Infidelity In Therapy (2016 Rerun)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to the Psychology and Seattle podcast. I
am your host, Kurk Honda. I'm a professor and elysis therapist.
It's just me today. I thought I would pose a
question to you and then I would go on with
the podcast. So let me pose a question to you.
A couple comes into therapy. So they're married, or they're

(00:20):
not or something. But a couple comes into therapy. For
couple counseling, you meet alone with each of them. After
the initial meeting where you meet with both of them,
you meet alone with each of them and the wife
tells you that she's having an affair and does not
want to tell her husband.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
What do you do?

Speaker 1 (00:37):
Okay, So just hold on to that question and let
me explain. I thought I would talk about a training
I went to yesterday titled Secrets Cybersex, Affairs, Addiction and Forgiveness,
Who was put on by Janie Abrams Spring, PhD. She

(00:58):
is a Board certified clinical site cologist and she's a
nationally acclaimed expert on issues of trust, intimacy, and forgiveness.
She has three popular books that a lot of people
rave about. I haven't read them, but I have heard
wonderful things from people that I respect, whom I respect.

(01:18):
The books are titled after the affair. The second one
is how Can I Forgive You? And the third one
is Life with Pop. So again, the name of the
training was called Secrets Cybersex, Affairs, Addiction and Forgiveness. As
I like to do for the podcast, sometimes I will
go to a movie or a training or something and

(01:39):
I will just take a bunch of notes and then
I sit down in front of the microphone and just
read through my notes and see what comes out of
my mouth. So doctor Spring talked about the definition of
an affair. She said that decades ago, an affair was
very narrowly defined and perhaps more easily defined as heterosex

(02:00):
well intercourse with someone other than your partner without telling
your partner. But then she went on to say that
because of the Internet, there is a new definition of infidelity.
She said, she claims that the current definition of infidelity
now includes same sex or unmarried couples. So again, originally

(02:21):
infidelity might only be defined as if you were married
and you had intercourse with someone outside of that marriage.
But now it applies. The word infidelity applies to a
couple that say that isn't married, and one of the
partners has a sexual encounter with someone outside of that couple,

(02:42):
And it also, of course applies to same sex couples.
I might extend that to even include sex that is
not discussed prior in a polyamorous couple. And the new
definition of infidelity has to include things that happen on
the Internet, which of course didn't exist a number of
decades ago. Also, she said that for many people, infidelity

(03:05):
is defined by the couple. If one couple, say, thinks
that looking at porn is infidelity, then that's what infidelity is.
And to another couple, if they say that that isn't infidelity,
then that isn't what infidelity is. But she says at
the core of the definition is about having secrets and

(03:26):
a violation of trust. That infidelity at its core involves
keeping secrets from your partner and violating their trust. She
talked about various different ways that people can violate other
people's trust, like chatting with someone in a sexual way
or fantasizing in a way that your partner doesn't want

(03:46):
you to. By the way regarding fantasizing, she seemed to
have the attitude that couples should allow their partners to
fantasize about whatever they want to.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
She was clear.

Speaker 1 (03:59):
She made it clear that fantasizing is very different from
actually doing something, and that fantasies are healthy, and that
without fantasies, people might be prone to actually act out
in a way that is against what the partner wants.
She seemed to think that fantasies will provide variety to

(04:20):
individuals in a way that is somewhat functional, or more
functional than cheating. She seemed to think that human beings
need variety, and since couples are sometimes together for fifty years,
fantasizing is a appropriate way to get that variety. But she
was also careful not to say that one behavior was

(04:43):
okay and another behavior wasn't. She made it clear that
she didn't want that to be communicated to us. She
seemed to think that couples are free to define that
for themselves, But at the same time, it seemed like
she might provide some perspective to clients around what is
normal or what can be acceptable in how to understand

(05:05):
your partner's needs and proclivities. At the very beginning, she
had sort of a disclaimer where she talked about gender,
and she said that she didn't like to stereotype men
and women, and that men and women are perhaps more
like than people like to make out. And I think
throughout the training she upheld that credo, but at times

