October 8, 2024 • 62 mins
Hey, Fellow Travelers. After Scott discovered his wife's affair, he wanted to save their marriage and was heartbroken when she wanted a divorce. But months later, much to Scott'ssurprise, his wife asked to come back. Now that they're together again, Scott is struggling to trust her, and we help him to ask the hard questions that he's been afraid to address.
If you have a dilemma you’d like to discuss with us—big or small—email us at LoriAndGuy@iHeartMedia.com.
Follow us both online:
LoriGottlieb.com and on Twitter @LoriGottlieb1 and Instagram @lorigottlieb_author
GuyWinch.com and on Twitter @GuyWinch and Instagram @Guy Winch
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, fellow travelers. I'm Lori Gottlieb. I'm the author of
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, and I write the
Dear Therapist column for the Atlantic.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
And I'm Guy Wench. I wrote Emotional First Aid, and
I write the Dear Guy column for Ted. And this
is Deo Therapists. This week, a man struggles to trust
his wife again after she has an affair.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
She said, I'm sorry for everything I've done. I know
you were hurt. I would like to work it out
with you. Could you give me a chance? I said,
why do you want to come back?
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Listen in and maybe learn something about yourself and the process.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Deo Therapist is for informational purposes only, does not constitute
medical advice, and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis,
or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician, mental
health professional, or other qualified health provider with any questions
you may have regarding a medical condition. By submitting a letter,
you are agreeing to let iHeartMedia use it in partner
(01:04):
and full and we may edit it for length and
or clarity.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Hi Laurie, Hi Guy.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
So this week we have another letter about infidelity, but
this one is about the attempt to repair, and it
goes like this, Dear therapists. I caught my wife of
thirteen years cheating. At first, we agree to separate and
we're going through the early stages of divorce. We also
have two children, and after gaining some perspective on my
(01:38):
life and navigating through the darkness of the pain, eight
months later, she wanted to come back. I have since
taken her back, and I know that my children are
happier than I am too. Yet I often go into
moments of trust issues and feeling uncertain about myself. Will
this feeling go away? What suggestions do you have to
(01:59):
cope with these issues of trust? Thank you, Scott.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
I'm glad that Scott wrote to us because so many
people think that once there's infidelity, that relationships aren't repairable.
And he's saying, listen, we really want to work this out.
I am happier having her back here. She is happier,
kids are happier. We want to make this work, but
(02:27):
we're not quite sure how to do that. And I
think it's important for people to see that there can
be a path forward. Depending on the circumstances of.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
All the couples I've seen that came to work on
their relationship after an affair. The vast majority really do
fix their relationship and stay together, and many of them
the relationship becomes stronger and even happier. Of course, this
is the majority of people who together are coming to
see me too intentionally work on fixing it. So that's
(02:58):
definitely a pre co contion that both people have to
be intent on doing that. But it's very possible to
repair a relationship after an affair, depending on the circumstances
and the people.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
That's right. You can't heal a relationship on your own.
So let's go talk to Scott and see what's going
on with him and his wife. Yes, you're listening to
Dear Therapist from my Heart Radio. We'll be back after
a quick break.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
I'm Lori Gottlieb and I'm Guy Winch and this is
deo Therapist Scott. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Thank you, nice to be here.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Hi Scott, Hello.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
We'd love to start by hearing a little bit of
background about the marriage and then how you discovered the affairs,
what happened thereafter.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
I've been married for thirteen years. We have two children,
an eleven and a nine year old a year ago,
she was working. She had told me early on in
the day that she had a dinner appointment with some clients,
so she would be late. And it was like nine
(04:19):
thirty and I was calling her and there was just nothing,
even text messages. So I used the feature on the
phone called Find my Friends, and she was in a
residential area and I just dismissed it as a computer
(04:41):
glitch on there. Well, it kept showing up and I
was fixated on it. I kept looking at it and
it was still there. Eventually I did get a call
back and she says, I'm coming home, but I'm following
her also on the app, and I see the car
(05:02):
drive right by our apartment and go to a mall
restaurant area. And then I got another call later on
at the restaurant saying all right, no, no, I'm really
leaving now, And in about another ten minutes she arrived home.
So I just said, hey, where have you been, And
(05:25):
she's like, I was at a restaurant with clients. And
then I said, I was on Find my Friend and
I saw that you were at this location. Honestly, Becky,
could you just tell me what's going on? She straight
up said I'm sorry I was with someone. I think
she might have even said I've been cheating or something
(05:45):
like that. It was just a lot of denial on
my part. No, no, I can't believe it, and we
talked a lot that night. Yet it was very messy
in the sense that this person that she was seeing
she worked with, and apparently this language school that our
(06:08):
kids were going to, this guy kids went to that school.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Scott, did you suspect that she had been having an
affair before that night? Was this a complete shock to
you or was there a part of you that maybe
thought something might have been going on, or when she
said it, you thought, oh, this makes sense now.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Yeah, I had suspicions. There were times when I went
out with friends and she would say, well, then does
that mean can I just go out with other people too?
What if it was a date? You know, just kind
of remarks.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
So she didn't trust you. She was making a joke
that as if you were on it.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Right, Because I often went out with friends, and some
of them were female friends, there were guys there too,
and during those moments she would say things like, well,
could I go on a date? I'm like, no, I'm
not doing that. I'm not okay with that.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Did that signal to you the fact that she was
asking permission for herself? Maybe there's an issue that we
need to talk about. Is everything okay in a relationship?
Was there a conversation like that that you had with
her at that time?
Speaker 3 (07:12):
There was no conversation after that about that situation?
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Can you take us back a little farther? You said
you've been married for thirteen years. What was the communication
like between you before this? Because when you talk about
the interaction about the comment about the date, seems like
neither of you was willing to say, wait a minute,
what are we really talking about here? How do you
(07:39):
think the communication was before all this happened.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
I feel I'm a pretty good communicator. I like to talk,
I like to spend time kind of looking at a situation.
She often says, Oh, it's another lecture. Here we go.
She's often looking at the clock, going have you made
your point? Are we done? And so it always leaves
me with a kind of bad taste Scott.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Usually when someone responds like Becky was responding, it's a
sign that she feels that you're doing perhaps too much
talking and not enough listening. In those conversations. Were you
asking her questions? Were you're giving her a chance to
voice things?
Speaker 3 (08:16):
It does sound like I was doing most of the talking.
I feel I've given her the opportunity to talk. She
said stuff, but there's no elaboration on it.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Before this happened. What were the things that she did
tell you when she did speak up in whatever conversations
you had over those thirteen years.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
I think one thing that really hurt our relationship was
our children in regards to putting them through private schools.
I'm a teacher, but she came from a very different philosophy.
That's just a lot of wasted money, and it's putting
some stress on us, and so those kind of discussions
would be very heated and there was no compromise at
(08:56):
the end. That's when I said I'm going to do this,
and we got a little help from my parents just
with money.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
I just want to go back to that night where
she comes home and she's telling you that she's been
having this affair. Did she say how long it was
for that this has been going on? Did you ask?
Speaker 3 (09:11):
So it's been going on steadily for most of her
time at this company. She was promoted and she had
to move to a downtown branch. It was very stressful
for her. She really didn't like the job, and I
guess that's when she started having conversations with this person.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
And how long ago was that.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
I would say that was going on for about four months.
And she told me that her co worker saw her
crying and this guy was a person who she ended
up talking with day after day, and that's when the
relationship started. So I found that out and a lot
(09:52):
of other things clicked into place. She would go to
the beach with my kids and she would be like, no,
you don't need to go, and I thought that was
a little weird. The kids ended up telling me they
would see this person there. Anyway, That night was very difficult,
and I wanted to work it out. I believed we
could work it out.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Was she apologizing? Was she promising she wouldn't see this
person again? In otherwise? What reassurances was she giving you
that you wanted to look it up?
Speaker 3 (10:19):
No, that that was the toughest part. She realized that
she did something wrong, but it didn't seem to me
like she wanted to work this out. The next day,
the kids had language school, and I said, you're going
to go see this guy there, right, please let him
know everything that went on and that this is over.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Scott, when you asked her to tell the guy it
was over, had she indicated to you that she was
ready to end the affair or was this again sort
of like the private school thing of this is what
I want and this is how we're going to do it.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
I would say it's more that I was just thinking
of everything our kids, to myself and just everything in
our family, and I just couldn't believe that that was
going on. Just going back and thinking about it, I
definitely pushed her hard to make that decision.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Well, it doesn't sound like she made that decision. It
sounds like you were asking her to do something that
she hadn't come to a place of deciding. Yet, You're right,
and I just want to say we understand how hard
this is and how much your life got up ended
in that moment when she came home, and even the
denial before that, where the kids would say, oh, there
(11:34):
was this other guy at the beach, and you didn't inquire, well,
who is this guy at the beach when my wife
said not to come. So I think that veil of
denial was pierced that night, and then you had the
reaction many people have, which is, let's just fix this
and put an end to it without really exploring does
the other person want to fix it? Where are they
(11:56):
with it? And it's so hard. So we have so
much empathy for what that must have been like. But
at the same time, we want you to just notice
because I know you're trying to repair this. How sometimes
you have an idea about something, whether it's private school
or ending the affair, that she might not quite be
on board with, and it just echoes that sentiment that
(12:18):
you mentioned that she had sometimes of like are you
done with the lecture? And I want to be clear
too that you are not to blame for the affair.
Nobody causes someone to have an affair. They make a
decision that that is how they're going to handle whatever
they're experiencing. It is not the other person's fault that
they decided to handle it that way. There are many
ways to handle difficulties in relationships. Having an affair is
(12:41):
not one that somebody forces somebody.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
To have, thank you, Okay.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
It's got to add one thing to that. It's a
very strong tendency people have when they're blindsided and heartbroken
by finding out in the moment that the partner had
an affair to do what you did intil of saying okay,
then we need to do ABCDE to fix it. It
not only doesn't find out where Becky is in terms
(13:09):
of whether she's willing to do that, it gives her
an easy out in terms of having to really do
the reckoning and really do the exploration. She can just
say okay, fine and agree to something without even fully
agreeing to it, and so it actually lets the other
person off the hook when you make those decisions, when
the impetus for repair, the need to want to put
things together has to come from the other person, and
(13:32):
by giving them all the answers, you prevent that.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
Yeah, you know, she took a long time to get
back home and she wasn't picking up again. So I
drove to the parking lot and saw our other car
there and I walked over and she was crying. Actually,
she was still on the phone with him, and I
kind of looked at her and said, what what's going on?
(13:57):
And she said something like I'm I'm sorry, And so
in my head, I guess I thought it was over.
She was definitely crying and said the next day, I
tried to do things that she said she wanted to do.
I was like, let's go hiking, let's take the kids
hiking Scott.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
In your mind, you thought I'll do things that she
likes to do and then we'll just move past this.
