples whose identity was based mostly on passion and romance were not[v]. Passion alone cannot sustain long-term shared purpose, because romantic love often does not last the entire length of the relationship while commitment and intimacy can. As we covered in our episode on the neuroscience of dating your spouse, this is not an absolute rule, but it is the dominant pattern. Positive and negative meanings. Newlyweds are influenced by each other's negative views of marriage (the things they believe make a marriage bad), but not by each other's positive views[vi]. In other words, couples come into marriage with a clear, shared sense of what their marriage should not be like, while figuring out what it should be like takes longer. That asymmetry has clinical consequences. Couples often agree on what they are running from years before they agree on what they are running toward. Expressing Shared Purpose Through Joint Ventures Once a couple has built some sense of shared identity, the natural next question is what to do with it. One of the most common ways couples express shared purpose is through joint ventures: enterprises, projects, or causes that the two of them invest in together. This podcast is one example. We started it as a joint venture and it has shaped our marriage in ways we did not predict. When the joint venture is business-based, research shows that the love bond between couples grows stronger over time as they work together[vii]. Couples who build a business together create shared experiences, which can raise intimacy, even though work and family roles get complicated[viii]. Couples who do this well typically share three qualities: Strong family values High mutual trust and confidence in each other's abilities A strong commitment to equality in the marriage[ix] The "joint" part does not have to mean each spouse owning half of the business operations. Sometimes one spouse runs the venture while the other contributes through household management, network-building, advisory work, or simply keeping the running spouse grounded[x]. Joint does not mean identical. It means co-invested. Joint ventures also do not have to be commercial. They can take the form of involvement in your church, service to your local community, work on a school committee, coaching, mentoring, or volunteering. Some joint ventures build the life you want inside your family. Others create impact in the world around you. Most couples I see in healthy marriages are running both at once, often without naming them as such. Sometimes the activity is shared equally. Other times one spouse takes over with the kids for an evening so the other can pour into something purposeful. Even though they are physically separated that night, the activity is still shared because both of them are invested in it. Parenting as a Vehicle for Shared Meaning For couples who have children, raising a family is one of the deepest sources of shared meaning available to them and one of the most lasting forms of impact on the world. As we have covered in earlier episodes on parenting for the benefit of your marriage, raising a family carries both positive and negative effects on life satisfaction[xi]. Day-to-day satisfaction often drops while children are young. Sleep, freedom, and bandwidth all shrink. But long-term life-meaning, the deeper sense that your life is contributing something,...

Remarriage After Bereavement

Wed, 16 Aug 2017 11:00:07 +0000

Remarriage after bereavement. Maybe I get a little selfish and hope that I’ll never have to face the loss of a spouse. When I’m feeling more noble and altruistic, I hope my spouse will never have to face it. But regardless, nearly 100% of couples face the loss of their significant other during their lifetime. And so if this reality is so common, it’s worth talking about. Losing your spouse is one of the hardest things any person can go through. Amidst the grief and sadness, you have the question of remarriage: when is it ok to remarry? How will my new marriage compare to my old one? Should I even be comparing them? Today we’re going to be looking at this topic and hopefully offering some hope to those of you in this situation. Background Info about Remarriage We’re just talking about remarriage after bereavement today. Not remarriage after divorce- that’s a rather separate issue. But for both of us here at OYF: this is our first marriage. We don’t actually have any close connections in our peer group who have remarried after bereavement. And both sets of our parents are still living. So we’re definitely abstracted from this in terms of experience. But we do have some research to help frame the issue of remarriage. Here are some stats to get us started: Men are more likely to remarry across all age groups. Remarriage rates decline with age for both men and women. Women's likelihood of remarrying declines more sharply with age than it does for men[i]. As they get older they become less likely to remarry. These patterns are true across cultures. Remarriage rates decline with age for both genders. This could be due to a lack of availability of potential partners, or may also reflect a reduced interest in remarrying. Older widows often cite freedom from having to care for their spouse as a reason not to remarry in later life[ii]. Which makes sense — if you see someone caring for a spouse with a long, protracted terminal illness: they are not only learning to become more independent as the illness progresses, but they are also carrying a huge burden of care. And I could definitely see someone coming through that being more reluctant to remarry. When do people tend to remarry? Rates of remarriage drop just after bereavement and then rise. This is different from the remarriage rates for divorce, where people often remarry quickly. Clearly, a time of mourning is needed before remarriage after the death of your spouse, but perhaps this finding is also hinting at a social norm or taboo stating that it is inappropriate to remarry too quickly after being widowed[iii]. 12 months is sometimes considered the acceptable time to wait before re-marriage, and there is actually a large increase in marriages among bereaved men and women in the 13th month after the bereavement[iv]. This suggests that a good percentage of the bereaved consider a year an appropriate time to wait before moving on with a new partner. I think if you’re recently bereaved then that alone should offer some hope: right now you may feel like you’ll never recover, but perhaps it’s comforting to know that for some people the healing process moves along to a point they feel ok remarrying after just a year. Of course, it doesn’t always go that way, and every circumstance is different. Overall rates of remarriage are much lower after bereavement than divorce: 5% of women and 12% of bereaved men remarry, compared to 69% and 78% of divorced women and men, respectively[v]. Interestingly, widowed people often marry other widows, with 45% or bereaved men and 42% of bereaved women doing so[vi]. Perhaps the shared experience of having gone through such a terrible loss makes them uniquely able to comfort and support each other. Issues Affecting Remarriage We’re going to cover some interesting factoids here, talking about the influences that come into play. In a general sense: either post-divorce or post-bereavement, it’s my understanding that the divorce rates for second marriages are higher than the divorce rates for first marriages. I think the takeaway from this is to note that it is probably harder to make that second marriage work well and we’re going to see how many different factors play into this. I’m not mentioning this because I have an agenda to discourage second marriages, but rather to make sure that folks listening to this are better prepared and better educated so that they can come to their second marriage more informed and prepared. And, consequently, have a greater likelihood of real enjoyment of that second marriage. Availability of Partners: Availability of potential partners is lower the older you get, especially for women since older unmarried women greatly outnumber older unmarried men. This is mostly down to the simple fact that women live longer than men on average. Widows/widowers living in big urban areas have lower rates of remarriage than those living in less urban areas, possibly due to having less of an established social circle[vii]. Social Support: Levels of social support can affect the availability of partners but also the desire to remarry. Bereaved men who had higher levels of social support from friends and family reported less desire for future romantic relationships at 6 and 18 months after the bereavement[viii]. Having a supportive network around you may help ease the loneliness and make remarrying less of a priority. Women tend to have larger social networks and trusted confidants than men, and also typically receive more support from their children after bereavement. So men's generally higher desire to remarry may be partially due to a lack of alternative social support. In fact when bereaved men report having high levels of social support their desire to remarry is no higher than that of women[ix]. Economic factors: Remarrying is often seen as economically advantageous over staying single. Especially for women, who typically tend to have lower incomes or work fewer hours[x]. This effect gets less pronounced in later adulthood as traditional gender roles become less important: couples are no longer looking after children, are potentially not in employment anymore and so on. So the advantage of remarrying may be less in later life. But for many bereaved individuals, it makes sense to remarry on a practical, economic level as well as an emotional one. Social norms: as we noted above, there may be a perception that remarrying quickly after bereavement is inappropriate and that there is an acceptable way to grieve. Time clearly plays a factor in this. In one study bereaved men and women both report desire to "remarry someday" at 6 months from the bereavement and a desire to "start dating now" at 18 months[xi]. Quality of the marriage: couples who had high levels of conflict were more likely to want to start dating again more quickly[xii]. I guess it’s important to remember that no marriage is perfect and just because a spouse passed away that unfortunately doesn’t always mean that the marriage was free from problems. And that’s bound to have an impact on the surviving spouse. So these are some of the factors that come into play. Now we’re going to take a look at some of the benefits of remarriage but I also want to mention that we have created a bonus guide for our much-appreciated patrons. Benefits of Remarrying The research shows that remarriage is almost universally a good thing when undertaken in the right way. First, remarried men and women have lower symptoms of depression. Research suggests that remarriage then is not a reaction to loneliness and lack of coping, but in fact, signals coming to terms with the loss and moving on[xiii]. I take it from this that the remarriage can act as a catalyst for grieving through all the stages, finding closure, and looking for creating the next part of your story. Perhaps there’s also a cautionary note here: are you ready to move on, or are you looking for someone to help you through the grieving process? The former is a great reason to remarry; the latter is not a foundation for a fulfilling marriage. The next research observation is more just a correlation, not necessarily a causation. But widows who remarried had higher household incomes and worried less about finances than those who did not remarry[xiv]. Obviously, nobody thinks it’s a worthwhile idea to remarry just for money, but financial considerations are real. Another research study noted that widows/widowers dating or being remarried 25 months after the bereavement was highly correlated with greater overall psychological wellbeing[xv] . Again, yet another study noted that over time, remarried individuals showed improvements over non-remarried individuals in life satisfaction, resolution of grief, self-perceived coping, stress levels, self-esteem, physical health and levels of social support[xvi]. If you’re bereaved today and considering remarriage I hope that this can give you some factors to consider and that these findings are also an encouragement to you as well. Attachment Ties And now we come back to attachment. This is a concept we’ve addressed in previous episodes, such as our examination of the neuroscience of love and dating. Attachment refers to the love bond that exists between a couple. Now when you form that over 10, 25 or 40+ years and then one spouse passes away, this is a huge disruption in that bond. But you’re still left with your part of the bond. Remarrying allows you the opportunity to form a new attachment bond, not plug the old one into someone else. That old bond still lingers and will continue to affect you as the bereaved spouse. To quote one researcher, "Human attachment bonds are established and maintained at emotional levels so deep that the mere fact of the physical death cannot disrupt these bonds.[xvii]" So then remarrying becomes a process of both letting go and holding on. ...

Help! My Spouse is a Perfectionist!

Wed, 09 Aug 2017 11:00:21 +0000

Perfectionism is not too far from any of our hearts. Certainly, anyone who is on Facebook or Instagram knows that we, just like everybody else, tend to present the perfect image of ourselves on these channels. But: we want to ask the question, how does this affect our marriage? The topic of perfectionism was suggested by one of our readers, and it’s certainly an interesting one. What is perfectionism? Is it a good thing? How can it impact marriage when one spouse is only satisfied with perfection and the other finds it hard to live up to their standards? What is Perfectionism? Perfectionism usually comes in one of three flavors[i]: Self-oriented perfectionism: requiring yourself to be perfect Other-oriented perfectionism: requiring other people to be perfect Socially prescribed perfectionism: belief that others hold unrealistic expectations about you: believing that others require you to be perfect. A related concept is perfectionistic self-presentation, which is the desire to be seen as perfect by others[ii]. This includes actions such as self-promotion, desire to hide imperfections, and reluctance to talk about your own imperfections. Obviously needing to be seen as perfect is going to impact a marriage in quite a big way, especially if you’re afraid to be vulnerable around your spouse. I think it’s helpful to take a step back from the role that perfectionism plays in your marriage and ask, “What kind of perfectionism do we each struggle with?” You’ll want to nuance your response based on whether it is self or other-oriented, or if it socially prescribed. Is Perfectionism a Good Thing? There are mixed thoughts on this. When you have these perfectionistic traits, it is inevitable that you would feel unsatisfied or stressed if you do not meet the standards set on you (by yourself or by perceived others). Some may argue that it is useful or essential for a high-achieving life while others argue that it is unhelpful or detrimental to your wellbeing. Some researchers have differentiated between adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism, in which adaptive perfectionism is seen as a form of motivation and hard-working attitude, and so is linked to positive outcomes. Adaptive perfectionism is correlated with higher achievement but neither perfectionism nor achievement are correlated with life satisfaction[iii]. However, both adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism are linked to highly negative outcomes such as anxiety, depression and low self-esteem, as well as a variety of interpersonal problems, which we’ll get to in just a moment[iv]. So even if perfectionism helps drive you to succeed it comes at a steep cost. So the bottom line is it may help you achieve more but it will cost you. For me, I think perfectionism is contrary to the gospel. Those of us who are born again are all valuable, fallible children of God. So our worth is something instilled in us and given to us but we also acknowledge that we have an innate, undeniable potential to fail. Perfectionism is incapable of helping with either point, although it attempts to. It cannot provide worth because when is perfect ever perfect enough? And it cannot preserve us from proving that we have a fallen nature: that we sin, we act in ways that are not congruent with our values or with God’s values, we let our spouses down from time to time. So in my mind, perfectionism just becomes a breeding ground for shame. For that reason, it is unhelpful. The Effect of Perfectionism on Marriage So let’s look at how this touches marriage specifically. The reality is that perfectionism in marriage is more likely to help us get our ugly on than anything else. Let’s break this down according to the three kinds of perfectionism: self-oriented, other-oriented and socially prescribed. Self-Oriented Effects The fear of being seen as imperfect may prompt you to hide parts of yourself from your spouse. Physically, yes, but I’m thinking mainly in terms of psychologically. This really then becomes a fear of intimacy: you can’t present a perfect version of yourself, so now you must conceal parts of yourself[v]. In so doing you create a barrier towards getting to know each other more deeply. But more importantly, you also miss out on the opportunity of disarming the perfectionism. If your spouse is a safe person, it is a profound experience to let someone see parts of you that you are ashamed about and to have them still accept and love and embrace you. Also this touches your sex life. The belief that you have to be the perfect sexual partner (one expression of self-oriented perfectionism) is significantly related to marital distress and sexual dysfunction, particularly for men but also for wives[vi]. So this kind of perfectionism really can hold you back from experiencing deeper intimacy. And intimacy is the key to so much of marriage, from better sex to reigniting the passion. Other-Oriented Effects Requiring other people to be perfect leads to a variety of unhelpful interpersonal behaviors. That’s a nice way of saying that it can make you nasty. These behaviors can include authoritarian, exploitative and dominant actions towards other people, as well as the increased likeliness of blaming other people for problems rather than blaming yourself[vii]. What you’re likely to see is more conflict or more avoidance, and you’re likely to see wives taking on more self-blame or more likely to act out of self-interest than for the benefit of the marriage. And you’re likely to see husbands launching into conflict more readily. As with self-oriented perfectionism, it’s going to impact your sex life too. As a wife if you have a high level of other-oriented perfectionism towards your husband the research shows that the higher that level of perfectionism, the lower your husband’s sexual satisfaction is likely to be and also the lower your own sexual satisfaction[viii]. The issue here is that other-oriented perfectionism creates very high expectations which make it harder to adjust to being happily married. Socially-Prescribed Perfectionism This is also linked to bad behavior. This kind of perfectionism is often linked to hostile and dominant behaviors as well as higher levels of blame and outwardly directed anger. It’s also linked to acting in an overly controlling way in intimate relationships and not letting your guard down[ix] . If you think everyone around you is expecting perfection from you it’s going to be hard to open up, even to your spouse. As researchers studied 76 couples with regards to this kind of perfectionism, they found that it was strongly linked to lower marital satisfaction for both the self and the spouse. So this kind of perfectionism reduced happiness for both spouses in the marriage. Socially prescribed perfectionism can lead to biases in how spouses behavior is interpreted, eg the perfectionist spouse may see simple requests like "Could you help tidy the living room?" as threats or attacks along the lines of "you are not doing enough to tidy the house”[x] Couples (both men and women) with high levels of this trait showed more blaming, sarcasm and demands for change. If you think about it, we all tend to react with hostility when we feel perfectionistic standards are being imposed on us. Husbands and wives both experienced reduced sexual satisfaction when they though their spouse required them to be perfect. And that’s a key point. It’s the expression of those beliefs that’s more impactful than actually having them. Bottom line: perfectionism probably is not helping your marriage at all. How to Deal with Perfectionism We’ve seen so far that perfectionism comes in three flavors, none of which are particularly conducive to a healthy, trusting marriage. So what can you do about it? Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is one great option and has been shown to be highly effective[xi] . The goal with this kind of work is to increase self-compassion and change unhelpful beliefs. The exercise for today’s episode uses these principles. Avoidance One way to challenge yourself is around avoidance. Believing that you have to do things perfectly can often cause you to avoid doing them altogether, thinking it’s better not to try and complete a specific task than to try, and end up failing[xii]. This pattern of behavior means that your beliefs about the negative consequences of being imperfect are never disproved. You’re always avoiding things for fear of doing them imperfectly, so you never get to see that doing them imperfectly actually doesn’t have as many bad consequences as you’re imagining. So exposing yourself to situations where you perform imperfectly allows you to see that nothing bad comes of it, removing the belief that you have to be perfect. So: that went imperfectly and I’m still OK. Seeing that helps undermine the belief that I have to do it perfectly in order to be OK. Communication and Conflict But I’d like to help with communication and conflict as this is how it often becomes a struggle in marriage. Now if you are perfectionistic your challenge is that being in that frame of mind makes it really hard to hear how you’re impacting yourself or your marriage. So I want to be gentle here. But the research does show that self-oriented perfectionism leads to depression because it creates conflict and interpersonal problems, both of which lead to isolation[xiii]. And other-oriented perfectionism is linked to low relationship quality for both the perfectionist and the non-perfectionist[xiv]. We saw earlier how socially-prescribed perfectionism is also an issue. On the upside, you can not only choose to address the perfectionism, but you can also mitigate its effects by developing new communication and new conflict skills. Let’s talk about this first for the non-perfectionist spouse and then for the perfectionist spouse. For the non-perfectionist spouse ...

Am I a Sex Addict?

Wed, 02 Aug 2017 11:00:34 +0000

Join us for a special episode of the Marriage Podcast for Smart People as we take an in-depth look at sex addiction: What it is, how how it differs from normal, healthy sex, how it can be caused and what the options are for treatment.

Learn to Date Your Spouse Again

Wed, 26 Jul 2017 11:00:45 +0000

In our previous show, we talked about the neuroscience of romantic love. Today we’re going to address the behavioral side of things to help you rekindle the passion in your marriage. Dating can be one of the most exciting times in any relationship: it’s when you’re constantly thinking about each other, finding out so much about each other and forming that deep connection. But what makes dating so awesome? How do men and women come at it differently? And how can a married couple make this come alive in their marriage again? What Makes Dating & the Early Stages of Love so Enjoyable? Last time we looked at our brains and how there are pleasure and reward systems built right into them. You’ll recall we talked about romantic love (which is out front during the courtship or dating phase of a relationship) and partner attachment (which is the steady, committed love of lasting marriages) Romantic love is linked to systems in the brain which "reward" you with strong feelings of pleasure whenever you think about or spend time with your spouse[i]. This motivates you to want to spend time with your spouse or girl/boyfriend at the start of a relationship. Typically this phase of love lasts 12-18 months[ii], but can last an entire lifetime[iii]. We talked about extending that last time. Self-expansion theory, developed by husband and wife researchers Arthur and Elaine Aron, speaks to this situation[iv]. In their view, romantic love is a period of rapid self-expansion by including the beloved in your sense of who you are. During the very early stages of the relationship, you learn a lot about your beloved and get to grow as a person and experience new things by integrating aspects of your spouse into your own life. The rate at which you can do this declines after the initial period of the relationship: you start to run out of new things to learn about your spouse. So dating is the most exciting phase of a relationship because you’re getting to grow as a person by getting to know your spouse, and this inevitably starts to taper off the longer a relationship lasts. The other side of the coin is the concept of habituation: the longer you do something/spend time with someone, the more you get used to it/them, and the less rewarding the time becomes[v]. Sniff. Intimacy and sex then play into these early stages of love and then marriage. For those that are new to our podcast, we speak out of a Christian worldview and we practice and hold the value that extramarital sex is not only wrong, but it’s also unhelpful. On the ‘unhelpful’ point, we’ve noted before that the best sex is happening inside of marriage so we not only have moral reasons for asserting this value, but research-based evidence to support the benefits as well. Back to our point. Let’s talk about how intimacy works. Remember that when we look at intimacy, we mean the whole enchilada, not just sex. This is interesting. According to a study by Baumeister et al in 1999[vi], passion is a function of changes in intimacy. So when intimacy is stable (either low or high), passion is low. But when intimacy is increasing, passion is high. Intimacy is often increasing fastest at the start of the relationship, as you become more comfortable disclosing information about yourself and generally become closer. "As relationship partners gain an understanding of each other’s innermost thoughts and feelings, the rate of intimacy growth may taper off over time as they have less to learn about each other and the rate of engagement in novel relationship activities diminishes[vii]." This intimacy growth during dating makes the start of a relationship a lot of fun. But sex comes into the equation once we get married too. The frequency of sex (although not necessarily the quality of sex) is highest at the start of the relationship. In later years it becomes less frequent, and as the research, this points out this is often due to less interest, higher rates of dysfunction and difficulty, and major life events like having children[viii]. Sounds like a gloomy picture. But just stay with me. And let me say too, that having less sex is not necessarily a bad thing if you are both satisfied with the quality and quantity. We’re going to look at how to get the excitement back into your marriage but first let’s just look at some gender differences. Just so we’re managing expectations. Gender Differences in Romance and Dating Men tend to fall in love more easily, and report higher scores on measures of romantic love than women in the early stages (first few months) of relationships[ix]. Later on, the scores balanced out. Men are also more likely to say "I love you" first in a relationship[x]. Men have more traditionally romantic beliefs: they are more likely to think that you fall in love at first sight and that love overcomes all boundaries like race, social class etc. That surprised me because — pardon the stereotype — I thought women would be more prone to this from reading romance novels. Men place a higher emphasis on sex in the early stages of relationships, but this was at least partly because they were "less aware of the emotional aspects of their relationship[xi]”. Very interesting. I would add (and here are my values coming through again) that this is another feather in the cap of waiting for sex until you’re married because it compels men to become more emotionally engaged to fill their intimacy needs. Both men and women experience similarly high levels of passion at the start of the relationship, but this declines particularly strongly for women as the relationship goes on[xii]. What about our perceptions and our definitions of love? Perceptions of what love is were actually similar between men and women. Both placed importance on the value of companionate love, but men placed a higher value on passionate love[xiii]. So we have these dynamics going on and we are seeing some gender differences and some similarities. I don’t know how many we are socialized for vs. biologically programmed for, but there you have it. How to Get the Excitement Back Many of the things that make the start of a relationship so passionate and enjoyable can naturally decline as the relationship progresses, but they don't have to. So we want to talk about several areas that you can work on in order to keep your marriage spicy or else bring back some heat. Again, we go deep on this in our bonus guide for the patrons of our show. New Experiences Such as joint leisure of professional activities, jointly supporting a cause, travels, etc. Gaining new experiences as a couple allows spouses to learn more about each other, increasing intimacy and self-expansion, both of which increase passion[xiv]. Doing novel and exciting things together also activates the same reward-pleasure systems in the brain as romantic love, so can boost romantic love by associating these feelings with the partner. It also counteracts the effects of habituation/boredom. So, shake it up a little. Try doing something you haven’t done before: together. It doesn’t especially matter what it is but aim for something that has elements of excitement and/or novelty. Researchers have studied this. Aron et al[xv] surveyed couples for relationship satisfaction before and after completing an assault-course while tied together at the ankle. More exciting than your standard psychological test! Taking part in this exciting and novel activity increased reported relationship satisfaction compared to doing a more mundane physical activity. Sex Increasing the frequency of sex increases intimacy and passion[xvi]. It also activates the same brain areas as romantic love[xvii]. In a previous post, we looked at how emotional intimacy is the key to the best sex, but the link goes both ways. I was thinking Verlynda and I should set up a sex challenge for our readers, … after we try it first, of course. Intimacy If passion is caused by changes in intimacy[xviii] then increasing intimacy will increase passion. A study in 2011[xix] tested this on a day-to-day level by asking 67 couples to keep daily dairies and reports on intimacy. Daily changes in intimacy predicted relationship passion, sexual frequency and sexual satisfaction for both men and women. Intimacy can be increased through self-disclosure and shared experiences. But it is also to do with how the partner responds when you self-disclose: responding with sympathy and making the partner feel validated increases intimacy and makes you more likely to want to self-disclose in the future[xx]. Share something with your spouse. Maybe there’s something from your childhood or youth that you haven’t shared yet. Something personal. Or just something you’ve been worried about that’s going on right now that maybe you need to bring your spouse in on. Self Esteem Higher rates of self-confidence and self-esteem are moderately linked to higher rates of romantic love in long-term relationships as they allow "an intense, exclusive focus on a partner but not possessiveness or jealousy". Being confident in yourself lets you feel love more strongly, without any element of fear or unworthiness. This is also supported by the fact that romantic love in older couples does not have the obsessive or insecure components that can characterize love in younger couples[xxi]. Maybe choosing some self-esteem building activities or lifestyle changes would be helpful for you. Motivation This one is to do with your whole orientation when it comes to what motivates your actions. There are two motivation systems for behavior in relationships: Approach: the desire for positive outcomes like fun, intimacy, and growth Avoidance: desire to avoid negative outcomes like conflict. Think about this in terms of your posture in your relationship. Are you all about chasing the good things or is your mindset focused on just avoiding the bad?...

Neuroscience of Love in Marriage: What Brain Science Reveals About Staying in Love

Wed, 19 Jul 2017 11:00:23 +0000

Most couples do not wake up one day and decide the spark is gone. It fades quietly. You are still kind to each other. You still kiss goodbye. But somewhere along the way you notice you are living more like cooperative roommates than people who are actually in love. If you have wondered whether that shift is permanent, the neuroscience of love has something to say about it, and the answer is more hopeful than most of us have been led to believe. The short version: your brain is not designed to make romantic love disappear. It is designed to let it evolve. Brain imaging studies of couples married for two decades or more show that romantic love can run alongside long-term attachment, activating the same pleasure and reward circuits that light up in newlyweds. The fade is common, but it is not inevitable. What makes the difference is specific, and we will walk through exactly what the research says, what it looks like clinically, and what you can actually do with it. How Love Works in Your Brain (The Three Systems) Romantic love is not a single emotion. It is three distinct brain systems working together, each with its own neurochemistry and its own role. Research by Helen Fisher, Arthur Aron, and Lucy Brown identified them clearly: sex drive, courtship attraction (also called romantic love), and partner attachment[i]. Sex drive motivates you to pursue sexual connection generally. Romantic love narrows that energy toward one specific person and makes you want to be with them above anyone else. Partner attachment is what keeps you bonded once that choice is made. Each system draws on different brain circuits and different neurotransmitters, and you need all three for a marriage that is passionate, committed, and stable over time. If you have only heard the "fireworks fade and companionship takes over" story, that framing misses something important. Romantic love does not have to hand off the baton to attachment and exit the stage. The more useful picture is three layered systems, each capable of running in the background at the same time. It is worth naming a second framework here, because it complements the neuroscience well. Psychologist Robert Sternberg's Triangular Theory of Love describes three components: intimacy (emotional closeness), passion (arousal and longing), and commitment (the decision to stay). Different combinations produce different forms of love, and what Sternberg calls consummate love, the rare combination of all three, lines up cleanly with what Fisher's neuroscience describes. Enduring, passionate, committed love is not a myth. It is an observed pattern in a minority of couples, and the research tells us why some make it and others do not. The Neuroscience of Romantic Love Romantic love is one of the most potent brain states a human being can experience. A 2005 study by Arthur Aron used fMRI scans to watch what happens in the brains of people who had been "intensely in love" for 1 to 17 months while they looked at a photo of their partner[ii]. The activation pattern was striking. Romantic love lights up the dopamine reward system, the same circuit tied to pleasure, focused attention, motivation, and the drive to pursue something rewarding. This is why early love feels like more than a feeling. It is also a drive, pulling you toward your partner with a very specific focus. Dopamine is also what gives early love its euphoric, almost narcotic quality. Norepinephrine plays a supporting role. Elevated norepinephrine produces the alertness, racing heart, blushing, and trembling that come with new love, along with the tendency to remember every detail about the person you are falling for[iii]. Then there is the serotonin twist. During the early stage of romantic love, levels of the serotonin transporter 5-HT mirror the pattern seen in obsessive-compulsive disorder, which helps explain why new love so often tips into obsession. You cannot stop thinking about them. Small details feel enormous. Research by Donatella Marazziti found that 5-HT levels return to normal between 12 and 18 months in[iv]. This is one of the reasons "intensely in love" is a time-limited brain state, and it is why the shift some couples describe as "we lost that spark" often maps onto a real neurochemical transition. None of this means romantic love disappears at the 18-month mark. It means the obsessive, destabilizing intensity fades. What can remain, if you build it, is the pleasure-and-reward activation that makes looking at your spouse still feel good. What Partner Attachment Actually Is (And Why It Matters) If romantic love is the fire, partner attachment is the lava. It is slower, deeper, and more sustainable. Elaine Hatfield and colleagues defined companionate love, the felt experience of attachment, as "a feeling of happy togetherness with someone whose life has become deeply entwined with yours"[v]. Neurologically, attachment recruits a different set of circuits. Oxytocin is the key player. It is released through touch, eye contact, shared laughter, physical closeness, and sex. It deepens the felt sense of belonging to each other. A follow-up fMRI study of couples who had been in love for an average of 28 months showed brain activity in the same reward and motivation areas seen in new love, but with added activation in systems involving oxytocin, which is linked to stronger and more stable couple bonds[vi]. Attachment shows up in the brain as calm belonging, not as a fire. Here is why this matters clinically. Partner attachment is what keeps a marriage intact when life gets harder. It is what you feel when your spouse walks into the room after a long day and your body relaxes without you consciously choosing it. It is also why a breakup after decades of marriage is so disorienting. You are not just losing a person. You are losing a neurological co-regulation system your brain has been using for years. What we have seen in our practice is couples panicking when the initial romantic intensity starts to fade, interpreting the shift as evidence that they chose wrong or that love is dying. Most of the time, they are just moving into attachment. The work at that stage is not to grieve the fire. It is to keep the fire going while letting the deeper bond form underneath it. Both are possible at once, and that reframe changes what people do with the second decade of their marriage. Does Romantic Love Have to Fade? What the Research Says The perception that romantic love inevitably dwindles is nearly universal. Nisa, a !Kung woman from the Kalahari, described it this way: "When two people are first together, their hearts are on fire and their passion is very great. After a while, the fire cools and that is how it stays. They continue to love each other, but it is in a different way, warm and dependable"[vii]. That is the expected trajectory, and a meta-analysis by James Graham confirmed that passionate, obsessive love does tend to decrease as relationship length increases[viii]. "Tend to" is not "always." In 2012, Bianca Acevedo and colleagues published fMRI research on couples who had been married an average of 21 years and who still reported feeling intensely in love with their spouse[ix]. Their brains responded to pictures of their partners with the same dopamine reward activation seen in newlyweds. The pleasure circuit was still firing. The difference was in the surrounding activity. Newlyweds' brains showed activation in regions associated with mania, obsession, and anxiety. The long-married couples did not. Their romantic love activation came with higher activity in brain regions linked to calmness and to secure attachment[x]. In other words, they were experiencing romantic love without the panic, the hypervigilance, or the sleeplessness of early love. They had the pleasure without the chaos. High activation of both systems was associated with higher sexual frequency, stronger friendship-based love, and a greater tendency to include the spouse in one's own sense of self. That last finding matters. The couples who maintained romantic love over decades were not protecting a separate identity from their marriage. They were letting the marriage become part of who they were. This is the part we want you to hear: the research does not say long-term romantic love is rare because it is biologically impossible. It is rare because most couples stop doing the things that sustain it. Which leads directly to the practical question. What You Can Actually Do With This If the romantic love brain state can be sustained, what sustains it? The neuroscience and the clinical pattern converge on a few specific answers. None of them are exotic. All of them are things we see couples who beat the statistics doing consistently. Prioritize novelty together. The dopamine reward system responds to newness. Couples who keep taking on new experiences together, whether that is travel, a new hobby, a physical challenge, or a shared project, keep feeding the same brain circuit that fueled the early months of the relationship. Routine is not the enemy of marriage, but routine without any novelty is the quiet enemy of passionate love. Keep touching each other. Not just sexually. Oxytocin release is driven by everyday physical contact: hand-holding, hugs that last longer than three seconds, a hand on the small of the back, sitting close on the couch. Couples who let touch disappear are cutting off one of the strongest biochemical supports of long-term bonding. Actually date your spouse. Scheduled, intentional time that is not about logistics or kids or money. This is the practice the article's title points to and it is not a cliche. The couples who stay in love treat the marriage as something that requires tending, not something that sustains itself because vows were exchanged. Protect sexual frequency. The Acevedo findings are clear: enduring romantic love correlates with higher sexual

Is Fear Wrecking Your Marriage?