(05:29):
I have to say there were times when the training
bothered me. For instance, she said that men prefer porn
whereas women prefer erotic chats and other interpersonal exchanges. So
my thoughts on this are, yes, that is certainly the stereotype,
and according to data, you could say that on average,

(05:53):
men are more likely to watch porn than women. But
to say that men like this and women like that,
I think portrays this idea that women don't like porn
and men don't like erotic chats and other interpersonal exchanges.
As you might tell from previous podcasts, I'm very careful
about stereotypes and I'm very careful about how we as

(06:17):
scientists practitioners portray data because I think we have failed
as scientists to communicate effectively to the public, and what
often gets communicated to them is that men are this
way and women are that, when in reality, it's that
on average, men are slightly more or to some degree

(06:41):
more likely to do this, and women are to some
degree more likely to do that. The analogy that I
always think about in my mind is what if I
said the statement men are taller than women? What if
I say that, you know research shows that men are
taller than women. Well, since it doesn't take a sciences
to look around and see that many, many men are

(07:04):
shorter than many women, right, So you can't the statement
that men are taller than women doesn't make any sense,
right because there's a wide variety of sizes.

Speaker 2 (07:15):
Of men and women.

Speaker 1 (07:17):
But all of us know that on average, men are
on average taller than women. But that doesn't mean that,
quote unquote men are taller than women. So in the
same way, you wouldn't say men watch porn and women
like to chat sexually, because that ignores the fact that
many men don't like to watch porn and many women

(07:40):
do like to watch porn. So I just really don't
like the way that those sorts of statements portray the data,
and our brains are too small to understand that, and
so I think it has to be explained almost every
single time, as I always do. And I'm sure you,
as the listeners, are getting tired of me repeating that

(08:00):
all right, moving on, I have several pages of notes,
and I'm about a quarter of the way down the
first page.

Speaker 2 (08:06):
So oh wait, okay.

Speaker 1 (08:09):
She went on to tell us about the website Ashleymadison
dot com, which is, if you don't know, a website
for married people to have secret sex with other people.
She named some statistic or something, and you know, it's
quite interesting how many people go on Ashley Madison. Apparently

(08:30):
infidelity is rampant in our country if you look at
that statistic, and apparently a lot of people are interested
in it. So it seems to be much more normal
for married people or committed people to seek sexual relationships
outside of their committed relationship. So those at you on

(08:50):
podcasts podcast land. So there's this website called Ashley Madison.
As I said, what's the number one day that women
sign up on Ashley Madison out of the year. It's
the day that you think most is the is the
largest number of women signing up on Ashley Madison. Well,
it is the day after Mother's Day apparently, and it

(09:11):
is speculated that that is because women feel unappreciated and unloved,
so they will sign up after Mother's Day and decide
that they want to apparently cheat on their spouses. And
what do you imagine is the second highest sign up
day for Ashley Madison for women. If you guessed the

(09:33):
day after Valentine's Day, then you would be right, because
again their spouses make them feel uncared for. On Valentine's Day,
it is speculated, and therefore the day after they say,
screw it, you know, give me another partner, I want to.

Speaker 2 (09:47):
Have sex with them.

Speaker 1 (09:48):
And just getting back to my little rant on gender.
At the very beginning, I think I kind of missed
it because I was not always paying one hundred percent attention.

Speaker 2 (09:58):
But I'm pretty.