Or did you think that there would be a process
by which you had to understand what had happened with
her with you with the relationship in your mind, how
are you going to recover from this as a couple.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
I did think that therapy would be very important. We've
never done anything like that before. So I got a
recommendation of a therapist and told her, let's do this,
and we went and in general it was okay until
the discussion of school came up again, and she got
very angry afterwards and said I don't want to see
her again. By then we had been going for almost
(14:57):
two or three weeks. She was sad, was crying here
and there. Shortly after, it was Valentine's Day. I wanted
to surprise her because she always said, I'm really hungry
at work, So I decided I would go to a
coffee store, get her some coffee and a sandwich, and
I did drove over. She wasn't there for almost twenty
(15:18):
to thirty minutes, and then she finally showed up, very
surprised to see me, and that's when I saw that
she was with this guy again.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
If I were listening to who did what after that
first night, if I just listened to which of you
took which actions, which of you said what, I would
have guessed you were the one that had the affair,
because you were the one that was trying to convince
her to stay, to repair, to work. You were taking
(15:49):
all the initiative, I'll do this for her, I'll find
a therapist. These are the actions usually the person who's
trying to make up for the affair to convince the
other person that they want to repair does. And I'm
pointing that out because when you're trying to fight for
your marriage, you cannot do it by yourself, and your
(16:10):
tendency is to try and do things without her and
then to get her agreement to the plan you've laid out.
And that is not true partnering. It's not really working
with her, it's not really seeing where she is. You're
hoping that she'll want to be back in the relationship.
(16:31):
You're pushing and trying to convince her to do that,
but you're not actually waiting to inquire understand whether she
is willing able wanting to do that, and.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Going along with what guy said this whole time that
she was crying. I don't think that you wanted to
understand why she was crying. And I don't think she
was at this place where she knew that she wanted
to fix the marriage. That was something you had decided.
And even when somebody is very clear I want to
(17:03):
fix the marriage, there is some loss and some grief
around the affair that they had to end, and it's
very hard for the person who was cheated on to
have any empathy for that or to even acknowledge it.
But she was very sad because she was getting something
from this relationship with this person that was meaningful to her,
(17:25):
as painful as it was for you. And then she
was being asked to give that up when it might
have felt like her lifeline at that time. And then
there's this guy who listens to her and she's probably
telling him how she feels all the time, and you're saying,
I want to save our marriage. I feel devastated by
the affair. Let me tell you all about how I'm feeling.
(17:48):
But it doesn't sound like there was a lot of
curiosity around how are you feeling? Tell me what you're
crying about, Tell me what is making you sad. It
was let's go hiking, let me surprise you on Valentine's Day,
all very lovely things, but a misattunement to what she
was probably needing. Does that make sense at all now
(18:11):
given where you.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
Are, Yeah, it does make a lot of sense. When
I asked her, she did say straight up, I miss him,
So you're right.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Did you ask her directly whether she wanted to give
up that relationship and work on the marriage and did
she own that directly explicitly at that time?
Speaker 3 (18:32):
Honestly, I don't feel there was a full conviction behind it.
As I'm processing this with you, guys, like I very
much kind of written the paperwork there and she just
kind of checked the box.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
And probably because part of you felt very worried that
if you do ask directly, she might just say, you
know what, no, so you avoided asking things that you
were afraid you'd hear the answer that you didn't want
to hear.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Yeah, you're right, I didn't want to believe that was
going to be an option for us and our family.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
When she said after that couple session about the private schools,
that you didn't want to go back. It's very common
for people who aren't really sure that they want to
be working on the marriage to find something about the
couple's work that they don't like and say I'm done,
just because they just don't want to live that double
life of inside, I don't know that I want to
(19:28):
be working on this, and then I have to go
to couple therapy and pretend that I'm invested in this.
And so people find a way to get rid of
that cognitive dissonance, and they generally find one comment, one
thing that is wrong with the therapy just so they
can get out of it so they don't have to
experience that every week.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
Yeah, and I'll add this extra thing. After I had
caught her at work, I said, could I see your phone?
As she held on to it, and I just had
enough and left. But I wanted to confront this guy,
and I went in and I said, hey, do you
know who I am? I was very afraid, but I
was running on adrenaline and he knew who I was,
(20:08):
and I said, do you know what you're doing to
my marriage? And he said, Becky told me that you
guys are going through counseling, and he made it seem
like a joke. There was this kind of smirk on
his face. He is married, has two children. And he said, well,
if you want me to end this, ask Becky get
(20:30):
her on the phone now. I want to hear from
her that she doesn't want to be with me. And
I said, I'm not doing that and I walked out.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Did it register to you that moment that he seems
to be saying that with a certain amount of confidence
and knowing what Becky would say.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
He was completely confident, and yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
So it occurred to you in that moment that she
indeed would make that choice.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
Yeah. I think I always had that fear. And it
was that night when I confronted her about it. That
was Valentine's Day, and that's when I knew it was
absolutely over. When I asked her, do you still want
to make this work? And she basically said no, I'm done,
and we just started to move towards the official divorce.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
I have a question about the person she was having
the affair with. When you were talking with him. Did
he say that the plan for them was that he
was going to leave his marriage and they were going
to be together.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
No, and I had also talked to Becky about that,
and she said that he was already on the outs
with his wife. She even told him at that point
that this is not perfect opportunity for us to be together.
And he was not sure at first, but eventually they
started to be together.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
He told his wife about the affair.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
No, No, till this day, she knows nothing about it.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
So what did happen? How did you guys decide to
give it a try?
Speaker 3 (22:05):
It was a good four or five months of divorce lawyers.
She had moved out, got her own apartment.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
How did you tell the kids? Did they have any
idea what was going on?
Speaker 3 (22:17):
They found out the following day.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
The following day from when you discovered it.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
I discovered it. I remember this vividly. My older son
screamed no, really loud. So she had told him despite
the fact that I told her not to.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
What did she tell him exactly?
Speaker 3 (22:37):
She basically said that mom and dad are not really
in love. She didn't say she was with another man
per se, that we were just going to separate.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Scott. What I'm hearing here is that, on the one hand,
you had said to her, here's how we're going to
fix our marriage. Here are the steps we're going to take,
and then we're going to go hiking, and I'm going
to do these nice things for you. And at the
same time, she had told your children mom and dad
aren't in love anymore. So how did you reconcile that
(23:10):
in your mind of your idea that you were going
to fix the marriage. But her stating to the kids
something that I don't know if she said to you.
Did she say those words to you or did you
hear this through the kids that she was not in
love with you anymore.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Once I heard this kind of commotion going on, I
went to the scene and it all started to come out.
I was just shocked. I started adding, but we'll work
it out. There's a plan. Mommy's going to actually go
there now and say no.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
She told them about the affair and with whom it was.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Yeah, By then, when I had gone down, it all
kind of bubbled up. All of that bubbled up all
at once.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
Wow, that's a lot of information and eleven year olds
shouldn't have.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
That's a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeap.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
What I'm hearing is that she felt so unable to
commit unicate directly with you, And I want to be
clear that this is her issue. There was something going
on in the marriage that made it hard for her,
but also it was her issue that she decided to
handle it this way where the only way she felt
she could be heard was to tell a child. The
(24:18):
only way she could say, here's how i'm really feeling.
The only place she had to go in your household
was to a child, which is of course completely inappropriate.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Because the way you responded made her think that you're
not listening, You're just focused on making this work when
she doesn't really want to.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
I agree with that guy. I think that's exactly what
she was thinking. And what you said, Laurie, she probably
didn't feel like I just didn't want to believe there
was any other option except that we were going to
make it work. I did not want to face that reality.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
So you went through four or five months of going
through the first stages of divorce, and then you got
back together. I'm curious to hear about getting back together,
and I'm curious because is this more of you convincing
her talking her into doing something that she's saying yes to,
but we're not quite sure whether her heart is behind it.
(25:15):
How different was the round of getting back together than
what we've heard so far.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
Yeah, this is the part that confuses me the most, honestly.
As the months went along and I was still trying
to reconcile, even though the divorce papers were on the way,
I said, look, we can still make this work. And
it was no. She was seeing this guy regularly, and
one day when she was coming to get the kids,
(25:43):
she was waiting downstairs and I texted, he's going to
be down soon, and the next thing I know, she
got in the apartment and she was right at the door.
By then, I had kind of re established my apartment
so I could kind of see it as MySpace because
I was still living in the same place we were living.
So I had this kind of mental thing where I
didn't want her in that space anymore. So I said,
(26:05):
please stay outside, and I more or less shut the
door on her, and eventually the kids were ready and
they left with her. But I started getting a lot
of messages that day and phone calls saying, look, I
know you don't want to talk to me, I know
you hate me all of that, but if you would
(26:25):
just let me talk to you, and I promise, if
you don't ever want to talk again, that's fine. And
I found that very intriguing, so I texted back, fine,
give me a call, and she did.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Did you think that she was going to come toward you?
Speaker 3 (26:42):
Yeah, since we've broken up, it was always very kurt, hostile,
so I was very intrigued with suddenly this kind of softer,
Please let me talk to you. And my therapist said,
you may never hear these words ever from her, but
she said, I'm sorry for everything I've done. I know
(27:03):
you were hurt. I would like to work it out
with you. Could you give me a chance. I was
shocked to hear that because I was in a place
where I didn't want to have anything to do with her.
It took me so long to get to that place,
and quite frankly, I wasn't even quite a hundred percent there,
and so when I heard that, I was shocked. And
(27:26):
it was the first time where I didn't have to
say anything and I was just listening to her because
she was just going, would you take me back? She
was asking all of this, so I didn't understand what happened.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Did you ask what happened?
Speaker 3 (27:41):
I said, why do you want to come back? The
last time I saw you, I pushed you out. I
just don't understand this, she said. She talked with her
mom about things. Her mom suggested that this would be
your only chance if you wanted to have him back.
To ask now. Then a little deeper stuff came out.
She would often feel angry or sad if the guy
(28:06):
was with Sometimes she would be waiting for him and
he would be with his wife. There would be moments
when they were together and she just couldn't sleep. She
always had anxiety issues when she was around him. It
wasn't as great as she thought it was, and that
she ultimately missed me. She even missed the lecture. She
(28:28):
said that I didn't understand it to honestly, you know,
when she.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
Was with you, she used the other guy to complain
about you, and then when she became dissatisfied with him,
she called you and complained about him. And what I
would love to hear from her is not the other
guy disappointed me, it's I want to be.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
With you, right. So I had talked to many of
my friends too, so When they heard about this, one
friend made sure to say, are you hearing that? Does
she want to be with you? And I did hear
it here and there, but I don't know if I
was completely convinced. I really told her, I can't take
(29:11):
you back until I think it feels right, and I'm
not sure. And that even gave her more anxiety. And
there was a point when I couldn't give her assurances
that I would take her back. She basically said, I'm
just going to go back to him because right now
this is adding to my anxiety. So I got a
little angry at that.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
When you say got a little angry about that, are
you sure? It was a little, because basically what she's
saying is I can't tolerate being alone. Yeah, And so
I'm either going to pick him or I'm going to
pick you, because one of you is going to be
my anti anxiety medication.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
Yeah. And so I pretty much scoffed at it and
said okay. However, we continued to talk, and she wrote
me a letter saying everything, apologizing again. And it was
a nice.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Letter apologizing, yes, But how much was expressed in that
letter about I want to be with you as opposed
to not the other guy.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
There was a lot about me.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
What did she say?
Speaker 3 (30:12):
She said, I miss you. She listed things that she
liked about me, like what things like. I like how
you care about the children and take care of everything
for me. You do care about me. You have a
sense of humor. I enjoy the hobbies that you have.
They're quirky but lovable. And there was a lot there
I felt, and I think that's why I still have it.
(30:33):
It's music that I go to every once in a
while when things go bad, and I sometimes remind her
about it. I said, he here's what you said, you know,
here's the letter. And in that letter she made promises
too that she would change. And if we wanted to
go to therapy, sure, she'll say things like if you pay,
i'll go. And I said, okay, that's fine. But it's
(30:54):
been a little reluctant on that part.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
What I'm hearing is that she wants you to do
all the work. She'll show up, but you're going to
pay for it. You're gonna take responsibility for.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Her and thest you find you paid.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
She's not saying I'm equally invested in repairing this marriage.