Wed, 12 Jul 2017 11:00:50 +0000

Fear is a frightening thing. In marriage, it is usually an invisible force. Like the winds of a storm: invisible itself but threatening and destructive. However, fear is always extinguished by the steady flame of committed love. I think we all carry some fear in our hearts, at some level. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the more confidence you see in a person, the more likely they have fear issues. So this episode may be particularly relevant to those of us who feel that we really don’t need to hear it. I may just burst your bubble gently. Often confidence is a protective coping stance against the insecurity and fear that deeply troubles us. And nowhere are you more vulnerable to the effects of these fears than in your most intimate relationship: your marriage. Fears About Me or Fears About You? Most of us carry one or two kinds of fear. Either we have some level of fear that is really about ourselves: fear of rejection or fear of abandonment or fear of not being good enough, or fear of being unworthy of love and affection. These point at concerns within me and about me. The other kind is fear about our spouse or significant people in our lives: fears of intimacy (afraid of letting people get too close to you) or fear of dependency (afraid to trust or afraid to count on other people). These are also fears that we carry within ourselves, but they are different from the previous in that they are indicative of our models of others. So we all carry these models of self and models of others. Those are basic, nearly instinctive ways of relating to the humans around us based either on how we see ourselves or how we see other people. On the ‘other people’ part it’s about: are others reliable, are they trustworthy, can I depend on them. On the ‘self’ side it’s about am I worthy, am I lovable. These are very deep but often when folks talk about them they use very simple language. For example, for me, I struggle most with the part of myself that asks the question: “if you saw me for who I am, would you still accept me?” The language is simple but the impact of that question touches the way I present myself in every social context of my life. Another person may just say “I cannot trust others” or “people are just going to let me down”. Again: simple language, but this touches all of their social contexts and all their relationships too. We’ve looked before at issues of trust and why people may be unable to trust their spouse, and this attachment issue is often at the heart of it. These deep fear constructs are indicators of our attachment style. Our attachment style is the way that we have learned to relate to the significant others in our life. Primarily our spouse, but it also impacts our children, our closest friends, and then to a lesser degree, our social network as well. About half of the people are securely attached. That means they are secure in both themselves and their spouse: they believe themselves to be worthy of love and believe they can count on their spouse to love them and be there for them when they are needed. The rest fall into three categories but we’re going to focus mainly on what we call avoidant attachment. Those with avoidant attachment are insecure about the intentions of their spouse and they prefer to keep emotional distance in order to keep themselves safe. Often this comes across as coolness or distance or can even be interpreted as rejection. Usually, where one spouse is avoidant in their attachment style you’re going to see lower levels of intimacy[i]. If you aren’t sure your spouse is going to respond well to you, better to keep the really deep emotional stuff to yourself. See how this attachment style is about your view of yourself? There’s also anxious-ambivalent attachment style which is more now about your view of your spouse — whether your spouse is actually like that or not. In this case, because of your view of others, you are not sure how your spouse will respond to you. You probably feel a strong desire for intimacy but fear rejection — if you struggle with low self-esteem and the negative self-image you may discover that this anxious-ambivalent is your attachment style. On the other side, those with secure attachment know that their spouses are not perfect but they are confident that their spouse is available and there to support them in times of need. They understand that their spouse is not only accessible and available but will generally respond appropriately. Consequently, people with secure attachment are very comfortable with both closeness and doing things apart from each other. Fear and Relationship Satisfaction Now, if you’re both securely attached, your marriage is likely to be more stable, warm and satisfying and likely to exhibit higher levels of self-disclosure, trust, positive conflict solving skills and social support[ii]. Avoidant relationships (that’s fear about your spouse) tend to be more distant and filled with worry about the security of the bond between you. So you can see fretting over the connection, although that may look more like nagging or jealousy or just kind of being needy. There may also be greater control or suppression of your own emotions — because you’re not sure, you don’t want yourself to be fully seen. There may be reduced frequency and intensity of positive emotions because you cannot allow yourself to fully enjoy your spouse in order to protect you from the disappointment that you expect will come. There are also more frequent and more intense negative emotions usually[iii]. So your fears relating to your spouse and your attachment to them affects not only your relationship but even the emotions you feel day to day. The reason why this attachment issue is important is that attachment style is a stronger and more accurate predictor of relationship quality than personality[iv]. So when I am doing marriage counselling I am not working on making personalities get along; I’m just working on shifting attachment in the relationship. It’s a far more successful approach because it’s addressing the core ability of the couple to create and maintain an enjoyable, secure bond between them. By this point, you’re probably like “oh boy I have some work to do. My attachment style is getting in the way of creating the kind of marriage I want”. The second thing I suggest is that you consider marriage counselling with me because I can help you create that deep, secure enjoyable bond in your marriage that you’ve really been looking for. If you’d like to learn more about marriage counseling just head over to Therapevo and click the counseling link at the top of the page. Now I want to focus in on three areas of marriage: communication, perceptions, and conflict. How does fear impact these? Fear and Communication Just a brief point here from a study in 1994[v] which looked at 261 married couples and, not surprisingly, found that secure attachment was predictive of relationship satisfaction. What was noted with regards to communication was very important: the link between attachment and relationship satisfaction was largely mediated by communication style, especially for women. This means that how you communicate is very influential. Think about it this way. Attachment styles are deeply embedded in our psyche. They can shift and heal, which is great. But that’s turning the freighter around: give yourself time and space and compassion to do so. What can help you continue to grow your marriage as you make that deeper shift is communication. In a simpler way, you can compensate for the attachment challenges by really just working on those communication skills. And anybody can learn those. So just take that as encouragement because I know this deeper stuff can be challenging, especially as we address a couple more complications shortly. Fear and Perceptions Because highly anxious people have a strong fear of being abandoned or rejected they show "hypervigilance" towards any perceived threats to their relationship. This means they tend to notice far more things which could be perceived as a threat, and show a bias towards interpreting their spouses' actions negatively. As such even minor issues are seen as a threat to the entire relationship[vi]. You’re constantly on the looking for warnings signs and primed to interpret anything and everything as a threat to your relationship. So you’re bound to end up finding these threats and reasons to get worried, whether they’re really there or not. For those of you with anxiously attached spouses, this may help you to understand how things appear to get blown out of proportion quickly — in your mind. But put yourself in the shoes of your spouse who was raised in a family where security and safety and accessibility to a comforting parent were very unpredictable and that, I hope, will start to give you some compassion. What makes this even more challenging is that the anxious spouse will crave comfort and support from you. However, because they carry the insecurity internally, they tend to be unhappy with the amount of support available from significant others[vii] and can perceive attempts at support as having hurtful intent. Anxious individuals also believe that their own attempts to support and comfort their spouses' are less effective. Now you start to see how fear can really impact your perception about your marriage, at so many different levels. What I like to do here, for anxious spouses, is to ask them to consider if their fearful part is doing the interpreting or if their wise part is. Or, maybe put another way, are you seeing your spouse through the lens of fear or seeing your spouse through a lens that is wisely choosing to trust and to hold onto yourself at the same time? Fear and Conflict Note the gender differences here. As you can imagine, fearful relationships cause women to react to conflict with more stress,...

When Introverts Marry Extroverts

Wed, 05 Jul 2017 11:00:42 +0000

This one should be fun to look at as Verlynda and I personally sit on opposite sides of the field on this issue! But, as it turns out, there may even be some hope for folks like us! It’s a classic scenario: you’ve got a free evening and one of you wants to go and hang out with friends and the other would rather curl up on the couch and watch Netflix. Or one of you is having the time of their life at a party and the other is secretly gritting their teeth through the entire thing. When you have a marriage where one of you is introverted and one of you is extroverted it can seem like you’re on opposite wavelengths when it comes to how you spend your time, where your energy comes from, and how you make decisions and talk about important issues. If this is you, you may well be wondering if your differences along this dimension are going to impact your marriage. Can Introverts and Extroverts Get Along? I’m happy to say: yes! We can. What I loved about the research on this episode is that it confirms what we suspected but it also has some very useful insights both for those who marry similar personality types AND those who marry other personality types. A 2007 study[i] showed that similarity in the big 5 personality traits— those are the 5 traits researchers have identified as being the most fundamental part of our personalities, of which introversion/extroversion is one— predicted higher relationship quality. However, emotional similarity, which means experiencing and expressing similar emotions, was a strong mediating variable in this link. So even if couples differ in personality, for example one is introverted and one is extroverted, they can still function well as a couple by being similar on an emotional level. This emotional similarity helps partners react to events in similar ways and feel understood by their spouse. That emotional connection is a deeper and more important predictor of happiness than similarity on a personality level. So are introvert-extrovert marriages common? Generally, folks do not choose spouses with similar personality types. If you look at the Myers-Briggs personality type indicator (in which introversion-extroversion is one of the four dimensions), it is most common for couples to share two of the four parts and differ on the other two[ii]. We’ve looked before at whether opposites attract, and while it’s not a simple yes or no answer, there’s certainly plenty of evidence that very different people can have thriving, passionate marriage. A small study based around that idea showed that differences in personality types were not linked to marital difficulty, and being opposites on introversion/extroversion specifically, did not predict any specific problems in marriage. Another study[iii] supported this finding — differences along the introversion/extroversion scale don’t negatively impact marriage quality in any noticeable way. So it does look like introverts and extroverts can get along just fine. However, there was one interesting caveat. Moffit & Eisen[iv] found that levels of neuroticism and emotional instability for wives — but not husbands — were significantly linked to the degree to which the couple was apart on an introversion/extroversion scale. So having one spouse who is highly introverted and one who is highly extroverted could lead to emotional instability for the wife. The mediating factor in this effect is thought to be communication: highly divergent couples showed lower rates of intimate communication and agreement, which may be the cause of the emotional strain the wives were experiencing. Again: even if there is a big difference, it’s not a death blow to the marriage. Rather, it just requires that you step up your communication game. What Makes for A Happy Introvert-Extrovert Marriage? So here’s an interesting study[v] of 365 couples who reported they had happy marriages. They looked at the common characteristics of marriages where one spouse was extroverted and the other introverted, and then marriages where they were the same. Characteristics of households where the one spouse was extroverted and the other was introverted, included: A close, intimate relationship with each other and family members Separate friends Conflict solved through negotiation as and when the issue arises Fewer common leisure activities Moderate levels of expression of love Joint decision making, but the extroverted spouse was responsible for economic management And here are the characteristics of households where couples were similar on introversion/extroversion: A close, intimate relationship with each other and family members Joint friends Same conflict resolution style as above Many shared leisure activities Frequent expressions of love Shared all decision making and money management So there were a couple of differences between similar and divergent couples: the introvert/extrovert couples had fewer shared activities, less expression of love, and some separate responsibilities, particularly money management. Now that might seem like a bad thing — and maybe it’s something for these couples to work on — but remember that these were all couples who described their marriages as happy. So how they handled these issues was clearly working for them. And if you have a way of making it work for you, then that’s great, whether or not it looks like what we’ve described here. While we’re on this topic, let me give you some tips for success in marriages where you’re paired introvert/extrovert[vi]: Accept and appreciate your differences. "Although these differences provide fertile ground for increased conflicts, they also provide balance and potential for growth". You can choose how you see those differences: something to appreciate as variety? Or be dissatisfied with? Understand your own, and your spouse’s personality, and factors which affect it. Some people's levels of introversion/extroversion are influenced by their energy levels or the specific situation they are in. These aren’t fixed traits that apply universally, so learning to see how they are nuanced for you individually can help you navigate them. Commit to personally develop and grow. Couples who are different along this dimension can learn a lot from each other. Introverts can aim to expand their social world and gain new experiences from the outside world, while extroverts can "find themselves building a richer inner world". "Understand the importance of give and take". In terms of socializing, time together, decision making etc. You’re going to have different preferences and ways of handling certain situations, and you’ll need to accommodate both. Combine and play to your strengths: if one of you is better at dealing with certain social situations, or if one of you is more thoughtful and takes longer to reach a decision on something, then acknowledge and utilize those strengths in your marriage. Introversion/Extroversion Changes Over Time We often see personality as fixed — especially in others and especially when we are frustrated with them. But these traits can change over time. A study from 2006[vii]: studied 1,130 participants over 8 years and found that increases in extroversion increased relationship satisfaction. To me, that seems to show that the introvert is learning to be more social. However, as an introvert myself, I don’t want to imply that there’s something wrong with introversion and that extroversion is the gold standard. Mind you, I adore my extroverted wife (you are the gold standard for me :-p) but you get my point, right? It’s also interesting to note a phenomenon called personality convergence: spouses generally become more similar in terms of personality over time[viii]. Becoming more similar in personality traits such as extroversion/introversion increases relationship satisfaction while becoming less similar led to "steep drops in marital satisfaction". So if major differences in extroversion/introversion are affecting your marriage, those traits can change. Again: let’s not get into a fight over who should change, but let’s help each other grow! So we need to think about these things in a healthy way. Social Support Of course, since the whole extrovert/introvert thing relates mostly to how we interact in social situations we have to consider this in light of the marriage too. It’s a well-established fact that social and emotional support is one of the most important factors in a happy marriage[ix]. Look at this: extroverts offer more social support and perceive themselves as having more support than introverts[x]. The same study also found a positive correlation between extroversion and stress. Perceived availability of support, particularly feelings of belonging, mediate the relationship between extroversion and stress. So perhaps for introverts married to extroverts, it is important to make them aware you are there for support, in order to buffer your spouse against stress. This might not come as naturally to you as it does to your extroverted spouse, but sometimes you need to remind them that they do belong, that they are appreciated, and that they matter not just to you but to a host of people. I think this is necessary because extroverts are more likely to draw energy from their social network. Conflict Style Finally, we should mention differences in conflict style between the two. In a study in 1998[xi], 461 participants were measured for personality types and conflict style. They found that: Extroversion is correlated with the integrating style of conflict Extroversion is negatively correlated with avoidant conflict style Extroversion is positively correlated with a "dominating" conflict style So extroversion is linked to an integrative/collaborative conflict style and makes you less likely to avoid conflict. Which is good....

How Does Menopause Affect Marriage?

Wed, 28 Jun 2017 11:00:55 +0000

Now menopause isn’t something that I’m likely to experience but it is something that half of you are going to go through, or have gone through, and the other half will observe. And since it’s going to impact your marriage, we might as well be smart people and make sure we’re prepared for it! Menopause can be a tricky time for marriages. Wives have to come to terms with changes in their body while dealing with all the hot flushes and night sweats life can throw at them. And husbands can often feel like they’re walking on eggshells trying to support their wives through unpredictable mood changes and other unpleasant side-effects. The research shows that menopause can impact marriage in some surprising ways, but the overall picture is more nuanced, and overall more positive, than the simple perception that menopause = BAD. Menopause and Marital Satisfaction A survey of 326 midlife women[i] showed a significant negative correlation between marital satisfaction and menopause symptoms: as symptoms went up, satisfaction went down. They also noted a correlation between menopause symptoms and feelings of anger and depression. As symptoms went up, anger and depressive symptoms increased too. However, they did note that married women reported fewer feelings of depression than non-married, suggesting that marriage guards against these feelings of depression. That fits with other research we’ve covered that shows that good marriages offer resilience against the challenges of life. But the quality of your marriage is key: so if you’re listening today and not yet menopausal, this is another reason to work on your marriage! Check out what these researchers said: "Women in dissatisfying marriages, characterized by less social support, less depth, and higher conflict, reported increased stress and more menopausal symptomatology (symptoms such as sleep disturbance and vasomotor or blood circulation problems) than did women in satisfying marriages.[ii]” So this is fascinating because now your marriage is impacting your menopausal symptoms. A supportive, stress-free marriage reduces the strain of menopause and makes the symptoms less severe and easier to deal with. But menopause also affects one’s sex life. Menopause and Sex Life Satisfaction Menopause produces changes in a woman’s body, which may also decrease the enjoyment of sex: issues such as reduced libido, difficult orgasming and dryness in the vagina[iii]. However, these do not necessarily have to lower sexual satisfaction or the quality of your sex life. This merely becomes another life transition that couples go through and can learn to successfully navigate. Follow me here. A study by Deeks & McCabe in 2001[iv] interviewed 304 women aged 35-65. Menopause predicted higher rates of sexual dysfunction (inability to orgasm, reduced desire etc), but sexual satisfaction and frequency were better predicted by age than by menopause status. Meaning that yes, complications came in, but it didn’t necessarily derail sexual satisfaction and enjoyment — for some it was getting better as they got older. To understand this, we have to look at how couples going through this phase of life are facing the potential challenges of menopause. A study in 2003[v] interviewed 30 women about their sex lives post-menopause and found that "few women focused on menopausal changes when they discussed their sex lives". Issues like relationship quality, communication and willingness to change sexual activities were more important. Many women with lower sexual satisfaction after menopause stated that this was due to their husband's reaction- for example complaining about their wives’ vaginal dryness or getting frustrated when the woman doesn't want to have sex because it is painful. "These accounts suggest that some women continue to enjoy their active sex lives regardless of menopausal changes because they communicate openly with their partners and change the ways they have sex.[vi]" Focusing on activities other than intercourse, recognizing that it can take longer to orgasm, and using a lubricant to compensate for dryness are all strategies that post-menopausal couples used to still enjoy sex. So we come back to the communication issue. You can either take these changes and take them personally or you can choose to face them with maturity and compassion and explore your way through this new phase of life. Menopause doesn’t have to spell the death of your sex life — it might create a couple of practical hurdles but these can certainly be overcome in the context of an open and supportive marriage. One other thing to keep in mind is that our wives are also facing a change in perception of attractiveness as they age. Research from 2005[vii] found that women's perception of their own attractiveness decreased with age (although it was not directly linked to menopausal status), and lower self-rated attractiveness predicted lower sexual satisfaction and less sexual activity. Higher perceived attractiveness was linked to increased sexual desire, higher rates of orgasm and greater frequency of sex. We went in-depth on how your body image impacts sexual functioning in episode 88 — we don’t need to rehash that here — but the important point is that you are the determinant of your body image and that plays a key role in this part of life, too. Menopause and Wellbeing The other thing to keep in mind is that wellbeing also plays a role in menopause, and by extension, your marriage as well. Rates of depression are high among midlife women. High levels of menopause symptoms can lead to decreased mental wellbeing and lower perceived quality of life[viii]. However, higher depression rates are not always due to biological changes from menopause but are most often predicted by having multiple roles and causes of worry such as holding a full-time job while looking after adolescent children, aging parents or physically ailing husbands.[ix] Managing different responsibilities or being sandwiched between caring for toddlers and aging parents can definitely create a strenuous stage of life, and this stress can often be more of an issue than anything relating to the menopause. This is important because we can make menopause the whipping boy of these issues and fail to recognize the number of challenges that we can have on our plates at a time of life like this. I think when that happens we lose the ability to show healthy compassion for all that we do carry through this phase of life. Fortunately, there are things we can do. As an example, Elavsky & McAuley[x] found that physical activities such as yoga and walking reduce the severity of menopausal symptoms and improved mood and psychological wellbeing. Another study showed that remaining physically active can reduce the perceived severity of menopause symptoms and help retain good physical health[xi]. So we can respond well and choose self-care and choose to find ways to show compassion and care for ourselves in this part of life. Stress is also a significant issue during menopause. And menopause increases the cardiovascular response to stress. And, menopausal symptoms are exacerbated by life stresses (including marriage stress, amidst others). Then menopause makes the stress worse. And now you have a cycle. However: in the midst of this, marriage can also be a buffer against stress. Here’s a quote from some researchers:[xii] "supportive relationships in which couples demonstrated care and concern, affection, helpfulness, and sensitivity toward one another appeared to provide a buffer against emotional distress for each other.” Menopause and Marriage Overall: yes, there are biological consequences. There can be sexual difficulties that arise[xiii], as well as depressive feelings[xiv] and increased reactivity to stressful events[xv]. But relationship factors have a strong influence on all these variables. So create a thriving, passionate marriage — and know you can lean on that in times of change. It’s just so important that we create a strong marriage so that we do have that in place for this time of life. Listen to this quote: "The less satisfying the marriage, the less perceived social support, and depth and more perceived conflict in the relationship, and the more distress related to self, husband, and family, the more menopausal symptomatology reported.[xvi]” So instead of worrying about how menopause may affect your marriage, take hold of the ways your marriage can improve your experience of menopause. Maybe you’re going through menopause right now, or maybe it’s a long way off. Either way, I hope this is an encouragement to you to create that marriage that is thriving and resilient and strong, and that acts as a buffer against challenges such as menopause. References: [i] Sharon E. Robinson Kurpius, Megan Foley Nicpon, and Susan E. Maresh, ‘Mood, Marriage and Menopause.’, Journal of Counseling Psychology, 48.1 (2001), 77–84 . [ii] Katherine Vaughn Fielder and Sharon E. Robinson Kurpius, ‘Marriage, Stress and Menopause: Midlife Challenges and Joys’, Psicologia, 19.1–2 (2005), 87–106. [iii] Julie A. Winterich, ‘Sex, Menopause, and Culture: Sexual Orientation and the Meaning of Menopause for Women’s Sex Lives’, Gender and Society, 17.4 (2003), 627–42. [iv] Amanda A. Deeks and Marita P. McCabe, ‘Sexual Function and the Menopausal Woman: The Importance of Age and Partner’s Sexual Functioning’, The Journal of Sex Research, 38.3 (2001), 219–25. [v] Winterich. [vi] Winterich. [vii] Patricia Barthalow Koch and others, ‘“Feeling Frumpy”: The Relationships between Body Image and Sexual Response Changes in Midlife Women’, The Journal of Sex Research, 42.3 (2005), 215–23. [viii] Steriani Elavsky and Edward McAuley, ‘Physical Activity, Symptoms, Esteem, and Life Satisfaction during Menopause’, Maturitas, 52.3–4 (2005),...

How to Porn-Proof Your Marriage

Wed, 21 Jun 2017 11:00:02 +0000

Suggesting that it is possible to porn-proof your marriage may appear to be preposterous. Porn is so prevalent in our culture that it may be simply impossible to prevent yourself from seeing and coming into contact with pornography. However, what if you could build a marriage relationship and a shared worldview where pornography was not even attractive? To begin with I want to clarify what we’re proposing, and who this is for. You cannot walk through a mall, drive on a major highway, watch TV or use the Internet without being exposed to pornographic images. By ‘pornographic images’ I mean images capable of provoking sexual attraction, thoughts or fantasies. Such images are nearly impossible to avoid on a daily basis. That’s a sad but true commentary on our society's sexualization of women in particular. So when I talk about porn-proofing your marriage, I’m not necessarily talking about living a life where you don’t ever come into contact with these images: that would be pretty much impossible. Which is sad. But what I’m aiming at is creating a marriage and a shared worldview where pornography holds no traction (there’s no grip) and no attraction (there’s no real desire to pursue it). I also want to point out who this post is for and not for. Who it is for: If you’re currently in the grip of pornography addiction, I hope you will find this useful. If pornography is not a factor in your marriage and you want to keep it that way: this is for both of you. If one or both of you are recovered pornography addicts then I believe this will be helpful as well. Who it is not for: If your spouse is in the grip of pornography addiction and you want to single-handedly shape your marriage in order to out-compete or even just eradicate pornography than you’re probably coming at this the wrong way. This post is not really for you until you fall into the previous category. You see, it’s not your job to manage your spouse’s recovery. Your job is to both confront and refrain from enabling, and I think you should even go so far as to refuse to take responsibility for your spouse’s recovery. It’s the addict’s job to own all aspects of his or her recovery, not yours. We do have a previous post on steps you can take when you’ve just discovered your husband’s porn addiction, so that may be helpful for people in this situation. Having said that, it’s not fair for you to choose movies with pornographic scenes while also holding the conviction that pornography is wrong, and expecting your previously- or currently-addicted spouse not to be triggered by this. I mean, if you’re comfortable with some pornography, then you should be comfortable with your spouse viewing some pornography too, right? Finally, we should mention for those who are new to our website and podcast that Verlynda and I speak from a born-again Christian worldview. It is our belief that pornography does not have anything to add to your marriage because the Bible and even secular research both support the notion that the best sex is happening inside marriage. We could go a lot further explaining our beliefs and the theological underpinnings but I think that is an adequate summary for now. Pornography and Marriage Quality Let me cite some research relevant to pornography and marriage quality. Stack et al[i] noted that high marriage quality was linked to lower porn use. Another researcher[ii] also observed that satisfaction with real-life sex is not linked to rates of porn use (i.e., porn use is not compensating for lower satisfaction with sex, and increasing porn use is not equal to increasing sexual satisfaction). In fact, Poulsen et al[iii] showed that high levels of porn use lead to lower sexual satisfaction for both men and women. A Barna Group study called the Porn Phenomenon also reported a number of other potential impacts of pornography, including: A dramatic reduction in a spouse’s capacity to love their wife and children Difficulty achieving orgasm with your spouse Increased likelihood of having multiple sexual partners in both paid sex and extramarital sex Wives’ reporting their husbands’ sexual advances as conveying a message of objectification as opposed to a meaningful interaction Increase in sexless marriages We could go on and on. The point is that porn is not helping marriages — I really, truly believe that pornography has nothing to offer and nothing to add to creating a healthy, vibrant, enjoyable marriage — including sexual intimacy within that marriage. Porn-Proofing Your Marriage This is a multi-faceted issue so we’re going to touch on this at different levels, from behavioral all the way to examine our worldview. Behavioral Safeguards I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this. But I want to mention it because curiosity is a powerful thing. You can see something sexual that piques your interest and then it becomes a rabbit trail into pornography until you get lost in that world. So I think there is value in doing whatever we can to protect ourselves even from accidental exposure to pornography. You might not be able to totally shield yourself from sexually provocative images, but you can certainly remove some of the temptation and make it harder for yourself to engage with overtly pornographic material, especially online. It’s for that reason that our family uses a device called Circle, and we have Covenant Eyes accountability for adults and accountability and filtering for our kids, and we use Google Safe Search all the time. To be candid, we probably need more. Social Circles that Resist Pornography Now let’s look at how your friends and social circle can protect against porn use. Social control theory states that people may want to engage in deviant behavior (such as porn use) but their social bonds provide motivation not to[iv]. For example, things like bonds to society, to a particular religious or political view, or to the family may prevent a person from doing something that their society of family would deem unacceptable. You might want to look at porn but thinking about how your family or friends would react may influence your decision one way or the other. A study from 2004[v] analyzed 531 surveys of internet users and found that three particular kinds of social bonds were related to cyberporn use: Church attendance negatively predicted cyberporn use Being happily married reduced likelihood of cyberporn use by 61% Political liberalism increased odds of porn use I just thought it was really interesting to look at this. It challenges us to step back and examine our most influential social circles. Who do you choose to put in your circle? Think about this in terms of your marriage: you want to have a circle of friends that you move among who uphold the sanctity of marriage. You may have Christian friends but have an unacknowledged contract between you that it’s OK to watch inappropriate movies, or maybe there’s the odd porn or sex joke that just communicates the idea — we all do it, what’s the big deal? Having this element of permissiveness in our social circles increased our vulnerability to pornography. Religiosity and Pornography This one is more interesting. Let me start with a poignant quote: "while religiosity is consistently negatively associated with an acceptance of pornography, these same attitudes do not always translate to a lack of use.[vi]" People from Christian backgrounds often have negative attitudes to porn use but actual usage levels don't always reflect this. For example, a study by Nelson et al in 2010[vii] interviewed 192 Christian men aged 18-27 and found that 100% of them thought porn use was unacceptable, but that 45% of them had still used porn at some point in the last 12 months. This was lower than porn use rates in the general population for a similar age group (87%) but still shows that beliefs and actions don't always tie together. So just calling yourself a Christian, or even having closely held beliefs, doesn’t necessarily porn-proof your marriage. However, there are some specific characteristics noted by Nelson et al.[viii] that were found to be linked to not using porn in Christian men: (keep in mind as we list these that this is from a research perspective, not a preaching-at-you perspective) Higher levels of current and past involvement in religious practices (prayer, scripture reading, attending church etc). Regularly connecting with God and other Christians in this way was thought to serve as a reminder that porn use was unacceptable. "Even if an individual is taught that pornography is unacceptable, religious beliefs may not be enough to prevent pornography use without the regular, maybe even daily, participation in activities (praying, reading scriptures) that reinforce those religious beliefs." A stronger sense of identity and self-worth, particularly relating to family, dating, and faith. Having a stronger sense of who you are and what’s important to you strengthens you against the temptations of porn. Stronger relationships with the family, particularly a stronger relationship with your mother, and higher involvement in religious activities as a family. Lower levels of depression. For this one it’s unclear which direction the effect is: it could be that those who used porn felt guilty about it, leading to depression, or could be that depression causes weaker impulse control or the need to use porn to raise your mood. In either case, porn use is closely linked to depression, so if either of them affects you it’s important to seek help. So a strong personal belief, supported by regular practice and a close family, can guard you against porn where simply having a faith does not. But there’s a flip side. There are also some risk factors associated with religiosity that can increase risk of porn use and addiction. ...

Is It Even Possible to Have a Happy Marriage?