Speaker 1 (09:59):
Sure she said and stuck to this policy throughout the
all day training that whenever she talked about the unfaithful partner,
she referred to that person as a male, and whenever
she referred to the hurt partner or the partner who
was cheated on, she referred to that person as a female.
So she would say so when he cheated on her,

(10:21):
as examples, she would always use the male as the
cheater and the female as the cheaty as it might
be described. And again I just have to say, like,
why would you do that? I'm pretty sure upon if
my memory serves me, research shows that men are more
likely to cheat than women are. But I think it's

(10:41):
like a sixty forty thing. At this point in the past,
it was a greater margin between men and women, and
that gap is quickly shrinking. It's speculated because women have
more power, they work outside of the house and have
more access. So as one of the only men in
the training, I have to say, it's just a little
bothersome to me, it's like, just to continue on this

(11:03):
rant a little bit. To me, it's like you have
a training on crime, and for simplicity's sake, you always
have the criminal a black man and the victim a
white man, and you just refer to the criminal the
perpetrator as so the black guy walks up to the
white guy in the alley and beats him over the head,

(11:24):
and throughout the day whenever you refer to the criminal,
you say the black man. Well, again, this is different
because men aren't oppressed in our society and black men are.
But I hope you get my point that you wouldn't
do that. No one would ever ever do that. They
would never do that to black people, And to me,
it just seems unnecessary. You could easily switch up the
pronouns or just use they, so or he or she

(11:46):
or something. Plus the other obvious issue here is it
completely ignores same sex couples, which is another rant I
should go on. I feel bad because I liked the
training overall. I mean, it was of trainings that I've
been to. It was definitely worth going to and worth
my money. So I'm nitpicking here. But one of the
other issues was that she never I don't think once.

(12:10):
I don't think once did she mention a same sex
couple and or a polyamorous couple or a trans person.
One person midway through the training asked her a question
about gay couples as an open ended question, something like, well,
what about gay couples? You know, do you want to
talk about that? And she didn't really respond very thoroughly.

(12:33):
I don't think she's a bigot. I don't think she
is purposely trying to oppress LGBT people. But I think
it's a little I don't know, uncomfortable to be at
a training where none of the planned material even mentions
LGBT people. But again, I'm probably nitpicking. All right back

(12:57):
to my notes here. So she gave an example of
a client that she worked with, and the husband said
that he wanted to go to a massage parlor for
hand jobs, so she meets primarily. This was interesting, actually
to me. She primarily meets individually with her couples. When
they come to her, she primarily meets individually with them,

(13:20):
and she only meets with them together when there's a
specific reason to do so. But it seems like her
primary mode is to meet with them individually. And so
she gave this example of a husband who felt like
he wasn't getting any sex from his wife, and the
wife was reporting that she just wasn't interested in sex,
and they had been together for a long time, and

(13:41):
the husband said that he was considering going to a
massage parlor for I'm presuming hand jobs, and doctor Spring
cautioned him away from massage parlors and recommended instead Ashley
Madison dot com. And there were gasps in the audience
when she said this, And so he went to the

(14:03):
wife the husband and asked his wife if it was
okay if he went to Ashley Madison dot com so
he could meet up with people that didn't mind having
sex with a married man. And the wife apparently said outstanding,
that is wonderful.

Speaker 2 (14:18):
I'm go for it.

Speaker 1 (14:20):
It'll relieve me of the pressure of having to have
sex with you, and you can get what you need
and great and again. As she said that, a woman
next to me turned to her friend and mouthed the
word what you know. And so it's just interesting to
see people's reactions. I didn't know what to think as
she was giving that example. Someone then asked her about

(14:44):
her decision about recommending Ashley Madison over the massage parlor,
asking well, what's the difference. Why would you caution him
away from the massage parlor and toward Ashley Madison.

Speaker 2 (14:57):
I mean, what's the logic there?

Speaker 1 (15:00):
And Doctor Spring justified her decision by saying that the
massage parlor is illegal and you can get in trouble
with the law, whereas with Ashley Madison it's not illegal.
So you know, there is some logic there, but it
didn't seem to satisfy the person who asked the question.