I don't hear that. I hear a lot of I
need to be taken care of, and so I'm gonna
pick Ham or I'm gonna pick you. He's not really
available because he's married and he's not gonna leave and
that makes me really mad. And you're available and we
have kids together, and you make me feel safe. But
(31:33):
I don't hear a lot of Wow, I really screwed
up here. I hurt you so badly. I want to
figure out what hasn't been working between us. I want
to figure out what's going on with me, what's going
on with you. Let's get to a therapist. Let's share
in this experience of repair. We're just pointing that out
(31:56):
because we want you to have your eyes open in
a way that maybe they hadn't been. Because as you
try to fix this together, the success of this endeavor
depends fully on how invested the two of you together
are in this and for the right reasons.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
Yeah, part of what motivated me to talk with you
is I often get into moments of depression and sadness
out of the blue. It just hits me. It's the
strangest things. My sons could be playing a game, a
word game, and the person's name kind of comes up
because it just so happens. The guy's name is a character.
(32:38):
Those kind of things trigger me. And there are moments
too when she notices that look on my face of
just kind of staring, maybe blankly, or it looks sad,
and she will come up and say, are you okay?
Is there do you want to talk about it? Is
there anything I can do?
Speaker 2 (32:54):
And do you tell her yes? I would like to
talk about it, because Scott, I think that part of
your sadness is you decided to give it another goal.
You haven't done significant work to repair, to build trust,
to understand why the events happened and how you avoid
them going forward, and so fundamentally you feel insecure. You
(33:18):
mentioned trust in your letter, you don't have a lot
of grounds for the trust being restored. So she'll say,
are you okay? I want things to be okay. I'm
not yet hearing that she's actually willing to do the
work necessary to make them okay, and I'm not hearing
that you're insisting on that work either.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
And what I hear both of you doing is you
ask a question that you already know what you want
the answer to be. So when she says are you okay?
The correct answer is for her, yes, I'm okay, but
the true answer is no, I'm not okay. Affairs can
(33:59):
cause profound emotional trauma. It's like PTSD. So you hear
the name of the person and all of a sudden
you're triggered and you're brought right back into that space.
That's a very typical reaction to a betrayal. And so
when she says are you okay, and if you say yeah, yeah,
I'm okay, that's you hiding from her. And I'll bet
there are times when she gives you an answer because
(34:22):
she knows that it is the expected answer as opposed
to the true answer. And if you guys, keep having
your communication go that way, you're not going to get
that deeper sense of who are we to each other,
what's going on individually with each other, Because if you
want to get closer, that's how you get closer. That's
(34:43):
how you make sure that neither of you goes and
does other things to deal with your emotions. When we
talk about trust, the trust that you really need to
restore is can we trust each other with who we
really are?
Speaker 3 (34:58):
That makes sense, and we haven't been going deeper you
neled it.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Yeah, My concern is that part of you doesn't yet
fully know if she's there because it's convenient, or if
she's there because she truly wants to repair for the
long term, and you haven't asked. And I think that
knowing that is causing you a ton of insecurity, a
ton of anxiety. It's making you feel depressed and uncertain
(35:24):
because everyone's going through the motions and it feels hollow.
This looks like a tableau of a family, but I
really don't know if it is, and you don't. My
question for you then, is are you at a place
where you're willing to go looking for the truth? Check
out the foundations here before you keep building.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
Yeah, there is safety in not pursuing the deeper conversation
because I'm afraid of what I might hear. I do
want to get to a point where I can go
deeper so I don't feel this way, so I can
have trust again.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
For you to get to a place where you can
trust her, you also have to get to a place
where you are willing to ask questions, the answer to
which might be very upsetting, but you have to be
willing to ask the question. Okay, I'm asking is that
a risk you're willing to take to find out things
that you don't want to know?
Speaker 3 (36:24):
Yeah? Yeah, I'm afraid, but it's a risk I'm willing
to take.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
Because the alternative is that not knowing leaves you vulnerable
to not only this question of infidelity, but it leaves
you vulnerable to this kind of empty marriage that you
won't really have a partner. She'll be there, but you're
going to feel very, very lonely and very lone.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
I do want to ask one more thing, and that's
about has your sex life resumed and is that resumed
in a manner that's the same words, so better than
it was.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
Yes, our sex life has resumed. Earlier on, it was
a bit harder for me. It's the thoughts that I had.
It was weird and even now sometimes during sex, I
can go someplace in my mind. And so, yeah, we're intimate,
but there are moments.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Do you talk about it when that happens? No, she
sees it, but she just keeps going.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
She knows, but again we don't talk about it.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
Can I ask why what you're afraid of would happen
if you did tell her? Hey, this is what's happening
for me right now.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
I am afraid she's going to get angry. I'm afraid
she's going to say I've said I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Is there affection between you just in moments during the day,
Is just one of you reach out with the other
person's hand, and who initiates that?
Speaker 3 (38:00):
I do that all the time. I laugh because I'm
always the one saying, could you hold my hand when
we're outside. When we're out and she's not holding my hand,
I'm so aware of it since the affair. I will
just notice that and the worst thing goes in my
head and I'd say to her, come, you're not holding
my hand, and then she kind of laughs and says, oh,
just let me know. I'm just fixated on that. I
(38:22):
don't know why, but I'm fixated on that.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
You don't know why, because you need a ton of
reassurance about how she feels towards you, a ton. You're
getting very little. And when you're saying to someone who's
had an affair, it would really make me feel good
if you hold my hand a lot. But you have
to keep saying it, and she says, I'll hold it
whenever you tell me to hold it is really defeating
(38:45):
the purpose of what that exercise is about.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
Before the affair, did she spontaneously hold your hand or
were you always the person to initiate that kind of affection.
Speaker 3 (38:56):
I feel that was pretty equal. Can I say one
more thing in relation to this, I often want to kiss,
She says. Kissing is not her thing. I mean even
early in the relationship, it was a thing where she
was said, I'm not a great kisser. She never really
enjoyed that part of it. Like the holding hands. I
like even more of a connection now, and that's one
(39:19):
form of it, especially when we're intimate and she's not
very into that. That's when things start brewing in my
head and the mood starts to shift.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
You wonder if she kissed the other guy, and if
she enjoyed kissing the other guy. You're nothing, So that
says something that you esk about. You wonder, but you
don't ask because you don't hear a hurtful response.
Speaker 3 (39:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
I wonder if you've been lonely for a long time too.
You know, you're in a marriage where you never really kissed,
and that seems to be something that you wanted. And
I wonder how much time you've spent thinking about not
so much about how do I keep her and how
do I assuage her loneliness, but also what have I
(40:08):
not been asking for? And maybe it's time to do that.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
But I've mentioned it, and again I don't really like it.
I'm not really comfortable with it, so I don't feel
right in asking her to do that.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
I think what Laurie's saying to you is that it's
time for you to focus on how you feel in
the marriage and to focus on getting to a place
where you feel better and what would allow you to
feel secure and loved and wanted and needed romantically, sexually,
all of it. You're so focused on her emotional responses,
(40:49):
you've taken your eye away from yours. Scott, we have
some advice for you. It comes from this place. We're
both concerned that you and Becky are putting in work
to get back to where you were before the affair,
(41:13):
which is not the best place to go back to,
because that was a place in which the marriage was
vulnerable to an affair. You're putting in a lot of
work trying to get back to the wrong place, and
you're not working where you need to work. In a
way that will actually repair the relationship.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
Part of doing the work is that you need to
know and she needs to know that you're both willing
to do the work. And so we want you to
talk to Becky this week and there are a few
things that we want you to include as part of
that conversation, and they're very specific. The first is that
(41:55):
it seems like you feel rightly so uncomfortable that the
kids have been involved in what's going on between the
two of you. And instead of lecturing her and I'm
using her word there about well, from now on, we
can't involve the kids and what's going on, I want
you to just share with her very briefly. I really
(42:16):
want to resolve this between us, and it makes me
uncomfortable when we involve the kids. I'm wondering how you
feel about both of us making an effort to make
sure that whatever goes on between us, that we keep
it between us. How does that feel to you? And
(42:37):
she may say, well, no, I don't agree to that.
That's just information for you. You're not going to do
anything with it right now, You're just going to hear
how she feels about it. So that's the first thing.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
Here's the second, and with suggesting this, because we think
you need to be able to demonstrate to yourself that
you can do the work as well by not shying
away from questions to which you might hear upsetting answers.
And so we would like you to ask her first
so that you can get the practice asking difficult questions,
(43:11):
but second to see how she reacts, because we also
want to see that she understands what doing real work means.
We would like you to say to her, and I
have a couple of questions I want to ask you.
I want to know when you were with the other guy,
did you kiss him when you were having sex? And
I know that's a difficult question for you to ask,
(43:32):
and it might be a difficult answer to hear, but
it's the kind of question you have in your head.
And those are the kinds of questions you have to
be able to talk about to be able to move on,
and she has to be able to tolerate.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
And maybe you can preface that by saying, part of
having the kind of relationship that we want to have
means that we can have these hard conversations. And so
as painful as it might be for me to hear
the truth. It will be so much better for us
if I have the truth. It gives us a place
to go exactly.
Speaker 2 (44:07):
And I would emphasize that the idea of having these
conversations is so that you can truly move on, rather
than pretending to move on when all these questions are
still in your head.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
And then we'd like to have you ask her one
more hard question. And I think this question is something
that's there all the time in your mind, but you
just haven't voiced. And you can preface it again by saying,
we can't move forward in any real way without the truth.
And the question is if the person that you've been
(44:38):
having this affair with were to say to you tomorrow,
I'm leaving my wife, would you get in the car
and go to him? And then you just stop talking.
I think part of asking these questions is not filling
in the space because there might be just a quiet
(45:00):
there or she doesn't know what to do with it.
Just stop talking, Just wait patiently, however long it takes
for her to respond, Just keep breathing. Whatever she does
with these questions will give you such valuable information that
you just don't have right now. Even if she doesn't answer,
the question that's information. How she answers the question, that's information,
(45:22):
and it's good information to have. It will create a
healthier dynamic between the two of you, no matter what happens.
Speaker 3 (45:31):
That sounds good.
Speaker 2 (45:32):
There is one last thing. We think it's imperative that
you guys have these conversations with a therapist. These are
extraordinarily difficult conversations to have. Other than those three things
that you mentioned, we do think you need to be
in coupless therapy. We think you should say to her
you didn't like the last therapist we went to, but
(45:53):
we really need to do this work with somebody trained
who can help us. I would like you to find
some Take seventy two hours and call as many people
as you need until you find someone who calls back
or you feel comfortable with, set up an appointment for us.
I'd like for you to do that, so you're choosing
someone you feel comfortable with and set up an appointment
(46:16):
within seventy two hours, so I can have a sense
that you're seriously willing to work on making things better
for the long term. Okay, tell us how you're feeling
about all of this.
Speaker 3 (46:31):
I find them very interesting and I'm willing to do that.
I think they will give me a lot of information
and I'm totally okay with that. Actually good.
Speaker 1 (46:43):
Yeah, when you bring up the idea of the therapist,
we don't want it to sound like you're directing things
and it's a lecture. So I want you to say
to her, I'm not sure I can stay with you
if we don't go and see a therapist. You're just
telling her something about you. I don't know that I
will be able to manage this if we don't do this.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
If she says, why don't you make the call, I'll go,
but you make the call.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
I'm just curious, Scott. If she said that, how would
you respond.