Wed, 14 Jun 2017 11:00:34 +0000

Marriage can have some really, really tough times — maybe you’re in that mode right now — and have been for a while. You wonder: is this all there is? Does anyone really enjoy this? Or maybe your marriage is not horrible but it’s only just tolerable. Maybe steady but dull. You’re wondering if there’s more. Or perhaps you’re contemplating marriage but what you witnessed of your parents’ marriage leads you to continue to wonder: is it even possible to have a very happy marriage? There is a mixed perception of marriage in western culture. On one hand, marriage is viewed as the "happily ever after" that everyone aspires to, on the other it is considered a restriction of freedom; being stuck with the same person for life and giving up on what you want in favor of what’s best for the marriage and the family. "These two competing visions of marriage- the wedding as a doorway to happiness and the wedding as an obstacle to individual growth- subsist side by side in contemporary American culture.[i]" So we’re not all sold on this, right? We still wonder: does marriage actually make you happier? Does Marriage Make You Happier? I am very happy to say the answer is “Yes!" Research almost universally shows that married people are happier than non-married, divorced or widowed[ii][iii][iv]. “Marriage has often been found to be one of the strongest correlates of happiness and wellbeing[v]”. One study[vi] of over 14,000 people over a ten year period found that marriage was one of the most important predictors of happiness. Now before we get all giddy — we have to ask. Does marriage make you happier? Or is it that happier people are more likely to get married? A study from 2006[vii] found that happier single people are more likely to opt for marriage. Uh-oh. However, in a 2014 study[viii] that controlled for pre-marital levels of happiness, it was still found that marriage will increase happiness over and above pre-marriage levels, suggesting a causal effect. So the evidence suggests that even if happier people tend to get married, marriage still causes an increase in happiness above what it was pre-marriage. Stats on Marriage and Happiness/Satisfaction So what about the stats on this? What are we looking at? 79% of married men and 81% of married women report being "satisfied" or "very satisfied" with life[ix]. This is higher than for those living together, or those who are single or divorced/separated. 40% of married people reported being "very happy" with their lives, compared to under 25% for single people[x]. I just want to the sidebar for one sec here — in case you happen to be single and reading a post on a marriage website— there are still nearly 1 in 4 people who are single and very happy. Yeah, it’s less than the percentage of married and happy. But don’t choose to stake your happiness on being married — because there are people who are not married and are still happy. I just don’t want to leave anyone with the idea that if you’re single, you can’t enjoy life or if you’re single, you aren’t reaching a standard that the rest of us have who are married. It’s just different. It’s about what you make of it for your singleness as much as for those of us who are making something of our marriages. Factors Leading to Joy and Happiness in Marriage Now let’s go over the factors leading to happiness and joy in marriage: Communication[xi]. Styles of communication that were relaxed, friendly, open, dramatic or attentive increased marital happiness. Using a variety of different communication styles was also linked to happiness. Couples who are happily married develop unique conversation styles that are more personal, spontaneous and make self-disclosure easier. You’ve probably seen couples who seem to speak a totally different language that only they understand. This totally relaxed, unique way of relating to each other builds intimacy and happiness into the relationship. Friendship[xii]. Don’t miss this one. Marriage increases happiness and life satisfaction levels overall, and protects against the dip in life satisfaction many people feel in middle age. This effect is twice as strong in married couples who are also best friends. These effects are found almost universally in different cultures around the world. Social Support[xiii]. "Marriage is the greatest source of social support for most people, more than friends or kin, including emotional and material support, and companionship." Marriage also promotes physical health by encouraging you to think about long-term consequences and to live healthily and protects mental health by giving you someone to confide in and receive support from. “Social support” sounds so technical — but this is a beautiful thing when you have it. And great for your health and wellbeing too. Well worth building into your marriage. Specialization[xiv]. Couples complement each other with different emotional skills, creating a "balancing act that leaves both partners better off.” Don’t compete or complain about shortcomings — complement each other. Also sometimes true with physical skills, leading to an easier division of labor. Meaning[xv]. "Marriage partners together create a shared sense of social reality and meaning- their own little separate world, populated by only the two of them". Even a marriage that isn't perfect can still provide a sense of meaning and a sense that what you do matters. There’s also meaning in the bond you have: no matter what else happens in life there is someone who cares for you and values you. Better Sex[xvi]. Marriage creates a better sex life due to increased intimacy, exclusivity and enabling you to continually grow closer together and learn how to enjoy sex more. We talk about this a lot more in episode 128! Humor[xvii]. Marital happiness was linked to the use of positive humor (jokes that were about the relationship or the spouse in a playful, benign way). Negative humor (sarcasm and harsh jokes at the spouse's expense) was negatively correlated with happiness. For both positive and negative, your perception of your spouse's use of humor was more important than how you use it yourself. So use humor, but wisely and graciously. Staying Happy Long Term When it comes to long term marriages — what makes them happy? How do you keep that sense of joy and contentment through the years? Well, we’re going to see it’s some of the same things so I won’t spend too long on this. But I do think it is definitely worth noting these items. A study from 1990[xviii] interviewed 100 couples who had been married for at least 45 years. These couples identified some variables which were important in sustaining their marriages for so long and remaining happy throughout: Being married to someone they enjoyed spending time with Commitment to the spouse and to the marriage A sense of humor Similar aims in life, sharing the same friends and agreement on decision making They found that men and women were very similar in their responses. Creating a happy marriage also prepares you for the increasing health challenges that come as we age. See, marital closeness protects against hardship. Research shows that relationship quality and closeness to your spouse buffer against the depressive effects of hardships such as physical frailty and financial distress[xix]. Not only is a great, happy marriage something to aim for in itself, but it helps protect you from feeling the effects of hardship in later life. So: yes, you can have a happy marriage. It is possible. It is also very enjoyable. And it is very helpful. I hope that as you read this today you are challenged and encouraged to keep moving forward! If your marriage isn’t as happy as you’d like it to be, hopefully you can identify some areas you can work on. A joyful marriage is definitely something worth fighting for! References: [i] Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher, The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier and Better Off Financially (Crown/Archetype, 2002). [ii] Shawn Grover and John Helliwell, How’s Life at Home? New Evidence on Marriage and the Set Point for Happiness (Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, December 2014) . [iii] Michael Argyle, ‘Causes and Correlates of Happiness’, in Well-Being: The Foundations of Hedonic Psychology, ed. by D. Kahneman, E. Diener, and N. Schwarz (New York, NY, US: Russell Sage Foundation, 1999), pp. 353–73. [iv] Waite and Gallagher. [v] Argyle. [vi] Waite and Gallagher. [vii] Alois Stutzer and Bruno S. Frey, ‘Does Marriage Make People Happy, or Do Happy People Get Married?’, The Journal of Socio-Economics, The Socio-Economics of Happiness, 35.2 (2006), 326–47 . [viii] Grover and Helliwell. [ix] Argyle. [x] Waite and Gallagher. [xi] James M. Honeycutt, Charmaine Wilson, and Christine Parker, ‘Effects of Sex and Degrees of Happiness on Perceived Styles of Communicating in and out of the Marital Relationship’, Journal of Marriage and Family, 44.2 (1982), 395–406 . [xii] Grover and Helliwell. [xiii] Argyle. [xiv] Waite and Gallagher. [xv] Waite and Gallagher. [xvi] F. Scott Christopher and Susan Sprecher, ‘Sexuality in Marriage, Dating, and Other Relationships: A Decade Review’, Journal of Marriage and the Family, 62.4 (2000), 999–1017. [xvii] Melissa Johari, ‘Humour and Marital Quality: Is Humour Style Associated with Marital Success?’, Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive), 2004 . [xviii] Robert H. Lauer, Jeanette C. Lauer, and Sarah T. Kerr, ‘The Long-Term Marriage: Perceptions of Stability and Satisfaction’, The International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 31.3 (1990), 189–95 . [xix] Roni Beth Tower and Stanislav V. Kasl,...

The Essentials of a Successful Cross-Cultural Marriage

Wed, 07 Jun 2017 11:00:49 +0000

One of the benefits of being a patron of The Marriage Podcast for Smart People is that you’re given the opportunity to request topics. One of our patrons asked us to address cross-cultural or inter-racial marriages. It’s an interesting area, with research showing that there are some common difficulties inter-racial couples face, as well as some real strengths they can draw from their different backgrounds and perspectives. We should acknowledge at the start that we do address this issue from a place of white privilege — even though we have a bizarre last name, we are both white and so a set of privileges was defaulted to us at birth. However, we have been studying this issue and want to bring some wisdom to those of you who are inter-racial couples. We’d also love to hear your feedback in the comments section below. Interracial couples face challenges in their marriages that often find their source in issues that aren’t marital. Socioeconomic Differences For example. A study in 2006[i] looked at survey data for interracial couples and found a higher risk of severe distress compared to intra-racial couples (same race). What is interesting is that they noted that issues to do with socioeconomic status accounted for half of the variance. So they concluded that one of the largest challenges in interracial marriages was to do with money and socioeconomic status. It’s an unpleasant fact about the western society that racial minority families are, on average, less well off than white families. So an interracial couple may be coming from very different economic backgrounds, which can create tension. Another study along these lines[ii] pointed out that interracial couples have fewer resources available to them in terms of being able to share finances, possessions, and workloads due to this disparity in socioeconomic status. Tied to this was the observation that these couples may be less able to get support from their extended family due to the possibility of the family disapproving of the marriage, which could also add to marital strains. I think the point here is that we all know financial issues put strain on marriage: but for interracial couples, the likelihood of experiencing this stressor is higher. Yet, in this, I also want to offer hope. Financial stress does impact your marriage: however, financial stress does not mean there’s something wrong with your marriage. To me, the question then becomes: how can we acknowledge this reality but have it become something we face together rather than something between us? For those readers not from interracial marriages, that’s actually something you can use for your marriage too! If you want a bit of extra help we have a whole series of posts on marriages finances, with some useful info on topics like how to build a budget and how to reduce debt. Stigma There has been a stigma about cross-cultural marriage in society — probably forever. It was even illegal in many US states and in many countries — perhaps still is, in some. I don’t know. This stigma and disapproval of cross-cultural marriage is an issue: in ways that those of us with intra-racial marriages may not even consider. For example, stigma may make it harder for interracial couples to show affection in public[iii] due to that fear of being judged. Stigma can also affect you outside of public settings: think about families. More conservative families may dislike the idea of you marrying someone from a different race or culture. Older research suggests this stigma issue may even have a “Romeo and Juliet Effect” where parental or family disapproval actually works to increase feelings of love[iv]. However, most modern research shows the exact opposite: disapproval from your social network often leads to lower relationship quality[v]. So there’s this sense of isolation and disapproval from your family and from society in general. It’s possible that this could bring you closer together as a couple in a “you and me against the world” kind of way but even so the strain this puts on your marriage should not be underestimated. Trust The stigma around cross-cultural marriages and the long history of inequality and discrimination between races may lead to an inherent mistrust and even anger inside your marriage. This may come out in conflict situations[vi]. The long and difficult history of race relations can lead to things being misinterpreted or generalizations being made and other unhelpful communication issues. Again, now you have something that is between you but finds its source outside your marriage. We’ll unpack this a little more but we have the same principle as with socioeconomic issues: can you have a discussion that acknowledges this reality (if it actually is real for you), and then agree that you’re both going to help each other to acknowledge it as something to face together, rather than have between you? So that might look like a white husband saying, “Look, I know you’re angry and you see my perspective as being racist — but I want you to know that at the very least I don’t want to or intend to be racist. If there’s some way I’m unconsciously using my white privilege or being racist, please help me understand." But if there’s nothing there you can identify that your spouse is being racist about, could it be that you are just experiencing a trigger from other traumatic racial situations — and this is not actually a problem occurring in the present? It could go either way, right? He could be doing something racist or insensitive and need to be educated and given an opportunity to apologize and make amends. Or, he could just be doing something without any intent to be racist and certainly with the desire to never treat you differently because of the race — but this is how you are experiencing it due to other things you have experienced. Possibly it could be a little of both. Either way, helping him to learn about himself and learning about yourself — these are all valuable discussions to have so that you can work through and understand how this plays into your dance as a couple. But this requires you to trust each other — not despite racial differences — but with awareness of those differences. Trust helps with communication, decision making, conflict resolution, and commitment. One of the ways you can build this trust is by creating your own shared worldview as a couple. All of us have a worldview. And it is shaped by culture and race and experiences of race. Understanding each other’s worldview and building a shared set of beliefs is vital for a trusting relationship[vii]. You don’t necessarily need the same beliefs but having compatible beliefs will make communication easier and increase your happiness in your marriage. At the very least you need to be aware of what each other’s beliefs are as you could be coming at this relationship with very different perspectives on how it is going to look. Assuming those beliefs are the same is just going to add to the strain of marriage. Talk about gender roles, religion, parenting — as early on as you can in your relationship. Communication Now let’s look at how interracial couples can work on communication. Cross-cultural communication is interesting, especially in light of the pursue-withdraw cycle that we talk about on our show from time to time. A study from 2006[viii] interviewed 363 participants from different countries (Brazil, Italy, Taiwan and the USA) about communication style and satisfaction. Findings were the same across cultures: Constructive communication style linked to higher satisfaction Demand/withdraw patterns were found in all cultures with men in the withdrawing role being significantly more common in all cultures Demand/withdraw communication associated with lower satisfaction across all cultures. So styles of communication and conflict resolution are often the same across cultures. I don’t know enough to speak to this fully but of course in this type of marriage work you are looking at primary emotions like anger, joy, fear etc. And those primary emotions are common to all humankind. The takeaway here is that your communication doesn’t have to fail or be a problem because you are from different cultural or racial backgrounds. And it also means that there are a lot of therapists out there like myself who can help you create a marriage you’ll love today and treasure for a lifetime. Racial Identity Let’s end on a positive note here. A study by Leslie & Letiecq[ix] interviewed 76 interracial couples. They found that taking pride in your own racial identity while also being accepting of other cultures was the highest predictor of marital quality for these couples. What I took from this is what we need to do in any marriage: acknowledge our reality, and learn to be accepting and committed. Don’t thrust these issues under the table or pretend they aren’t there. Because they are there. Another study from 2009[x] also identified the need for supportive communication. They also talked about self-disclosure as a predictor of marital satisfaction in interracial families. That’s sharing your internal world and experience with your spouse. And they also talked about identity accommodation, similar to the previous work we just referred to. Identity accommodation is about having positive attitudes towards both your own and your spouse’s culture and heritage. So when these positive ingredients are mixed together, it increases your sense of family identity. Who you are as a couple. What’s beautiful now is that we’re talking about “us” and “we” rather than “you” and “I”. And that’s the key to a successful cross-cultural marriage: in the face of all these issues like disapproving families and economic strain, and in spite of years of distrust and inequality in society, you have chosen to come together and make your two worlds one....

Can You Fix Your Marriage Without Dredging Up The Past?

Wed, 31 May 2017 11:00:52 +0000

This is a great question! Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just leave all the past behind, turn over a new leaf, and start afresh? Most couples have problems and difficulties that they’ve been through and are trying to put behind them. Some of you might even have serious issues in your past that are still causing you pain and affecting your marriage today. And so you may be wondering if it’s possible to move on from difficulties in your marriage without bringing up all these issues again. Is it possible to leave past conflict unresolved and still have a happy marriage? Turns out it’s not a simple “yes” or “no” answer. For those of you that are new to the site, we speak to marriage issues out of a Christian worldview but what makes our approach unique is that there’s a ton of research in psychological journals that becomes part of our content. So when we come to a question like this we aim to give you a very balanced, reliable recommendation that is going to truly help you move forward in your marriage. Because that’s our goal: to help you create thriving, passionate marriage. And if you are reading this it is probably because you don’t have that but you want it. And we want to help you get there! How Unresolved Conflict Impacts Marriage A good starting question is: can you have a happy marriage while leaving past arguments or differences unresolved? It turns out that unresolved conflict does not appear to impact the duration of your marriage. But: it is negatively correlated to relationship satisfaction. Meaning that as the amount of unresolved conflict increases, it might not lead to the complete breakdown of your relationship but you’re probably going to become less satisfied with your marriage[i]. What is interesting is that this researcher then factored conflict out of the equation. You can do this with multifactorial analysis to pinpoint what exactly is causing the effect that you’ve observed. And when the amount of conflict (or frequency of arguments) was removed from the equation, the satisfaction still went down. Meaning that it truly is about the fact that things are left unresolved: this is the key factor, not the conflict itself. But the researcher did have something to conclude about conflict styles: the more unresolved conflict, the more negative conflict styles were present. When higher levels of unresolved conflict were present in couples he observed more things like withdrawal during arguments, escalating small issues into arguments, etc. Which makes sense. Not dealing with stuff causes a buildup of pressure so that when things do spill over into an argument it’s going to be more extreme and all these other unresolved issues are going to get thrown in as well. Poor communication strategies are likely to follow. As another researcher put it: "To leave conflict unresolved is a risky course of action. An unresolved conflict could fester to the point of causing an explosion.[ii]" So the evidence says: resolving conflict is better than leaving it unresolved. And I think most of us know that on an intuitive level: we have to deal with the things that just aren’t going away. But: there is also some research to indicate that avoiding conflict (and even leaving things unresolved) may be a good idea if your conflict style is very negative and volatile. If you really do not have any functional, adaptable ways of resolving issues then you may need to contain the fallout. In that case, leaving things unresolved may be the lesser of two evils[iii]. That’s fine for the research to point out but I would still contend that if this is your situation it would be better to learn those skills. Read a book, get some counselling: do something to help you guys learn how to resolve conflict. I just cannot see this working out well in the long term even as I understand and acknowledge why it may be helpful in the short term. Avoiding conflict because your way of dealing with it is so destructive doesn’t sound like a healthy, sustainable marriage, so if you find yourself doing this then get help with learning new conflict-resolution skills. Of course, I’m assuming we’re not talking about an abusive marriage here. Avoiding conflict becomes a whole new topic when any form of abuse is involved. Remember that abuse isn’t always as obvious as physical violence; verbal and emotional abuse resulting from conflict are serious issues that need to be identified and addressed. We’ve written a series of posts on abuse and part 1 was all about how to tell if you’re in an abusive marriage, so give that a read if you’re concerned this may be an issue in your marriage. 3 Ways to Avoid Conflict There’s three avoidance strategies that we probably all use at some point or another. They can actually be helpful but they can also be quite unhelpful too! Withholding Complaints Withholding is simply not mentioning it when your partner does something that you find aggravating. This solution works best for minor grievances and when used to avoid raising minor day to day issues was positively correlated with relationship satisfaction. However, the offending spouse still has no idea they have done something to upset the other spouse and so the behavior will likely persist[iv]. This may work best for concerns that aren’t worth addressing right now. Or, maybe it’s something that you feel just happened as a one-off situation. But generally, for bigger issues or recurring problems, simply refraining from mentioning them isn’t a great idea as it just leads to that festering low level of dissatisfaction that’s liable to blow up. Suppressing Arguments Suppression is avoiding talking about the past issue or withdrawing once your partner has initiated the discussion. This can be done by pretending to agree with what your spouse is saying so as to stop the argument, minimizing the importance of the issue they have raised, or outright avoiding/leaving the conversation (stonewalling). Personally I find this hard to take in the moment because I feel disconnection from myself and the other person. I prefer to put something on the table. However, the researcher noted that minimizing the importance of a past issue and focusing on "shared values which tied them together which overwhelm the importance of the past conflict" was a trait observed in some happily married couples. So it does appear to work for some couples. I think there’s value in the idea that sometimes we do need to declare a truce over an issue and then maybe agree to leave it until we feel like we are more equipped to come back to it. If used with restraint, it can be a way to remind yourself about the positive, get unstuck, and move forward. However, if you’re doing this constantly it becomes the elephant (or herd of elephants) in the room that nobody wants to mention. Declaring a Topic Taboo This is the next notch up from suppressing arguments. Declaring a topic taboo happens when you mutually decide not to ever talk about a certain issue for the good of the relationship. Deciding that a certain issue is totally off limits is probably something you’ll only consider for major issues, maybe after having tried and failed to come to any kind of resolution. But as a strategy for dealing with these major problems, it isn’t always successful. Explicitly agreeing that you aren't going to talk about an issue is problematic because it means acknowledging that there is an unresolved issue that you are unable or unwilling to solve. On the other hand, deciding not to argue about something can be done based on selectively disclosing your position to your spouse without attempting to persuade them of your point of view. In our post about why it’s important to stop bottling things up we created a guide for how to approach irreconcilable differences; issues that aren’t going anywhere and are unlikely to ever get solved. There was a similar idea there about continually sharing your own perspective without trying to change your spouse’s mind or persuade them. This ongoing discussion might be a better idea than simply making something taboo. Declaring topics or past issues as taboo was negatively correlated with relationship satisfaction in terms of both the number of taboo subjects and the extent to which they were made explicit[v]. However, relationship commitment moderated this effect to the point where taboo topics did not significantly affect relationship quality in high-commitment couples. Implicit decisions to make some subjects taboo were less linked to low marriage satisfaction and were present in some happily married couples. So you can see many of these strategies kind of work and kind of don’t. It is a mixed bag. It is probably very nuanced from couple to couple and even issue to issue with that couple. Sometimes you can both live with designating a subject as taboo and loving everything else about being married to each other. Sometimes you cannot. So these are examples of how you may be able to fix your marriage, or parts of it, without dredging up the past. On the other hand, the research is also showing this likely isn’t going to work for everything in your past. And I’m guessing: the larger the issue, the less likely it is to work out for the benefit of your marriage. Starting Over Without Resolving the Past So what about the whole turn-over-a-new-leaf thing? Can you just put everything behind you? Personally, I think this is pretty unlikely to succeed. The reason being is that your relationship is a matrix of perspectives and behavior. You act and react towards your spouse. You perceive and interpret and make meaning out of each other’s words and actions. These form a matrix defined by your experiences of each other over the years. So you can decide to put all history in the past and close that book but you still have this matrix. And the next time your spouse repeats some problematic behavior,...

PDA in Marriage: What Is OK and How to Find Your Balance

Wed, 24 May 2017 11:00:49 +0000

You probably already know whether you are the kind of couple that holds hands in public or the kind that keeps a careful distance. What you might not know is how much that gap, when it exists between spouses, can quietly shape the emotional temperature of a marriage over time. PDA, or public display of affection, covers any physical or verbal expression of love that others can witness: holding hands, a kiss goodbye, an arm around the shoulder, a look that communicates something private in a public setting. A PDA couple is simply one where that kind of affection shows up in public with some regularity. The research on what it does for marriages is consistent and worth knowing. The clinical picture of what happens when spouses disagree about it is something I see in practice with real regularity. What Is a PDA Couple? PDA stands for public display of affection. It exists on a wide spectrum, and understanding roughly where the categories fall helps couples have a more specific conversation about what each person is, and is not, comfortable with. At the subtle end: using a term of endearment, making deliberate eye contact across a room, adjusting your spouse’s collar without thinking about it. These tend to be unconscious and rarely cause disagreement. Touch-based affection covers holding hands, linking arms, a hand on the lower back, a shoulder squeeze. These are the forms research most consistently links to positive relationship outcomes. Kissing ranges from a brief peck on the cheek to something more lingering. In most North American settings, a hello kiss after an absence is unremarkable. Where it starts to attract attention or discomfort tends to be about duration and intensity rather than the act itself. More intimate contact in public includes full embraces, cuddling, sustained close physical contact in view of others. This is where individual and cultural comfort levels vary most. And then there is a category that falls outside PDA entirely, which I will come back to. How PDA Benefits Your Marriage The research on physical affection in relationships is consistent and worth taking seriously. Both private and public physical touch increase relationship satisfaction, commitment, and the sense of intimacy between partners. Research from Gulledge and colleagues found that all types of physical affection correlate with higher relationship satisfaction and greater ease of conflict resolution. What struck me about that finding was the specificity: physical affection had no effect on how often couples fought, but it significantly changed how capable they were of resolving disagreement. Touch does not prevent hard seasons. It changes what spouses are capable of during them. The biological mechanism matters here. Physical touch releases oxytocin, the bonding hormone, and reduces cortisol, the stress hormone. Your body responds to your spouse’s presence even when your mind is elsewhere. What couples experience as emotional connection has a physical substrate, and maintaining that physical thread through busy or difficult seasons keeps the nervous system regulated in ways that support closeness. There is also a support component that does not require either spouse to consciously notice it. Research from Robinson, Hoplock, and Cameron found that physical touch communicates care even when the receiving spouse did not ask for it and may not register it as comfort. It operates quietly, in the background. The couples I work with who maintain physical affection through conflict tend to stay more emotionally accessible to each other, not because they feel warm in every moment, but because the physical language between them keeps running even when the emotional temperature drops. Another study found that physical affection is linked to reduced anxiety, lower blood pressure, and decreased physiological stress responses. More affection, public and private, is better for the health of a marriage. That is not a platitude. It is what the research shows. Why Couples Disagree About PDA When spouses are not on the same page about public affection, there are usually a few factors at work. Understanding them does not resolve the disagreement on its own, but it changes the conversation significantly. Gender patterns. Men tend to initiate more PDA than women in dating and younger relationships, while women tend to initiate more in established marriages. For men, physical touch in public often carries a courtship function: signaling investment and claim. Once marriage is established, that driver can quietly drop off. For women in secure relationships, PDA is more about ongoing connection. Neither pattern is wrong. But it explains why some husbands become less physically expressive after marriage without realizing anything has shifted, and why that absence registers as meaningful to their wives. Attachment style. This one matters more than most couples realize. Partners with an anxious attachment style tend to seek more PDA. Physical contact in public functions as reassurance: the relationship is visible, the commitment is present, the other person is here. Partners with an avoidant attachment style often find PDA uncomfortable. Physical closeness in private is manageable; in public, it can feel exposing, like vulnerability without the safety that makes vulnerability bearable. Neither spouse is being difficult. They are operating from different internal models of what security looks like in a relationship. How you were raised. What you witnessed growing up forms a baseline for what feels normal, excessive, or intrusive. Research found that women whose parents had divorced were significantly more uncomfortable viewing public affection than those from intact families. A spouse who grew up in a demonstrative household and one who grew up in a more reserved one will arrive at marriage with different defaults, and they usually do not discover this until those defaults collide. Perceived disapproval. Couples who feel their relationship might draw negative attention, whether due to cultural background, interracial pairing, or same-sex partnership, consistently show lower rates of public affection. This is not reluctance. It is a safety calculation. Protecting the relationship from possible judgment sometimes overrides the impulse toward affection. If this is part of your dynamic, naming it explicitly changes the conversation from “why won’t you touch me in public” to something more honest and workable. Culture. What is unremarkable in one setting is conspicuous in another. Our podcast has been downloaded in more than 100 countries. In some of those contexts, a warm public greeting between spouses is expected and noticed when absent. In others, the same gesture would draw real attention. If you and your spouse come from different cultural backgrounds, your assumptions about PDA are likely shaped by those differences in ways you have never made explicit. When PDA Crosses a Line There is a meaningful difference between public displays of affection and public sexual behavior. The first builds connection and communicates love. The second crosses into territory that works against what intimacy is supposed to do. The clearest cases are not difficult to identify. Explicitly sexual contact in public, including touching your spouse’s private parts, is not a matter of different comfort levels or cultural interpretation. It is a matter of basic respect: for your spouse, and for the people around you. Intimacy at that level requires privacy and safety. A public setting cannot offer that. What might feel exciting in the moment is, at that level of explicitness, an exposure of your spouse rather than an expression of care for them. Kissing occupies a genuine grey area. A warm, lingering kiss in the right setting reads as affection. The same kiss extended past the point of consideration for those around you, or escalated in a way that becomes explicitly arousing, reads as something else. The honest question: is this for my spouse, or is it for the feeling of the moment? One thing worth knowing: your nervous system does not always clearly distinguish between different types of arousal. The mild physiological elevation that comes from a semi-public or slightly risky setting can overlap with sexual arousal. That blurring is not a character flaw. It is worth being aware of, particularly when PDA starts escalating in ways that feel charged. Awareness of what is happening gives you more control over where it goes. How to Find the Right PDA Balance Together This is where the conversation becomes clinically meaningful. When there is a consistent difference in PDA desire between spouses, it rarely stays neutral. It tends to activate what couples therapists recognize as a pursuing/distancing cycle, and that cycle can quietly do real damage over time. One spouse reaches out: a hand on the arm, an attempt at a kiss, a moment of closeness in public. The other pulls back, not out of rejection but out of genuine discomfort. The first spouse reads that withdrawal as a signal: they do not want me close. They reach out again, more urgently. The other spouse feels the pressure and withdraws further. Within a few rounds, what started as a simple difference in comfort has become a pattern where one person is relentlessly pursuing connection and the other is relentlessly protecting space, and both feel like something is wrong with the marriage. This dynamic is not really about PDA. It is about what those bids for connection mean to each spouse, and what it signals to each person when they are declined. Getting out of that cycle starts with a conversation that is honest about what is actually happening beneath the surface. That conversation needs to surface a few things: the unspoken rules each spouse brought into the marriage around physical affection, which rarely get named directly; what each person’s actual comfort level is with different forms of

Why a Fair Division of Labor is Important in Marriage

Wed, 17 May 2017 11:00:40 +0000

Well, this should be a fun subject! There are a lot of factors that go into how household chores get divided up between husband and wife, and today we want to give you guidance as to how to do that without creating any unnecessary conflict or resentment. Have you and your spouse ever had an argument over whose turn it is to do the dishes? Or do you ever resent your spouse for doing less around the house than you? Issues around the division of labor are common in most marriages and there’s a lot to unpack in terms of what society expects men and women to be involved with and what you each perceive as being “normal” or “fair”. And the research shows that it’s that perception of fairness that’s key to diving the work in a way that leads to a happy, distress-free marriage. Unequal Division of Household Work According to a piece of research by Breen & Cooke[i], husband’s contribution to household work is on average one third of the time that the wife puts in. This ratio, they claim, has persisted even with the increase in women having full time jobs and financial autonomy. Women still take most responsibility for, and spend the most time on, household tasks. This is not due to any kind of power-struggle within the marriage and is not caused by different amounts of time available. "Rather, it is the non-conscious ideology developed from parental modeling that preserves traditional sex roles[ii]”. Meaning that women naturally end up doing more of the housework because that’s how things worked in their parent’s house and that’s still considered the norm in most of society. So, do we have a gender inequality issue? I think that’s the question that we have to start with. These researchers go on to say that we need to get past gender inequality. Women do more unpaid work around the house than men, irrespective of whether they work and the amount of time those women have available. And this often comes from expectations and from unacknowledged ideas about gender roles. So, the researchers say, you need to work to balance this out. But: not so fast. Let me make a few points, and we have to keep all these points together. If you quote me on only one of them I’m going to sound like a liberal and the other, I’ll sound like a misogynist — we all know what that word means since the last US election, right? I’d like to give a balanced perspective on this. First, the Bible calls on husbands to live with their wives in an understanding way (1 Peter 3:7). The Bible puts the onus on us as husbands to be considerate. I think a lot of guys don’t think through their own assumptions and don’t understand why their wife is disappointed about how chores get divided up. I want to challenge husbands to be the leaders in this discussion — not leading in the sense of authoritative decision making but leaders in the sense of facilitating an open, understanding, receptive discussion about how each of you feel about how fairly you divide up the housework and childcare. So husbands need to be particularly considerate of the possibility that their wives are working harder than they are. Equality vs Fairness The next point to this section is that we also need to consider that there is a difference between equal and fair. I’m not talking about whether you and your wife are equals. You are. There’s nothing to discuss there. I’m talking about the equal division of labor vs. the fair division of labor. An equal division and a fair division might not always be exactly the same. You may disagree on the equality of the division and feel that one of you does more than the other, including the outside work you do. Or you may agree on the equality of the division of labor but feel that it is unfair. For example, if Verlynda and I split hours of household 50/50 and I work outside the home and Verlynda doesn’t I might say, that’s equal household hours but to me, it still feels unfair. The next couple, however, might be in the same situation but feel that this is fair because whatever else the wife is doing that doesn’t qualify as outside work or household work is so important that the husband is willing to do 50/50 even though he’s the sole breadwinner. Maybe she is taking care of a disabled child; maybe she is involved in the church somehow, whatever. So there could be meaning to her extra-curricular activity that they both support, and therefore he is willing to have equal hours of household work with her. Bottom line: it’s not just about equality, it’s about fairness. Further, it may be that a couple—both husband and wife—honestly prefer traditional gender roles. And perhaps they both work full-time jobs. But for whatever reason, by her own free choice, she prefers to do most of the household work and she is happy with how he uses his non-work time. Who are we to judge them? If they feel that is fair for them, God bless them! There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with traditional values—I’m assuming she’s not brainwashed or oppressed or anything. She just likes it that way and he does to. Good for them! So that is why in our title for this show we talk about the fair division of labor. There are so many variables that I don’t think ‘equal’ is the best word. I think ‘fair’ is the best word. And I mean fair in both your minds. Watch for Gatekeeping There’s one more thing to keep in mind: wives themselves may also be a barrier to fairness, even while asking for this in their marriage. There could be cases of men wanting to do more but their wife prefers it done to a higher standard. We’ve talked about gatekeeping in episode 80: Husband Doesn’t Help With The Kids? It Could Be Your Fault! That’s a situation where a husband cannot do more with the children because the wife prevents him. And meanwhile, she may be complaining that he’s not doing enough. So I think having a really good conversation about actual tasks, chores, work and childcare that needs doing is essential. Talking about roles and expectations. What happened in your family of origin, what you expected to do the same and what you expected to do differently: we have to talk through these things as couples. Expectations & Perceptions Around Household Labor Let’s look a little at the different expectations you and your spouse might be bringing to the marriage in terms of gender roles and division of work. A study by Hiller & Philliber[iii] asked 498 couples about their perceptions of who should be responsible for what jobs, and their expectations of who should do what within the marriage. They found that the majority of husbands consider it important to be better at traditionally "male" roles like earning the main income, and a significant proportion (43%) of women think it is important for females to be better at childcare. Now, this is an older study from the 80s and is reflective of the values of that time. But, even if the roles lead to an unequal distribution in terms of time, both men and women may still be quite attached to their different roles in a significant portion of marriages. So perhaps for you, the division of labor is about which tasks are important to you just as much as it is about which ones take the most time. A more recent study from 2009[iv]analyzed survey data from 732 couples about attitudes to division of labor and found that "women have more favorable attitudes toward cleaning, cooking, and child care than do men: women enjoy it more, set higher standards for it, and feel more responsible for it." Women's favorable attitudes to these tasks and men's unfavorable attitudes to them accounted for the reasons women actually did them more, rather than differences in available time or capacity to do them well. So again, it’s not that women tend to have more time for these kinds of tasks: you can’t use that as an excuse! But there is, in a lot of marriages, a preference to do the tasks and jobs which society would traditionally assign to you. Is this the result of social constructs? Probably. Is that a bad thing? Well: that depends on you. I don’t see a prescriptive Biblical assertion that says women should do dishes and men should do the mowing. Nor is there anything intrinsic about cooking or cleaning that makes women better at them or enjoy them more than men. But I think the point here is that expectations do play a major role and those expectations are shaped by society, by your beliefs, by your family of origin and your life experiences. Also, your spouse’s expectations may not be what you imagine them to be. In fact, when asked about their spouse's expectations around the division of labor, husbands were often LESS traditional and wives often MORE traditional than anticipated[v]. So husbands were sometimes more willing to share traditionally female tasks than their wives were. Again: we come back to needing to have the conversation. The best way to understand your spouse’s expectations is to sit down and lay them out. Also, this same study found that both spouses think they do more work than the other spouse. So having an accurate idea of how much time you each spend on things can help you divide the work properly. However: just a caution there. It’s not purely about the quantity of hours. That’s going down the ‘equal division’ by quantity trail, and you will probably need to go more down the ‘fair division’ in order to achieve a happy outcome to this discussion. Perceived Fairness in Dividing Household Chores But is imbalance a problem? A study in 2009[vi] showed that an imbalance in the division of work was linked to marital distress. But the perception of the division as fair was the mediating variable. It wasn’t the imbalance in terms of hours worked that caused distress, it was the perception of things being unfair. So this is research confirming what I’ve been saying. Fairness matters. And a perception of what is fair is going to be very different from couple to couple. ...