(15:21):
It was interesting to note the facial expressions on the
people around me at the beginning of the training. I
don't know if I'm reading them right. Of course, I
can't read people's minds. But it seemed to me that
there were a number of people, maybe you know, a
small minority of people, who had a lot of visceral
reactions to a lot of the things that she was saying,

(15:43):
and I was just taking note of that. I was thinking,
you know, I wonder what's going on in their mind.
I think it's just an uncomfortable topic for people in general,
and clinicians as well. I find that when I talked
to therapists, I don't know how comfortable they are talking
about sex and other such things. People have varying degrees

(16:06):
of comfort level, which bothers me to some extent because
we were a room full of marital therapists. That was
the audience was, you know, two hundred or so marital therapists,
and you would think that they would be comfortable with
the ins and outs, as it were, of sexual discussions.

(16:26):
It's not that you approve or disapprove of any one
thing or another, but the comfort level is there, and
the ability to listen without gasping, I guess I think
should be there. And again, most people didn't have visceral
reactions to the things she was saying, but a lot
of people did. There you know, there were giggles and
this sort of thing, and I just thought she gave

(16:47):
a funny Woody Allen quote it goes masturbation is having
sex with the person I love. She talked a lot
about how cyber activity is like cocaine. She said that
we're wired for sex and we're wired to notice pop
ups or text messages. She kept talking about pop ups. Actually,

(17:11):
so this is I'm going to say a few criticisms.
Apparently I'm realizing this. I really, again, really loved the
training overall. I learned things and benefited from it. But
when I hear things that kind of bug me, I
tend to write them down in my notes.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
And here it is. She kept talking about pop ups.

Speaker 1 (17:30):
And she, you know, she was trying to demonstrate the
cocaine addictive nature of the Internet and of pop ups.
She kept pop up, pop up, click, click, click, pop up,
pop up, and then there's a pop up. And I
just thought, I haven't seen a pop up in twelve years.
So I don't know much. Maybe the training is that
old or something. But who who out there in podcast

(17:52):
land has even seen a pop up in the last
I don't even know seven years. Maybe I don't see
pop ups anymore.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (18:00):
Somehow my browsers have all figured out how to negate
the pop up thing. I think there's even the button
that you can do in your preferences it says no,
I don't want to see pop ups. And plus, I
don't think that when people look at porn it's primarily
pop up based. I think it's just just you know,
regular browser based internet porn. But anyway, so it's just

(18:21):
kind of funny anyway. She also went on she I
don't know how old she is, but I find that,
you know, there's a certain cut off age of people,
and if you're older than that age, you tend to
see text messaging, at least currently, as this evil thing
that teens do in this annoying way. She talked about

(18:43):
how text messaging was addictive, which is, I don't know,
an exaggeration. In my mind, text messaging is just another
form of communication, and yes, we are not mature yet
as a society as a when it comes to managing that.
I mean, there are people that I know who will
text in the middle of a conversation as I'm talking
to them, which is obviously not fair and it's definitely

(19:06):
rude behavior and people should be ridiculed for doing such things.
And so we're still working those kinks out, but for
the most part, people manage it pretty well. And it's
not in and of itself addicting, and there isn't anything
evil about texting people. But I wrote in my notes
as she said that texting is addictive or is addicting,

(19:26):
and she didn't temper it with for some people texting
is addicting. She just said texting is absolutely addicting. And
she said something like, again, I loved the training, but anyway,
she said something like, some people text ten twenty fifty
times a day, And I'm thinking I frequently text ten

(19:47):
twenty fifty times a day because that's just how I
communicate with people. I communicate with my coworkers through texting.
It's just an easy way to contact people with a
short little message like Hey, where are you or meeting
today at twelve or something. You know. Now, having said that,
can texting become a problem for people? Absolutely, And I

(20:09):
think the pendulum has swung a little too far regarding
allowing kids to have access to these technologies in the beginning,
when I remember in the beginning, this is another sidetrack.

Speaker 2 (20:21):
I'll probably never get through these notes.