Speaker 3 (47:15):
I may say I would love to see you make
the call because that would show me that you care
about our relationship.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
I would say, because that would show me that you
are really interested in doing the work we need to
do to fix our relationship.
Speaker 1 (47:33):
I might even say one of the things that I've
come to realize is that maybe what I wanted was
not always what you wanted, And if you make the call,
that would indicate in some way that you wanted this.
Speaker 3 (47:50):
Got it? Got it? Thank you? Okay, thank you so much?
Speaker 2 (47:55):
You're welcome, Scott. We look forward to hearing back from
you when we wish you luck. When I see a couple,
I always let them know that my client is their relationship,
that I will be advocating for the relationship. And even
though we were just talking with Scott, I think both
of us had this idea of they're trying to repair,
(48:17):
let's really see what can make this relationship actually work.
And the dilemma that we had was that we know
that they have to have these difficult conversations if they're
going to have a chance at succeeding, and we also
know that having them can lead to their breakup. And
so it's this dilemma of do you recommend the thing
that the people have to have in order to succeed
(48:40):
even though there's a high risk involved in doing that.
Speaker 1 (48:42):
That's right, And when you say we advocate for the relationship,
I want to be clear that we advocate for the
relationship when both people are on board and say they
want to repair the relationship. We don't do that when
those conditions aren't met. And I think the other thing
is we're advocating for the relationship in the sense of
even if this marriage doesn't work out because they do
(49:05):
find that they're not able to do this kind of
work together or have the kind of marriage that both
of them want. They're going to be co parents no
matter what. So we want them to come to a
place that's not about slamming the door in someone's face.
We want them to come to a place of we
have an understanding despite all of the pain. And I
(49:26):
think what you said is so true that as therapists
we have this dilemma. We know that the relationship can't
survive without the truth, but we also know that the
truth often comes with a lot of pain in the
short term, but in the long term it's what provides
the relief.
Speaker 2 (49:43):
Right and if they can't tolerate it in the short term,
they're not going to get to the long term. So
find out now rather than data.
Speaker 1 (49:51):
Yeah, it feels like they're never going to move past
this place of uncertainty if they don't start doing this
kind of work. I really liked what you said earlier
about it seemed like he was the one who had
the affair and was trying to repair it because he's
doing so much and she's doing so little, which is
often what happens in the reverse.
Speaker 2 (50:13):
But I think even though she's trying to just move
forward and pretend things are okay, she also has that
feeling of deep insecurity somewhere that she knows that things
are unstable because they never really got to it. And
so I think there would be a part of her
that would feel comforted if she was able to and
if he's able to really dive in and do the
(50:33):
hard work.
Speaker 1 (50:34):
It seems like what she really wants on some level
that she hasn't felt she had is a sense of
emotional safety. Before the affair, she felt like Scott would
sort of lecture her, talk over her, and maybe there
wasn't enough space for her. And then she goes to
this other guy and well, it's not really safe because
he can't talk to her because he's with his wife
and he's actually not going to leave. And she seems
(50:56):
to then go back to Scott because somehow she feels
like she's going to have this emotional safety with him.
But there's not emotional safety in that relationship at all,
because there is so much that is just living in
the air between them that they are not discussing. For
both of them, it will be kind of a reckoning
of where do I stand in terms of what I want,
(51:17):
what I'm willing to do to repair this relationship.
Speaker 2 (51:21):
Yeah, I'm thinking of what I say sometimes to couples,
and that is that it is very brave of you
after an affair to come to see me to do
the work of repair, because it's very difficult. You're showing
up knowing that these are going to be painful conversations,
and I really appreciate that you're both here with that
in mind, and I hope they're both going to be
brave enough to do that. I do too. You're listening
(51:47):
to Deotherapists from iHeartRadio. We'll be back after a quick break.
Speaker 1 (52:00):
So, Guy, we heard back from Scott, and we had
given him the task of asking some difficult questions that
he had been afraid to ask, and then also making
a hard request. So let's hear what happened.
Speaker 3 (52:14):
Hi, Guy and Laurie. This is Scott. So I did
ask the three questions. The first question it was relatively easy.
I think we he really at this point have been
on the same page about keeping our issues between ourselves,
(52:34):
and so she didn't have a problem at all. The
second question was not as easy. She took a while
to answer, and it was very uncomfortable for me, but
she did say that she did kiss him and that
she had wanted to, And actually it led to a
(52:58):
lot of awkward ms right after that, where I was
feeling a lot of things, jealousy, a bit of anger,
a bit of why is it so hard to kiss me?
And it troubled her also that I asked that, and
it was very difficult. But I moved along to the
third question, which was if he were to leave, what
(53:22):
would she do and she said that no, she wouldn't,
that she doesn't want to hurt anybody anymore. And it
did lead to a very open conversation about why she
came back, that she had done it for the kids,
(53:45):
and at that point she got a little doubtful about everything.
I don't know if I can continue like this. These
are very hard questions. It's very uncomfortable, and I told
her I would like for you to call a therapist
make an appointment for us, and she ultimately said she
(54:08):
wouldn't and that she doesn't even really want to see
a therapist. Things really just did not end well there. Honestly,
I thought it was over. It seemed like things were
just going to implode. At that point, I felt really bad.
I couldn't eat. I really felt that our marriage was
(54:30):
just going to fall apart. Interestingly, the next day I
talked with her and I said, again, if we want
to move forward, it's very important that we do see
a therapist together. That this won't be about who's right
and who's wrong. I think she was very much afraid
(54:52):
she would always be cast in a negative way, but
I tried to reassure that wouldn't be the case. It
would be about us and working together. There would be
difficult things brought up, but we're working together. And she said, look,
I'm not really good at finding someone, but I would
(55:13):
be okay if you found someone, and I'll go. I
was very happy to hear that. And I'm in the
process right now of getting some references and we'll be
making an appointment for us. She seemed like this is
going to be hard for me, but I do want
(55:34):
what's best and she was willing to do it. So
thank you very much.
Speaker 2 (55:41):
So kudos to Scott for asking those really difficult questions.
I have to say I was disappointed when I heard
the answers Becky gave because saying I came back really
for the kids. Yes, I kissed him and I wanted to,
which is kind of what we suspected. But if she
(56:01):
added any affirmation or validation to him afterwards, but I
care about you, I love you, it wasn't mentioned, and
I kind of think it wasn't mentioned because it wasn't there.
And her reluctance to go to therapy was another red
flag for me. I think she wants to be in
it for the family. I just don't know if she's
in it for Scott.
Speaker 1 (56:18):
I very much felt the same way. My heart ached
for him when I was listening to his response, because
I think there's a part of him that still is
in denial about this. I agree, which is to be expected.
He loves her, he wants the marriage to work. He's
just hurting so much. And she eventually the next day
(56:41):
agreed to go to therapy again if Scott found the therapist,
meaning I'm sure she would be capable of doing so.
She doesn't really want to put in the effort, and
the reason that she gave for going was it's the
right thing to do. It's not I really love you,
and we need to figure out what's going on and
try to see what's here. I'm not hearing any of
(57:04):
that from her, and what I am hearing from Scott
is this passivity where he said, I really thought the
marriage was over after the first set of questions, but
he didn't really go inside and say, given these answers,
what do I want.
Speaker 2 (57:21):
We gave him that task because we wanted him to
hear the hard answers and be realistic about is this
enough for him? Can he get his needs met in
this situation? So he asked the hard questions, he got
the hard answers, and then he softballed his response to
those hard answers. So I am concerned that he's not
going to be able to get what he wants. And
(57:43):
I hope that at least with the therapy, that will
be able to be clarified.
Speaker 1 (57:48):
Right, I mean, I think that the most painful answer
that she gave, and it was honest, so good for
her for being honest. But the painful answer was if
the person she had the affair with were to leave
his wife, would you go with him? And her answer
was no. But the because was the hard part. She said,
(58:09):
because she doesn't want to hurt anyone anymore. Right, it
wasn't because I want to be with you. It had
nothing to do with him. Really. It was about not
hurting him, but it wasn't about whether she desired to
be with him.
Speaker 2 (58:23):
I don't want to hurt you means I don't really
want to be here and doing it for the kids.
It's just not a motivation that can sustain a relationship.
Speaker 1 (58:32):
I think if we were to have two columns and
one column was what Scott heard and the other column
is what we heard. So the answer to the first question,
I think the columns would be the same, that we'll
keep the kids out of these discussions, which is good.
The answer to the second question, whether she had kissed
the other guy, what Scott heard was what's wrong with me?
(58:55):
Why is it so hard to kiss me?
Speaker 2 (58:58):
It was asking himself and actually not answering himself and
not saying, I guess she doesn't care about me enough,
but just not answering the question.
Speaker 1 (59:06):
Right. And for the third question, which is about whether
she would leave, he heard, oh, she would stay, and
what we heard was she would stay out of obligation, right.
And for the therapist question, what he heard was, well, optimistically,
the next day she said she would go to therapy
and I'm getting names, and I'm going to make an appointment.
And what we heard was she's not willing to put
(59:29):
in the effort and the energy to do the kind
of work that would make this marriage be a true
marriage and not a surface marriage or a marriage where
you're at risk again of this kind of thing happening.
Speaker 2 (59:42):
He is going to have to be honest with himself
and face the difficult truths, and in therapy continue to
ask difficult questions and maybe with the help of the therapist,
listen to the answer objectively rather than optimistically, because I
do think he's the kind end of person who can
absolutely find someone who truly cares for him. He's a
(01:00:04):
very giving person, and I think he can find another
very giving person to be with, but he has to
finish with this relationship first.
Speaker 1 (01:00:11):
I'm very optimistic about his ability to find a satisfying
relationship where it's reciprocal, where the love is there both ways.
One thing he said at the end that I felt
optimistic about was when he said, I realized that I
can't be afraid of asking the difficult questions, and he
felt some relief that he had asked these questions even
though he really hasn't taken in the answers yet, And
(01:00:32):
I think that that will bode well both for the
therapy that they're going to do, because he'll see very
quickly whether Becky is willing to engage with those difficult questions,
and if not, that will give him some answers much
sooner than if they just did status quo at home
without going to the therapist, And if they don't end
up together, that will serve him well in the next
relationship he finds himself in.
Speaker 2 (01:00:58):
Hey, fellow travelers, if you've used any of our advice
from the podcast in your own life, send us a
quick voice memo to Loriandguy at iHeartMedia dot com and
tell us about it. We may include it in a
future show.
Speaker 1 (01:01:11):
And if you're enjoying our podcast each week, please help
support Dear Therapists. You can tell your friends about it,
and we'd be so grateful if you'd leave us a
five star review on Apple Podcasts. Your reviews help people
find the show. You can follow us both online. I'm
at Lorigottlieb dot com and you can follow me on
Twitter at Lorigottlieb one or on Instagram at Lorigottlieb, underscore author.
Speaker 2 (01:01:34):
And I'm at Guywinch dot com. I'm on Twitter and
on Instagram at Guywinch. If you have a dilemma you'd
like to discuss with us, big or small, email us
at Lorianguy at iHeartMedia dot com.
Speaker 1 (01:01:48):
Our executive producers Christopher Hasiotis, were produced and edited by
Mike Johns. Special thanks to Samuel Benefield and to our
podcast Fairygodmother Katie Couric. And next week, a woman faces
her first holiday season after a difficult divorce. It was
really stressful to be going back and forth and to
not no. I think I sort of became numb to it.