A Marriage Survival Guide for Parents with Toddlers

Wed, 10 May 2017 11:00:45 +0000

The busyness of life can often have an impact on your marriage, and few stages of life are as hectic as raising toddlers. Balancing the never ending demands of looking after young children with a full time job and caring for elderly parents can seem impossible, and this stress is bound to have an affect on the amount of time you have for your spouse. So what can you do?

2 Questions To Think About Before You End Your Marriage

Wed, 03 May 2017 11:00:57 +0000

What do you do when your marriage is absolutely at the end of the road? Is divorce your only option? Does separation ever help couples reconcile? And is there ever such a thing as a marriage that’s beyond recovery? I’ve had a number of individuals reach out to me lately through our website saying that they are absolutely at the end of their rope as far as their marriage goes. They aren’t just whining or complaining. Some have been married for decades and the marriage has been very difficult for that entire time. They want out. But their value system tells them it’s wrong. If you are seriously considering ending your marriage there are some critical questions that you need to ask yourself first. Is It Ever Too Late to Save the Marriage? Let me start by saying that for our readers who are believers (born-again Christians), which is most of you, we don’t intend to get into the divorce and remarriage debate today. We just want to assert that God is pro-marriage, and so are we. That’s the core value that is driving the content of today’s post (and all of our content!). If you’re looking for someone who will justify the termination of your marriage for you, you’ll have to look to other resources. Having said that we are not at all unsympathetic to the profound distress many of our listeners are experiencing in their marriage. We’re just pointing out that we want to take you in the direction of healing and recovery in your marriage. So this is a great question. And there are a couple of things to look at. One is the desire for reconciliation. A study in 2011[i] interviewed divorcing couples and found that: 1 in 4 individuals indicated some belief that the marriage could be saved, even as they were going through the final stages of the divorce process Only for 1 in 9 couples (~11%) did both spouses have this belief 1/3 of couples were interested in external reconciliation services This data seems to suggest that even as couples go through divorce, a reasonable minority still have some form of hope and belief that the marriage can be reconciled. And so I think if you’re in the process of divorcing I hope you’ve taken the opportunity to ask your spouse this question: do you believe our marriage could be saved? If you get a flat “no” then you know where you’re at. If you get a “yes” it’ll probably be a “Yes, if…” or a “Yes, but…” and then a list of demands or things that need to change. And I would say for that discussion: don’t spiral off into an argument about what was said after the “Yes”. If you want to save your marriage and both you and your spouse believe it is possible, then surely it’s worth a shot? Why not ask them if you can both take that “Yes” and then get some outside help to work on the “if” or “but” conditions. All those grievances and things that need to change are much easier to face if both of you want to get through them and both of you believe that it’s within the realms of possibility. Another study from 2012[ii] interviewed couples going through a divorce. The most common reasons for divorce were “growing apart” (55% of couples) and not being able to talk together (53%). These factors decreased participant’s interest in the idea of reconciliation, as did differences in tastes and financial issues. But there were other reasons cited for divorce that actually increased the interest in the possibility of reconciliation: “Not getting enough attention” is an example. Presumably because in this situation you still want your spouse’s attention, you just feel you aren’t getting enough of it. “Problems with the in-laws” also predicted higher interest in the possibility of reconciliation. Finally, being involved in abuse did not affect the desire to reconcile. It’s interesting that these are all couples going through a divorce but the interest in the possibility of reconciliation is tied to some of the reasons why they were going for a divorce. It is really complex to try to tease all these apart. For abuse I’d refer you back to episode 125 about when to stay or leave an abusive marriage. For the others, it may be more about the difference between major hurdles (like an affair) vs. long-standing differences in values or vision (like financial goals). Single events like infidelity or abuse, however difficult to go through, don’t seem to color your impression of your marriage’s prospects as badly as a long-standing inability to connect. But this study also showed that 26% of couples believed their marriage could still be saved, even as they were going through the divorce process. I think what is worth noting is that all of these issues are ‘treatable’. They respond to therapy. You can learn communication skills. You can learn to deal with in-laws. You can go deep on those financial issues to find the core values driving each of you and then find ways to honor each other in despite differences. We did a five-part series on debt and budgeting for marriage which you could definitely use as a starting point. Is it ever too late to save the marriage? Dr. Gottman says that when the fondness and admiration system in the marriage is completely dead—not just veiled by long-standing conflict—then you should help the couple figure out how to separate amicably. I'm not sure I'd be ready to give up even at this point, however. In my opinion it’s only definitely too late to save the marriage when one spouse is dead or remarried. Having said that, I want to acknowledge those of you who are married to a spouse with a personality disorder or to a sex addict who will not seek treatment or to an abusive husband. I would not in any way force you to stay married: who am I to ask you to do something that has no consequences for me, and profound ones for you? So at the end of the day, this is your decision. And one to be made very carefully, with much prayer and seeking of God’s will, and advice from trusted people in your life who care more about you than themselves. Does Divorce/Separation Ever Help? Our next question looks at whether divorce or separation are really the solutions you’re expecting them to be. You may recall back in Episode 125 we talked about leaving an abusive marriage. One of the interesting observations is that wives who come and go, and are in and out of living with an abusive spouse, fare worse than spouses who make a firm decision to stay or make a firm decision to go. Similarly, a study from 1984[iii] noted that couples who file for divorce, but whose petitions are withdrawn or dismissed, report higher rates of psychological distress than control group samples of divorced and married people. Reconciled couples experience high levels of domestic violence and have more serious marital complaints than those who divorce, but are not especially likely to seek professional help. I think that waving divorce around as a stick is not always helpful — that’s what could be concluded from this. I hate to say you need to finish what you start because I don’t want people to finish their divorce if there’s hope of saving the marriage. So what I hope comes across is that you should not go down the divorce road if you don’t have the intention to complete what you start. What about separation? Here’s a quote from a study in the 80’s:[iv] "The limbo of separation is associated with physical and psychological health problems. In fact, even higher rates of physical and psychological distress are reported for the separated than for the divorced or widowed.” So it seems that separation is a very distressing state to be in. Being apart from your spouse, probably with your last argument still ringing in your ears, and with your future incredibly uncertain is bound to take its toll on your wellbeing. From what I’ve observed in my own practice I do see this to be the case too. But, here’s some data to think about: Data from the 2009 Census in USA: 87% of couples going through a "trial separation" or living apart end up divorcing. Most are divorced by 3 years from the separation. So most separations end in divorce. 1 in 8 or so do not, however, which is notable. Let’s look at some more research on separation. A study in 1994[v] examined info from national surveys. They reported that one third of women who attempted to reconcile the marriage were still married 1 year later. So that’s a relatively high success rate. Religion has the strongest relationship to successful reconciliation, followed by cohabiting before marriage, and similarity in age between partners. Socioeconomic factors like race, income, etc were not related to the success of reconciliation. Having some grounding in faith helped your marriage reconnect even at this late stage, while other seemingly prominent factors like your financial situation did not. Around 1 in 10 couples who were married reported having separated for some length of time during their marriage. Another study from 1985[vi] interviewed 1101 married/separated individuals. They found that separations of 48 hours or more resulting from arguments/discord were found in 1 in 6 marriages, suggesting that shorter separations resulting from arguments are not uncommon and do not always spell disaster for the marriage. However, marriages that ended in divorce were 4 or 5 times more likely to have had a separation at some point. So separations due to arguments ending in one of you leaving are not a sign of a healthy marriage and don't seem to help. Another study found that the likelihood of any married couple experiencing a separation was found to be nearly 5 percent in one year[vii]. Most separations (77%), after lasting about one year, end in divorce. Binstock & Thornton (2003)[viii] examined relationship trajectories in marriage (and cohabitation) based on national survey results and looked at the effect of both separating due to discord and separating for other reasons (such as jobs or

My Husband Is Not an Emotional Guy

Wed, 26 Apr 2017 11:00:24 +0000

If I had a dollar every time a husband told me he wasn’t a very emotional guy, I’d be retired by now. But hey, I’m not judging. I used to think the same thing. Turns out: it’s pure bunkum. And it’s messing up your marriage too. It’s definitely a very commonly held view that women are more emotional than men. The stereotypical view is that women’s emotions are all over the place and they’re only too happy to let you know about it, while men are more muted; less extreme in their emotions and less willing to talk about how they’re feeling. But the research on emotion and gender paints a rather different picture. There are some differences around our ways of expressing ourselves, but nothing so drastic as being able to say that men “just aren’t as emotional” as women. Sorry, guys. Does Evidence Support the Idea that Women are More Emotional? We have to start by looking at our culture, and the subset of a culture known as emotion culture. Emotion culture is defined as a way of viewing emotions and their expression within society. It’s the unspoken rules and implicit assumptions that guide how we see and express different emotions. Unsurprisingly, these rules differ for women and men. Part of western emotion culture then is the belief that women are “both more emotional and more emotionally expressive” than men[i]. Also it is widely thought that we differ in the emotions we feel and express: for example anger is a masculine reaction to things and sadness is more a feminine reaction[ii]. But does this commonly held view hold up to scrutiny? A study by Simon and Nath[iii] used a questionnaire about daily emotional experiences for which they analyzed 1460 responses. They looked at: The frequency of feeling emotions in general The frequency of reporting feeling different emotions (changing emotional state) Emotional expressiveness (how much expressivity happened) They found: No difference in the frequency of feeling emotions between genders. Men feel as frequently as women do. Some differences around which emotions are felt by men and women, but not a strong link. Often these differences were accounted for by differences in roles or situations. For example, women reported feeling negative emotions more often but this difference was accounted for by their lower household income. Men often reported feeling calm more often than women did, but when the effect of having children under 18 was removed, this effect disappeared. Men aren't naturally calmer than women--women are just less calm because they are dealing with the kids! Women DO express their emotions more readily than men. But the underlying level of feeling is not different. Now you have visibility into emotion culture: humans all experiencing the same amount of feeling, but culture is dictating the extent to which you express it. We’ll unpack that more in a minute. I only cited one study. Let me drop a couple more in just so we know that we’re being fair in our consideration of the research. Kring & Gordon[iv]: measured people’s emotions while watching film clips that were either scary, happy or sad. They observed participant’s facial expressions, self-reported emotional reaction and skin-conductance, which is part of the physiological or biological aspect of emotion. They found no difference in self-reported emotions or skin conductance between men and women, but women were again more expressive with their facial expressions. Men were reporting feeling the same emotions as women, they just weren’t showing them externally. So again: male and female feelings were the same. Only women were more expressive of those feelings. Another study: Lively & Powell[v]: looked at differences in expression of anger between men and women. Found that "social domain and status differences are such powerful predictors of emotion expression that they eclipse the influence of other individual characteristics, most notably the gender of both the individual and the target of the anger." So any perceived difference in anger between men and women are actually down to differences in status/power. Again, note the identical underlying feelings, but observe that cultural influence is the modulating factor. How Does Society Shape Emotion? Roles and Norms have an impact. Due to different expectations placed men and women, and different roles in society, there are differences in emotional expression. So it’s not that God made men one way emotionally and women another, it’s actually about the roles and expectations of society[vi]. Emotion Management is another factor which affects different levels of expression. Emotion management means controlling what emotions you feel, as well as what you express. And this is done by channeling or bringing to mind memories with strong emotions attached to them. Society dictates which emotions are considered acceptable for men and women to feel and express. And we use emotion management based on our gender expectations to regulate what we express. So if a man feels sad about something he may channel angry memories in order to make himself feel more angry, as this is considered a more normal response for a man. This is emotion management at work. Reaction from Others. Society will react differently to men and women displaying certain emotions, teaching them which emotions it is acceptable to feel and display. Thorne[vii] shows that boys are given more leeway in expressing anger in the school playground than girls. This affect also changes which emotions men and women pay attention to. From an early age, boys are also taught to conceal their emotions while girls are taught to express them. Hence why many guys prefer to bottle stuff up in marriage rather than honestly talk about what’s going on. Differences in expression of emotions increased with age, and are more pronounced when interacting with unfamiliar adults than with parents, suggesting it is a learned behavior[viii] rather than something innately different about men and women. All of this adds up to the fact that ability to feel different emotions is the same for men and women, and the differences in expressiveness are much more to do with society’s expectations than any real gender differences. Women in our emotion culture are taught from a young age that it’s ok to express how they are feeling while men are taught to conceal their true emotions or twist them into something more “manly”. Bottom line: looking at gender differences and looking at the impact of society: your husband is a perfectly emotional guy. You are not a crazy emotional woman. You are actually the same emotionally. You just differ in your expressiveness and, probably also your awareness. So when a guy says to me, I’m not an emotional guy, I’ve always corrected him and said, “You should say, “I’m not an emotionally expressive guy, yet.” That is what is actually true. Sorry guys. Your cover is blown. Now, I’ve started a Kickstarter campaign and if I can raise one million dollars from all you guys out there by the end of the month, I will remove this post from the Internet! Just kidding… However, I do have a more practical solution for you. Below, we’re going to take a look at increasing emotional expressiveness and then why this is so important to your marriage. Trust me, you’re missing out, gentlemen: this is going to open up a whole new world. And you'll love it! Increasing Emotional Expressiveness I’m going to tell you a little of what you need to do to increase emotional expressiveness here but if you really want to know HOW to do it, be sure to become a patron and get the guide for this episode. The first thing is to become more aware of your emotions. Having an accurate idea of what emotion you are feeling, and what caused it, isn’t always easy. To begin with, pay attention to the physiological signs: what you’re feeling in your body. Think of it this way. The feeling is about sad, happy, hurt, etc. Emotion is about where and how you experience that in your body. That’s a key. Map your physiological signals back to the feelings they represent. This is where emotional intelligence comes in. Knowing what you’re feeling and why makes a huge difference in your ability to accurately interpret the world around you. And then a huge part of that becomes learning to understand your spouse! Here’s an example. Read this carefully. In a study by Yip and Cote[ix], people were measured for emotional intelligence and given a decision making/risk-taking survey. All participants displayed risk-taking preferences about 50% of the time. The researchers then repeated the exercise but induced anxiety in participants first by telling them they would have to give a speech later. Those with high emotional intelligence performed exactly the same on the risk test- they could tell that the anxiety they were feeling was nothing to do with the current task. Those with low EI showed a big reduction in risk-taking behavior- they thought their anxiety was to do with the current task and so acted in a safer way. They misinterpreted the source of their anxiety. They didn’t know exactly what they were feeling, nor why they were feeling it. In a follow-up study, this effect could be eliminated by making low EI participants aware of the real source of their anxiety. Even in people who are not naturally good at identifying their emotions (people with low emotional intelligence), developing "emotion-understanding ability guards against the biasing effects" of misinterpreted emotion. So even if it's not something you are naturally good at, forcing yourself to identify where your emotions are coming from is still effective. And you need to know: we figure we’re born with an IQ — a defined, predetermined level of intelligence. However, I know from my own experience and seeing my clients’ growth that emotional intelligence can be developed and grown,...

Why Every Couple Needs to Pray Together

Wed, 19 Apr 2017 11:00:02 +0000

So for a long time, I thought praying together was just a nice thing to do. It was one of those optional, lets-do-this-if-we-remember kind of things. But with time, my perspective on this has shifted. A lot. Regular readers of the blog will know that we offer sound, research-based advice, as well as speaking from a Christian worldview. Even today when we’re looking at the effect of prayer on your marriage we’re referring to what we can learn from Scripture and from secular research because we believe that God also reveals truth in creation. When I was coming to the research that had been prepared for this post I had in my head that we would only be looking at praying together, but there’s also some great info about praying for your marriage that I want to share as well. The research shows that both praying for your marriage and praying with your partner have some incredibly beneficial effects on your marriage. Prayer Increases Long-Term Marriage Satisfaction I wasn’t expecting this but it does make sense. It turns out that praying for blessings for your spouse predicts marriage satisfaction later in life[i]. So this study showed that who praying for the wellbeing of your spouse predicted relationship satisfaction at a later point in time. The opposite was not true! Relationship satisfaction did not lead to an increase in prayer. So it was apparent that prayer is a catalyst to increase relationship satisfaction. As the researchers considered this, they speculated that prayer encouraged spouses to think about the long-term aspects of the relationship. Here’s a quote: "Praying to an eternal and unchanging being and asking for positive things for my partner, may prime me to use a longer time frame in thinking about my relationship to my partner as well.[ii]" That might be the case. I have a different idea. In 1 Peter 3:7, Peter is instructing husbands and he says, “Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered.” (NKJV). Notice here that there is a prescriptive and behavior that Peter requires of husbands so that their prayers are not hindered. In other words, you have to behave a certain way, giving honor to your wife and understanding her, in order for your prayer to be effective. I think this is also one of the ways that prayer impacts marriage. It puts back-pressure on your behavior. I know if I get to the end of the day and if I’ve been crusty with Verlynda or disrespectful towards her or have just been a jerk: I can’t pray. It just feels so fraudulent. So one of the things I’ve noticed is that having a daily time of prayer together forces me to confront myself with my care for my wife and how I’ve related to her that day. I think that has a regulatory effect that challenges us to live— in both behaviour and attitude— in a way that allows us to arrive at the end of the day in a way that we can pray with authenticity. So of course that is going to have a positive effect on marriage. There’s another part that this researcher noted: praying for your spouse also involves God in the marriage. Because of this, there’s a sense of accountability towards God which means both that I’m watching my behavior again, but also that I’m checking in on my commitment levels. And, as we discussed in episode 45, a top 5 predictor of marital success is commitment. So if praying for your spouse and your marriage increases commitment, that’s definitely something we want to be doing as well. I’d like to issue a challenge on that note: do you pray for your spouse? And I mean, more than just “Father I pray for Verlynda and I pray for our dog etc etc”. Like you’re actually praying about stuff that matters to her and to you. Further, these same researchers noted that praying FOR your spouse and praying WITH your spouse were highly correlated. So I know we’re talking about praying together but this is why praying for your spouse also matters: the two go hand in hand. But I do think it’s useful to just underscore the point that prayer can alter the goals of your relationship by prompting you to focus your attention on the long term commitment and specifically on each other’s needs[iii]. This shift in goals then directs both spouses to choose behaviors that support the relationship rather than undermine it. Makes sense, right? You can’t pray for something and then sabotage it. It has to help. Specific Benefits of Prayer Let’s look at some specific benefits of prayer: why we need to pray together. I want to start with a personal observation about why it’s hard to pray together, because I think that we need to talk about this. Because ‘why’ it is hard, in my mind, directly relates to ‘why’ we need to. Vulnerability For the first several years of our marriage, I found it hard to pray. And I know from talking to other couples we weren’t alone in this. Typically, it seemed like the wife always wanted to but the husband wasn’t nearly as interested. I’d be lying in bed hoping Verlynda would fall asleep and just be thinking “I’ll just pray in my head after she falls asleep.” So I started trying to really observe myself and figure out what the reluctance was. Why was it so hard to pray together? After a while I concluded that it all really just boiled down to one thing: vulnerability. It was like either I pray and keep it superficial and feel like it’s pointless ‘cause it’s not getting to the real issues. And then I’m not being authentic. Or, I skip praying then I don’t feel unauthentic. Or, if we are going to pray sincerely together then I need to be vulnerable and openly vocalize my fears, anxieties, doubts and uncertainties in front of my wife before God, and admit my powerlessness to meet these needs. All in all, this means being very unmanly, per cultural expectations. On the other hand, you can see precisely why wives want their husbands to pray: they get an open window into their husband’s heart, probably in ways that he possibly isn’t otherwise opening to her. I eventually figured out that the reasons why I didn’t want to pray were the reasons why I should. That sense of vulnerability, while difficult to open yourself to, is a very powerful thing in marriage. Acknowledging that enabled me to commit to it and now I see it as a good thing. I still don’t always look forward to it, but it’s a good thing and I appreciate the inherent goodness of it. Forgiveness and Selfless Concern An interesting study from 2010[iv] asked 52 spouses to prayer either their spouse or to simply imaging describing their spouse to their parent (this was the control group). Participants who prayed for the well-being of their spouse reported greater willingness to forgive their spouse, and also reported higher levels of "selfless concern" for their spouse. This was shown to be true after just a single prayer for the other person and continued to be shown over longer periods. Why does this work or help? Well, selflessness was thought to be the mediating variable here: praying to God, who is strongly associated with love, primes couples to think un-selfishly about loving each other. This, therefore, leads to higher levels of forgiveness. There might also be a back-pressure or self-monitoring effect here too, like we described above. Spending time as a couple praying to God, who has already forgiven literally everything you have done and ever will do wrong, makes it harder to justify holding onto those little grudges and gripes we have with our spouse. Trust and Unity In another study, Lambert et al[v] asked couples how often they pray together and then were observed talking about their relationship. Observers then rated how highly the couple appeared to trust each other. Higher rates of praying together were linked to higher ratings of trust. A follow-up study found that unity was a mediating variable in this. Praying together creates a sense of unity and togetherness as you pray for the same things and connect with God together. This leads to increased trust. Of course, this fits well with what I said about vulnerability: if we see into each other’s hearts, nothing is hidden, there is more trust and more of a sense of being together. Commitment and Reduced Chance of Infidelity Fincham et al[vi] found that praying for blessings on your spouse predicted lower levels of infidelity in a longitudinal study. This effect is over and above what would be expected by measures of relationship satisfaction. Spouses asked to pray for each other once a day for 4 weeks were rated by observers as appearing to be more committed to each other at the end of the 4 week period. A moderating variable is this effect is the belief that the relationship is sacred: prayer is linked to a stronger belief that your relationship is sacred, which alters the goals of your relationship and naturally results in less infidelity. So there is value in prayer there too. How NOT to Pray Together I think it’s worth noting too that there can actually be destructive ways of praying together. Prayer that is focused on the negative qualities of your spouse or prayer that is trying to change your spouse’s behavior may decrease rather than increase relationship satisfaction (always a ‘duh’ moment when researchers point out the obvious!) Fincham et al[vii] noted that "joint couple prayer could be used by one partner as a tool to manipulate or coerce the other, accentuating rather than ameliorating problematic relationship dynamics” The message from this is: don’t be a dork when you’re praying. We looked in a previous post at healthy ways to approach conflict and not bottling things up in your marriage, and praying pointed prayers that your spouse would change some part of their behavior you find annoying does not form part of this....

What To Do When You’ve Just Discovered Your Husband’s Porn Habit

Wed, 12 Apr 2017 11:00:36 +0000

This week we’re hitting a very specific moment that is occurring in many marriages; that moment when you discover your husband’s porn habit. The revelation that your husband is addicted to some form of pornography is obviously a huge problem and a real shock to your marriage. But we're going to look at what the research says is the best way to deal with it in the immediate aftermath and how to look towards getting through it. We’re going to help you see what’s going on in his world, and then go through first steps towards recovery. We’ll be coming at that through two approaches: one if he is on board to get help and the other if he is in denial. One quick preparatory comment: we’re going to be using the word ‘addiction’ quite a bit in this episode. Researchers can debate the definition of this word and Christians even more so. I want to skip that discussion for now simply because this episode is for wives whose world has just come crashing down around them and a ten-minute theological diatribe is not going to be helpful. Discovering a porn addiction is an incredibly difficult thing to experience, often just as devastating as discovering an affair. Even if the problem is “just” online rather than in the real world, that same sense of betrayal, of being lied to, of a breakdown in trust, of repulsion, anger, and even fear are felt in response to this horrifying discovery. Wives may well wonder if their marriage can have a future after discovering that their trust has been violated on such a deep level for such a long period of time and angry thoughts of revenge are common. Defining Porn Addiction Let me give you a definition that can be used to help understand what’s going on for your husband and will give us a basis for what we need to go over today. I also want to say that while my main specialty is marriage therapy, my second most experienced area of work is with pornography recovery. Also, this problem, unfortunately, has been a part of the history of our marriage and so Verlynda and I will be drawing out on our own respective experiences too. Addiction is "when a person compulsively uses sex to alter his or her mood to produce pleasure and/or to provide an escape from internal discomfort and is employed [or, entrenched] in a pattern characterized by recurrent failure to control the behavior and continuation of the behavior despite significant negative consequences[i]". I like that definition for a few reasons: It identifies why your spouse is engaging in this behavior. Not for the purpose of justifying it but helping us to understand: he’s using porn to alter his mood and/or escape. This is important because there is a valid need and an invalid coping mechanism at play. Your husband has a desire to feel better or escape from the pressures of his life, which is normal but has turned to a very unhelpful way of meeting that need. If we want the invalid coping mechanism (the porn) to go away, we have to also take care of the valid need in a healthy way. It also points out the recurrent pattern: this could be daily, weekly, monthly, even quarterly. There’s a recurring pattern here. And it also highlights the fact that at some level, even on the verge of his awareness, he knows there are significant negative consequences to his behavior. Why doesn’t that stop him? That’s a separate discussion where we would have to look at addictive cycles and come back to that valid need. Keeping a Healthy Perspective If you’ve just discovered his porn addiction, it will probably be a real shock and there will be all kinds of feelings going through you. To help you get a handle on the situation there are a few things you need to know. The first is that you’re not alone. This is a profoundly common problem but also one that carries a lot of shame for both husbands and wives. Because of that, it doesn’t get talked about. Usually, couples that go through this go through it feeling very alone and without sharing it with others. Several years ago I hit the point where I was done with the lies and hiding this and I disclosed to Verlynda — she felt very alone. There’s that very real issue: who do you go to? On the one hand you need help and support. And on the other, you either don’t want everyone to think your husband is a freak or you feel like people are going to look at you like, wow, you must not have been giving him enough action. So it’s a very stuck place to be in. But: know that you are not alone. The second thing that’s important is to know that it’s not your fault. A study from 2012[ii] asked 171 people about porn habits and real-life sexual activity. The researcher found that satisfaction with real-life sex and relationships was NOT linked to porn use. So it’s normal for a wife to feel guilty or responsible, but the research shows that your husband’s addiction is NOT because you’re leaving him “unsatisfied”. I would totally agree with this and point out that wives often forget to consider that this is always (as far as I’ve ever seen) something that the husband has brought to the marriage. So this was a pre-existing problem, and also not one that you can or should try to solve by trying to compete with the porn problem. The third thing you should know is a little tricky to articulate because I don’t want to sound like I’m letting us guys off the hook. But the same researcher also found that sexual arousal from internet porn was found to reduce decision-making ability and to interfere with cognitive functioning. He may be aware of the negative consequences but if his cognition is impaired he doesn’t have full access to his decision-making ability. On top of this, the brain is definitely wired to reward short term gratification over long term satisfaction. I’m not saying this in his defense but just so you know that there are well established neural pathways here. And it’s going to take time for those pathways to break up and for new, healthier ones to form. This sucks. But it’s real. Fourthly, porn is going to change him and the way you interact. There’s a new dimension now that has become visible in your relationship. You may feel that your husband has changed in all kinds of ways, and women seeking help for their husbands often report the strongest reason to want help is that they feel they no longer recognize the person they are married to, and are "living with a stranger[iii]". Indeed, depression, change in sleeping habits, lack of intimacy, less interest in sex, irritability and defensiveness may all come into play. Just be prepared for this. On the flip side, having worked with people who have recovered, I think you should also know that the true, lovable, respectable version of the person you married is still in there. If he’s willing to work towards recovery and he’s being fully honest about his problems and his need for help then I sincerely believe that it is possible to get back to that person, not the addict you’re confronted with at the moment. I’ve seen this happen. Finally, he probably feels awful about it. Men struggling with porn addiction often feel high levels of "powerlessness, emptiness, hopelessness, depression, shame and guilt[iv]". Addiction can also lead to reduced feelings of intimacy with the real-life partner[v] and he may come to feel depressed or highly anxious about this. So bear this in mind when confronting him about it. On the other hand, if he’s only showing you anger and defensiveness, then these other feelings I would say are in there but are very much repressed. That’s why we have a section below on what to do if he’s in denial or refusing to get help. Whatever you do, don’t be accepting of his pornography problem. Pornography is evil and has nothing to add to your marriage. I know even some Christian podcasters take a more open approach but I have never found a reason to condone the use of pornography, even in a marriage where both spouses are accepting of it. Moral and biblical reasons aside, at the very least, it is profoundly degrading to the men and women who produce the material. It objectifies and violates their sanctity and dignity as humans. How to Talk to Your Husband about His Porn Addiction OK so we’ve given you a quick primer on the addiction and then talked about really holding onto a healthy perspective as you come to deal with this problem. Next, we’re going to talk about how to talk to your husband. There are two parts: one if he is on board and the other if he is not on board with getting help. In either case, these first discussions are very important. First Steps in Recovery for Cooperative Husbands Obviously having a discussion about pornography addiction is important. If your husband has already admitted that he has this issue and shown a genuine desire to be rid of it, that’s half the battle won already. But we are still potentially dealing with a brain-altering addiction and a long-standing habit here so helping your husband through recovery is going to be essential. If he has this stance that he wants to overcome his addition then you can focus on fighting the problem, not each other and developing a collaborative plan for dealing with the addiction. But I think it’s important that you understand as the wife that it’s not your role to manage his recovery. You may want to or even feel you need to because you feel that is how you’ll be safe. But you don’t want to end up in a codependency situation where you’re in charge of managing his morality and recovery. Ultimately, recovery from this addiction is his responsibility and he has to take ownership. There are a number of suggestions here, from my own experience as a counselor and from a study by Weeks[vi]. So the first part of this is to help your husband understand the problems that pornography creates. He needs to see your pain, to know your deep feelings of hurt and betrayal and to know that you are completely unwilling to integrat