Speaker 1 (20:22):
But anyway, I remember in the beginning when cell phones
first came out, as a therapist that would sometimes work
with teens in their parents. I would find the parents
and the teachers would be one hundred percent no tolerance
of cell phones at schools. They would say, if I
see a cell phone, I'm going to take it and
it's mine and I'm never giving it back. And parents

(20:42):
would say, do not bring your cell phone to school.
Don't do that, or the parents wouldn't even get their
kid's cell phone. Now it seems that all kids have
cell phones one, which is you know, fine in and
of itself, but the teachers have varying levels of response
to when they see a cell phone out and being used.
And I have one client right now. I don't have

(21:04):
very many teen clients these days, but I have one,
and he was telling me that not only does he
have his cell phone out on the desk as he's
in class at school in high school, but the school
has given him an iPad as just they give all
their students iPads because they're moving to a completely iPad
based education system where there's no textbooks and all their

(21:26):
assignments are on their iPad. And I'm sure this is
the way of the future, and I'm sure it's probably
a better model, given that books are expensive and heavy
and need updating constantly and all this stuff. So I
see the benefit of it. Of course, I'm sure there
are downsides. But one of the things they haven't seem
to work out is that these iPads are completely open

(21:47):
to the user to add applications and to set the
settings in whatever they way they went to. It's just
an iPad with no software on it that manages the
use of it. So the student will be in class
and getting snapped chat and Facebook notifications and text messages
and emails and you know, all those things, and all
those notifications while they're in class on their iPad that

(22:09):
they're supposed to have out, and there's no monitoring of that,
and there's no and the teachers don't say, hey, you
need to turn off your Facebook notifications when you're in class,
so do that. Now.

Speaker 2 (22:20):
You know that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 (22:22):
I don't see how kids manage that. Personally, when I
am trying to get work done, I have to turn
things out. For instance, right now, my cell phone is
on silent and which means not even buzzing. That's another
thing people out there. Just because you put your cell
phone on silent and doesn't mean that it necessarily will
not buzz. And buzzing is not silent. Buzzing is loud. Buzzing,

(22:44):
by definition, is not silent. It makes a noise. If
it was just buzzing, like it just rattled and made
no noise, and it only sort of rattled your leg
because it was in your pocket, then fine. But often
people will put their cell phone on the desk and
it'll rattle, and it's very distracting to me. I don't
know if it's because I come from another age when
these sorts of things weren't around, but when I hear

(23:06):
buzzing and bings and alarms, it completely distracts me and
I can't concentrate on what I'm supposed to be concentrating on.
I'll be in a meeting with a bunch of other
professors and.

Speaker 2 (23:20):
A cell phone.

Speaker 1 (23:21):
Sometimes people's cell phones will just just start ringing, and
whoever owns the cell phone doesn't do anything about it.
They just sit there and you and I think it's
because they're just like, well, my cell phone's ringing. Eventually
it'll stop, and I'm like, come on, people put it
on side the other thing. But the more often thing
that it's fine is that people will have it on
buzz and it'll be buzzing away for you know, when

(23:43):
it starts buzzing when someone's calling you, it'll buzz for
you know, thirty seconds a minute or something. And so, man, man,
you know it's so distracting. I just think, do you
have no shame?

Speaker 2 (23:56):
I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (23:58):
I have a feeling I'm a fuddy eddie. But on
the other hand, I think in fifty years people will
agree with me. But that is yet to be seen. Ah. Right,
back to the notes, still in page one out of six. Okay,
so where was I pop ups? Yeah, anyway, pop ups.
It's hilarious to me. I don't know why, right, I mean,

(24:19):
has anyone seen a pop up in the past seven years?
I mean, having said that, I think I've seen one
pop up in the past seven years.

Speaker 2 (24:26):
I'll give it that.

Speaker 1 (24:27):
But she seemed to think pop ups were a major
part of the Internet experience and of pornography. So anyway, now,
having said that, she did mention something about technology. Another
thing about technology, that I completely agree with in that
and for a lot of my adult clients, young adult clients,
I see the following thing that is definitely different than

(24:52):
it was ten twenty years ago, in that not only
are corporations requiring their employees to work longer hours, they,
for instance, arrive at seven am and work until six
or seven at night. This is very common in Seattle.
I actually have a client that's from another region in
the States, and he just moved up here and works

(25:12):
for a major organization up here. And he asked me,
is like, well, you grew up in the Seattle area, right,
I said yes, And he said, does everyone work such
long hours in Seattle?