(01:02:10):
Dear Therapist is a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, fellow travelers. I'm Lori Gottlieb. I'm the author of
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, and I write the
Dear Therapist column for the Atlantic.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
And I'm Guy Wench. I wrote Emotional First Aid, and
I write the Dear Guy column for Ted. And this
is Deo Therapists. This week, a man struggles to trust
his wife again after she has an affair.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
She said, I'm sorry for everything I've done. I know
you were hurt. I would like to work it out
with you. Could you give me a chance? I said,
why do you want to come back?
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Listen in and maybe learn something about yourself and the process.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Deo Therapist is for informational purposes only, does not constitute
medical advice, and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis,
or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician, mental
health professional, or other qualified health provider with any questions
you may have regarding a medical condition. By submitting a letter,
you are agreeing to let iHeartMedia use it in partner
(01:04):
and full and we may edit it for length and
or clarity.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Hi Laurie, Hi Guy.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
So this week we have another letter about infidelity, but
this one is about the attempt to repair, and it
goes like this, Dear therapists. I caught my wife of
thirteen years cheating. At first, we agree to separate and
we're going through the early stages of divorce. We also
have two children, and after gaining some perspective on my
(01:38):
life and navigating through the darkness of the pain, eight
months later, she wanted to come back. I have since
taken her back, and I know that my children are
happier than I am too. Yet I often go into
moments of trust issues and feeling uncertain about myself. Will
this feeling go away? What suggestions do you have to
(01:59):
cope with these issues of trust? Thank you, Scott.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
I'm glad that Scott wrote to us because so many
people think that once there's infidelity, that relationships aren't repairable.
And he's saying, listen, we really want to work this out.
I am happier having her back here. She is happier,
kids are happier. We want to make this work, but
(02:27):
we're not quite sure how to do that. And I
think it's important for people to see that there can
be a path forward. Depending on the circumstances of.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
All the couples I've seen that came to work on
their relationship after an affair. The vast majority really do
fix their relationship and stay together, and many of them
the relationship becomes stronger and even happier. Of course, this
is the majority of people who together are coming to
see me too intentionally work on fixing it. So that's
(02:58):
definitely a pre co contion that both people have to
be intent on doing that. But it's very possible to
repair a relationship after an affair, depending on the circumstances
and the people.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
That's right. You can't heal a relationship on your own.
So let's go talk to Scott and see what's going
on with him and his wife. Yes, you're listening to
Dear Therapist from my Heart Radio. We'll be back after
a quick break.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
I'm Lori Gottlieb and I'm Guy Winch and this is
deo Therapist Scott. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Thank you, nice to be here.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Hi Scott, Hello.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
We'd love to start by hearing a little bit of
background about the marriage and then how you discovered the affairs,
what happened thereafter.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
I've been married for thirteen years. We have two children,
an eleven and a nine year old a year ago,
she was working. She had told me early on in
the day that she had a dinner appointment with some clients,
so she would be late. And it was like nine
(04:19):
thirty and I was calling her and there was just nothing,
even text messages. So I used the feature on the
phone called Find my Friends, and she was in a
residential area and I just dismissed it as a computer
(04:41):
glitch on there. Well, it kept showing up and I
was fixated on it. I kept looking at it and
it was still there. Eventually I did get a call
back and she says, I'm coming home, but I'm following
her also on the app, and I see the car
(05:02):
drive right by our apartment and go to a mall
restaurant area. And then I got another call later on
at the restaurant saying all right, no, no, I'm really
leaving now, And in about another ten minutes she arrived home.
So I just said, hey, where have you been, And
(05:25):
she's like, I was at a restaurant with clients. And
then I said, I was on Find my Friend and
I saw that you were at this location. Honestly, Becky,
could you just tell me what's going on? She straight
up said I'm sorry I was with someone. I think
she might have even said I've been cheating or something
(05:45):
like that. It was just a lot of denial on
my part. No, no, I can't believe it, and we
talked a lot that night. Yet it was very messy
in the sense that this person that she was seeing
she worked with, and apparently this language school that our
(06:08):
kids were going to, this guy kids went to that school.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Scott, did you suspect that she had been having an
affair before that night? Was this a complete shock to
you or was there a part of you that maybe
thought something might have been going on, or when she
said it, you thought, oh, this makes sense now.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Yeah, I had suspicions. There were times when I went
out with friends and she would say, well, then does
that mean can I just go out with other people too?
What if it was a date? You know, just kind
of remarks.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
So she didn't trust you. She was making a joke
that as if you were on it.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Right, Because I often went out with friends, and some
of them were female friends, there were guys there too,
and during those moments she would say things like, well,
could I go on a date? I'm like, no, I'm
not doing that. I'm not okay with that.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Did that signal to you the fact that she was
asking permission for herself? Maybe there's an issue that we
need to talk about. Is everything okay in a relationship?
Was there a conversation like that that you had with
her at that time?
Speaker 3 (07:12):
There was no conversation after that about that situation?
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Can you take us back a little farther? You said
you've been married for thirteen years. What was the communication
like between you before this? Because when you talk about
the interaction about the comment about the date, seems like
neither of you was willing to say, wait a minute,
what are we really talking about here? How do you
(07:39):
think the communication was before all this happened.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
I feel I'm a pretty good communicator. I like to talk,
I like to spend time kind of looking at a situation.
She often says, Oh, it's another lecture. Here we go.
She's often looking at the clock, going have you made
your point? Are we done? And so it always leaves
me with a kind of bad taste Scott.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Usually when someone responds like Becky was responding, it's a
sign that she feels that you're doing perhaps too much
talking and not enough listening. In those conversations. Were you
asking her questions? Were you're giving her a chance to
voice things?
Speaker 3 (08:16):
It does sound like I was doing most of the talking.
I feel I've given her the opportunity to talk. She
said stuff, but there's no elaboration on it.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Before this happened. What were the things that she did
tell you when she did speak up in whatever conversations
you had over those thirteen years.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
I think one thing that really hurt our relationship was
our children in regards to putting them through private schools.
I'm a teacher, but she came from a very different philosophy.
That's just a lot of wasted money, and it's putting
some stress on us, and so those kind of discussions
would be very heated and there was no compromise at
(08:56):
the end. That's when I said I'm going to do this,
and we got a little help from my parents just
with money.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
I just want to go back to that night where
she comes home and she's telling you that she's been
having this affair. Did she say how long it was
for that this has been going on? Did you ask?
Speaker 3 (09:11):
So it's been going on steadily for most of her
time at this company. She was promoted and she had
to move to a downtown branch. It was very stressful
for her. She really didn't like the job, and I
guess that's when she started having conversations with this person.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
And how long ago was that.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
I would say that was going on for about four months.
And she told me that her co worker saw her
crying and this guy was a person who she ended
up talking with day after day, and that's when the
relationship started. So I found that out and a lot
(09:52):
of other things clicked into place. She would go to
the beach with my kids and she would be like, no,
you don't need to go, and I thought that was
a little weird. The kids ended up telling me they
would see this person there. Anyway, That night was very difficult,
and I wanted to work it out. I believed we
could work it out.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Was she apologizing? Was she promising she wouldn't see this
person again? In otherwise? What reassurances was she giving you
that you wanted to look it up?
Speaker 3 (10:19):
No, that that was the toughest part. She realized that
she did something wrong, but it didn't seem to me
like she wanted to work this out. The next day,
the kids had language school, and I said, you're going
to go see this guy there, right, please let him
know everything that went on and that this is over.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Scott, when you asked her to tell the guy it
was over, had she indicated to you that she was
ready to end the affair or was this again sort
of like the private school thing of this is what
I want and this is how we're going to do it.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
I would say it's more that I was just thinking
of everything our kids, to myself and just everything in
our family, and I just couldn't believe that that was
going on. Just going back and thinking about it, I
definitely pushed her hard to make that decision.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Well, it doesn't sound like she made that decision. It
sounds like you were asking her to do something that
she hadn't come to a place of deciding. Yet, You're right,
and I just want to say we understand how hard
this is and how much your life got up ended
in that moment when she came home, and even the
denial before that, where the kids would say, oh, there
(11:34):
was this other guy at the beach, and you didn't inquire, well,
who is this guy at the beach when my wife
said not to come. So I think that veil of
denial was pierced that night, and then you had the
reaction many people have, which is, let's just fix this
and put an end to it without really exploring does
the other person want to fix it? Where are they
(11:56):
with it? And it's so hard. So we have so
much empathy for what that must have been like. But
at the same time, we want you to just notice
because I know you're trying to repair this. How sometimes
you have an idea about something, whether it's private school
or ending the affair, that she might not quite be
on board with, and it just echoes that sentiment that
(12:18):
you mentioned that she had sometimes of like are you
done with the lecture? And I want to be clear
too that you are not to blame for the affair.
Nobody causes someone to have an affair. They make a
decision that that is how they're going to handle whatever
they're experiencing. It is not the other person's fault that
they decided to handle it that way. There are many
ways to handle difficulties in relationships. Having an affair is
(12:41):
not one that somebody forces somebody.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
To have, thank you, Okay.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
It's got to add one thing to that. It's a
very strong tendency people have when they're blindsided and heartbroken
by finding out in the moment that the partner had
an affair to do what you did intil of saying okay,
then we need to do ABCDE to fix it. It
not only doesn't find out where Becky is in terms
(13:09):
of whether she's willing to do that, it gives her
an easy out in terms of having to really do
the reckoning and really do the exploration. She can just
say okay, fine and agree to something without even fully
agreeing to it, and so it actually lets the other
person off the hook when you make those decisions, when
the impetus for repair, the need to want to put
things together has to come from the other person, and
(13:32):
by giving them all the answers, you prevent that.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
Yeah, you know, she took a long time to get
back home and she wasn't picking up again. So I
drove to the parking lot and saw our other car
there and I walked over and she was crying. Actually,
she was still on the phone with him, and I
kind of looked at her and said, what what's going on?
(13:57):
And she said something like I'm I'm sorry, And so
in my head, I guess I thought it was over.
She was definitely crying and said the next day, I
tried to do things that she said she wanted to do.
I was like, let's go hiking, let's take the kids
hiking Scott.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
In your mind, you thought I'll do things that she
likes to do and then we'll just move past this.
Or did you think that there would be a process
by which you had to understand what had happened with
her with you with the relationship in your mind, how
are you going to recover from this as a couple.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
I did think that therapy would be very important. We've
never done anything like that before. So I got a
recommendation of a therapist and told her, let's do this,
and we went and in general it was okay until
the discussion of school came up again, and she got
very angry afterwards and said I don't want to see
her again. By then we had been going for almost
(14:57):
two or three weeks. She was sad, was crying here
and there. Shortly after, it was Valentine's Day. I wanted
to surprise her because she always said, I'm really hungry
at work, So I decided I would go to a
coffee store, get her some coffee and a sandwich, and
I did drove over. She wasn't there for almost twenty
(15:18):
to thirty minutes, and then she finally showed up, very
surprised to see me, and that's when I saw that
she was with this guy again.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
If I were listening to who did what after that
first night, if I just listened to which of you
took which actions, which of you said what, I would
have guessed you were the one that had the affair,
because you were the one that was trying to convince
her to stay, to repair, to work. You were taking
(15:49):
all the initiative, I'll do this for her, I'll find
a therapist. These are the actions usually the person who's
trying to make up for the affair to convince the
other person that they want to repair does. And I'm
pointing that out because when you're trying to fight for
your marriage, you cannot do it by yourself, and your
(16:10):
tendency is to try and do things without her and
then to get her agreement to the plan you've laid out.