The Impact of Trauma on Marital Sexuality

Wed, 05 Apr 2017 11:00:29 +0000

Did you know that 89% of veterans experiencing PTSD report one or more kinds of sexual dysfunction? And that survivors of childhood sexual abuse have a very common set of negative feelings and beliefs about sex? That’s the bad news. The good news: your marriage can become a place to help heal trauma — even through what happens in your most intimate moments. In our previous post we asked whether trauma might be having an unseen impact on your marriage, and how you can identify and begin to heal this issue. Previous trauma can have a major impact on a marriage by damaging your ability to trust and open up to your spouse. It can also have a major impact on marital sexuality. Like last week, we’re not trying to encourage anyone to make up something that isn’t actually there. But I believe that trauma is impacting more of our marriages than many of us realize. And one area the symptoms are particularly evident in is the area of sexuality. We’re going to start by looking at how trauma impacts female and male sexuality individually. And then we’re going to show you how to improve your sexual relationship directly. If trauma is affecting your situation or even if you don’t have any trauma that you’re aware of, the last half of today’s post is going to have some very useful teaching on becoming more conversant about your sexual relationship. How Trauma Impacts a Wife’s Sexuality Unfortunately, a common cause of trauma in women is childhood sexual abuse. And although this also happens to men, we do have a very useful study from 2012[i] that specifically looks at the impact of childhood sexual abuse on women’s sexuality. Based on their review of the research, this study found that trauma impacts women’s sexuality in the following ways: "Women with a history of CSA report more negative feelings about sex and experience less sexual satisfaction than do non-abused women[ii]”. I want to be clear: this is normal. I know when statements like this are made it’s easy to put yourself in the “damaged goods” category. But that’s not what this is about. It’s really helpful when we’ve been through something profoundly difficult like trauma to know that we’re not alone in our struggles. Finding out that this is a normal experience should normalize it. So you’re not crazy, you’re not the only person like this. The good news is that there is hope and recovery. So just stay with me here. The first take-home point is that it’s not uncommon to report more of these negative feelings. Next, “Forming intimate adult relationships is often difficult” for survivors, and “when relationships are formed, sexual and emotional fulfillment is often lacking[iii]”. So if you’re listening today you may be listening because you want more from marriage — more from your relationship with your husband. That’s great! Research has found that the most common sexual difficulties in survivors are “disorders of desire, arousal, orgasm, and less often dyspareunia (painful sex) and vaginismus[iv]”. Vaginismus is the term given to recurring, involuntary tightening of the muscles around the vagina whenever penetration is attempted, making sex difficult or impossible. So these are common issues that female trauma survivors face in the context of married sexuality. What causes these sexual difficulties? That’s a good question to ask. One common underlying factor is often that survivors of sexual abuse have been found to have "more negative self-schemas [ways of thinking about self] than non-abused women[v]". When psychologists talk about schemas they are referring to our core beliefs- the things about ourselves and the world which we hold as irrefutably true. You can imagine that in intimacy when these deeply held negative ways of thinking about yourself are the dominant stories, it’s going to have an effect. It doesn’t matter how beautiful your husband thinks you are — you just can’t see yourself any other way. These messages are the main headlines running through your head and your husband’s opinion isn’t able to make the front page. Here’s another quote from this research: “Meston and Heiman (2000) found that sexually abused women were more likely to use negative terms to describe themselves and less likely to attribute positive meaning to sexual behavior[vi]”. So you can see how this perception impacts sexuality. And how it would easily impact desire, arousal, orgasm and so on. Listen to this even more specific observation: “Wenninger and Heiman (1998) found that women with a history of CSA perceived their bodies as less sexually attractive than did nonabused women and reported feeling angry at, and distant from, their own bodies during sexual activity[vii]”. So there I would see old protective mechanisms — ways of coping with abuse that are no longer needed — still kicking in and operating even though the new context of what is happening with your husband is actually safe and blessed by God and respectful. So it really becomes about these beliefs that inform how you see yourself and how you see sex as you explore and engage in physical intimacy in your marriage. Abuse has created this view of yourself that you are unattractive and that sex is something dangerous rather than enjoyable, and shifting that mindset becomes really difficult. How Trauma Impacts a Husband’s Sexuality This study is a little different. No longer are we looking at childhood sexual abuse but now at PTSD in war veterans. So a very different kind of trauma. Each veteran completed a marital satisfaction scale and a sexual dysfunction checklist. They found this: "89% of PTSD veterans reported one or several kinds of sexual dysfunction[viii]”. That number shocked me. “Among all the sexual dysfunctions, decreased libido and decreased sexual arousal, which is a result of decreased libido to some extent, were the most common problems (68.2 and 61.8%, respectively). Also, 41.8% of our subjects experienced premature ejaculation”[ix]. I don’t know why this is particularly an issue. “22.7% of them are averse to sexual relations[x]”. This really shocked me. I typically think of veterans as almost defining manhood. A veteran is a man’s man and I know we all respect our service members and the sacrifices they make for the benefit of our freedom and our countries. We appreciate that so much. But until I came across this study I was not expecting to see this significant of an impact in marriage. It just goes to show how serious trauma really is. That you can have something happen in a battlefield 5000 miles away and you come home and in bed things are not functioning as expected because of those traumatic experiences. Overcoming Trauma’s Effect on Sexuality Taken together, these two studies of husbands and wives show us that it is extremely common for different types of trauma to impact both men and women’s experience of sexuality. Of course, sexual dysfunction can be embarrassing and often brings about feelings of deep shame. It is difficult to talk about and can leave people wondering, “What is wrong with me?” It’s hard to walk into a doctor’s office and say “I can’t get an erection” or “My husband can’t get his penis inside me.” That’s really personal territory. But the good news is that if you are experiencing these issues, you are not alone. I hope there’s comfort there. It is extremely common for trauma to impact an individual’s sexuality. And if you are experiencing any of these issues you are joined by many other people who have been impacted in the same way. Sexual difficulty is a common response to traumatic experiences. But hear this especially: there are ways to move forward. Start By Working On Your Marriage Generally So in moving forward: if you think about trauma, it takes a couple of forms. In the context of CSA it’s a violation of human connection. As we saw last week, healthy marriage provides a beautiful corrective experience for this where connection and vulnerability are re-learned in a safe and loving context. In the context of PTSD in veterans, you’re looking at trauma that comes as a result of feeling profound overwhelm and distress with no real safe haven to retreat to. Again: healthy marriage provides a wonderful corrective experience for this. These researchers came to the conclusion that individuals should engage in marriage counseling with the goal to reduce marital dissatisfaction. Their belief was that if the quality of the marriage improves, there will be a corresponding recovery from sexual problems and disorders [xi]. We’ve seen in previous episodes how the best sex happens in a healthy, loving marriage, so working on your marriage will naturally lead to better sex (among many other benefits!). In particular, when it comes to males with PTSD, Ahmadi et al.[xii] note a “significant relationship between sexual dysfunction and violence and anger. Violence and anger reduce relations between husband and wife and hence reduce libido.” So: if we can work on the violence and anger then we’re already moving towards improving the sexual relationship. What this means is that everything in the previous episode on how trauma impacts a marriage relationship applies here. All of the tools that were discussed to improve a relationship in the midst of trauma can be applied for the ultimate good of the sexual relationship. Addressing Your Sexual Relationship Directly So general marriage counseling can get you going in the right direction. If you’re new to the website, by the way, I am a marriage counselor and would be glad to help you. Of course, if you’re from a state that doesn’t allow qualified therapists from outside the state to practice with residents of your state, then I would only be able to offer you marriage coaching. In any case, I want to follow the literature review study that we’ve been referring to[xiii], to look at what the research has to say about treatment for survivors of sexual abuse

Is Trauma Impacting Your Marriage?

Wed, 29 Mar 2017 11:00:05 +0000

Do you ever get the sense that an unseen force is at work in your marriage? I’m not going all woo-woo on you here, but what if you could identify that force, understand it, and then use your marriage as a place of healing? If you've been through some kind of deeply traumatic experience then it's perfectly reasonable to expect that it will have had some effect on you as a person. But trauma can also have a big impact on your marriage, often without you even knowing. How big of a deal is trauma? I wanted to examine this because I see it at play in a lot of marriages and I am hoping that by reading this you will be able to self-evaluate your circumstances to see if this is relevant or helpful. Trauma has different definitions and can be caused by many different things. Experiences such as childhood illness or hospitalization, near death encounters or experiences where death is witnessed, accidents, extremes like genocide and war, rape or torture are all examples of situations where trauma may result. Basically any deeply distressing or disturbing experience can result in trauma. Often you’ll see this where a person’s ability to cope is simply overwhelmed and you end up feeling powerless. What’s interesting about trauma is the rule of nine. If you have events on a scale where zero is not a big deal and nine is witnessing something really terrible, the rule of nine is about how there are different figures you can multiply together to get to nine. If you experience one incident at a nine level of intensity you can have trauma as a result. Or you could also get it from having three incidents at a three-level; none of the incidents on their own would be big enough, but they add up together to a traumatic experience. Or even nine events that are a one level of intensity, where you have repeated exposure to something “small” that’s not big enough by itself, but by repeated exposure, it works up a trauma response. So trauma ends up being the emotional response you carry to a very negative event or series of events. Trauma is a normal reaction to painful or difficult experiences but it can impact your ability to cope with normal life. And it can also have a major effect on your marriage. How Trauma Impacts Marriage A study from 2000[i] looked at 96 couples where at least one spouse reported a history of childhood abuse. Of course, that would be a likely source of trauma. These couples exhibit some particular attributes. So we’ll look at what these are and then why they appear, and then examine how we can help heal this. This study made a few observations. First, if one or both spouse reported a history of physical and/or sexual abuse in childhood the couple was more likely to experience lower relationship satisfaction and higher individual stress symptoms than couples where neither spouse reported an abuse history. This is why we are dealing with the subject of trauma: it can impact marriages for sure! They also noted that couples with a history of childhood abuse scored lower on cohesion than non-abuse couples. Cohesion is about the closeness of the couple- the emotional bonds they share. So there is more distance experienced in marriages where childhood abuse has been part of one or both spouse’s history. It is common for individuals who have experienced abuse to report that they experience emotional distance and isolation. So yes, this definitely has the potential to touch marriages. If you’re reading this and it feels familiar, just stay with me though: we have good news for you later on. Why Does Trauma Affect Marriage? We’ve talked about attachment before — the science of love or the love bond that exists between two spouses. Trauma impacts attachment and, related to that, one’s ability to be emotionally engaged. Let’s talk about some examples of what this looks like based on the work of Johnson and Williams-Keller[ii]. By the way, this is Sue Johnson who has really pioneered EFCT— the approach to couples’ therapy that I use with my clients. These are some of the ways they identified which a history of trauma can play out in marriages: Disengagement and withdrawal: if you think about the severity of situations that prompt a trauma response it makes sense that you need a secure base to come back to. Somewhere safe and protective. However, trauma is often prompted by violations from the very people we should be safe with. For example child abuse by a parent. So it becomes easy to see how trauma “destroys the trust and security that are the main building blocks for such attachments”. If the very people you would turn to for comfort are responsible for such emotional pain then it’s no wonder you become hesitant to form such strong bonds in the future. Now: the person desperately needs to feel safe but feels unable to trust human connection. So in your marriage today you have a spouse with this formative belief that closeness is not safe. Therefore they can either be quite disengaged or can vacillate between feeling anxious and needy vs. distant and disengaged. Where most couples see a connection with each other as a source of safety and comfort, trauma-impacted spouses can’t help but see the same thing as a source of danger. And yet: they too need emotional engagement. And emotional engagement is a key feature of a strong and satisfying marriage. But emotional engagement leads to vulnerability. Survivors of trauma feel the need to avoid vulnerability to protect from harm. See the cycle? Trauma survivors both need and are afraid of vulnerability. Therefore, "relationship activities that have the potential to soothe and calm other distressed couples, such as confiding and lovemaking, become at minimum a source of threat and at worst a source of re-traumatization in the partnerships of trauma victims". Vicarious Traumatization: let’s complicate this a little more. Say you have survived trauma. Your spouse sees how deeply affected you are by different aspects of the trauma. And because it’s so personal because of your closeness, your spouse begins to experience personal distress on account of your trauma. They now start to wonder if the world is a safe place too, if something so terrible could happen to someone they love. Now they are starting to live out the same responses as you. This is vicarious traumatization. The traumatic events did not happen to your spouse, but they start to experience the trauma. Now they begin to become disengaged and withdrawn, just like you… This gets pretty hard to sort out, right? Distancing, Defense, and Distrust: take a look at this quote from the research: “Trauma victims' marriages are, therefore, more likely to become distressed and, once distressed, tend to become stuck in particularly intense self-perpetuating cycles of distance, defense, and distrust. In addition, marital distress tends to evoke, maintain, and exacerbate trauma symptoms. A vicious cycle is then set in motion that is often totally debilitating both to the relationship and to individual partners' ability to cope with the effects of the trauma[iii]”. The trauma causes you to be distant and distrustful of vulnerability, which creates distress in your marriage, leading to further trauma… leading to further distrust and distancing. No Shame in Trauma Now I want to pause for one moment to speak to spouses with trauma. After reading all of this you could be feeling pretty bad about yourself. One of the things my counseling clients tell me they appreciate about my approach is that I’m very honest with them. But I’m also very gentle. And you may have read what amounts to a pretty honest assessment of your marriage and your role. Listen carefully: don’t go to shame on this one. You didn’t create this situation. Whatever the source of your trauma, it’s not your fault. None of us are immune to trauma. Therapists who are very emotionally resilient and have done a lot of personal work are vulnerable to trauma and even vicarious traumatization. This is not about you being fundamentally flawed or ruined or damaged goods. This is about how you’ve learned to cope as a survivor. However: you don’t have to remain in “survivor” mentality forever. You can take ownership of your journey towards healing. And the good news is that even though your marriage is where the impact of the trauma is most visible, your marriage can also be a place where healing can begin and then grow into wholeness. Marriage as a Place of Healing from Trauma So I think it’s really cool that even though trauma can have a distressing impact on marriage, there can also be an inverse effect where marriage can have a healing impact back on the trauma. For me, this prompts worship towards God. I just think it’s so cool that he designed a relationship for us which could be a place of healing and recovery from the most extreme challenges life can throw at us. There was a study in 2005 by Skogrand et al.[iv] who studied adults who survived and transcended a traumatic childhood and they looked specifically at the role their spouses played in the process of overcoming these childhood experiences. Half of the participants in the study believed their spouse was helpful in this process. So the question is, how did they help? Survivors stated that their spouses provided a “listening ear” and “someone to give support through difficult times.” This gave survivors “courage” and the “ability to emotionally move to a better place[v]”. Survivors who believed their spouse was helpful in the process of transcending “reported having a spouse who listens, loves unconditionally, is not judgmental, and is nurturing[vi]”. The researchers underscored the idea that these adults all reported on this major theme of having a spouse who would listen to them and do so for as long as they needed to be talking through something. So I think that’s a huge first takeaway. Hopefully,...

The Best Sex Happens Inside Marriage

Wed, 22 Mar 2017 11:00:22 +0000

Is this just a Christian myth? Is the idea that the best sex occurs within marriage something that is only believed by church-going people? What does the research say? If you’re struggling with your sex life we offer sound, research-based advice, and today, hope for a constantly improving sex life too. Today we’re going to be looking at why the best sex happens inside marriage. Actually, it’s hard to believe that going through a bunch of research might be arousing but today we’re going to take a crack at it. Why Sexual Boundaries Are A Good Thing We’re going to do something very deliberate today: we’re not going to refer to the Bible at all. Now if you’ve just started reading our posts you need to know that Verlynda and I are born again Christians who are very involved in our local church and we always think and write out of our Christian worldview. We often refer to Scripture as well as to research. And today could definitely be a Bible-thumping episode. In the New Testament, there are only a handful of epistles that refrain from addressing sexual sin, from lust to fornication to adultery. So that message is clear. And I think that a lot of people, perhaps from more agnostic or atheistic backgrounds, look at Christianity and see it as being very prudish because of these restrictions. Like we’re missing out. But I think it’s actually very much the opposite: the sexual revolution of the 1960s to 1980s has actually done more to erode the quality of sex that people are experiencing than to enhance it. It’s telling that just now, in 2017, we’re starting to see articles in the New York Times and Washington Post raising the alarm over pornography use and its detrimental impact on male sexuality. This is nearly 50 years after the first adult erotic film had a wide theatrical release in the USA. Where culture has got this backwards and impressions are still inverted is that God put boundaries around sexuality to increase the amount of pleasure and sexual satisfaction that can be experienced, not to decrease it. And we’re going to demonstrate this from the research today. At the end I’m going to tell you why this is important to your marriage, and to ours, of course. What Statistics Say About Sex Within Marriage Overall, research tends to support the idea that the best sex happens within marriage. Let’s start with a study from 2000 by Christopher and Sprecher[i] which compared sex within marriage to sex within dating and cohabiting relationships. They found that married couples generally reported being satisfied with their sexual relationship. They cited a study where 88% of married couples reported being “either extremely or very pleased in their [sexual] relationship” [content_container max_width='200' align='center'][thrive_fill_counter color="blue" value="88" before="" after="%" percentage="88" label="Rockin' It"][/content_container] What I think is really cool is the words that these same extremely pleased or very pleased married couples used to describe how they felt about having sex: loved, thrilled and excited. So not only are married couples typically satisfied with their sexual relationship but Scott and Sprecher also showed that studies have found that married individuals are more satisfied with their sexual relationship than single and cohabiting individuals. This was particularly the case for monogamous married respondents. So it’s not just being married that’s the key, but being monogamous in marriage too— can’t make any assumptions here since the Sexual Revolution. So this is great: sex is better within marriage. But why? Again, we could go to the Bible and argue that it just makes sense because God is good, and He designs us to flourish when we are obeying him. And of course, that’s very true. But instead, let’s go to the research again and see what these researchers are observing. What makes monogamous married sex the best kind of sex? Sex Within Marriage is Exclusive This study is interesting. They looked at what they call time horizon: meaning they asked people about the stability of their relationship and how long they expected it to last. They also asked a very specific question about sexual exclusivity: "What is your opinion about a married person having sexual relations with someone other than the marriage partner-is it always wrong, almost always wrong, sometimes wrong, or not wrong at all?" The researchers used these views on extramarital sex as “an indicator of a commitment to sexual exclusivity, at least within marriage[ii]”. And then they asked about physical pleasure and emotional satisfaction related to the couple’s sexual relationship. What they found is that both physical pleasure and emotional satisfaction increased with time horizon and increased with sexual exclusivity. So these are important clues as to why married sex is better. When people hold an expectation that the relationship will last long into the future and will be an exclusive interaction between the two of them, I think it’s only natural and normal that these two people are going to make the most of it. See, when you make commitment and monogamy becomes part of your core values, sex no longer becomes about swapping out the person for someone with more skills or better features. Rather, it becomes about continually pursuing growth together. As you grow closer emotionally you naturally learn more about how to enjoy sex together. That pursuit over a lifetime is going to reap a far better experience that flitting like a butterfly from flower to flower. As we said in a recent episode: emotional intimacy is the key to great sex. There are some more interesting results that these researchers highlighted: “In all cases but one, the more exclusive the sexual relationship, the greater the emotional satisfaction reported[iii]”. “Both men and women who said that they had another partner in the past year during their marriage, cohabiting, or dating relationship-were less emotionally satisfied[iv]”. "Women who either had another sex partner themselves or whose husband or boyfriend did, report less physical pleasure from sex than do others.[v]” “For both men and women, the married, cohabiting, and "engaged" all report higher levels of physical pleasure than those in relationships that they expect to end soon or within a few years[vi]”. Again: this is a secular study and you can see they’re looking at what people are experiencing without coming through our Christian value system. But they’re drawing the same core conclusions: the best sex is happening inside monogamous, committed marriage. But I want to come back to the butterfly thing and this idea of focussing on one person. Sex Within Marriage Specializes in a Specific Partner These same researchers took their research one step further. They concluded that time horizon and sexual exclusivity improve sexual satisfaction because of the way in which they “facilitate emotional investment into a particular relationship and specialization in that partner[vii]”. So they used another variable called sexual investment. They tied sexual investment to various sexual behaviours including the number of times a couple has sex per month and the frequency of orgasm for both the male and female partner. Basically, they are saying that investing in sexual activity with your spouse and developing your sexual skills are going to result in an increase in the frequency of orgasm. They showed in their study that sexual investment increased both the emotional and physical benefits of sex. You became better at it but there’s also this other super important piece where you invest in your spouse whom you love, and you are incentivized to please him or her because you get direct satisfaction from pleasing him or her. Sex then becomes less about simply fulfilling your own needs and becomes a joint experience with a deep emotional and physical connection. The longer you expect to be in a sexual relationship the more incentive you have to make this investment. This becomes a positive cycle, right? The more you invest sexually the more satisfaction is returned. The more satisfaction the more you’re incentivized to invest. In terms of quality and quantity they noted the following: “More sex is associated with more emotional satisfaction with sex” “Both partners are more emotionally satisfied the more frequently the woman has orgasms during sex” “Physical satisfaction with sex is higher for men and women who have sex more often and when the female partner always or usually has an orgasm.” In other words, the more investment a couple puts into their sexual relationship, the more able they are to know and meet the needs of their specific partner. A perfect place for this to happen is in the exclusive and lifelong context of a marriage relationship. By the way, if you’re needing to brush up your skills on the female orgasm we have a terrific resource on this where Verlynda interviewed Shannon Ethridge so be sure to check that out. But there’s one more important piece to all of this. Sex Within Marriage is Guilt-Free Sex So you could make the argument, well, what about a long term cohabiting relationship. Why doesn’t that work just as well? It turns out that sex within marriage is more satisfying than sex within long-term cohabiting relationships. There’s a reason for this: in a 2016 study, Hackathorn, Ashdown and Rife[viii] showed that compared to any other form of sex, sex within marriage is completely guilt-free. We have this thing we all can experience called sex guilt. Previous research has shown that there are correlations between religious beliefs and lower frequency of and desire of sexual activity. We’ve looked at sex guilt in Christian couples in a previous episode. Basically, religious beliefs lead people to feel guilty over their sexual activity,...

Why You’re Using the Love Languages All Wrong

Wed, 15 Mar 2017 11:00:22 +0000

I was originally thinking of coming up with an inflammatory title for this post like “Chapman’s Love Languages Debunked” because that makes for good clickbait on the internet! But this is The Marriage Podcast for Smart People and I figured, well, smart people are going to see that I’m just trying to create hype. And my mission is to help marriages, not create hype. So we’re actually going to look at research that examines the validity of the 5 Love Languages Concept and challenge you on how you might be using or abusing this concept in your marriage. We have an exciting post for you this week. Today we’re going to be talking about Gary Chapman’s famous book, the 5 Love Languages. Now, the premise of the 5 Love Languages is that everyone has one single primary way in which they prefer to receive love and one secondary way. The five options are: Gift giving Quality time Words of affirmation Acts of service (devotion), Physical touch The idea is that once you discover what yours and your spouse’s love languages are you’ll be better able to give and receive love in a way that resonates with them. This concept has been widely accepted in mainstream thought and seems particularly popular in the Christian world. But the purpose of what we do is to offer sound, research-based advice, which sometimes includes questioning popular ideas. Most of all, we offer hope and because we tell you what actually works in marriage. So I’m working from the assumption that Gary Chapman is a brother in Christ and I have no desire to cut him up or attack his reputation. Where we’re coming from today is we’ve noticed a number of occasions in marriages now where the 5 Love Languages has actually been counterproductive to the health of the marriage. While it’s nice to put yourself in a box, we’ve seen it become an issue in a number of ways. So we want to look at what works, what doesn’t, and give you some research and some points to consider before you swallow the whole 5 Love Languages idea hook, line and sinker. Is There Empirical Support for the 5 Love Languages? If you look on the Wikipedia article it’ll say right away that there’s some question as to whether Gary’s concept can be empirically validated. Well, we’re happy to tell you some researchers have taken up the challenge. In 2006, Polk and Egbert[i] set out to determine if the claims made in Chapman’s book could be supported through an empirical study. They took 86 couples and asked them to pick one of the five languages that best described the way they prefer to receive love. So these folks each had to pick their primary love language. Then they had to complete two surveys: how they preferred to receive love and how they preferred to give love. They also used a standardized assessment called the Quality of Relationships Inventory to measure the quality of these relationships (this is the non-Chapman part of the study). Following this they bunched the people into three categories: Match: both spouses gave and received in their preferred Love Language. The way they gave and received love in their marriage was perfectly complementary. Partial match: only one spouse received his/her preferred Love language. Mismatch: neither spouse received their preferred Love Language. Here’s what the researchers found, for and against Chapman’s ideas. There was no correlation between the survey regarding how you preferred to receive love and your actual perceived preferred love language. In other words, if I said “choose one of the 5 Love Languages as your preferred one” and then gave you a detailed survey that asked 20 questions to help determine the same there would be no statistically dependable matchup between the two. What you think your Love Language is when you pick one vs. trying to measure this by looking at what you actually do to express love and maintain your relationship doesn’t match up. There are a few possible conclusions. One is that the study participants were too young (most were 18-22) and they didn’t really know themselves well enough to say how they best received and gave love. Or, it’s possible that all of the behaviors that display love and maintain a relationship are important. Which means there is no such thing as a preferred love language— they’re all equally important. Bottom line: further testing is necessary. What the study did find is that 3/4 of couples fell into the partial match or the mismatch category. So the majority of marriages exist without one or both of the partners receiving love in their preferred way. Love Languages and Relationship Satisfaction Here’s the most concerning point: the study found that relational quality was not predicted by whether the couple was matched, partially matched, or mismatched. In other words, it didn’t matter if you spoke your spouse’s love language or not, or if one of you did and the other didn’t. If the Love Languages are such an important aspect of how couples experience love, surely having a mismatch would create dissatisfaction? But this does not appear to be the case: no significant difference was found in the relational quality of couples in the three categories of matched, partially matched or mismatched. Additionally, “the couples with mismatched Love Language’s largely reported high relational quality. Perhaps as long as both partners feel under-benefited, they may not experience diminished relational quality[ii]”. What this is saying is that relational satisfaction may be more about a sense of fairness: are both spouses trying? Rather than being about if they’re speaking the right language. Relational Maintenance So the research suggests that Chapman’s love languages are not as easy to identify in ourselves as you might think, and that they don’t appear to have much bearing on the quality of your relationship. In any case, Chapman does put popular language around the well-established concept of relational maintenance behaviors. These are the things we do in marriage in order to sustain the wellbeing of the relationship. These behaviors include everything from making your spouse a cup of coffee after a long day or telling them they look nice in that top to full body massages and trips away together, and they include all five of the Love Languages. So if Chapman’s book helps us understand the importance of these behaviors and gives us a way to talk about them more easily then there is definitely some value to his work. I think the bottom line on the research side is that there appears to be some relevance and some irrelevance in Chapman’s concept. Obviously, it appeals to how we think— it’s a very popular book. But let’s critique a couple of points because not everything that is popular works out well. And part of what we are going to see here is that when the Bible defines love, it does so in a different way. Problems with Chapman’s Love Languages There are three issues I want to raise and I’m drawing from the work of a Christian counselor Powlison[iii] who wrote a concerned critique of Chapman’s Love Languages. First, Chapman’s theory of love languages is all about me and my desires. He raises a very good point here that resonates with the concerns we have. What if your preferred love language is actually sinful? Here’s an illustration: let’s say you decide your love language is quality time. But what this actually means is "I feel loved when you drop everything to focus on me, are completely understanding, give me unconditional love, agree with all my opinions, and never disagree with me, question me, or interrupt me[iv]”. This sounds like narcissism or selfishness or just self-love and absorption. You can keep going with this: Gift giving: you get me exactly what I want, when I want it. Physical touch: I only feel loved when we are physically intimate and don’t want you expressing any kind of intimacy with anyone else. Acts of service: you do what I want. Affirmation: here, take this huge wounded hole in my heart and I need you to fill it. Should this not be brought to Christ to fill? Idolatry is turning to anything other than God to meet our needs. I’m not saying Chapman’s theory is sinful. I’m saying it can be applied in very sinful ways and I’m challenging our listeners who love this model to think about how they are applying it in their marriage. Knowing how you prefer to receive love is one thing, but using that as a justification for self-absorbed attitudes or expecting your spouse to bend over backwards to fit into your way of experiencing love is not Godly. What if we take the words “preferred love language” and substitute them with “selfish desire”. Even desires for good things can be evil or sinful. That’s a huge potential pitfall. Second, Chapman’s theory of love can bring out a victim mentality and lack of responsibility for one’s own actions. Chapman talks about filling up your spouse’s love tank and keeping it full. But the corollary is that if my tank doesn’t feel full then you are not meeting my needs. But this doesn’t take into consideration how I am contributing to the problem. Instead, it can lead me to just think— well, Verlynda never fills my love tank, so she’s the problem. This can also lead to jealousy or a tit-for-tat mentality— if you’re not going to fill my love tank, why should I bother filling yours? Finally, the love languages can lead to manipulation. Again: we’re not villainizing Chapman here. I don’t believe for a second that he had this intention. But, what if I only use the love languages to give so that I can get? For example, I want to have sex tonight. So I spend the day filling your love tank. This is tricky because we ourselves teach that you need to touch your spouse’s heart before you touch their body. That’s why I say we’re not trying to make Chapman out to be the bad guy. But we all have this tendency that we’re not actually sincerely interested i

Post Infidelity Stress Disorder: Symptoms, Causes, and Recovery

Wed, 08 Mar 2017 13:38:11 +0000

Three weeks after she found out, a client told me she was writing a grocery list on the back of an envelope when she noticed her hands were shaking so badly she could not read her own handwriting. She had not been thinking about her husband. Her body had. That is what post infidelity stress disorder looks like in real life. It is the persistent stress response that often follows the discovery of a partner's infidelity, and it can look a lot like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): intrusive memories, hypervigilance, sleep disruption, emotional numbing, and the sense that the world is no longer a place you can trust. The term was coined by psychologist Dennis C. Ortman in 2005[i], and the clinical pattern has been documented repeatedly in the years since by trauma researchers studying the aftermath of partner betrayal. If you discovered an affair, or porn use, or any sustained pattern of concealment in your marriage, and you are reading this because something inside you does not feel right, you are not weak and you are not overreacting. Your nervous system is doing what nervous systems do when they encounter a major breach of trust in the most important attachment in your life. The body responds to relational threat the way it responds to physical threat. This article walks through what PISD actually is, why infidelity hits the way it does, the symptoms most people experience, and the recovery path that brings people out the other side. What Is Post Infidelity Stress Disorder? Post infidelity stress disorder, sometimes shortened to PISD or called post-traumatic infidelity syndrome, describes the cluster of trauma-response symptoms that frequently appear after a person discovers their partner has been unfaithful. Ortman first named the pattern after noticing that many of his clients responded to the disclosure of an affair the same way clients with classic PTSD responded to combat, assault, or accident: re-experiencing, avoidance, numbness, and hypervigilance, sometimes for years. Here is a clinical-accuracy point worth saying out loud. PISD is not a stand-alone diagnosis in the DSM-5-TR. When a betrayed spouse meets enough criteria, they are usually given a related diagnosis: adjustment disorder, major depressive episode, generalized anxiety disorder, or in some cases PTSD itself, depending on how the clinician interprets the Criterion A "threat" element. The term PISD does not replace those diagnoses. It is shorthand for a pattern that trauma-informed clinicians see often enough to want a clean way to name it. Newer research has continued to fill in the picture. A 2019 study of unmarried young adults found that romantic betrayal produced clinically significant post-traumatic stress symptoms in a meaningful portion of participants[xiv]. A 2021 qualitative study went further, exploring whether romantic-partner betrayal should be considered a genuine traumatic experience under existing trauma frameworks; the participants' own descriptions made the case persuasively[xv]. The research is not as voluminous as the trauma literature on combat or assault, but it points in a consistent direction. Infidelity does what trauma does. Why Infidelity Hits Like a Trauma Traditional PTSD usually requires a Criterion A event: serious threat to life or bodily integrity. Infidelity does not always meet that bar on its face. The body may still register it as danger. A few things happen at once when a betrayal is discovered, and any one of them is enough to push the nervous system into a sustained threat response. The attachment bond ruptures. The person who was supposed to be your safest place has just become the source of the wound. There is no available co-regulator to help bring the system back down, because the partner is the trigger. This is unique to betrayal trauma and a major reason it lingers. The assumptive world breaks. Most of us walk around with quiet background assumptions: my partner is who they say they are, my marriage is the thing I think it is, the past five years happened the way I remember them. Infidelity does not just disprove one of those. It calls the whole catalog into question. Researchers have described this as "the shattering of core beliefs essential to emotional security in the relationship," and the description fits. The body files it as a danger event. Every nervous system has its own threshold, but the discovery of a betrayal often passes it. From that point forward the body is on watch for evidence of the next deception, even when the conscious mind is trying to get on with normal life. This is also why a one-time fight, even a serious one, does not produce PISD, but a sustained pattern of concealment does. The nervous system reads sustained concealment as ongoing threat inside the trust circle. That reading is not paranoia. It is accurate to what was happening. Of course your body is alert now. It has reason to be. Symptoms of Post Infidelity Stress Disorder The original Ortman framework identified six PTSD-mirror symptoms. The clinical picture I see in practice, and the picture other trauma-informed clinicians describe, is closer to eight distinct experiences. Some of these overlap. Most people who develop PISD live with three or four of them at a time, not all of them at once. Intrusive Thoughts and Replay The discovery scene comes back unbidden. So do half-remembered moments from the months before that suddenly make sense in a sickening way. "Victims of adultery relive the painful discovery of infidelity"[iii], and the replay is involuntary. You can be loading the dishwasher and suddenly find yourself back inside the moment you read the message, in full color. The mind is trying to make sense of a story whose ending has changed, and it goes back over the old footage looking for the clue it missed. Hypervigilance This is one of the most consistent symptoms and one of the most exhausting. You scan. You check phones, calendars, browser history, tones of voice. You notice things the pre-disclosure version of you would not have noticed. Of course you would. Your sense-making system has been told it missed something major; it is going to overcorrect for a while. Hypervigilance is not a character flaw. It is the body's way of trying to never be blindsided again. Heightened Anxiety and Sleep Disruption Many betrayed spouses live "on high alert for recurrence"[vi]. They struggle to fall asleep, or they wake at 3 a.m. and cannot get back down. Some have nightmares about the discovery scene. Others have what look like panic episodes at random points in the day, often triggered by something they did not consciously notice: a song, a smell, a phrase. Avoidance The other side of intrusion. The mind tries to cope by going around the thing rather than through it[iv]. You avoid the room where the conversation happened, the restaurant, the friend who reminds you of that period. Some people stop using the social-media platform where they first saw the evidence. Avoidance helps for a minute. Then it keeps the wound from being reprocessed. Emotional Numbing The nervous system has a fail-safe. When the feelings get too big, it turns the volume down. Betrayed spouses describe "withdrawing into an emotional cocoon"[v], detaching from life and from themselves. Numbing is often misread as "moving on" or "doing fine." It is usually the system asking for a break, not the absence of pain. If you are asking yourself what this numbness might be pacifying, that is the right question. The numb is doing a job. Usually it is buying time the body does not yet have the capacity to spend on the feelings. Irritability and Rage Trauma researchers describe betrayed partners "becoming preoccupied with how they have been victimized, which causes them to become angry with the perpetrator, with life, and with themselves"[vii]. The anger is real and largely earned. It is also exhausting to live inside for months. Many spouses turn the anger sideways onto the kids, the in-laws, the dog, themselves. The anger is not the problem. Living inside the anger long enough that you cannot find your way out is the problem. Trust Collapse A more recent addition to the clinical picture and one of the longest-lasting downstream effects. Once the assumption that "I can tell when my partner is being honest with me" has been broken, it can take years to rebuild, and during that period nearly every interaction is filtered through suspicion. This is not just about trusting the partner. It is about trusting your own ability to read a person, which is a much bigger loss. Intense Fear and Helplessness Survivors describe being overwhelmed by fear, helplessness, or horror when they remember the affair, and they live with a low-grade fear that it could happen again[ii]. The fear is not always nameable. It is often experienced as dread without a clear object. The Somatic Side of PISD The body keeps a copy of all of this. Most betrayed spouses describe physical symptoms alongside the emotional ones, and these are worth naming because they often go unrecognized and untreated. Sleep disruption is almost universal. Many people lose weight in the first few weeks because their appetite shuts down; others gain weight as the body trends toward freeze. Panic episodes, racing heart, and shortness of breath are common. Gastrointestinal symptoms (nausea, IBS-like flares, loss of appetite) show up frequently. In a smaller subset of cases, the cardiovascular system can be hit hard enough to mimic a heart attack. The technical name is takotsubo cardiomyopathy, sometimes called stress cardiomyopathy or broken-heart syndrome; the American Heart Association documents it as a real and measurable phenomenon following major emotional stress. It is usually reversible, but if you are having chest pain, please go to an emergency department and get it ruled out. A psychological cause does not make a physical symptom less serious. ...