Speaker 2 (25:23):
Is that a Seattle thing?

Speaker 1 (25:25):
Because he said where he was from, people worked, you know,
regular hours, eight to five that kind of thing is
he said, nobody does eight to five. Everyone does like
six to seven ers, you know whatever. So not only
are corporations putting a tremendous amount of pressure on non
union employees to work ungodly hours, which is not healthy,
by the way, And I'm not just saying like not health,

(25:46):
I'm saying it's literally not healthy for your body and
your mind. If you have problems, there's a good chance
that it might be because of your work hours. So
not only that, but they also require either subtly or
overtly that the employee after they come home, have their
cell phone or their computer or whatever ready to go

(26:08):
to respond to emails and phone calls and texts and
all that kind of stuff. So what ends up happening
is people will come home and they're still working, they're
still basically on the clock, and their brain and their
soul has not relaxed and never gets a chance to
do that, and you know, bleeds into the weekends and
back in the day. For the vast majority of people,

(26:31):
when they left the office, you could not contact them
and the only way you could contact them was through
the home phone, and most people just did not do that.
But now apparently it is So this was not what
she was talking about. What what she was talking about
was that people are in bed, both of them are
on their iPads or their phones and working still or

(26:52):
reading something or texting people or data, and they're not
being intimate with each other. And the last thing that
people will do will be to close their device and
put it on the night stand. And the first thing
people will do is pick up their device and check it.
I don't think this is inherently wrong the way that
she was describing it. There's nothing inherently wrong with that.

(27:14):
That's the lifestyle you want to have. Great, but it
does raise some interesting questions, and I think people should
really ask those questions and wonder if it is making
their life better. I would argue that when you're in
a constant state of being in contact with stressful things
or potentially stressful things, I should say, then that raises

(27:37):
your stress biology, shall I say? And that is not
healthy for you. Plus another thing that it does politically
is it puts employees in this position where because everyone
else is doing it, they feel like they have to
do it, and basically they're working many more hours of
the week than they are getting paid for. And of
course managers and corporations love this because they get quote

(28:01):
unquote more productivity out of you, and they don't care
about your sex life or your mental health. Really, they
just want you to work as many hours as possible
and produce the most possible for the least amount of money.
And how do you do that, Well, you don't want
to have them work more hours and pay them. You
want to have them work more hours and not pay them.
So to me, it's a political problem. It seems very

(28:24):
strange to me, even though in today's modern society we
have a lot of wealth and a lot of convenience,
for some reason, we're working more hours than we were before.
And to me, that makes no sense. We should be
working less hours. And I primarily blame this on materialism,
because in order to afford a certain level of living,

(28:48):
you have to work a tremendous amount, and that encourages
people to work more than they probably should. There was
a time when people were satisfied with a very simple,
split level house in the suburbs, and they had one
or two cars, and they had one small TV and

(29:08):
they were happy. Now you need to have a brand
new car every few years, you need to have a
five thousand square foot home and a four car garage,
you need to go on expensive vacations and all for
what I think all it does is it drags us down. Now,
if that's the life you want to have, great, But

(29:30):
I really encourage people to think about whether or not
that is the life they want. And I'm not asking
that people go off the grid and become the unibomber
I'm just saying, how can you scale your life back
in a real way that makes you not have to
earn so much money. Imagine, for instance, if you're one
of those people out there that earns it, that has
like a very expensive home, and your mortgage is I

(29:51):
don't know, three four thousand a.

Speaker 2 (29:53):
Month or something.

Speaker 1 (29:54):
Imagine your mortgage being half that and translate two thousand
dollars a month into how much less you would have
to work. How much do you earn per hour?