And that is not true partnering. It's not really working
with her, it's not really seeing where she is. You're
hoping that she'll want to be back in the relationship.
(16:31):
You're pushing and trying to convince her to do that,
but you're not actually waiting to inquire understand whether she
is willing able wanting to do that, and.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Going along with what guy said this whole time that
she was crying. I don't think that you wanted to
understand why she was crying. And I don't think she
was at this place where she knew that she wanted
to fix the marriage. That was something you had decided.
And even when somebody is very clear I want to
(17:03):
fix the marriage, there is some loss and some grief
around the affair that they had to end, and it's
very hard for the person who was cheated on to
have any empathy for that or to even acknowledge it.
But she was very sad because she was getting something
from this relationship with this person that was meaningful to her,
(17:25):
as painful as it was for you. And then she
was being asked to give that up when it might
have felt like her lifeline at that time. And then
there's this guy who listens to her and she's probably
telling him how she feels all the time, and you're saying,
I want to save our marriage. I feel devastated by
the affair. Let me tell you all about how I'm feeling.
(17:48):
But it doesn't sound like there was a lot of
curiosity around how are you feeling? Tell me what you're
crying about, Tell me what is making you sad. It
was let's go hiking, let me surprise you on Valentine's Day,
all very lovely things, but a misattunement to what she
was probably needing. Does that make sense at all now
(18:11):
given where you.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
Are, Yeah, it does make a lot of sense. When
I asked her, she did say straight up, I miss him,
So you're right.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Did you ask her directly whether she wanted to give
up that relationship and work on the marriage and did
she own that directly explicitly at that time?
Speaker 3 (18:32):
Honestly, I don't feel there was a full conviction behind it.
As I'm processing this with you, guys, like I very
much kind of written the paperwork there and she just
kind of checked the box.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
And probably because part of you felt very worried that
if you do ask directly, she might just say, you
know what, no, so you avoided asking things that you
were afraid you'd hear the answer that you didn't want
to hear.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Yeah, you're right, I didn't want to believe that was
going to be an option for us and our family.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
When she said after that couple session about the private schools,
that you didn't want to go back. It's very common
for people who aren't really sure that they want to
be working on the marriage to find something about the
couple's work that they don't like and say I'm done,
just because they just don't want to live that double
life of inside, I don't know that I want to
(19:28):
be working on this, and then I have to go
to couple therapy and pretend that I'm invested in this.
And so people find a way to get rid of
that cognitive dissonance, and they generally find one comment, one
thing that is wrong with the therapy just so they
can get out of it so they don't have to
experience that every week.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
Yeah, and I'll add this extra thing. After I had
caught her at work, I said, could I see your phone?
As she held on to it, and I just had
enough and left. But I wanted to confront this guy,
and I went in and I said, hey, do you
know who I am? I was very afraid, but I
was running on adrenaline and he knew who I was,
(20:08):
and I said, do you know what you're doing to
my marriage? And he said, Becky told me that you
guys are going through counseling, and he made it seem
like a joke. There was this kind of smirk on
his face. He is married, has two children. And he said, well,
if you want me to end this, ask Becky get
(20:30):
her on the phone now. I want to hear from
her that she doesn't want to be with me. And
I said, I'm not doing that and I walked out.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Did it register to you that moment that he seems
to be saying that with a certain amount of confidence
and knowing what Becky would say.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
He was completely confident, and yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
So it occurred to you in that moment that she
indeed would make that choice.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
Yeah. I think I always had that fear. And it
was that night when I confronted her about it. That
was Valentine's Day, and that's when I knew it was
absolutely over. When I asked her, do you still want
to make this work? And she basically said no, I'm done,
and we just started to move towards the official divorce.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
I have a question about the person she was having
the affair with. When you were talking with him. Did
he say that the plan for them was that he
was going to leave his marriage and they were going
to be together.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
No, and I had also talked to Becky about that,
and she said that he was already on the outs
with his wife. She even told him at that point
that this is not perfect opportunity for us to be together.
And he was not sure at first, but eventually they
started to be together.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
He told his wife about the affair.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
No, No, till this day, she knows nothing about it.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
So what did happen? How did you guys decide to
give it a try?
Speaker 3 (22:05):
It was a good four or five months of divorce lawyers.
She had moved out, got her own apartment.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
How did you tell the kids? Did they have any
idea what was going on?
Speaker 3 (22:17):
They found out the following day.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
The following day from when you discovered it.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
I discovered it. I remember this vividly. My older son
screamed no, really loud. So she had told him despite
the fact that I told her not to.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
What did she tell him exactly?
Speaker 3 (22:37):
She basically said that mom and dad are not really
in love. She didn't say she was with another man
per se, that we were just going to separate.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Scott. What I'm hearing here is that, on the one hand,
you had said to her, here's how we're going to
fix our marriage. Here are the steps we're going to take,
and then we're going to go hiking, and I'm going
to do these nice things for you. And at the
same time, she had told your children mom and dad
aren't in love anymore. So how did you reconcile that
(23:10):
in your mind of your idea that you were going
to fix the marriage. But her stating to the kids
something that I don't know if she said to you.
Did she say those words to you or did you
hear this through the kids that she was not in
love with you anymore.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Once I heard this kind of commotion going on, I
went to the scene and it all started to come out.
I was just shocked. I started adding, but we'll work
it out. There's a plan. Mommy's going to actually go
there now and say no.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
She told them about the affair and with whom it was.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Yeah, By then, when I had gone down, it all
kind of bubbled up. All of that bubbled up all
at once.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
Wow, that's a lot of information and eleven year olds
shouldn't have.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
That's a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeap.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
What I'm hearing is that she felt so unable to
commit unicate directly with you, And I want to be
clear that this is her issue. There was something going
on in the marriage that made it hard for her,
but also it was her issue that she decided to
handle it this way where the only way she felt
she could be heard was to tell a child. The
(24:18):
only way she could say, here's how i'm really feeling.
The only place she had to go in your household
was to a child, which is of course completely inappropriate.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Because the way you responded made her think that you're
not listening, You're just focused on making this work when
she doesn't really want to.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
I agree with that guy. I think that's exactly what
she was thinking. And what you said, Laurie, she probably
didn't feel like I just didn't want to believe there
was any other option except that we were going to
make it work. I did not want to face that reality.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
So you went through four or five months of going
through the first stages of divorce, and then you got
back together. I'm curious to hear about getting back together,
and I'm curious because is this more of you convincing
her talking her into doing something that she's saying yes to,
but we're not quite sure whether her heart is behind it.
(25:15):
How different was the round of getting back together than
what we've heard so far.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
Yeah, this is the part that confuses me the most, honestly.
As the months went along and I was still trying
to reconcile, even though the divorce papers were on the way,
I said, look, we can still make this work. And
it was no. She was seeing this guy regularly, and
one day when she was coming to get the kids,
(25:43):
she was waiting downstairs and I texted, he's going to
be down soon, and the next thing I know, she
got in the apartment and she was right at the door.
By then, I had kind of re established my apartment
so I could kind of see it as MySpace because
I was still living in the same place we were living.
So I had this kind of mental thing where I
didn't want her in that space anymore. So I said,
(26:05):
please stay outside, and I more or less shut the
door on her, and eventually the kids were ready and
they left with her. But I started getting a lot
of messages that day and phone calls saying, look, I
know you don't want to talk to me, I know
you hate me all of that, but if you would
(26:25):
just let me talk to you, and I promise, if
you don't ever want to talk again, that's fine. And
I found that very intriguing, so I texted back, fine,
give me a call, and she did.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Did you think that she was going to come toward you?
Speaker 3 (26:42):
Yeah, since we've broken up, it was always very kurt, hostile,
so I was very intrigued with suddenly this kind of softer,
Please let me talk to you. And my therapist said,
you may never hear these words ever from her, but
she said, I'm sorry for everything I've done. I know
(27:03):
you were hurt. I would like to work it out
with you. Could you give me a chance. I was
shocked to hear that because I was in a place
where I didn't want to have anything to do with her.
It took me so long to get to that place,
and quite frankly, I wasn't even quite a hundred percent there,
and so when I heard that, I was shocked. And
(27:26):
it was the first time where I didn't have to
say anything and I was just listening to her because
she was just going, would you take me back? She
was asking all of this, so I didn't understand what happened.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Did you ask what happened?
Speaker 3 (27:41):
I said, why do you want to come back? The
last time I saw you, I pushed you out. I
just don't understand this, she said. She talked with her
mom about things. Her mom suggested that this would be
your only chance if you wanted to have him back.
To ask now. Then a little deeper stuff came out.
She would often feel angry or sad if the guy
(28:06):
was with Sometimes she would be waiting for him and
he would be with his wife. There would be moments
when they were together and she just couldn't sleep. She
always had anxiety issues when she was around him. It
wasn't as great as she thought it was, and that
she ultimately missed me. She even missed the lecture. She
(28:28):
said that I didn't understand it to honestly, you know,
when she.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
Was with you, she used the other guy to complain
about you, and then when she became dissatisfied with him,
she called you and complained about him. And what I
would love to hear from her is not the other
guy disappointed me, it's I want to be.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
With you, right. So I had talked to many of
my friends too, so When they heard about this, one
friend made sure to say, are you hearing that? Does
she want to be with you? And I did hear
it here and there, but I don't know if I
was completely convinced. I really told her, I can't take
(29:11):
you back until I think it feels right, and I'm
not sure. And that even gave her more anxiety. And
there was a point when I couldn't give her assurances
that I would take her back. She basically said, I'm
just going to go back to him because right now
this is adding to my anxiety. So I got a
little angry at that.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
When you say got a little angry about that, are
you sure? It was a little, because basically what she's
saying is I can't tolerate being alone. Yeah, And so
I'm either going to pick him or I'm going to
pick you, because one of you is going to be
my anti anxiety medication.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
Yeah. And so I pretty much scoffed at it and
said okay. However, we continued to talk, and she wrote
me a letter saying everything, apologizing again. And it was
a nice.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Letter apologizing, yes, But how much was expressed in that
letter about I want to be with you as opposed
to not the other guy.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
There was a lot about me.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
What did she say?
Speaker 3 (30:12):
She said, I miss you. She listed things that she
liked about me, like what things like. I like how
you care about the children and take care of everything
for me. You do care about me. You have a
sense of humor. I enjoy the hobbies that you have.
They're quirky but lovable. And there was a lot there
I felt, and I think that's why I still have it.
(30:33):
It's music that I go to every once in a
while when things go bad, and I sometimes remind her
about it. I said, he here's what you said, you know,
here's the letter. And in that letter she made promises
too that she would change. And if we wanted to
go to therapy, sure, she'll say things like if you pay,
i'll go. And I said, okay, that's fine. But it's
(30:54):
been a little reluctant on that part.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
What I'm hearing is that she wants you to do
all the work. She'll show up, but you're going to
pay for it. You're gonna take responsibility for.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Her and thest you find you paid.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
She's not saying I'm equally invested in repairing this marriage.