When to Leave (or Stay In) an Abusive Marriage [3 of 3]

Wed, 22 Feb 2017 11:00:39 +0000

Today’s episode is twice the challenge: we’re dealing with the difficult subject of abuse in marriage but we’re also talking about when to leave a marriage too, which, under normal circumstances, is contrary to our personal values and our mission to help save marriages. So read carefully and thoughtfully as we navigate this very difficult topic. Today we’re going to be guiding you through this subject of when to leave or stay in an abusive marriage. If you missed last weeks’ post we discussed trajectories of healing and recovery for abusive marriages. You’ll definitely want to check that out for some background to today’s episode if this is the first time you’re listening in Also, make sure you hit the subscribe button so you don’t miss any upcoming shows from us. Let’s get into this topic by starting with our values and then going to some really interesting research. I think the most important thing we need to keep in front of us and for our readers to bear in mind is the context in which we are writing. We are sitting here in Florida writing this from our travel trailer. But when we publish this episode it will be available in over 100 countries and will be downloaded thousands and thousands of times. We have people of all faith backgrounds that read our posts. And even when most of our readers are evangelical Christians we have a spectrum of opinions on the subjects of separation, divorce and remarriage. Rather than going into a huge sidebar on that I’m just going to say this. Our mission is to save marriages — we want to reach and influence as many marriages as possible. We hope your marriages never comes under this kind of strain and believe that no marriage is beyond recovery. We have written previously about certain exceptions to this and whether genuine ultimatums are ever justifiable in marriage, and while we still believe that separation is not the ideal from a Christian standpoint, when we talk about abusive marriages we are dealing with a whole different ball game. You may well have your own opinions on whether divorce is ever acceptable. I would just ask that if you are not in an abusive marriage and if you have never been close to someone who is on the victim side of that relationship, that you suspend judgment until you hear some of their stories and experiences. On the other end of the spectrum, we will have women listening to this who are facing another beating today. In this very moment, they are afraid — possibly even for their lives. So we have this wide audience reading but we really want to speak to those of you who are in an abusive marriage and are trying to figure out what your next step is and are maybe even afraid for your life, certainly for your wellbeing and possibly that of your children also. Should I Leave My Abusive Marriage? Let’s start with a very interesting study from 2007[i] where the researchers collected data from over 400 women who were seeking help due to being in a violent relationship. They interviewed these women every 3 months for the next year. These women had four patterns of relationship that the researchers identified Completely apart: the women remained uninvolved with their partner from the second interview to the end of the study Together then apart: women who were “in” the relationship with this partner for at least one-time point [during the first 6 months of the study] but were “out” of the relationship [during] the last 6 months of the study Fluid: women who were involved with their partner for at least a one-time point [during]…the last 6 months of the study, but were “out” of the relationship for at least a one-time point between the second interview and the end of the study. Completely together: women who remained involved with their partner for the entire study Where this study is helpful is it showed how women fare in an abusive relationship based on their decisions to stay, leave or live out some combination of the two. Women who left an abusive relationship and did not come back at any point showed “marginally significant higher quality of life score” than women who stayed or went back and forth. That’s interesting. Leaving may not be your ticket to happiness. It may be your ticket to safety and survival, which is important! But in terms of happiness and quality of life the decision to leave an abusive marriage might not be as beneficial as you’d imagine. Let’s keep going… When it came to experiences of violence: women who remained completely apart experienced the least amount of violence. Women who remained completely together experienced the second least amount of violence, followed by women who were together and then apart, and women who were fluid in their relationship status over time Conclusion: decisiveness in decision making appears to be helpful. Coming and going due to indecisiveness appears to expose you to greater levels of violence. In a way this makes sense– this constant back and forth of breaking up and returning would create a very unstable relationship where tempers run high whereas staying in the marriages at least creates some stability. Additionally, women who remained completely apart from their abusive partner also “reported the lowest rates… of psychological abuse and stalking at the final interview.” Women who remained completely together with their partner experienced the second lowest rates of psychological abuse and stalking. They experienced significantly more psychological abuse than those who completely left their marriages but the differences in physical abuse and stalking were not found to be significant. In other words, although women who remained with their partner did experience more physical abuse, psychological abuse, and stalking than women completely left their partner, in most cases this difference was small and not significant. It was only a significant difference when it came to psychological abuse. When it came to all three forms of violence – physical, psychological, and stalking –“fluid women fared the worst of the four groups…suggesting that women who leave and then return experience more abuse than women who never leave at all.” So I think there are three takeaways to put this all together: It appears that leaving appears to be the most effective in preventing re-abuse (1 year later) when it occurs relatively soon after a given incident of violence and is sustained for an extended period of time[ii] The authors concluded that “How women leave an abusive relationship is more important than whether they leave”[iii]. The reason for this conclusion was the small difference in outcomes for women who completely stayed and women who completely left compared to the more negative outcomes for women who were back and forth in their decision making. It appears that it is more helpful to have certainty about your decision– definitively leaving or staying produce the best outcomes but going back and forth between the two only makes things worse[iv]. Obviously choosing whether to stay in an abusive marriage is a huge decision and some level of doubt and uncertainty is completely understandable. But the research shows that you should avoid acting until you’re totally sure what you want to do, and then stick to that decision. So conclusively leaving or staying in your abusive marriage are both better than moving from one to the other. Now let’s look at some reasons for and against leaving. Deciding to Leave When reviewing the literature, Koepsell and Kernick (2006)[v] list the following as reasons why women stated they chose to leave an abusive relationship (these aren’t qualified as marriage relationships…they may be common law or other forms of cohabitation): A low commitment to the relationship Financial independence apart from the husband A greater frequency and severity of abuse The presence of children and the potential for children to be abused. So these are factors that women consider. The first two points show that if you just aren’t all that invested or committed to your relationship and it becomes abusive then leaving seems the obvious choice. But I think the most significant factors are safety issues. And as you consider your situation, we have to ask: could your husband’s abuse toward you turn lethal? Is your life in danger? Are you at risk for severe bodily harm? What about your children? It’s hard to know the answer to these questions sometimes. So I want to bring in a study here from 2014[vi] that looked at risk factors for lethal violence. Again, keep in mind that for women in this situation it is often very disorientating so I hope that these factors help you gain some perspective on the relative severity of your position. You experience and increased level of fear towards your spouse. If you fear your spouse, you are at greater risk of lethal violence. The fear itself affects your ability to change your situation and increases your risk for lethal violence[vii]. If you feel fear — that may be an indication it’s time to begin safety planning. You have been using drugs or alcohol to cope with the abuse. A greater proportion of women in the high-risk category for lethal violence use drugs or alcohol. So if it’s gotten bad enough that you’re finding yourself resorting to these coping mechanisms, that’s another signal that you may be in a severe situation You have been diagnosed with depression or PTSD. There’s another correlation here. You have sought out domestic violence resources. Now: this isn’t saying that you should not seek out these resources. It’s just saying that if you have sought them out this is another indicator that you may be in a high-risk situation. Here’s a direct quote from these researchers: “In comparison to the low-risk-for-lethal-violence group, a higher proportion of women in the high-risk group reported using domestic violence resources[viii]

Can Abusive Husbands Change? [2 of 3]

Wed, 15 Feb 2017 11:00:50 +0000

Will the abuse get better? Or is it going to stay the same? Abuse is deeply rooted in belief systems and so we want to talk about recovery rates and how to figure out if you might consider sticking things out or if there is no hope for your husband. Today we’re going to be looking at what the research says about trajectories of abuse. Meaning: if you learned from the last episode that you are in an abusive relationship, what hope is there for change? So last week we looked into how to know if you’re in an abusive marriage or just a distressed marriage, and at ways of defining the different forms of abuse. Be sure to give last week’s post a read. What Research Says About Trajectories of Abuse A study from 2008[i] looked at physical and emotional aggression and measured them using the Domestic Conflict Inventory— a tool for measuring conflict in marriage that includes elements of physical and emotional aggression which we describe in our previous episode. They looked at 118 couples and found that: Physical aggression significantly decreased over time (43% per year) Emotional aggression did not significantly change over time. They actually found that husbands showed a 3% increase per year. Just note that this means that 3 or 4 or of the men out of the 118 couples changed. Longer duration marriages had lower physical aggression. What we are seeing is that research tends to support these results. Physical aggression changes over time — often decreasing — but emotional aggression tends to remain stable over the years. Another study from 1996[ii] found that even when the husband’s physical abuse decreased over a 2 year period the same was not true of emotional abuse. The frequency of emotional abuse remained stable even as the physical abuse decreased. Now, for men that get involved in batterer programs and seek help, more recent research shows that these programs can be effective in helping them reduce aggressive comments and helping them communicate more positively during arguments. Not all batterer programs offer this kind of skills-based training but this does help reduce verbal abuse, but the researchers also noted that good communication skills need to be taught to both the man and the woman to be most effective[iii]. Another thing that is worth noting here is that the abuse interventions need to be seen as an ongoing process, not just a one-time cure[iv]. So men who successfully stopped being violent towards their spouses often stated that they were violent due to patterns of behavior learned from their parents. Or they were violent because it helped them feel more “masculine” and in control. So violence and abuse are deeply engrained into this type of thinking as you might image. Consequently, you can’t shift this in one intervention. The change in thinking and beliefs is most successful in men who continually engaged with counseling and intervention such as batterer programs. The men reported that they would sometimes “forget” the right ways of coping with situations when in the moment but that long term interventions helped them become more aware of their own motivations in being abusive, which helped them towards change. What I hear when I look into this kind of research is that your husband will do best when he considers himself to be on a journey of self-discovery and personal growth. This, obviously, is going to look very different than him just apologizing, even being tearful, promising he’ll never do it again, and then not actually engaging in any process to help him recover. A tearfully apologizing husband may mean every word he says and genuinely want to change, but that in-the-moment remorse is rarely enough to change long-standing patterns of thought and behavior. So just keep that in mind as you gather evidence about what kind of a trajectory he is on. How Many Abusive Men Recover? The answer to this question depends a lot on the type of abuse being perpetrated. Again: higher rates of recovery are found for physical abuse rather than psychological abuse. A 2003 study[v] showed that men who participate in batterer programs show decreases in the amount of physical aggression perpetrated over the next year, with some men becoming completely nonviolent. They looked at 40 batterer programs and found that 50 to 80% of husbands who completed the program were nonviolent over a 6 month to 1 year period, according to their wives. However, the researcher goes on to point out that the reduction of other forms of abuse (i.e. psychological) is less clear. One study this researcher referenced showed that about 40-50% of the participants stopped their terroristic threats at a 6 month follow up. That’s a success rate of less than half. They also pointed out that it may be that some men displace their physical abuse into heightened verbal and psychological abuse. Which is quite concerning. These men might be learning to control their fists a little better, or perhaps how to make their abuse less obvious, but the underlying problem isn’t changing. Studies I looked at were also observing that stopping abuse is very phenomenological and multiple characteristics of both the abuser and the wife come in to play to influence outcomes. However, studies are also showing that wives are often a good predictor of whether their husband will stop or not. How Does it Affect Your Marriage? At the end of the day, all we can research and refer to are statistics. Your marriage is unique. You are unique. So is your husband. So these statistics are not determinative of the course of your marriage. Also, these statistics do not take into account the power of God working in your marriage. He has, and He can change hearts—yet, I do not know if he will change your husband’s. I was mulling over Biblical examples and trying to think of abusive men in the Bible. It’s not something I had thought of before. The only one who came to mind at first was Pharaoh: eventually, God led his people out of Pharaoh’s grasp. And not before a lot of difficulties. But, that was God’s final solution: an exodus. That may be your final solution as well, I don’t know. In other cases, I don’t know how harsh or abusive the foreign kings were that led Israel captive towards the latter part of their Old Testament history. But: some of those kinds showed compassion and released the captives. In that case, God’s solution was to soften their hearts. How does this affect your marriage? Only time will tell. But God knows. And He cares deeply about what you are experiencing today in your marriage. Do You Think the Abuse Will Continue? Statistics and patterns can give you an idea of the general rates of improvement in abusive marriages but they can’t predict the outcome in your own individual circumstances. So are your own predictions at all accurate? A study from 2008[vi] wanted to try to determine if victims of psychological abuse were able to accurately predict their risk for future psychological abuse. They had participants rate the likelihood that their partner would engage in controlling/dominance behavior or efforts to humiliate/degrade them in the coming year. Then they followed up 18 months later and what they found was that women were more likely to be right than wrong in their assessments of risk. In fact, almost two thirds (62%) of victims accurately assessed their risk of being psychologically re-abused, either for or against. So if you are in an abusive situation, but you believe you can get through it and that your husband can change, you may well be right. Now, this is going to be a longer post. Because if you’re a wife in an abusive marriage and you want to keep your marriage but not keep the abuse, I will give you two things to work on. One is a way to cope — you may have figured some of this out already. Another is a way to look at shifting the pattern of abusive behavior. I have to caution you that this is just a self-help tool and does not replace individual counseling for your situation. Bear in mind that if you attempt to shift things in an abusive relationship, you may put yourself and your children into greater danger. Next week we are going to be talking about when to leave or stay, and if you need leave, how to do so safely. So if you are not certain of your safety I would say hold off on trying anything new until you read that episode or until you do some personal research along these lines. How to Cope with an Abusive Husband Your evaluation of how things are going to go with your husband is likely accurate. However, we also know there is no way to predict the future. But there are steps you can take to protect yourself and give your marriage the best chance for healing. I just want to pause here to really talk to wives where your husband is blaming you for all the distress and abuse that is happening in the marriage. By giving you these skills I am concerned that I might inadvertently be conveying the same message: that you’re the problem here. You are not the problem. You are not the cause of his abuse. He is the source, the cause of that issue. It’s not your fault. Yet: there are some things that you may be able to do to help yourself cope and to help empower yourself against the abuse and thereby shift your position in the marriage. This may improve your situation and change the pattern of abuse you are living with. That’s what I’m trying to help with. There are four things to look at. The first three are from a study in 2008[vii] where the researchers interviewed 27 women who had been in an abusive intimate relationship but these relationships had become nonviolent. These three items build on each other. Counteracting Abuse This involves actively struggling to survive day-to-day in the context of abuse while exploring ways to change, avoid and/or escape his oppressive behavior. Again,...

Is My Husband Abusive? [1 of 3]

Wed, 08 Feb 2017 11:00:20 +0000

Abuse is such a tough situation. We want to speak to all the brave wives out there who are putting on the mask every Sunday and acting like things are OK when every week you live through a cycle of walking on eggshells, explosions, the honeymoon stage and then starting all over again. But abuse isn’t always as obvious as physical threats or violence; there are lots of subtler— but equally damaging— forms abuse can take. We have a sad but necessary topic for you this week. For the next few episodes we’re going to be looking at abuse in marriage. Today we’re starting with the question, Is My Husband Abusive? I think one of my biggest fears coming to a topic like this is that there are a lot of times that the “abuse” word gets thrown out there to describe stuff that really isn’t. And there are a lot of times when something should be called abuse and it is not. We wanted to take this first episode to really help you go through these issues if you think it might be your situation — before we start talking about how to get help in our next episode. One of the things we put together for this episode is an assessment tool so that you can go through a specific set of questions and then evaluate your relationship to see if your husband is abusive. We’ll look at about how you can get hold of that later on. As you might expect, abuse gets categorized in a number of different ways. I often like to point out that in the simplest terms that when you’re dealing with an abusive situation it’s to do with issues of power and control. You do need both of those things, not just one. There are a lot of us who struggle with anxiety who try to exert a lot of control on the world around us to try to help reduce the uncertainty — that’s an anxiety problem, not an abuse problem. And there are power struggles in marriage too — probably for most of us — but that doesn’t constitute abuse by itself either. So let’s lay out some groundwork here about the types of abuse in marriage. Types of Abuse in Marriage I think it’s good to look at physical versus non-physical abuse. I’ve actually encountered wives experiencing physical abuse and they didn’t recognize it as such because not all forms of physical abuse look like a balled up fist. Physical abuse includes any type of violence. Going from least to worst seriousness, this can include: Throwing something with the intent to hurt or intimidate Pushing Grabbing Shoving Slapping Pulling hair Choking Hitting with an object Attempting to drown Beating Threats or use of a weapon such as a knife or gun[i]. In addition to that researcher’s definition I would include blocking, acting threatening or intimidating by posturing physically. Types of Non-Physical Abuse Non-physical abuse can be more difficult to identify. I want to pause here to make one point. A few years ago I came across my first situation where I had a wife asking for help with abuse. To help me make sure I was brushed up on the topic I consulted with a therapist who has written a book on the subject. During my consultation with this therapist and author, she mentioned the case of a woman who had been stabbed several times by her husband, rolled up in a rug and left in a field to die. The woman survived and her words were: the stabbing was awful, but his words hurt me more than anything else. I think for a lot of us that have been blessed to grow up in safe families where there was no physical violence we often think of the worst kind of physical abuse as being the batterer. And I don’t want to discount that at all. But I just want to raise the point that non-physical abuse is incredibly brutal too, and should not be belittled. The old playground epithet that “sticks and stones may hurt my bones but words never do” is a bunch of baloney, especially in an abusive context. Just keep that in mind if you’re just beginning to learn about abuse. There are four categories of non-physical abuse described in one of the journal articles we pulled: Emotional abuse (which can include verbal abuse) occurs when “a partner tries provoking arguments, engaging in name-calling, making [you] feel inadequate, and shouts or swears at [you][ii]” Social abuse occurs when “a partner limits contact with family and friends[iii]”. This is where the partner prevents you having a life outside your relationship, either by manipulation and guilt-tripping, by preventing you reaching other people (not letting you use your phone or the car etc) or by physically stopping you leaving the house. Economic abuse occurs when a “partner prevents [you] from knowing about or having access to family income[iv]” Psychological abuse occurs when a partner “undermines the security of the victim’s own logic and reason.[v]” These kinds of mind games and manipulation are designed to make the partner feel as if they are losing their mind. Where this gets tricky is that your spouse’s behaviors can just look like bad behavior. There often isn’t a clear cut line between aggressive or controlling actions and abuse. So what is the difference between bad behavior and abuse? Are My Husband’s Behaviors Destructive or Disappointing? Leslie Vernick is a Christian counselor who works with many couples in abusive marriages. I am going to refer to her work because she has good work. But I want to mention this. I’ve been to her website. And in my opinion, which she may or may not want, I think the marketing people have designed her website so that it invites wives to conclude their husbands are abusive. And I think that is a very risky approach and I would urge a great deal of caution. I have nothing to say in the defense of abusive husbands. Even as a therapist who employs a Rogerian, non-judgment, unconditional acceptance approach, I still have the urge to take abusive men out behind the barn. Even though that probably wouldn’t help them. Abuse is a horrible thing. But her site makes an assumption that you’ve shown up married to a manipulator. And I just want to caution because we all try to manipulate our spouses. So that’s just a heads up. Her book, The Emotionally Destructive Marriage, has some very valuable content for us to look at together. In there she makes the distinction between marriages that are disappointing and marriages that are destructive[vi]. You may be listening today and you find yourself in a disappointing marriage but one that is not destructive or abusive. There are marriages in which things don’t turn out as expected. You may feel upset that there is not enough romance, that your husband disagrees with you on important issues, or that you don’t feel the emotional connection that you want. If you find yourselves in conflict over these matters, where does it move from disappointing to destructive? She offers three indicators to help you know if your marriage is disappointing or destructive. You have to take all of these items together. The possibly abusive behaviors are repeated over and over again. I like a couple of things she says here. Firstly, emotionally destructive marriages consist of “emotional abuse [that] systematically degrades, diminishes and can eventually destroy the personhood of the abused”. She emphasizes the importance of looking for patterns of behavior. When I work with wives of abusive husbands I call this evidence gathering. He says God has forgiven him and he’s changing? You just watch and observe and see if the systematic behaviors have left or if they’re still present. You see, we’re all prone to individual instances of destructive sin. So you can’t define your marriage as abusive from one single episode of behavior, but should be looking for “repetitive attitudes and behaviors that result in tearing someone down or inhibiting growth” On many occasions, there are more than one or two potentially abusive behaviors. So perhaps with the list I gave at the start you saw your husband in one of the examples. Does that automatically indicate abuse? Not necessarily. The other researcher I referred to points out that some behaviors such as name-calling or provoking may not indicate abuse. But a spouse that “engages in many or all of them may be more clearly labeled abusive[vii]”. So ask the question, are there more than one or two potentially abusive behaviors? The potential abuser shows the following qualities when it comes to these behaviors: Lack of awareness Lack of responsibility (often blaming you — if you hadn’t provoked me I wouldn’t have punched you) Lack of change Now you may have promises or indicators of these but we’re looking for evidence. On the other hand, if your husband misbehaves but then demonstrates change, awareness and taking responsibility then his behaviors may not fall into the abusive category. So take those three indicators together. Does your husband show repeated abusive behavior or more than one type, while showing a lack of awareness, responsibility or willingness to change? If you’re getting solid “Yes’s” on all of them, we may have a situation. Identifying Patterns of Non-Violent Abusive Behavior So far we know that abusive behavior is repetitive, involves a variety of behaviors and often comes with a lack of awareness, responsibility, and change[viii]. Let’s look at some specific examples of non-physical behavior. Porrua-Garcia tal (2016)[ix] developed a psychological scale called The Scale of Psychological Abuse in Intimate Partner Violence. In this scale, they divide psychological abuse into the following categories. There are six of them, and I’m going to list them off. There’s quite a bit here but remember that we have a simplified 2-page assessment available to our much-appreciated supporters. It’s a good tool to help you identify if you’re in an abusive marriage and should seek help. You can get this by becoming a patron of The Marriage Podcast for Smart People. ...

Stop Bottling Up Stuff In Your Marriage

Wed, 01 Feb 2017 11:00:58 +0000

I find it’s pretty easy to avoid conflict. I kind of stockpile the issues until it gets really big and then I feel like I’m ready to talk. But the irony is: that’s actually when I’m least ready to talk. As soon as I open my mouth I know it’s not going to go well. So if avoiding conflict and bottling everything up until I burst isn't the answer, is there a better way of approaching conflict? We have an intriguing topic for you this week. Today we’re going to be looking at one of those things we are all doing wrong in marriage: avoiding conflict. I know that sometimes I find myself cataloging a list of issues I want to bring up with Verlynda. And then I kind of realize this is going to come out as way too much at once. It’s like we villainize the other person and adopt this belief that they won’t hear us unless we have a really exhaustive list of how bad they are. Or like we have to build up a comprehensive “case” against them, rather than just addressing each small thing as it arises, or our points will be rejected as being too “small” or “petty”. Avoiding Conflict Leads to More Conflict I want to start by asking you to consider whether you might have an avoidance orientation in your relationship. An avoidance orientation just means that you attempt to avoid conflict during conversations. A study from 2015 observed that couples who have this style of relationship often experience “communication difficulties and the perpetuation of avoidance [1]” They studied 365 couples and found that if you’re more avoidant, you’ll be more reactive to your spouse’s negative behavior. So avoidant spouses are more likely to explode when they are having difficult discussions because they’ve been bottling up issues and resentments for so long that eventually the dam just bursts and it all pours forth. So basically if you think that avoiding tough topics and just keeping things calm is a good idea, the research shows- and your experience probably resonates with this- that avoiding these issues actually leads to less productive discussions when you actually start talking about what matters. As we said in an earlier podcast episode: talk about it sooner before it's a big deal. Crucially, the study found that this was independent of relationship satisfaction and neuroticism. This is important to note— firstly because it doesn’t matter about how good or how poor your marriage is, avoidance is still not helpful. Secondly, when they say it is independent of neuroticism they are saying this is not about one spouse being a nutcase. This is not one person’s fault. It’s simply a matter of a technique that you’re using in your marriage that just doesn’t work. Of course, I get why we do this. We want to keep the peace. We don’t want to upset our spouse. We don’t want to rock the boat. We say things like, “Happy wife, happy life” and if that means keep silent and don’t complain, that’s what we do. Does that sound like a God-filled marriage? All over the Bible, we are told both to forgive and to exhort each other. In Ephesians, we are told to speak the truth in love. In Colossians, we are told to teach and admonish one another in all wisdom. Gary Thomas talks about this in his book, Sacred Marriage, and he points out that the purpose of marriage is to make us holy, not make us happy. When we avoid topics we need to be talking about, we are thwarting one of the purposes of marriage: personal growth and sanctification. Conflict isn’t fun. But: it leads to forgiveness, where avoidance does not. And, if done in the right way, it leads both you and your spouse closer to God’s ideal view of your marriage. Why Do Couples Avoid Conflict? Before we go to the “how to” of stopping this bottling up of stuff in our marriages, let’s take a look at why we avoid conflict in our marriages. There’s a number of reasons why we do this. Research has shown that: Poor marital satisfaction (not being happy and almost preferring to keep evidence rather than challenge the status quo) Depression (why bother — defeating thoughts, self-worth is diminished so we don’t assert on behalf of our needs) Relational uncertainty (I might lose him/her) Generalized anxiety (continuing to fret or worry over issues rather than address them) A study from 2000[2] looked, for example, at the relationship between depression, marital satisfaction and couple’s use of avoidance and attacking conflict resolution strategies. They found that depressive symptoms were significant predictors of avoidance in both husbands and wives. And they found that poor marital satisfaction was a significant predictor of avoidance in husbands. I think the latter is likely due to the fact that in most distressed marriages (though not all) the most common husband-wife pattern is withdraw-attack and the withdraw of course looks like avoidance. On the anxiety and uncertainty side of things, another study looked at couples reuniting after military deployment. The returning service members described issued they avoided discussing upon reunion and over the first three months of homecoming. The researchers found that when generalized anxiety was present the service member would be willing to discuss deployment but was more likely to be reluctant to talk about reintegration issues and the couple’s relationship. In other words, it kept them from discussing what matters here and now in the present — what was going on in their relationship today. They also noted that individuals who experienced more relational uncertainty reported more topic avoidance[3]. If you think your relationship is in danger, better to keep quiet about issues that are bothering you then risk everything by having a serious argument or uncovering a major difference in opinion. Ironically though this belief that avoiding conflict helps secure the relationship would probably make things less secure— if you’re afraid to broach issues then you’ll never grow as a couple and you’ll spend a lot of time feeling like you’re walking on very thin ice— one wrong word and it could all be over. Again: let’s not be hard on folks here. When you’re not certain, you don’t want to make things worse, right? I get that. But the challenge here is that the desire to not make things worse leads to not addressing what needs addressing, which keeps things worse. To be blunt: what you’re trying to do to save your marriage is not working. And I know what you’re thinking: “Well, last time we tried to talk about it just got worse and I was on the couch for like three weeks”. What I suggest is this. Not talking about it is not working. Talking about it is not working. So let’s change how you talk about it. And to do that, let’s change how you look at these issues. How To Move Forward When You Want to Avoid Conflict I think it’s really helpful here to look at the issues we face in marriage in terms of what Dr. John Gottman calls solvable and perpetual conflict. Solvable conflict is conflict that can be resolved through positive problem-solving styles. In other words, you just need certain skills in order to successfully solve these issues. And anyone can learn skills. We teach these skills, by the way, in our Talk To Me 101 course. It’s only $97 and will be a huge help to your marriage if you just need these basic skills. You can learn more about that course at talktome101.com Perpetual conflict refers to problems that cannot be solved. These occur when there are fundamental differences in values, assumptions and dreams. For example, you dream of dying with your boots on running a cattle ranch and your wife wants to spend your golden years by the lake, just being quiet and enjoying friends away from the pressure of having cattle around. Significantly different religious beliefs can also be a source of perpetual conflict [4]. So perpetual conflict is a really tough one because, ultimately, you cannot solve the problem. So you need to look beyond finding a “solution”. What I want you to know is that we’ve created a practical exercise in PDF form that is available to our much-appreciated supporters and patrons of our podcast. Downloading and using this exercise will teach you how to peacefully dialog about these perpetual conflict issues. You can get this by becoming a patron of The Marriage Podcast for Smart People. The thing to note here is that solvable vs. perpetual is not about how long you’ve fought over it. You may feel that all of your issues are perpetual because you’ve been fighting about them forever. But perpetual conflict is defined by fundamental differences in values, assumptions and dreams. Not about how long you’ve struggled to solve the issue. So don’t be too quick to drop everything into the perpetual bucket and throw your hands up in the air. The second thing to note is not only do you have to get things into the right bucket, but you come at each of the two things differently. Address Solvable Conflict For solvable conflict, you want to use positive problem-solving. There was this really neat study in 2014 by Scheeren et al[5]. Basically, they looked at conflict and said, OK, there are two ways to come at it. One is an attacking conflict style and the other is a positive problem-solving style. Not surprisingly, they found that for both men and women marital quality increased when positive conflict resolution was used. So I’m going to tell you right now what works. Positive conflict resolution looks like this: Avoiding personal attacks, insults and loss of control Focusing on the problem, constructively discussing differences, and establishing agreements Finding acceptable alternatives for both spouse, negotiating and compromising So that is how you come at solvable conflict. We look at this in a bit more detail in our podcast about collaborative conflict style. Use skills, find a positive outcome, look to build each other up and be willing to co