Speaker 2 (30:04):
Well?

Speaker 1 (30:05):
Is that worth it to you to have a smaller
home in a less nice neighborhood and in exchange for
that you work half as much and instead of working
sixty hours a week, you only work thirty hours a week.
Is that worth it to you? I think for many
people it is. I remember hearing once. I don't know
if this is accurate, but they did a research study

(30:25):
asking very elderly people what they regretted in life, and
very few people said I regret not working more. Most
people said they regret that they didn't spend more time
with their families, that they didn't spend more time doing
fun things for themselves. Very few people said, geez, you
know what I wish I earned more money, or I

(30:46):
wish my house was even bigger. Very few people say that,
and I think there's a lot of wisdom in that. Anyway,
where was I I'm going this is tangent episode. I
should just call this tangent episode training tangents. All right,
getting back to you again. I'm already at the bottom
of page one of the six page of notes, and
I am half an hour into the podcast. Okay, So anyway, Anyway,

(31:10):
I did appreciate her emphasizing the addictive and problematic nature
of spouses texting and doing technology things just before they
go to bed instead of being intimate with each other.
She said that people don't become addicted to porn, but
instead they become addicted to the endogenous neurochemicals that get

(31:35):
released due to porn. For some people, she said that
people become addicted to dopamine, adrenaline, testostrone, seratonin, these sorts
of things that are triggered as a result of pornographic
images being viewed. She said that she often hears from
her wives who catch their husbands watching porn. She says

(31:57):
that she often hears them say, what is this one?
And have that I don't have she'll hear, and she
says that she will tell the wives. It has nothing
to do with that. It's not that he's looking for
someone that has something that you don't have. It's merely
an addiction. It's an addiction to the release of a
chemical in the brain that real people cannot compete with.

(32:22):
And I think that that's a powerful message that she
was giving that when it comes to porn addiction, it's
not that the person is looking for sex per se.
Is that as animals that are driven to procreate and
therefore have sex, we cannot help ourselves when it comes

(32:42):
to images that stimulate certain portions of the brain that
have been created to reward us so that we will
continue having sex. You know, before you had porn, you
just had human beings, and so people would be compelled
toward each other to have sex so that.

Speaker 2 (32:59):
They will create.

Speaker 1 (33:00):
Well, when you can create a box in your office
that will pour pornographic images at you at speeds that
you just have to click, and you can literally click
and click and click, and porn and porn and new
and real human beings cannot compete with that. She gave
an example, a commonly cited example of research studies that

(33:22):
involve rats where you have two levers. Essentially, she said,
one lever stimulates an electrical current that goes straight into
their brain. So they do surgery on a rat and
they put the wire into a particular part of the
brain that stimulates the dopamine system, I believe, and every
time the rat hits this one lever, it will stimulate

(33:43):
that part of the brain. The other lever will be
for food, and they put the rat in the cage
and they see what the rat does. And over time,
the rat only hits the lever that stimulates that part
of the brain and forgets to or neglects to hit
the lever that actually get them food. And so the
rats will risk dying because they just keep pressing this

(34:06):
lever that stimulates their part of the brain. So it
seems eerily analogous to someone clicking their mouse, you know,
ironically it's called the mouse to get stimulation that will
stimulate that part of the brain and neglect everything around
them that will give them normal sustenance like food and relationships.

(34:29):
She gives the following test for cyber sex addiction. There
are nine different criteria, so to speak. So number one
is the amount of time you spend. Number two is
do you do it for longer than attended? Number three
is are you preoccupied with finding online sexual partners even

(34:50):
when you're not online? Number four is do you spend
an inordinate amount of time anticipating online sexual arousal or gratification?

Speaker 2 (35:00):
Number five?

Speaker 1 (35:01):
Do you hide your online interactions?

Speaker 2 (35:04):
Number six?

Speaker 1 (35:04):
Do you find yourself less invested in your real life
sexual partner?