I don't hear that. I hear a lot of I
need to be taken care of, and so I'm gonna
pick Ham or I'm gonna pick you. He's not really
available because he's married and he's not gonna leave and
that makes me really mad. And you're available and we
have kids together, and you make me feel safe. But
(31:33):
I don't hear a lot of Wow, I really screwed
up here. I hurt you so badly. I want to
figure out what hasn't been working between us. I want
to figure out what's going on with me, what's going
on with you. Let's get to a therapist. Let's share
in this experience of repair. We're just pointing that out
(31:56):
because we want you to have your eyes open in
a way that maybe they hadn't been. Because as you
try to fix this together, the success of this endeavor
depends fully on how invested the two of you together
are in this and for the right reasons.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
Yeah, part of what motivated me to talk with you
is I often get into moments of depression and sadness
out of the blue. It just hits me. It's the
strangest things. My sons could be playing a game, a
word game, and the person's name kind of comes up
because it just so happens. The guy's name is a character.
(32:38):
Those kind of things trigger me. And there are moments
too when she notices that look on my face of
just kind of staring, maybe blankly, or it looks sad,
and she will come up and say, are you okay?
Is there do you want to talk about it? Is
there anything I can do?
Speaker 2 (32:54):
And do you tell her yes? I would like to
talk about it, because Scott, I think that part of
your sadness is you decided to give it another goal.
You haven't done significant work to repair, to build trust,
to understand why the events happened and how you avoid
them going forward, and so fundamentally you feel insecure. You
(33:18):
mentioned trust in your letter, you don't have a lot
of grounds for the trust being restored. So she'll say,
are you okay? I want things to be okay. I'm
not yet hearing that she's actually willing to do the
work necessary to make them okay, and I'm not hearing
that you're insisting on that work either.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
And what I hear both of you doing is you
ask a question that you already know what you want
the answer to be. So when she says are you okay?
The correct answer is for her, yes, I'm okay, but
the true answer is no, I'm not okay. Affairs can
(33:59):
cause profound emotional trauma. It's like PTSD. So you hear
the name of the person and all of a sudden
you're triggered and you're brought right back into that space.
That's a very typical reaction to a betrayal. And so
when she says are you okay, and if you say yeah, yeah,
I'm okay, that's you hiding from her. And I'll bet
there are times when she gives you an answer because
(34:22):
she knows that it is the expected answer as opposed
to the true answer. And if you guys, keep having
your communication go that way, you're not going to get
that deeper sense of who are we to each other,
what's going on individually with each other, Because if you
want to get closer, that's how you get closer. That's
(34:43):
how you make sure that neither of you goes and
does other things to deal with your emotions. When we
talk about trust, the trust that you really need to
restore is can we trust each other with who we
really are?
Speaker 3 (34:58):
That makes sense, and we haven't been going deeper you
neled it.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Yeah, My concern is that part of you doesn't yet
fully know if she's there because it's convenient, or if
she's there because she truly wants to repair for the
long term, and you haven't asked. And I think that
knowing that is causing you a ton of insecurity, a
ton of anxiety. It's making you feel depressed and uncertain
(35:24):
because everyone's going through the motions and it feels hollow.
This looks like a tableau of a family, but I
really don't know if it is, and you don't. My
question for you then, is are you at a place
where you're willing to go looking for the truth? Check
out the foundations here before you keep building.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
Yeah, there is safety in not pursuing the deeper conversation
because I'm afraid of what I might hear. I do
want to get to a point where I can go
deeper so I don't feel this way, so I can
have trust again.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
For you to get to a place where you can
trust her, you also have to get to a place
where you are willing to ask questions, the answer to
which might be very upsetting, but you have to be
willing to ask the question. Okay, I'm asking is that
a risk you're willing to take to find out things
that you don't want to know?
Speaker 3 (36:24):
Yeah? Yeah, I'm afraid, but it's a risk I'm willing
to take.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
Because the alternative is that not knowing leaves you vulnerable
to not only this question of infidelity, but it leaves
you vulnerable to this kind of empty marriage that you
won't really have a partner. She'll be there, but you're
going to feel very, very lonely and very lone.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
I do want to ask one more thing, and that's
about has your sex life resumed and is that resumed
in a manner that's the same words, so better than
it was.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
Yes, our sex life has resumed. Earlier on, it was
a bit harder for me. It's the thoughts that I had.
It was weird and even now sometimes during sex, I
can go someplace in my mind. And so, yeah, we're intimate,
but there are moments.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Do you talk about it when that happens? No, she
sees it, but she just keeps going.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
She knows, but again we don't talk about it.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
Can I ask why what you're afraid of would happen
if you did tell her? Hey, this is what's happening
for me right now.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
I am afraid she's going to get angry. I'm afraid
she's going to say I've said I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Is there affection between you just in moments during the day,
Is just one of you reach out with the other
person's hand, and who initiates that?
Speaker 3 (38:00):
I do that all the time. I laugh because I'm
always the one saying, could you hold my hand when
we're outside. When we're out and she's not holding my hand,
I'm so aware of it since the affair. I will
just notice that and the worst thing goes in my
head and I'd say to her, come, you're not holding
my hand, and then she kind of laughs and says, oh,
just let me know. I'm just fixated on that. I
(38:22):
don't know why, but I'm fixated on that.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
You don't know why, because you need a ton of
reassurance about how she feels towards you, a ton. You're
getting very little. And when you're saying to someone who's
had an affair, it would really make me feel good
if you hold my hand a lot. But you have
to keep saying it, and she says, I'll hold it
whenever you tell me to hold it is really defeating
(38:45):
the purpose of what that exercise is about.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
Before the affair, did she spontaneously hold your hand or
were you always the person to initiate that kind of affection.
Speaker 3 (38:56):
I feel that was pretty equal. Can I say one
more thing in relation to this, I often want to kiss,
She says. Kissing is not her thing. I mean even
early in the relationship, it was a thing where she
was said, I'm not a great kisser. She never really
enjoyed that part of it. Like the holding hands. I
like even more of a connection now, and that's one
(39:19):
form of it, especially when we're intimate and she's not
very into that. That's when things start brewing in my
head and the mood starts to shift.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
You wonder if she kissed the other guy, and if
she enjoyed kissing the other guy. You're nothing, So that
says something that you esk about. You wonder, but you
don't ask because you don't hear a hurtful response.
Speaker 3 (39:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
I wonder if you've been lonely for a long time too.
You know, you're in a marriage where you never really kissed,
and that seems to be something that you wanted. And
I wonder how much time you've spent thinking about not
so much about how do I keep her and how
do I assuage her loneliness, but also what have I
(40:08):
not been asking for? And maybe it's time to do that.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
But I've mentioned it, and again I don't really like it.
I'm not really comfortable with it, so I don't feel
right in asking her to do that.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
I think what Laurie's saying to you is that it's
time for you to focus on how you feel in
the marriage and to focus on getting to a place
where you feel better and what would allow you to
feel secure and loved and wanted and needed romantically, sexually,
all of it. You're so focused on her emotional responses,
(40:49):
you've taken your eye away from yours. Scott, we have
some advice for you. It comes from this place. We're
both concerned that you and Becky are putting in work
to get back to where you were before the affair,
(41:13):
which is not the best place to go back to,
because that was a place in which the marriage was
vulnerable to an affair. You're putting in a lot of
work trying to get back to the wrong place, and
you're not working where you need to work. In a
way that will actually repair the relationship.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
Part of doing the work is that you need to
know and she needs to know that you're both willing
to do the work. And so we want you to
talk to Becky this week and there are a few
things that we want you to include as part of
that conversation, and they're very specific. The first is that
(41:55):
it seems like you feel rightly so uncomfortable that the
kids have been involved in what's going on between the
two of you. And instead of lecturing her and I'm
using her word there about well, from now on, we
can't involve the kids and what's going on, I want
you to just share with her very briefly. I really
(42:16):
want to resolve this between us, and it makes me
uncomfortable when we involve the kids. I'm wondering how you
feel about both of us making an effort to make
sure that whatever goes on between us, that we keep
it between us. How does that feel to you? And
(42:37):
she may say, well, no, I don't agree to that.
That's just information for you. You're not going to do
anything with it right now, You're just going to hear
how she feels about it. So that's the first thing.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
Here's the second, and with suggesting this, because we think
you need to be able to demonstrate to yourself that
you can do the work as well by not shying
away from questions to which you might hear upsetting answers.
And so we would like you to ask her first
so that you can get the practice asking difficult questions,
(43:11):
but second to see how she reacts, because we also
want to see that she understands what doing real work means.
We would like you to say to her, and I
have a couple of questions I want to ask you.
I want to know when you were with the other guy,
did you kiss him when you were having sex? And
I know that's a difficult question for you to ask,
(43:32):
and it might be a difficult answer to hear, but
it's the kind of question you have in your head.
And those are the kinds of questions you have to
be able to talk about to be able to move on,
and she has to be able to tolerate.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
And maybe you can preface that by saying, part of
having the kind of relationship that we want to have
means that we can have these hard conversations. And so
as painful as it might be for me to hear
the truth. It will be so much better for us
if I have the truth. It gives us a place
to go exactly.
Speaker 2 (44:07):
And I would emphasize that the idea of having these
conversations is so that you can truly move on, rather
than pretending to move on when all these questions are
still in your head.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
And then we'd like to have you ask her one
more hard question. And I think this question is something
that's there all the time in your mind, but you
just haven't voiced. And you can preface it again by saying,
we can't move forward in any real way without the truth.
And the question is if the person that you've been
(44:38):
having this affair with were to say to you tomorrow,
I'm leaving my wife, would you get in the car
and go to him? And then you just stop talking.
I think part of asking these questions is not filling
in the space because there might be just a quiet
(45:00):
there or she doesn't know what to do with it.
Just stop talking, Just wait patiently, however long it takes
for her to respond, Just keep breathing. Whatever she does
with these questions will give you such valuable information that
you just don't have right now. Even if she doesn't answer,
the question that's information. How she answers the question, that's information,
(45:22):
and it's good information to have. It will create a
healthier dynamic between the two of you, no matter what happens.
Speaker 3 (45:31):
That sounds good.
Speaker 2 (45:32):
There is one last thing. We think it's imperative that
you guys have these conversations with a therapist. These are
extraordinarily difficult conversations to have. Other than those three things
that you mentioned, we do think you need to be
in coupless therapy. We think you should say to her
you didn't like the last therapist we went to, but
(45:53):
we really need to do this work with somebody trained
who can help us. I would like you to find
some Take seventy two hours and call as many people
as you need until you find someone who calls back
or you feel comfortable with, set up an appointment for us.
I'd like for you to do that, so you're choosing
someone you feel comfortable with and set up an appointment
(46:16):
within seventy two hours, so I can have a sense
that you're seriously willing to work on making things better
for the long term. Okay, tell us how you're feeling
about all of this.
Speaker 3 (46:31):
I find them very interesting and I'm willing to do that.
I think they will give me a lot of information
and I'm totally okay with that. Actually good.
Speaker 1 (46:43):
Yeah, when you bring up the idea of the therapist,
we don't want it to sound like you're directing things
and it's a lecture. So I want you to say
to her, I'm not sure I can stay with you
if we don't go and see a therapist. You're just
telling her something about you. I don't know that I
will be able to manage this if we don't do this.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
If she says, why don't you make the call, I'll go,
but you make the call.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
I'm just curious, Scott. If she said that, how would
you respond.
Speaker 3 (47:15):
I may say I would love to see you make
the call because that would show me that you care
about our relationship.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
I would say, because that would show me that you
are really interested in doing the work we need to
do to fix our relationship.
Speaker 1 (47:33):
I might even say one of the things that I've
come to realize is that maybe what I wanted was
not always what you wanted, And if you make the call,
that would indicate in some way that you wanted this.
Speaker 3 (47:50):
Got it? Got it? Thank you? Okay, thank you so much?