Emotional Intimacy is the Key to Great Sex

Wed, 25 Jan 2017 11:00:28 +0000

What do you do when you want to spice up your sex life? We usually start thinking about new positions, or lingerie or maybe traveling to some exotic location with our spouse. Physical things. But what if the key to great sex was found in a completely different dimension? Sexual Experience Types & Attachment The research we’re looking at today will actually have a profound impact on the whole scope of your married life. So this is definitely going to be a pivotal topic for many couples who are reading. We are going to talk about attachment. I know that sounds like something to do with velcro but attachment in the science of relationships is simply about the love bond between two people. So every time you read “attachment” just think “love bond” so that this new term doesn’t throw you off. What we’re going to see is that the quality and nature of your attachment to your spouse has the largest impact on your sexual satisfaction. If you’re in a sexless marriage, or you have a lot of conflict about sex, it almost always comes back to this attachment issue. The only exception would be if there is a genuine sexual disorder such as erectile dysfunction or vaginismus— those may be related to physiological issues or they may find their root in other things like childhood sexual abuse. But: if you solve the attachment issue you’ll also have a safe place to talk about these other issues, and I would certainly recommend you do so with a qualified sex therapist. We will look at how attachment affects different ways of experiencing sex, and finish with a look at 7 steps to growing a secure attachment in a sexual context. Three Experiential Patterns of Sexual Intercourse The first thing you need to know is that both men and women experience sexual intercourse in one of three patterns: Relationship-centered orientation: This pattern is all about being connected to your spouse on an emotional level during sex. So it is about the “individual’s feelings of being loved and esteemed by one’s partner and the desire for partner’s involvement, as well as the sense of being the subject of love (i.e. feelings of love toward the partner, and attentional and emotional focus on her/his needs and reactions.) [i]” This is healthy, whole-person sex that encompasses both physical and emotional experience and is focused on both giving and receiving from your spouse. Worry-centered orientation: This pattern revolves around a focus on you and your own worries over giving and receiving from your spouse. This includes worry about "the personal vulnerability and sense of estrangement related to sexual activity, the negative and immoral meanings of this activity, the lack of partner’s sexual competence, and the potential evidence of one’s sexual inadequacy, along with the occurrence of interfering thoughts[ii]”. This is sex that’s not going well. Anything from doormat sex to abusive sex to my body-is-here-but-my-brain-is-not kind of sex. Or if you’re lost in self-consciousness. It’s not engaged sex. Pleasure-centered orientation: This pattern reflects sex on a more basic level that's focused on pleasure and not on the emotional experience. It's about “the orgasmic cycle of excitement-pleasure-relief-satisfaction, which is accompanied by a sense of power and strength and two complementary states of mind — cognitive/emotional dissociation from the environment and focused attention on reaching the orgasm [iii].”. This is sex that’s purely about crossing the finish line; focusing on the physical sensations, with no real person-to-person connection. Gender Differences in Sexual Experience Remember, men and women both experience sex that falls into these three patterns. But there are gender differences in how much of each they experience and what they are looking for: Women demonstrate higher relational orientation in their descriptions of sexual intercourse. “Women’s experience of heterosexual intercourse was more ambivalent in nature in comparison with men’s experience.” In that, “Women, compared with men, experienced more disappointment with their partner, along with worries and interfering thoughts.” While women were more concerned about getting more love from their spouse during heterosexual intercourse, men were more concerned about getting more sexual variety. So: Houston, we have a problem. Basically, they’re saying that women fluctuate between a worried orientation and a relationship orientation and men tend to see sex from a pleasure orientation. There’s a misalignment here and this is why so many couples aren’t experiencing deeply satisfying sexual intimacy. Why Do Men and Women Experience Sex Differently? I think there are some definite societal influences. Let’s acknowledge that briefly but what we need to talk about is what is happening inside the relationship because changing that is more accessible than changing culture. At the same time, we need to look at our own perspectives on sex. This is especially true for men, who have this pleasure orientation. I think there’s a huge problem in that we’re socialized to believe that we need to release and that the best sex happens with the most ideal female body type. We need to think through both of these carefully. If it’s about the release, what’s the difference between using your hand and using your wife? If it’s really just about crossing the finish line — that’s objectifying to your wife and completely neglects the relational aspect of sex. Surely this isn’t the perfect intimate experience that God had in mind when he created sex for us? I want to challenge husbands out there to see sex not as something you need for release- not just as a pressure valve that needs venting once in a while but as a means of connecting more deeply with your wife. And when you orgasm, it’s not because you’ve crossed a line but because you’re experiencing the pinnacle of human connection with this very precious singular person — your wife — who gets to see you and know you and experience you in a way that nobody else does. And afterwards you don’t just roll over and fall asleep, you hold her, you affirm her beauty, you continue to enjoy her presence. Sex is biological, sure, but it can be so much more than that. Secondly, I think that much of our wives’ worry-centered orientation comes from their insecurities about their bodies. Many of these are prompted by a worldview that says the best kind of sex only happens with perfectly endowed women. Or men, for that case — this can go both ways. Think about this. Suppose there are 1 million men with “perfect bodies”. And 1 million women with “perfect bodies”. That begs the question: are the other 7.399 billion people in the world condemned to having mediocre or less than satisfying sex? Would God really design us like that? It cannot be. One of the things I’ve been working on for a number of years is the conscious rejection of this worldview. This is not about whether Verlynda is in the 1 million or not. It’s about what it means for the rest of the world even if she is. And what does it mean for us as a couple as we age? How many 70-year-olds do you see on the covers of glossy magazines? What does it mean for us as an old couple? And yet we’re told by these older couples that sex gets better as you get older. We need to be very cautious about the messages we send each other as spouses around physical attributes and we need to pray that God will keep shaping our thinking and affection to see our spouse as the most beautiful person we know. Attachment and Sexual Experience I want to think about attachment. Remember attachment is about the love bond between you and your spouse. Not velcro. There are three main styles- avoidant, anxious and secure: Avoidant attachment "reflects the extent to which a person distrusts a relationship partners’ goodwill, strives to maintain behavioral independence, and relies on deactivating strategies for dealing with relational threats [iv]”. This is all about keeping your distance emotionally for fear of getting hurt and often entails fleeing from problems rather than facing them. Anxious attachment: "reflects the degree to which a person worries that partners will not be available in times of need [v]”. This is where you don't feel that your spouse can be relied upon to be there, so you act in a controlling or clingy way or do whatever you think will keep them wanting to be with you. You hold on too tightly because you don’t fully trust that your spouse will always be there when you need them. Secure attachment: "is defined by comfort with closeness and faith [vi]”. This is where anxiety and avoidance are both low, and you fully trust your spouse and understand that they are always there for you, enabling you to be less clingy and more of a separate, secure individual. So you have avoidant, anxious and secure. Attachment styles are often formed early in life and modeled after our relationship with our primary caregiver or parent. These styles of attachment and behavior obviously affect a lot more than just sex. You might, for example, notice some similarities with the different styles of fighting we talk about here. Now, remember our three patterns of sexuality: relationship-centered, worry-centered and pleasure-centered. Let’s tie attachment to patterns of sexual experience. Relationship-Centered sex is affected like this: Higher anxious attachment = lower feelings of being loved and higher desire for involvement from your spouse during sexual intercourse. At its extreme, it means using sex to reassure yourself of the love bond. This can look very needy, and never satisfying; if your spouse has ever said they feel like they’ll get lost in you or can never meet your expectations, you may have anxious attachment impacting your intercourse. Higher avoidant attachment = lower feelings of being loved and of love toward your spouse....

Overcoming Infidelity: 30 Days to Recovery

Wed, 12 Oct 2016 15:38:01 +0000

Has infidelity impacted your marriage? Do you feel like you need guidance through recovery and rebuilding your marriage? A few months ago we ran a 15 Day Marriage Challenge and were absolutely stunned by the number of people going through that process who were dealing with betrayal in the form of an affair or infidelity. Caleb created the 30 Day Betrayal Devotional set as a response to this need. This is a very unique product in the marketplace and in this podcast episode Caleb answers some questions and tells us about it. By the way, these were written for the more common situation of husband betraying wife. If you are a couple where the roles are reversed, and the wife has betrayed the husband, just switch books and pronouns. Broken Couples Need to Heal From Affairs Together The first thing we recognized is that both the betrayer and the betrayed need to be working through their own issues in this process, but they need to be doing so in a way that opens them up to each other. These devotionals comes in a set of "His" and "Hers" and are complementary to each other. They're two separate journals but come in a set. What happens is that you are working on things that complement and correlate with what your spouse is working on. For example, a few days in Caleb speaks to the betrayer about being willing to acknowledge his spouse's feelings and is talking to be the betrayed wife about sharing her feelings rather than always pursuing facts about the betrayal. The two parts match up day by day as you go through this journey. And some good news: rarely is there a couple recovering from an affair where there was not some sort of intimacy deficiency in the marriage. Those couples who make a sincere effort to rebuild and recover often speak of their marriage being WAAAY better than before. What changed? All of a sudden everything becomes open and vulnerable. It's incredibly painful and risky but you have two people who are seeing way further into each other than they did before. As they heal and rebuild, they don't let go of this newfound intimacy! Recovering From Infidelity Needs a Proven Plan The second thing that we realized is that couples need a plan. To be honest, we initially didn't want to do a devotional because we didn't want to string together some warm fuzzies and lead people down an unrealistic pathway that was sprinkled with Christian platitudes. So, Caleb wrote these devotionals with some very challenging Scripture readings but he also integrated them with a clinically proven pathway towards rebuilding and recovering from an affair. This is a proven process that you're stepping through. The first ten days help you confront the facts of the affair but move towards owning the feelings and the trauma of the affair: how it impacts the betrayed spouse, but also showing the betrayer how to demonstrate accountability and honesty. The next 10 days deal with the 'why' of the affair. This is the part where you really start to make meaning of the affair. It's a very touching part of the devotional where you go deep with root causes in order to find the healing. By the end of this, you still won't like that the affair happened or the pain it caused, but you should be able to see that there is hope, there is purpose and that God is going to turn your grief and pain into blessing and recovery. The last 10 days takes you through the decisions to forgive and reconcile. Do you want to do it? If yes, then it becomes about walking you through that as well. That is a very tough process to navigate through without guidance. Recovering From An Affair Should Result in Transformation We would never recommend having an affair in order to catalyze growth and transformation. However, since this has happened and it is a part of what you have experienced, the next thing I'm looking for is how can we take this heart-breaking, profoundly betraying, devastating discovery and turn it into something that is transformational. Obviously, this is a self-help tool so the transformation really depends on how sincere and how deeply you go with the challenges in the devotionals. But our goal for you would be, as the betrayed spouse, that by the end you will have: Made sense of why the affair happened Processed the grief and trauma of the betrayal Understood how to begin trusting again Learned how to forgive and reconcile And moved towards affair-proofing your marriage. And for the betraying spouse, my goals for you are that you will have: Supported your spouse properly through recovery from the betrayal Learned how to begin earning her trust again Learned how to make amends for the infidelity And moved towards affair-proofing your marriage. Who is This For? and Not For? These devotionals are for couples recovering from affairs and infidelity. It's ideal if you both can do the devotionals. There are journalling and workbook sections throughout so you are engaging with the Scripture reading, with prayer and the counsel given in the devotionals. You could do this on your own if you like and you will receive some benefit. We only sell them as a pair because that is really how we'd like you to come to this. These are not intended for couples recovering from discovering a sexual addiction or pornography addiction where you now know that this is something that was brought to the marriage. If you are in an abusive marriage and your spouse is abusive in any way toward you, we do NOT recommend that you engage in any process that makes you more vulnerable, which this would do. Your first step is to find safety. So it's not that we don't want to sell a lot of these - we'd love to reach as many distressed marriages as we can. We just want to be really honest about who this is and who it isn't for. Remember, affairs take all shapes and forms: if your spouse had an emotional affair or a physical affair; it is was a coworker or a random person; whether you feel like you were at fault or not. The variety doesn't remove the effectiveness of this resource. If you're recovering from infidelity, these 30 Day Betrayal Recovery Devotionals are an outstanding resource that we're proud to offer to you. They're printed in full colour on top-quality paper and they come with a wire binding so they open up and lay flat as you work through them. 30 Day Betrayal Recovery Devotionals That way it is easy to pray over what you're learning, do the writing and journalling that's involved and just really focus on recovering from this huge blow you've experienced. To purchase your devotionals, simple go to www.onlyyouforever.comhttps://therapevo.com/infidelity-recovery-for-couples/ Remember, if you have any questions about this or anything else, be sure to get in touch!

Why You Can’t Trust Your Spouse

Wed, 05 Oct 2016 13:51:11 +0000

Do you ever wonder why you can’t trust your spouse? Especially when you think you should be able to? Before we start, we want to make it clear who this episode is for because it may not be immediately apparent from the title. We’re speaking to men and women who are struggling to trust their spouse and recognize that this trust issue lies primarily within themselves at this point. There may have been a past betrayal or not. If there was you might say something like, “I know in my head that I can trust him or her now, but I just can’t get past the doubts.” You know your spouse is trustworthy, but you can’t get there yourself as far as trusting them. So, if you’re struggling to trust and you cannot, and you are sure this is about something happening within yourself, this article is for you. On the other hand, if you’ve gone through a betrayal and you’re struggling to trust and maybe your spouse is continuing to act in ways that are concealing or suspicious in nature and your lack of trust is legitimate, this is not for you. Trust your gut. But if it’s more like you feel something’s wrong in you rather than in your relationship, we’d like to help you. Finally, if you’ve betrayed your spouse and you can’t get them to trust you, don’t just stick your spouse in the bucket we are discussing today. A severe betrayal takes a long time to recover from. In fact, their discovery of your betrayal was probably a traumatic event and your spouse may be suffering from a variation of PTDS called Post Infidelity Stress Disorder. Remember, everything said here should be seen as a self-help tool and not as a replacement for counseling! So…trust. Trust has been defined as the “confidence that [one] will find what is desired [from another] rather than what is feared.[i] It’s the idea that when I turn to Caleb for something I have this innate confidence that he will provide what I desire. He’s safe. He’s reliable. He’s predictable. Now, if he’s all those things but I cannot trust him, then I have a problem that I need to address. Trust is implicit in love. 1 Corinthians 13 talks about love, and verse 7 says, “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” Do you hear the trust implicit in that? Proverbs 31:11 has this really neat little statement talking about the virtuous woman: “The heart of her husband trusts in her”. Trust is an emotional confidence in another person. That’s why betrayal hurts so bad and why it takes time to heal – because it touches you to the core. On the other hand, when you can’t trust but you should be able to, then this affects your marriage bond because of that fact that trust is implicit in love. In terms of why you can’t trust your spouse, here are a few different possibilities that may apply to you. Lack of Trust as Means of Maintaining Control The first possibility is that you may be holding onto a lack of trust as a means of maintaining control. In 2015, some researchers looked at the influence of trust on conflict discussions. Typically, if you’re a trusting person you tend to make positive attributions about your spouse even in questionable circumstances. You also tend to display more positive emotions than negative when you’re in conflict. On the other hand, if you’re a low-trust individual, you tend towards pessimistic views.[ii] For example, if you find a long black hair on your husband’s sweater and no one in your family has long black hair, a trusting spouse would remove the hair and that’s it. Instead, a low trust spouse may start the conversation with, “Who does this belong to?” When you’re less trusting, you often move very quickly towards tactics that really destabilize the relationship or even harm it because you have this underlying belief that your spouse is concealing negative events from you. In marriage then, low-trust spouses are more influential than high-trust spouses. They tend to pull down the high-trust spouse towards more negative outcomes. There is more power on their side. These researchers found that when one spouse was low on trust, both spouses felt less close following the conflict discussions. Only when both spouses scored high in trust did the conflict end up drawing them closer.[iii] You might be engaging in conflict to reduce your uncertainty, but if you are the low-trust spouse you already are on the high side of the power imbalance. It puts you on moral high ground and requires your spouse to defend themselves before the court. That’s a natural power imbalance in your favor. Is it possible that there was a period of time in your life where things felt really out on control? It could have been a betrayal or something very different like a traumatic medical situation. Were you able to bring some sense of sanity back to that crazy situation by leveraging a lack of trust? Perhaps you find yourself today somewhat entrenched in that position and it’s really scary to think about trusting again because it takes you back to a very real sense of vulnerability. Unfortunately, while that lack of trust can be a means of maintaining control, it is also harming your relationship to your spouse. So, while it’s an attempt to create safety, it’s also undermining your safety and if you can see that, you may find the motivation you need in order to consider making a shift if indeed this is the source of your lack of trust. Lack of Trust as a Means of Self-Protection Another possible source of lack of trust is related to maintaining control and that is your lack of trust could be a means of self-protection. Research in 2013 showed that people with low trust in their spouse feel compelled to remember the past in a way that prioritizes self-protection over relationship dependence.[iv] How this works is this: say there are transgressions on the part of your spouse in the past. If you have a lack of trust, you will continue to act in ways that protect yourself rather than protect the relationship. This is tricky, because who wouldn’t want to protect themselves? Unfortunately, this is eroding the relationship and therefore is ultimately not self-protective. That’s why it’s hard to get unstuck from this issue. The most natural sense of self-protection is what you resort to, but it doesn’t work and there’s a way that this continues to reinforce your belief you’re not safe. It’s a self-fulfilling, vicious cycle. These researchers found that “the greater a person’s trust in their partner, the more positively then tend to remember the number, severity, and consequentiality of their partner’s past transgressions.”[v] They also found that people with high trust “tend to expect that their partner will act in accordance with their interests. Consequently, …they have the luxury of remembering the past in a way that prioritizes relationship dependence over self-protection. In particular, they tend to exhibit relationship-promoting memory biases regarding transgressions the partner has enacted in the past.”[vi] If you’re having trouble trusting your spouse, you may just be trying to protect yourself. You know this isn’t working well for you, even though at a superficial level it makes sense to protect yourself. Lack of Trust as a Core Relationship Belief This may be the deepest level of trust issues that we're discussing today. In our very early experiences with our primary caregiver, usually our parents, there are ways that we come to see the world at a very fundamental level that are largely informed by how we are related to by our parents. That, in turn, affects how we relate to our significant others as adults. This is called attachment theory. If you learned in the early years of your life that the most important people in your world were not reliable, you will now naturally believe the same thing about your spouse even if the very opposite is true of your spouse. Again, we’re talking about why you can’t trust your spouse in the context where you know your spouse is a trustworthy person but you are having trouble trusting him or her. We all face this issue where we bring ways of seeing our significant other to the marriage that are more informed by the realities of our family of origin that the realities of our spouse. This could be another source of a lack of trust that is present but not actually a result of anything your spouse has done. How to Trust Again So, how do you start trusting again? That is a difficult question to answer in this context. There are a few things we do know. One is that you have to watch for cycles and learn how to break out of them. For example, if your lack of trust has created a level of suspicion in your marriage, your spouse may actually be concealing ordinary, legitimate things just to escape some of the burden of suspicion. If you perceive this, it increases your lack of trust. Can you see the cycle? This cycle of self-concealment by your spouse, resulting in a lack of trust, is hard to break out of. One approach might be to actually take the initiative to acknowledge to your spouse how your behaviour is promoting this cycle and asking for his or her gentle engagement in working with you to step out of this cycle.[vii] Another thing to note is that trusting behaviours come before feelings of trust. Another study actually showed this![viii] They asked 64 dating couples to allow their partner to dance with a stranger. If a person said yes, this was seen as a trusting behaviour. What they found was that when Partner A said yes, Partner B can dance, then feelings of trust were induced in Partner A.[ix] What is fascinating is that the impact of this was greater than the impact of trustworthy behaviours by Partner B. You actually may infer more trust from your own actions toward your spouse than your spouse’s actions. If you struggle with trust,...

What to Talk About on Your Next Date

Wed, 28 Sep 2016 11:00:59 +0000

Even if you're happily married you might find dates with your spouse kind of awkward sometimes. What do you talk about? I know we struggle at times to have an easy flow of conversation, too. I don’t know what it is about dates that make it difficult to know what to talk about. Sometimes we’re just distracted or exhausted but sometimes if you’re up to date with each other then you’re also not sure what to go over. Certainly, if there’s an ‘elephant’ in the room, that gets in the way too. This is a good place to start because where couples struggle sometimes is they haven’t dealt with something that’s pretty major. One spouse initiates the date as a way to try to repair or even extend a peace offering. We could go down quite a rabbit trail with this but I think it would be good just to point out that you want to set up your dates so that you have the same goal/agenda when you go on them. If your marriage is distressed, be sure that you’re both heading in with an open mind that you’re doing this as one little step to move towards repair and reconciliation. If this is your situation, don’t go in with super high expectations and give your spouse the benefit of the doubt and show some generosity by extending good will. This is one time that we’d actually recommend avoiding the elephant in the room. If the ‘elephant’, or issue, is too big for you, put that out there before you go and also suggest how you’d like to resolve that: set up a time to talk, ask for help from a spiritual leader in your church, or get some counselling. On the date itself, though, is not the time or place to hash out difficult issues. What you want to try to do is to set up your dates to allow a little sweetness to percolate into your marriage. Warmth. Kindness: both given and received. When you’re going on a date in the context of the distressed marriage you want to point the conversation toward topics that help you to build little wee connections with each other again. On the other hand, if your marriage is reasonably healthy but you just need a way to freshen up your dates and your relationship we’re going to point you toward the same topics! We know that life happens. We all get super busy and because we’re always in the whirlwind we tend to lose track of those little details that are happening in each other’s lives. Remember how when you were dating you used to love finding out those tiny little facts about each other? Well, date conversations should steer in that direction. Talk About Relationships and Experiences Generally, and looking at research on conversations that people tend towards, about 55% of conversation times for males and about 2/3 for females is devoted to talking about relationships and experiences.[i] See, most people like to talk about relationships and experiences because these are the most influential forces in our lives in terms of our emotional wellbeing. A much smaller amount of time goes to work or school-related trips, then to sport, then arrangements for future social activities, then culture and art and politics and religion. So let me give you a few different ideas about this. You definitely want to spend more time asking your spouse about the relationships you see less of. For example, how’s it going with their boss, with their mother, with their closer friends that maybe you don’t hang out with as a couple too much. These things are really important to your spouse. Watch for little hints of emotion there and try to catch those and expand on them to learn more about your spouse’s feelings. Be curious. Rather than assuming you know something, ask about it. Watch how you add your interpretive layers to what they’re saying, though. You may find more value, instead of thinking about how you see something just to stay with more neutral non-judgmental questions to ask your spouse how they experienced their friend or the specific circumstance at work. Part of this is not only having the topics to talk about but actually stopping and taking the time to unpack them. Males tend to just assume certain things and fill in the blanks on stuff, but if you can hold back on your own interpretation and try to lean into the curiosity, it not only helps to extend the conversation but also helps you to get to know your wife better. More understanding always leads to more compassion. The second thing here is to learn also to be curious about areas of your spouse’s life where your interests don’t overlap. Even if you have no interest or knowledge about what they are talking about, turn that into an advantage and say “Wow, I know nothing about that” and then start being really curious about the basics. Now you’re asking questions to learn about this interest and you have the other person excited about one of their interests and that is a great way to have a conversation! You can also just decide you want to take time to get to know how they think about certain issues more. Talk About Important Issues I know, I know. I said not deal with major marital issues on your dates. However, there is still a place for important, substantive issues. We get a lot of small talk from many of our relationships, we need to go deeper in our marriage. There was a study in 2010 that compared small talk vs. substantive conversations and looked at wellbeing. The small talk was really banal like “Oh, how’s your popcorn chicken?” and the important issues were those things where we’re exploring relationships, like, “So, your mom baked out of your lunch date? What do you think might be going on for her?” What these researchers found was that higher well-being was associated with less small talk and more substantive conversations.[ii] It appears that happy people don’t just stick with small talk but they also engage in more in-depth conversation. Start Conversations by Asking Questions Sometimes the pressure of having to bring a conversation starter leads to anxiety which prevents you from getting into the flow. Well, one thing we can do is learn to ask good questions. This is such a great skill for any part of marriage, or family life, or any human relationship. Here are some ideas from the 7 Power of Questions by Dorothy Leeds. The first thing you need to know is that not all questions are equally effective as conversation starters. I’m sure every person knows how well it works to ask your child, “So, how did school go today?”. “Good.” Period. End of conversation. Asking your spouse, “How was work today?” often doesn’t go much better. It’s too general a question. Think about how you can get more specific with the question. Try: What was the best part of your day at work? What was the most annoying part of your day at work? What was the funniest thing that happened to you today? These will lead to more things to talk about because they are more specific. It works even better if you have the presence of mind to track things from day to day. “So, you were hoping to get your proposal finished at work today. Was it hard to get it finished on time?” Keep Date Conversations Going by Staying Focused One thing that is so easy to do is to grab your phone wherever there’s a lull in the conversation. It’s like our phones have become the ultimate awkwardness disrupter – something to take me away from my discomfort and anxiety when there’s silence. There was a study in 2014 where researchers looked at the relationship between the presence of mobile devices and the quality of real-life in-person social interactions. They looked at 100 pairs of people discussing either a casual or a meaningful topic together while a trained research assistant observed them unobtrusively from a distance noting whether either participant placed a mobile device on the table or held it in his or her hand. The results of this study showed that conversations in the absence of cell phones were rated as significantly superior to those in the presence of the mobile device. Note: this is “in the presence” of; not even talking about use! They also noted that people who had conversations in the absence of mobile devices reported higher levels of empathic concern. Empathic concern is that ability to relate and to connect emotionally with what the other person is sharing.[iii] Putting your phone away shows that you are truly interested in the conversation at hand – it shows you care. When you show that, you’re sending your spouse a signal that gives them a reason to keep talking about what matters to them. So, be mindful of how your cell phone is a part of your date together, and what it might be adding or removing. Yes, if you have younger kids or a new babysitter, you may want to have your phone close by you. This is a time to get creative with your technology! Give your sitter a special ringtone or even turn on the do not disturb feature but set your babysitter's contact info so she has special exceptions to this. That way it will only ring if she calls and you can have uninterrupted conversation the rest of your date night. Once you get those date conversations going, remember that you also need to be intentional about how you’re going to keep them going! And keep in mind the Bible verse from Ephesians 4:29 that says our conversations should be “such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.” It would be really cool if you could go on your next date with a real concern to give grace to your spouse by being intentional about your conversation! [i] R. I. M. Dunbar, Anna Marriott, and N. D. C. Duncan, “Human Conversational Behavior,” Human Nature 8, no. 3 (September 1997): 231–46, doi:10.1007/BF02912493. [ii] Matthias R. Mehl et al., “Eavesdropping on Happiness: Well-Being Is Related to Having Less Small Talk and More Substantive Conversations,” Psychological Science 21, no. 4 (April 1, 2010): 539–41, doi:10....

How to Appreciate Your Spouse

Wed, 21 Sep 2016 11:00:29 +0000

Maybe your spouse has complained to you that he or she just doesn’t feel appreciated. Well, let’s just take that at face value today and work on this whole appreciation thing. It can only help, right? One of my favorite Bible verses is: “You must let no unwholesome word come out of your mouth, but only what is beneficial for the building up of the one in need, that it may give grace to those who hear.” If every word we spoke in our marriages was tested by this verse, we would see some vast improvements! What Does Appreciation Look Like? There is a measurement tool used in research called the Appreciation in Relationships Scale which looks at these items:[i] Telling your partner that he/she is the best Telling your partner how much you appreciate him/her Not taking your partner for granted Acknowledging and treating your spouse like s/he is someone special Noticing when your spouse does nice things for you and saying thank you, even for the really small things Feeling struck with a sense of awe and wonder when you think about your spouse being in your life. Basically, appreciation is any feeling or expression of gratitude for who a person is and what they do. When you perceive that your spouse sees you as valuable, you feel appreciated. This, of course, leads to a greater sense of security in the marriage and also the feeling that you can be confident of how your spouse sees you. It’s difficult when you’re not sure what your spouse thinks of you. This may be why your spouse is saying that s/he doesn’t feel appreciated. For some reason, they may not actually be sure of what you think of them. When you take these needs for appreciation that we all have and you bring them into your marriage what you’re doing is shifting your focus away from your own self-interest and really starting to include your spouse’s needs. This shift in thinking is fundamental to showing appreciation because you have to start to mentally position yourself around what you’re giving rather than what you’re getting from the marriage. When this shift takes place, you’re now expressing behaviours that help to maintain and build up your relationship. This is the whole point of appreciation! How Appreciation Blesses Your Marriage Here are five ways that appreciation benefits your marriage. We’ll show you why this works and what it does for your marriage so that you can really become intentional about putting this into place. First, Appreciate Your Spouse and Your Spouse Will Appreciate You A study from 2012 showed that “feeling appreciate by one’s spouse promotes one’s own appreciative feelings….people who feel more appreciated by their romantic partners report being more appreciative of their partners. In turn, people who are more appreciative of their partners report being more responsive to their partner’s needs.”[ii] Appreciation begets more appreciation. When you appreciate your spouse, your spouse is more likely to appreciate you back. Appreciation starts a healthy cycle in your marriage – as one partner considers the other before self, the other partner starts to do the same, and the relationship as a whole benefits from this. Second, Appreciation Leads to Commitment and Protects from Divorce Further results of the 2012 study showed that people who are more appreciative of their partners are more committed and more likely to remain in their relationships over time.[iii] In this way, displays of appreciation are protective against divorce and separation. Anything that contributes to the happy longevity of your marriage is really worthwhile! Third, Appreciation Positively Changes How You View Your Marriage Different research, from 2010, discovered that one of the benefits of expressing gratitude (which is just one way of expressing appreciation) positively changes how each partner views the relationship, specifically in terms of the communal strength of the relationship.[iv] Gratitude is what you feel when you are aware of what you appreciate. Developing the habit of looking for and then giving words to what you appreciate is how you create gratitude. Focussing on appreciation adds this powerful altruistic aspect to the marriage which in turn affects how you view your marriage. You feel it is stronger when you show more appreciation. Fourth, Appreciation Improves Your Spouse’s Mental Health A study in 2013 investigated how gratitude within a marriage impacted the mental wellbeing of each spouse. They used a depression scale (which is kind of like a Beck Inventory if you’ve heard of that) which is basically a questionnaire used to measure depression or depressive symptoms. Here’s what they found: A husband’s gratitude negatively correlated with the wife’s depressive emotion. This means that there was an observable correlation: as the husbands showed more gratitude the wives experienced less depressive symptoms. “A wife’s depression would be relatively palliated if her husband was assigned to express appreciation to her and not share daily hassles.” (Palliated means you have relief of symptoms but not necessarily a cure.) So, a wife’s depressive symptoms would be relatively lessened if her husband was intentional about appreciation and refrained from dumping daily hassles on her.[v] These findings are pretty neat, but why does this work? One thought is that the husband’s appreciation could serve as a mental resource: your positivity energizes me a little get through the day better. Also, receiving appreciation probably strengthens self-esteem and self-efficacy, meaning you feel more confident and more capable when you are shown appreciation. Not only that but you also have a reciprocation dynamic that comes into play. The depressed spouse wants to return the gratitude which is another boost also. Finally, Appreciation Leads to More Honest Marriages Some researchers is 2011 observed how expressing gratitude in marriage led to more honest marriages in the fact of conflict.[vi] Results of their study showed “a relationship between naturally occurring expressions of gratitude and comfort in voicing relationship concerns.”[vii] The researchers believe that expressing gratitude increases positive perceptions of the romantic partner, which is the mechanism by which partners feel more comfortable expressing their concerns. We’ve talked about this elsewhere, where having positivity in the marriage means that you also have the opportunity to raise issues without fear of a meltdown. That happens because you can more easily listen to your spouse point out a problem in yourself when you’re listening in the context of a marriage that is already affirming and safe and appreciative. Makes sense, right? So that’s our challenge for you today: go and start making it a consistent practice to show appreciation in your marriage. [i] Amie M. Gordon et al., “To Have and to Hold: Gratitude Promotes Relationship Maintenance in Intimate Bonds,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 103, no. 2 (August 2012): 257. [ii] Ibid. [iii] Ibid. [iv] Nathaniel M. Lambert et al., “Benefits of Expressing Gratitude: Expressing Gratitude to a Partner Changes One’s View of the Relationship,” Psychological Science 21, no. 4 (April 2010): 574. [v] Yen-Ping Chang et al., “Living with Gratitude: Spouse’s Gratitude on One’s Depression,” Journal of Happiness Studies 14, no. 4 (2013): 1431–42. [vi] Nathaniel M. Lambert and Frank D. Fincham, “Expressing Gratitude to a Partner Leads to More Relationship Maintenance Behavior,” Emotion (Washington, D.C.) 11, no. 1 (February 2011): 52–60, doi:10.1037/a0021557. [vii] Ibid.