Speaker 2 (47:55):
You're welcome, Scott. We look forward to hearing back from
you when we wish you luck. When I see a couple,
I always let them know that my client is their relationship,
that I will be advocating for the relationship. And even
though we were just talking with Scott, I think both
of us had this idea of they're trying to repair,
(48:17):
let's really see what can make this relationship actually work.
And the dilemma that we had was that we know
that they have to have these difficult conversations if they're
going to have a chance at succeeding, and we also
know that having them can lead to their breakup. And
so it's this dilemma of do you recommend the thing
that the people have to have in order to succeed
(48:40):
even though there's a high risk involved in doing that.
Speaker 1 (48:42):
That's right, And when you say we advocate for the relationship,
I want to be clear that we advocate for the
relationship when both people are on board and say they
want to repair the relationship. We don't do that when
those conditions aren't met. And I think the other thing
is we're advocating for the relationship in the sense of
even if this marriage doesn't work out because they do
(49:05):
find that they're not able to do this kind of
work together or have the kind of marriage that both
of them want. They're going to be co parents no
matter what. So we want them to come to a
place that's not about slamming the door in someone's face.
We want them to come to a place of we
have an understanding despite all of the pain. And I
(49:26):
think what you said is so true that as therapists
we have this dilemma. We know that the relationship can't
survive without the truth, but we also know that the
truth often comes with a lot of pain in the
short term, but in the long term it's what provides
the relief.
Speaker 2 (49:43):
Right and if they can't tolerate it in the short term,
they're not going to get to the long term. So
find out now rather than data.
Speaker 1 (49:51):
Yeah, it feels like they're never going to move past
this place of uncertainty if they don't start doing this
kind of work. I really liked what you said earlier
about it seemed like he was the one who had
the affair and was trying to repair it because he's
doing so much and she's doing so little, which is
often what happens in the reverse.
Speaker 2 (50:13):
But I think even though she's trying to just move
forward and pretend things are okay, she also has that
feeling of deep insecurity somewhere that she knows that things
are unstable because they never really got to it. And
so I think there would be a part of her
that would feel comforted if she was able to and
if he's able to really dive in and do the
(50:33):
hard work.
Speaker 1 (50:34):
It seems like what she really wants on some level
that she hasn't felt she had is a sense of
emotional safety. Before the affair, she felt like Scott would
sort of lecture her, talk over her, and maybe there
wasn't enough space for her. And then she goes to
this other guy and well, it's not really safe because
he can't talk to her because he's with his wife
and he's actually not going to leave. And she seems
(50:56):
to then go back to Scott because somehow she feels
like she's going to have this emotional safety with him.
But there's not emotional safety in that relationship at all,
because there is so much that is just living in
the air between them that they are not discussing. For
both of them, it will be kind of a reckoning
of where do I stand in terms of what I want,
(51:17):
what I'm willing to do to repair this relationship.
Speaker 2 (51:21):
Yeah, I'm thinking of what I say sometimes to couples,
and that is that it is very brave of you
after an affair to come to see me to do
the work of repair, because it's very difficult. You're showing
up knowing that these are going to be painful conversations,
and I really appreciate that you're both here with that
in mind, and I hope they're both going to be
brave enough to do that. I do too. You're listening
(51:47):
to Deotherapists from iHeartRadio. We'll be back after a quick break.
Speaker 1 (52:00):
So, Guy, we heard back from Scott, and we had
given him the task of asking some difficult questions that
he had been afraid to ask, and then also making
a hard request. So let's hear what happened.
Speaker 3 (52:14):
Hi, Guy and Laurie. This is Scott. So I did
ask the three questions. The first question it was relatively easy.
I think we he really at this point have been
on the same page about keeping our issues between ourselves,
(52:34):
and so she didn't have a problem at all. The
second question was not as easy. She took a while
to answer, and it was very uncomfortable for me, but
she did say that she did kiss him and that
she had wanted to, And actually it led to a
(52:58):
lot of awkward ms right after that, where I was
feeling a lot of things, jealousy, a bit of anger,
a bit of why is it so hard to kiss me?
And it troubled her also that I asked that, and
it was very difficult. But I moved along to the
third question, which was if he were to leave, what
(53:22):
would she do and she said that no, she wouldn't,
that she doesn't want to hurt anybody anymore. And it
did lead to a very open conversation about why she
came back, that she had done it for the kids,
(53:45):
and at that point she got a little doubtful about everything.
I don't know if I can continue like this. These
are very hard questions. It's very uncomfortable, and I told
her I would like for you to call a therapist
make an appointment for us, and she ultimately said she
(54:08):
wouldn't and that she doesn't even really want to see
a therapist. Things really just did not end well there. Honestly,
I thought it was over. It seemed like things were
just going to implode. At that point, I felt really bad.
I couldn't eat. I really felt that our marriage was
(54:30):
just going to fall apart. Interestingly, the next day I
talked with her and I said, again, if we want
to move forward, it's very important that we do see
a therapist together. That this won't be about who's right
and who's wrong. I think she was very much afraid
(54:52):
she would always be cast in a negative way, but
I tried to reassure that wouldn't be the case. It
would be about us and working together. There would be
difficult things brought up, but we're working together. And she said, look,
I'm not really good at finding someone, but I would
(55:13):
be okay if you found someone, and I'll go. I
was very happy to hear that. And I'm in the
process right now of getting some references and we'll be
making an appointment for us. She seemed like this is
going to be hard for me, but I do want
(55:34):
what's best and she was willing to do it. So
thank you very much.
Speaker 2 (55:41):
So kudos to Scott for asking those really difficult questions.
I have to say I was disappointed when I heard
the answers Becky gave because saying I came back really
for the kids. Yes, I kissed him and I wanted to,
which is kind of what we suspected. But if she
(56:01):
added any affirmation or validation to him afterwards, but I
care about you, I love you, it wasn't mentioned, and
I kind of think it wasn't mentioned because it wasn't there.
And her reluctance to go to therapy was another red
flag for me. I think she wants to be in
it for the family. I just don't know if she's
in it for Scott.
Speaker 1 (56:18):
I very much felt the same way. My heart ached
for him when I was listening to his response, because
I think there's a part of him that still is
in denial about this. I agree, which is to be expected.
He loves her, he wants the marriage to work. He's
just hurting so much. And she eventually the next day
(56:41):
agreed to go to therapy again if Scott found the therapist,
meaning I'm sure she would be capable of doing so.
She doesn't really want to put in the effort, and
the reason that she gave for going was it's the
right thing to do. It's not I really love you,
and we need to figure out what's going on and
try to see what's here. I'm not hearing any of
(57:04):
that from her, and what I am hearing from Scott
is this passivity where he said, I really thought the
marriage was over after the first set of questions, but
he didn't really go inside and say, given these answers,
what do I want.
Speaker 2 (57:21):
We gave him that task because we wanted him to
hear the hard answers and be realistic about is this
enough for him? Can he get his needs met in
this situation? So he asked the hard questions, he got
the hard answers, and then he softballed his response to
those hard answers. So I am concerned that he's not
going to be able to get what he wants. And
(57:43):
I hope that at least with the therapy, that will
be able to be clarified.
Speaker 1 (57:48):
Right, I mean, I think that the most painful answer
that she gave, and it was honest, so good for
her for being honest. But the painful answer was if
the person she had the affair with were to leave
his wife, would you go with him? And her answer
was no. But the because was the hard part. She said,
(58:09):
because she doesn't want to hurt anyone anymore. Right, it
wasn't because I want to be with you. It had
nothing to do with him. Really. It was about not
hurting him, but it wasn't about whether she desired to
be with him.
Speaker 2 (58:23):
I don't want to hurt you means I don't really
want to be here and doing it for the kids.
It's just not a motivation that can sustain a relationship.
Speaker 1 (58:32):
I think if we were to have two columns and
one column was what Scott heard and the other column
is what we heard. So the answer to the first question,
I think the columns would be the same, that we'll
keep the kids out of these discussions, which is good.
The answer to the second question, whether she had kissed
the other guy, what Scott heard was what's wrong with me?
(58:55):
Why is it so hard to kiss me?
Speaker 2 (58:58):
It was asking himself and actually not answering himself and
not saying, I guess she doesn't care about me enough,
but just not answering the question.
Speaker 1 (59:06):
Right. And for the third question, which is about whether
she would leave, he heard, oh, she would stay, and
what we heard was she would stay out of obligation, right.
And for the therapist question, what he heard was, well, optimistically,
the next day she said she would go to therapy
and I'm getting names, and I'm going to make an appointment.
And what we heard was she's not willing to put
(59:29):
in the effort and the energy to do the kind
of work that would make this marriage be a true
marriage and not a surface marriage or a marriage where
you're at risk again of this kind of thing happening.
Speaker 2 (59:42):
He is going to have to be honest with himself
and face the difficult truths, and in therapy continue to
ask difficult questions and maybe with the help of the therapist,
listen to the answer objectively rather than optimistically, because I
do think he's the kind end of person who can
absolutely find someone who truly cares for him. He's a
(01:00:04):
very giving person, and I think he can find another
very giving person to be with, but he has to
finish with this relationship first.
Speaker 1 (01:00:11):
I'm very optimistic about his ability to find a satisfying
relationship where it's reciprocal, where the love is there both ways.
One thing he said at the end that I felt
optimistic about was when he said, I realized that I
can't be afraid of asking the difficult questions, and he
felt some relief that he had asked these questions even
though he really hasn't taken in the answers yet, And
(01:00:32):
I think that that will bode well both for the
therapy that they're going to do, because he'll see very
quickly whether Becky is willing to engage with those difficult questions,
and if not, that will give him some answers much
sooner than if they just did status quo at home
without going to the therapist, And if they don't end
up together, that will serve him well in the next
relationship he finds himself in.
Speaker 2 (01:00:58):
Hey, fellow travelers, if you've used any of our advice
from the podcast in your own life, send us a
quick voice memo to Loriandguy at iHeartMedia dot com and
tell us about it. We may include it in a
future show.
Speaker 1 (01:01:11):
And if you're enjoying our podcast each week, please help
support Dear Therapists. You can tell your friends about it,
and we'd be so grateful if you'd leave us a
five star review on Apple Podcasts. Your reviews help people
find the show. You can follow us both online. I'm
at Lorigottlieb dot com and you can follow me on
Twitter at Lorigottlieb one or on Instagram at Lorigottlieb, underscore author.
Speaker 2 (01:01:34):
And I'm at Guywinch dot com. I'm on Twitter and
on Instagram at Guywinch. If you have a dilemma you'd
like to discuss with us, big or small, email us
at Lorianguy at iHeartMedia dot com.
Speaker 1 (01:01:48):
Our executive producers Christopher Hasiotis, were produced and edited by
Mike Johns. Special thanks to Samuel Benefield and to our
podcast Fairygodmother Katie Couric. And next week, a woman faces
her first holiday season after a difficult divorce. It was
really stressful to be going back and forth and to
not no. I think I sort of became numb to it.
(01:02:10):
Dear Therapist is a production of iHeartRadio.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Monster: BTK
'Monster: BTK', the newest installment in the 'Monster' franchise, reveals the true story of the Wichita, Kansas serial killer who murdered at least 10 people between 1974 and 1991. Known by the moniker, BTK – Bind Torture Kill, his notoriety was bolstered by the taunting letters he sent to police, and the chilling phone calls he made to media outlets. BTK's identity was finally revealed in 2005 to the shock of his family, his community, and the world. He was the serial killer next door. From Tenderfoot TV & iHeartPodcasts, this is 'Monster: BTK'.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.