Your Marriage Needs an Intimacy Checkup

Wed, 14 Sep 2016 11:00:05 +0000

Making your marriage more intimate can seem like a daunting task. Until you understand that there are just four basic components. We help you identify each of them and show you what you can do to take your marriage to the next level.

So You Stayed Married Just for the Kids’ Sake, Now What?

Wed, 07 Sep 2016 11:00:59 +0000

What happens if your marriage really hasn’t been that great but you’ve been sticking it out for the kids, or for some other reason. Let’s say the reason you’ve been sticking it out is no longer relevant… Now what? If the purpose for staying married is no longer relevant, is your marriage toast? Or can you do something to redeem and reconfigure your relationship so that new life is breathed into it? Barriers and Rewards in Marriage Why do people stay married? In 2003, two researchers set out to answer this. They cited past research that showed that people typically stay married due to either rewards (positive outcomes associated with being in a relationship) or barriers (psychological forces that restrain people from leaving relationships).[i] Happy marriages often stay together because of rewarding aspects of marriage, while unhappy marriages often stay together because of barriers to ending the marriage. The researchers were interested in specific rewards and barriers that kept marriages together and used data from a 17-year longitudinal study of marital instability to find some answers. In this study, couples were asked to list (1) specific barriers that prevented them from moving forward with divorce, (2) specific rewards that kept them together, and (3) whether they stayed due to a lack of alternative relationships. The results showed: When couples were asked why they stayed in their marriage, 74% listed various rewards, 25% listed barriers, and 1% listed lack of alternatives. Of those who listed barriers, the number one barrier to ending the marriage was staying for the sake of the children. The second largest barrier listed was religion. “People who attributed the cohesiveness of their marriages primarily to barriers (such as staying for the children) tended to be relatively unhappy with their marriages and were likely to be thinking (or acting) in ways that might lead to divorce.” “Thinking about marital cohesion exclusively in terms of barriers predicted divorce up to 14 years later, even after controlling for marital happiness and divorce proneness.[ii] The researchers also noted that barriers were not as powerful as rewards in maintaining cohesion. Without a strong attraction between spouses (as reflected in love, friendship, or positive communication) many people eventually find ways to overcome existing barriers and leave their marriages. For example, couples that are concerned about the effect of divorce on children may wait until their children are older or have left home before divorcing. Here’s the point: what’s keeping you together now could lead you to your ungluing later. You can think of this from a Scriptural perspective, too. Marriage, in terms of purpose, is cast in Ephesians 5 as a way to express the relationship of Christ towards his people on earth: there’s communication, intimacy, covenant faithfulness, loyalty and commitment, and deep, unfailing love. If your marriage has been carried along on the winds of any other kind of purpose, it’s time to seriously consider how you can remanufacture and build something that is aligned with the divinely ordained purpose. Surely, this is a far richer, far more joyful, perspective! But, just because you’re staying together for the wrong reasons doesn’t mean divorce is inevitable! If there’s pain in your marriage, why not find a place for the truth of redemption to be expressed in your marriage? Surely this is a better route than the devastation of divorce. Don’t Wait to Get Help Based on the research (above), marriages that stay together for the children are often unhappy marriages that could be headed for divorce once the children grow up. What should these marriages do? How can they find help? A large part of the problem is that many unhappy marriages don’t seek help at all. Other research shows that “most distressed couples do not seek marital therapy” and those who do wait an average of 6 years after serious relationship problems develop. In fact, only 37% of divorcing couples report seeking any type of counselling or therapy for their relationship.[iii] Trying to resolve issues after they have escalated for 6 years, is much more difficult than resolving them right when they start. So, why wait? What is stopping you from getting help today? Most people will answer that question by identifying a problem in their spouse. We understand that it’s often the case that your spouse isn’t on board for getting help, but if you’re creative and prayerful about this, you can find ways to improve things. What Motivates Couples to Seek Help? If you are wanting to get help, there’s this really tough question that we spoke about somewhat in our last podcast that we return to today: How do I get my spouse and I into counselling or some kind of marriage help. There was a recent study that looked at what motivated couples to enroll in a marriage checkup, which serves the purpose of increasing marital health.[iv] It turns out this is a really complicated problem to solve! Often one spouse is unwilling to seek help and therefore can either veto this or find ways to undermine it. It may also be hard to find time in your schedule or even find childcare. What these researchers found is that couples are motivated by relationship distress and that it’s usually more about the wife’s desire to find help. Husbands tended to be more affected by their wives’ assessment of the relationship than their own. This supports the idea that wives tend to function as a relationship barometer. So, if you’re a wife reading this, don’t underestimate your capability to influence your husband to pursue help together! Caleb had a thought about this for you wives: Men tend to hide. They’re afraid that if you see them as they really are, they’ll be rejected. Or, they withdraw as an attempt to save the marriage because they feel that if things are calmer, the marriage is safer than when you’re fighting. So, if you’re husband is hiding, perhaps you could undo the whole hiding thing by bringing in his parents, or his best friend or your pastor? Not someone to take sides with you, but to take sides with your marriage. Or, if he’s withdrawn, rather than pushing and pushing could you find a way to softly confess to him that everything you’ve been doing to try to save your marriage isn’t working and you’d like him to help you choose a counsellor so you guys can get some help. Try SOMETHING because there is hope for your marriage. Think about how you can remove barriers to seeking help and you might find some new ways to get things moving in the right direction. Is There Hope For My Marriage? Many marriages do not seek the help that they need. Many other marriages go through many years of distress, letting their problems become bigger and bigger before seeking help. But for those marriages that do seek help, there is a lot of hope! Here are a few options you can try now: (Remember, these are suggestions, and you have to bear the consequences for whatever you decide to do in your marriage. We cannot accept responsibility for choices you make!) The first option is just sticking it out. Check out episode 111, “Is My Marriage Beyond Recovery?” In that episode we include this research: “Only about 10% of individuals say at any particular time that they are unhappy in their marriages….As this study followed these couples over the next five years, 15% of these unhappy individuals did divorce, but 85% hung on…About two out of three unhappy married adults who avoided divorce ended up happily married to the same spouse five years later.”[v] So, one strategy you could choose is to just stick it out and do your best at bringing the best version of yourself to the marriage. Think of an ocean freighter – it takes those long, heavy ships a long, long distance to get turned around. That is this kind of strategy: you’re looking for the long, slow turn. The second option is to take a little more purposeful approach. This might look like having a conversation about your commitment because of the kids and stating that you want to create something between you that will endure and thrive even if the kids are largely out of the picture. Who wants to be along or trying to find another spouse in their 50’s, right? The big scary question you may consider asking your spouse is if they are willing to commit to do this work with you – then you both figure out how. Maybe you take some time off tougher, maybe you read some marriage books together, or go to a marriage retreat, that kind of thing. Just be sure that somehow you’re giving yourselves some helps along the way. A third option is marriage therapy. The cumulative research on marital therapy comes to a general conclusion: marriage counselling does work. A study in 2003 looked at 20 different meta-analyses of marital and family interventions (that’s a lot of data!). They found that “marriage and family therapies produce clinically significant improvements in distressed clients, with success rates of 40-50%”[vi], and emotionally focussed couples therapy, which Caleb uses, has an even higher success rate. This is not offering a guarantee for your marriage, but I hope that you hear hope in this. Hope for your marriage. So remember, what has defined your relationship to this point doesn’t have to be the final story. You can write a new story. For example, some couples struggle with feeling the circumstances of life pressed them together into marriage and they wonder if they ever really chose each other. Well, even if your spouse married you because they had to, it doesn’t mean that you cannot create a marriage NOW where you choose each other! Or, if you’ve made the mistake of having a child-centered marriage, it doesn’t mean that once the children are removed that it necessarily follows that there is no basis for your marriage....

I Want To Fix Our Marriage and He Doesn’t. Now What?

Wed, 31 Aug 2016 11:00:47 +0000

Here's today's question: "Background: I grew up in an abusive home (my father is an addict and a bully, but my mother never reported his abuse to authorities or tried to explain that what he was doing was wrong- we just pretended that nothing had happened afterwards) and my husband grew up in a home with not much affection or healthy communication. I am a newly trained mediator and I know we have issues (small issues but after 11 years they have grown to cause serious problems) but when I try and utilize my training, his radar goes up and he shuts down, Even though my communication is pretty terrible when I'm not using mediation (or at least, we have these awful cycles---he says he can't talk to me when I'm upset (voice raised or if I'm panicky or angry) he brings up things unrelated to what we are discussing (which granted, yes, need attention, but if I'm trying to resolve something that's bothering me and I want peace and harmony and to be a TEAM instead of petty ineffective blamers, imo, he sabotages the conversation and I go back to reptilian brain, angry or hurt mode and everything shuts down. So my question is, I'm trying so damned hard....I know he would like this stuff resolved too....but how on earth can things get fixed when he seems to prefer our dance of dysfunction???? And also, side note, I had a dream last night about being sad and single and so lonely and thinking of ways to meet someone to love and cherish me and be on the same side together....only to realize in my dream that I'm married (in my dream I had forgotten apparently) dark, foreboding stuff. :( Signed, Sad and ready to give up in Alberta" Listen to the podcast for Caleb's answer!

My Spouse is Flaunting Him/Herself on Social Media

Wed, 24 Aug 2016 11:00:21 +0000

A listener wrote in with the question: "How do you set boundaries with social media? What's acceptable to keep the marriage from the pressures of the world. For example: One spouse doesn't like revealing pictures put out and the other is getting physically fit and feeling the need to parade?" Listen to the podcast for Caleb's answer!

Extreme Sex Drive and Infidelity From Testosterone Therapy?

Wed, 17 Aug 2016 11:00:16 +0000

This week, we have a question from one of our audience members who wanted clarity on her expectations around side effects of her husband's testosterone therapy. "What experience do you have with testosterone therapy for men? I believe part of the cause of my husband's infidelity is due to much testosterone pellets and an excessive need for sex. I do not excuse him for one minute for the devastation he caused. think If that is going to be an available treatment for a medical condition some kind of information and counseling should be required as to how you will feel. We are 2-1/2 years past D day finding out of multiple hookups just for sex. We'd been married for 36 years!!! He is 59 and I am 57 right now. I credit my faith in keeping this altogether without telling anyone or counselling. Not a great idea after the fact. He's moved on from the infidelities and I still struggle at times. Q2: I guess I'm trying to understand if testosterone can make you impulsive and have the need to have sex in abundance. I feel you should be in control if your self, but if you are on the high end of the testosterone scale 1200-1500 can it change you? I do know hormones are powerful and make you feel all sorts of things." Listen to the podcast episode for Caleb's answer!

After Infidelity, How Do I Trust My Husband Again?

Wed, 10 Aug 2016 11:00:16 +0000

This week, Caleb answers a very touching question from Betty*, one of our email subscribers. She asked, "I responded a few months ago, rather aggressively, may I add, to your husband's question. And of course, he graciously responded with a question that pierced through my pain and frustration and found my heart. He asked," Do you still want to be married?" I thought about it for weeks!! Please let him know that we found a local counselor, who is also our pastor, and have been progressing, to say the least. What you two do is so vital in a world that opposes marriage and commitment in general.Thank you! Thank you! Anyways, to respond to your request, my question would be ... " After infidelity strikes, how do you trust your husband again?" I know it takes time to learn how to trust again, but how do you truly grant yourself the space to be vulnerable in that way? Or ... are you bruised for life? Sometimes I feel like I am a shell of who I once was; a child learning to be confident in herself and womanhood, it's embarrassing. So glad, this is anonymous! lol . Even if this isn't broadcasted I'd love your take on this." Listen to the podcast episode for Caleb's answer! *name changed for confidentiality reasons

If My Husband is a Sex Addict, Should I Divorce Him?

Wed, 03 Aug 2016 11:00:39 +0000

Caleb answers a question from a listener about sexual addiction and its consequences in marriage.

My Husband’s Sexual History Is Affecting Our Intimacy

Wed, 27 Jul 2016 11:00:28 +0000

Today we have a question from one of our audience members who is asking for help to overcome some significant mental barriers around her husband’s sexual history. Hi, I have a question. I got married just recently and much later in life...around 40 years old. I was a virgin when I got married. My husband was not. However he shared with me that he had not had any sexual partners for at least three years prior to our being married, because of his renewed commitment to Christ. I've been a Christian since I was a youth and my husband had also been a Christian since he was a child however he was not sexually abstinent in his relationships. We did not have sex prior to getting married. Since we have been married we have had a great sex life, but I have struggled with the fact that he's had previous sexual partners. My question is how can I best deal with my husband's previous sexual history and not let it interfere with our sexual relationship now. Of course, this is a vulnerable issue for me since I came into the marriage without sexual experience... So I get feelings of insecurity...wondering if he is comparing us to other relationships...etc. These thoughts can be intrusive for me. Now, today I had a bomb dropped on me when I got the results of a recent Pap smear saying I tested positive for HPV. It's very upsetting to find out that after being abstinent all these years and waiting for my husband to have sex; that he gave me a STD that could cause cervical cancer. The strain I have is the dangerous strain and will require more testing. I've already been struggling with feelings over his sexual past and now it's intensified a thousand fold as a result of contracting this STD from him. I feel like this is definitely going to affect my feelings toward him and toward sexual intimacy with him. He was tested for std's before our marriage but there is not a test for men for HPV, so in his defense he could not have known he had been exposed unless his previous girlfriend knew and told him. I'm hoping and praying that my immune system will fight off this virus and I will be okay, but unfortunately I've had previous health problems that have weakened my immune system so I'm really upset and stressed that I may end up not fighting it off. I'm just disappointed, sad, upset and hurt that I have to deal with an STD after waiting all this time to have sex with one man in my life.... My husband. I'm sure this is going to cause me anger and resentment for his choices and not being abstinent as a Christian man who proclaims Christ. I really have to say, at the risk of sounding judgmental.... That I am so tired of Bible believing Christians completely ignoring the word of God when it comes to sexual integrity! Why is it that people just wink at this sin like it's no big deal ??? People that I see at church every week that are living with their boyfriends and girlfriends that are having sex and acting as though it's not a sin. I don't understand it's very frustrating! Christians act as though it's inconsequential and casual... Please pray for me that I can be full of grace and forgiveness toward my husband and that we would grow stronger and more in love and that I won't withdraw from him like I feel like doing at this moment. The last piece of this puzzle is the question of fidelity?? Has he had sex with someone else during the time we've been together and contracted this STD and now passed it to me?? I really, honestly in my heart and soul, mind and spirit are telling me that he is being truthful about his sexual history and hadn't had sex for 3 years before we met...and that was his previous girlfriend for a couple years. But, my question is...why wouldn't she had let him know she had HPV. Most women know they have it because of their annual Pap smear. She would have known either back then or since then. They broke up in 2013. And they remained good friends. So wouldn't a good friend tell you this?? And if it wasn't her that gave it to him then who did? As he said he's only slept with a couple girlfriends from about 2009 to 2013. Sorry for the super long email but it felt good to vent all of that to someone, as I can't necessarily share this with other people and cause discredit to his character. I would love to get some feedback from you guys!!!!! Listen to the Podcast Episode to get Caleb's breakdown of this and his answers.

My Wife Won’t Stop the Affair. How Do I Save My Marriage?

Wed, 20 Jul 2016 11:00:50 +0000

One of our listeners asked for help with his situation. His wife is in an ongoing affair but also wants to keep the family unit intact. As you might imagine, despite his willingness to forgive and move on, he is wondering how to handle this very difficult situation.

How Can I Help My Wife Be More Trusting?

Wed, 13 Jul 2016 11:00:15 +0000

A listener wrote in asking how he could help his wife trust him after his infidelity in their marriage. Caleb gives him lots to think about!

Hectic Life + Happily Married: Is It Possible?

Wed, 06 Jul 2016 11:00:10 +0000

This is episode #114 and we are going to be talking about whether or not it is possible to have a hectic life AND be happily married. So in this episode, you will find out if you need to change your career and lifestyle, or if you’re all good to go. No pressure.

If Your Spouse Is Too Jealous

Wed, 29 Jun 2016 11:00:49 +0000

Jealousy. This can drive some people absolutely nuts - and their spouse feels completely justified. It’s a real conundrum. And it’s particularly worse when the jealous spouse has had prior reason to become jealous — a betrayal has occurred. What does a person do? Healthy And Unhealthy Forms of Jealousy. Research shows that jealousy can have positive or negative effects on a relationship, depending on the type of jealousy that is being displayed. There are three kinds of jealousy: Reactive jealousy: the degree to which individuals experience negative emotions in reaction to a betrayal/unfaithfulness. Possessive jealousy: the effort jealous individuals can go to to prevent contact of their spouse with individuals of the opposite sex. Anxious jealousy: a process in which the individual ruminates about and cognitively generates images of a mate’s infidelity, and experiences feelings of anxiety, suspicion, worry and distrust.[i] It is important to note that, in contrast to reactive jealousy, neither possessive nor anxious jealousy actually need a rival or a betrayal to be triggered. Results from the same research showed that individuals high in anxious jealousy had lower relationship quality, as did individuals married to spouses who were high in anxious jealousy.[ii] Remember, anxious jealousy is just about rumination thoughts – there isn’t necessarily any reality to it. The conclusion here was that anxious jealousy is bad for your marriage. Other clinical studies show that this type of thinking is characteristic of pathologically jealous individuals who, in general, experience great relationship distress. If you’re the anxiously jealous individual, I’m guessing that you’re not enjoying being that spouse any more than your spouse is enjoying your jealousy. Ruminating is not fun. It takes a lot of energy and creates a lot of negativity. I want to encourage you to get some help. Life doesn’t have to be this way. You’ve probably had some very real, even traumatic experiences or really, really significant disappointments in very important relationships, but there is healing. It doesn’t have to go on like this. The best thing you can do is take this to a good therapist and work with them towards finding a less anxious way to evaluate the world around you. The study also found positive associations between relationship quality and reactive jealousy.[iii] When a spouse reacts jealously to a betrayal, it is likely to be interpreted by their offending spouse as a token of love and caring and can even enhance the relationship. While reactive jealousy is good – you should be jealous if your relationship is threatened, we don’t recommend inducing reactive jealousy as a way to enhance your relationship. There are many other, safer ways to work on your marriage! Another finding from the study was that possessive jealousy was not found to be consistently related to relationship quality.[iv] Remember, that possessive jealousy is considerable effort a person goes to in order to prevent contact with the opposite sex. What the researchers felt is that this depends on how this jealousy was expressed. If you are buying flowers or romancing your spouse to keep them interested, it may help your marriage. In contrast, when you use threats or violence or debasement to prevent unfaithfulness, that will reduce the quality of your marriage. In either case, you need to ask yourself if this possessive jealousy is coming out of a place of fullness or a place of neediness. Fullness is – I appreciate what we have so much, I’m going to guard it. Neediness is – I can never be sure of what we have so I’m going to keep slapping romance Band-Aids on my anxiety to try to reduce the pressure. That is not healthy. Relabeling Jealousy in Your Relationship If your spouse is jealous and you have found this frustrating in the past, you might consider reframing it. For example, if you understand that reactive jealousy does not negatively affect the quality of your marriage, you may choose to see this reactive jealousy on the part of your spouse as a sign that not all love is lost and they really want you, and the relationship they have with you. You probably don’t want to do that with anxious jealousy, which could lead to accepting conflict or demanding or nagging which really isn’t good for you. The same goes to possessive jealousy. Is it really adding to your marriage, or is it just adding a burden? Not all jealousy is bad, but some of it is definitely unhelpful. Communicating Jealousy in Healthy Ways What happens with jealousy in particular is that it often is communicated in a way that undermines the security of the relationship. This is so ironic, as jealousy is about protecting but it is actually having the opposite effect. How you express any concerns you have to your spouse is so important. Just looking jealous, or appearing hurt, or crying, or acting all anxious, or accusing, or using sarcasm is all unhelpful. Clear, open communication is what is helpful – direct, non-aggressive disclosures and assurances.[v] If you have concerns, we don’t want you to feel you have no voice or that you cannot express them, just be mindful of how your express those concerns. As you’re expressing those concerns, another thing you need to look at is how your boundaries differ. Defining Healthy Boundaries Some researchers recently stated that “jealousy is usually an indicator of incongruous definitions of boundaries by the two partners.”[vi] Given that statement, we have a question that you need to think about: Have you two defined what monogamous means to you? Each couple needs to define monogamy. You need to define what fidelity looks like in your own marriage. This varies from marriage to marriage. Even with the moral boundaries of a lot of our listeners who self-identify as Christian, and want to honour the marriage standards of the Bible, there is a lot of grey area. Think about these questions: How much separateness and togetherness do you tolerate? (In some marriages, one spouse travels a lot for work. For other couples, they don’t even like to be apart for one night.) What works for you? What is private and what can be shared? What do you consider acceptable social behaviour with the opposite sex? What one person considers being friendly, another might think of as flirting. You need to find the boundaries for your marriage. The same researchers also stated that jealousy often comes about because “individuals vary a great deal in terms of how much freedom they expect for themselves and their spouses.”[vii] Determine what this balance will look like in your relationship. “Most couples need a balance of security and freedom to maintain vitality in their long-term relationship. However, couples struggling with jealousy end up in polar opposite positions with one partner feeling threatened by separateness and the other insisting on the right to freedom.”[viii] This is an area where a couple needs some give and take. Perhaps the more anxious spouse will need to realize that when his wife is being friendly with another guy, she’s only showing basic human courteousness – there’s nothing more there. For that wife though, she may need to be conscientious about her husband’s fears and maybe be a little more conservative with the opposite sex than she would naturally be. Perhaps she can find her outlet with same-sex friends. Both spouses need to be careful to build and strengthen their own marriage bond so that this internal sense of safety and security is very robust. Distinguishing Between Past and Present Finally, we need to talk about the possibility that something may have happened in the past to trigger this jealousy. Jealousy often arises out of memories of a past event that become entangled with the present.[ix] This is a rather tangly situation! The researchers explain it like this: “Jealousy is usually multilayered. For both partners, there are aspects of the present situation that instigate the pattern. However, there are fears from the past, or other contexts, that also inform the meaning of what is happening. These ‘remote files’ containing images, beliefs, sensations, and fears tend to quality and distort the present situation.”[x] Couples can learn to identify when current jealousy is being influenced by past experiences in the current relationship or other significant past relationships and begin to untangle the two. This is where it is very easy to get upset and lump things together, but you really need to go slowly and tease things apart in your own mind. This is where couples get really frustrated because you’ll have on jealous spouse and one not. For example, let’s say the spouse who is not jealous actually had an affair a while ago. It’s extremely difficult for the betrayed spouse not to get triggered into jealousy now, but you have to do the work of removing the past event from who your spouse is today. Yes, if your spouse is still a philanderer, I can see why you’d be jealous, but if they have grown and learned from that unfortunate experience, there there’s a good possibility that today’s jealousy is no longer necessary and may, in fact, be dragging you and your betraying spouse backwards. Which brings us back to where we started: even though jealousy feels like you’re protecting your marriage, it’s probably having the opposite effect and is eroding the bond between you. We need to challenge ourselves about distinguishing between past and present and make sure we’re thinking correctly today. References [i] D. P. H. Barelds and P. Barelds-Dijkstra, “Relations between Different Types of Jealousy and Self and Partner Perceptions of Relationship Quality,” Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy 14, no. 3 (May 1, 2007): 176–88, doi:10.1002/cpp.532. [ii] Ibid. [iii] Ibid. [iv] Ibid. [v] Jennifer L. Bevan,...

Find Yourself in a Roommate Marriage?

Wed, 22 Jun 2016 11:00:13 +0000

Learn more about the problems, symptoms and deeper issues that are present in sexless marriages. If you’re in this situation, you can find hope and ideas for recovery.

Is My Marriage Beyond Recovery?

Wed, 15 Jun 2016 11:00:40 +0000

We know for some of you, this episode is going to be a tough one. We’re going to speak the truth in love because we’re committed to integrity, but at the same time we want to give you hope because this IS hope, and recovery of your marriage IS possible. If you’re at the point where you think your marriage is fine, I hope you will take from this post the need to be proactive. Don’t want until you’re wondering if you can recover your marriage to take action – take action now! Personally, we don’t believe that any marriage is ever beyond recovery. We do believe that in some cases, like an abusive marriage, it is not safe to recover the marriage until the abuse issue is addressed thoroughly. We do not have any judgment for folks that have decided to move on – we’re not God and it’s not our job to judge that – but if you’re out there today and you just want someone to tell you there’s hope, then listen, there is hope! We’re going to talk about a number of things that challenge that hope, but we will end up with some things that you hope, so stick with us. Indicators That a Marriage is Moving Beyond Recovery Research indicates that the following behaviours may be warning signs that a marriage is headed past recovery and towards divorce. A Lot of Spouse Hostility Hostility without warmth is a major warning sign that your marriage longevity is seriously threatened. A study was conducted of over 400 couples married an average of 18 years. The study went on for five years and looked into the hostility of these marriages, the divorces that happened, and the quality of the interaction between spouses.[i] Hostility became a theme in the marriages that ended, so let’s look at hostility for a moment. The researchers looked for the frequency of how often a spouse had: gotten angry been critical shouted or yelled, ignored their spouse threatened to do something that would upset their spouse tried to make him or her feel guilty, or said that their spouse had made him or her unhappy. On the other hand, warmth looked like times when their spouse had: asked for his/her opinion listened to his/her point of view let them know that he or she cares acted in a loving and affectionate manner let them know that s/he is appreciated helped them something important to him/her had a good laugh with them, or acted supportive or understanding. Here’s what they found: “In every instance, greater marital instability was associated with more hostility and less warmth in marital interactions.”[ii] This warmth vs. hostility dynamic was so apparent that the researchers were able to predict with an 80% level of accuracy which couples would divorce the following year. All they had to look for was high levels of hostility and lesser levels of warmth. The researchers summarized their findings with the following statement, “Couples observed to exhibit high levels of hostile, angry, critical, stubborn, inconsiderate, defiant, or rejecting behavior that is not counterbalanced by considerate, cooperative, or affectionate behavior were more likely to perceive high levels of hostility in their marital interactions, were more likely to have unstable marriages, and were more likely to actually separate or divorce.”[iii] All that to say, that hostility needs to be counterbalanced with warmth in a marriage, or it will have lasting negative effects. We all get our ugly on once in a while unfortunately, but if those times are balanced with a lot of warmth and affection, it will serve your marriage much better. Significant Ambivalence and Lack of Responsiveness Another study looked more into the newlywed end of the spectrum and found the following. Couples who divorced after 2 years of marriage had: lower levels of love, more ambivalence and less responsiveness to each other, fewer affection acts in their marriage, and more frequent negative behaviors.[iv] That study speaks for itself, I think. Be sure you don’t take your spouse for-granted, and remember to respond (lovingly!!) each and EVERY time they speak to you. Total Lack of Fondness and Admiration Dr. John Gottman, in his training resources, refers to what he calls the fondness and admiration system. He says if that fondness and admiration system is still functioning the marriage is salvageable. He also says outright that if there is NO fondness or admiration in the marriage anywhere, then move the discussion towards how they can divorce as amicably as possible. Now, you need to take this with a grain of salt. When you’re mad at each other – and perhaps have been for a while – you aren’t going to feel any fondness or admiration, but it still might be there! Caleb had a couple come in for counselling, very upset with each other, and quite distressed. In the second session, he asked, “So, what is the glue that keeps you together?” They both melted – the harshness was gone, and they both responded, “We still love each other.” They were having a really hard time trying to figure out how to do life together but that system was back in there with fondness in it and they were able to recover their marriage. So, we see Dr. Gottman’s point, but don’t think that is a rule of life. A statement like his fails to take into account the power of the Spirit of God to redeem, to create healing, to reconcile and to rebuild even a very, very broken marriage. What I hope his comment does do is incite you (and me!) to be very intentional about making sure we invest in fondness and admiration in our marriage. Recovery is Still Possible You may be freaking out a little at this stage. You have that horrible sinking feeling in your gut. Well, just hang tight. Thankfully there is a wide range of research that shows that recovery is possible even for marriages on the brink of divorce. The other part I keep coming back to in my mind is that God is a God of reconciliation. That’s His specialty! So, here are four things for you to hold onto. The Importance of Commitment The first thing to do is to stay committed. A national survey completed by the National Fatherhood Initiative, cited that the most common reason given for divorce was “lack of commitment.” (73%) Other significant reasons included too much arguing, infidelity, unrealistic expectations, abuse, etc.[v] The #1 reason though is lack of commitment. This tells me that if you make commitment a priority you can undermine the risk of the #1 reason for divorce. Commitment is a powerful force in a marriage. If you want some tips on increasing your commitment, check out these five ways to increase commitment in your marriage. The Potential for Reconciliation The second thing is to hold onto hope for the possibility of reconciliation. Many couples who seriously consider divorce do not end up getting divorced.[vi] For example, “in Utah it appears that about 10-15% of couples who file for divorce decide not to go through with it, at least at that time.”[vii] Also, “research in Minnesota found that about 10% of couples there were interested in a reconciliation service, even at the last stages of the divorce process.”[viii] One statement that I thought was good, yet sad at the same time, said that “about one in three couples who actually divorce later try to reconcile, but only about one-third of those who try actually succeed.”[ix] I believe that if you both want to reconcile, and you’re willing to do the hard work that reconciliation demands of each of you, you can recover your marriage. Hold onto the hope for reconciliation. Oftentimes it’s just a matter of timing: where you both want reconciliation at the same time. The problem is that often one spouse wants it but the other’s not there yet – the timing is off. If I could wake you up and shake you and be in your face, I would tell you this. If your spouse wants to fix things, DO IT! DO IT NOW! Don’t wait until some later day when you think it’s important because by then your spouse may have moved on without you… The Hope That Marriage Can Get Better Thirdly, many couples in unhappy marriages, who hang on, do not remain miserable forever. “Only about 10% of individuals say at any particular time that they are unhappy in their marriages, and only about 2% say they are very unhappy.”[x] As this study followed these couples over the next five years they found that about 15% of these unhappy individuals did divorce, but 85% hung on. The even better news is that those who hung on weren’t miserable. About two out of three unhappily married adults who avoided divorce ended up happily married to the same spouse five years later. The unhappiest individuals improved the most; more than three-quarters of the unhappiest individuals who avoided divorce said they were now happy.[xi] How’s that for good news? Hold onto hope! Be committed! Be open to reconciliation! At this point, you might be wondering how you can move forward. How can you start fixing your marriage? Other Couples Have Moved Forward Our fourth and final hope for recovery is to consider how you might begin to repair. A smaller study looked at 25 couples in a qualitative approach. All of these couples had considered divorce at some time in their marriage. They were asked to consider their thought process in deciding NOT to divorce and asked what they did to move forward.[xii] Here’s what they said: Some couples worked on their communication skills, which allowed them to resolve conflict. Other couples found that they were able to turn towards each other and rely on one another, instead of continuing to turn inward or to other sources of help. Many couples stated that seeking professional help was the turning point that helped them move forward. Other couples stated that their religious beliefs helped them find common ground for moving forward. So there you have it....