Speaker 2 (35:09):
Number seven?

Speaker 1 (35:10):
Do you prefer cybersex as your primary form of sexual gratification?

Speaker 2 (35:15):
Number eight?

Speaker 1 (35:16):
Have your cybersex activities forced you to compromise your values?
And number nine have your online activities jeopardized a significant relationship,
a job, an educational or career opportunity, or your financial security?
So these are pretty common test questions for any kind
of addiction. This isn't an official DSM addiction. This is

(35:38):
just one way that she likes to test for cybersex addiction.
And my reaction to this is the following. For some people,
this test, I'm sure works wonderful. For many people that
have addictions to online sex, I think that this test
will be a good way of assess whether or not

(36:00):
they have a problem. These are good questions for anyone
to ask really. But the caveat to this is that
these questions, as any question along these lines, is completely
culturally dependent and socially constructed and subjective. So, for instance,
I think that these tests run into a problem in

(36:24):
two following situations. One is when you have a person
that has a difficult time evaluating the difference between what
are things that they want to do as opposed to
what other people want them to do, and let me explain.
And the other problem is when people use the test
to judge or treat other people unfairly. So and I'll

(36:46):
explain that for a second. So one of the questions
is do you prefer cyber sex as your primary form
of sexual gratification? So, according to this test, they're basically saying,
if you answer yes to that question, then you are
an all likelihood and addict cybersex addicts. So again, do
you prefer cybersex as your primary form of sexual gratification?

(37:07):
So again I would say that for most people that
answer yes to that question, they will probably find that
they would benefit by addressing their cybersex use and figuring
out a new lifestyle that would be better for them overall.
But for some people I can imagine I don't know
anybody like this, but I can imagine somebody who does

(37:29):
prefer cybersex as their primary form of sexual gratification at
that moment. So, for instance, imagine some guy moves across
the world to another part of the world and doesn't
have a lot of interest in meeting anybody to have
face to face sex with, and instead wants to look

(37:53):
at porn or wants to interact with people over chat
or over Skype.

Speaker 2 (37:59):
Or something and have of sex that way.

Speaker 1 (38:01):
I can imagine someone doing that and being very interested
in that and not very interested in meeting someone in
the flesh, and that person not being a quote unquote addict.
We have to clarify to some extent what we mean
by addict. I'm not going to do that here, but
just know that the word addiction and addict, these words
are hotly debated. Sometimes with every one of these questions,

(38:24):
I can imagine an exception, and so instead of just
using a yes or no question to determine whether or
not someone has a problem with something, I think you
really just have to take these on a case by
case basis. For instance, sometimes people will say how much
is too much masturbation? How often do you have to
masturbate to be considered an addict to masturbation or an

(38:47):
addict to porn? There is no threshold like that. You
have to take it on a case by case basis.
One person could be masturbating every day and looking at
porn and that could be a problem, whereas another person
could be masturbating every day in it and it wouldn't
be a problem. So and the part of this that
I think often doesn't get discussed is that our country

(39:10):
is still quite backward when it comes to sex. People
from other countries and if there were aliens looking down
at us, they would all agree that Americans have a
very strange attitude towards sex. And we're not the only
society that has strange attitude towards sex. I would say
that Canadians have a similar attitude to the two Americans.

(39:32):
I know a lot of Canadians that agree with me
on that. I know a lot of Mexicans that would
say that they have different problems with sex. But you know,
perhaps to the same degree. I'm Japanese and have a
somewhat good picture of what Japanese culture is like regarding sex,
and they definitely, oh my God have their problems. So

(39:53):
Americans are not the only people, but I can speak
to what American culture is like. And one of the
things that we like to propagate through a culture is
that basically sex is a bad thing, and particularly masturbation
is a bad thing. Masturbation was originally seen as a

(40:14):
sin against God, and even though many people don't believe
that anymore, even though they might be Christian or religious,
I still see that attitude in many of the people
that I talk to about masturbation, including my clients. And
I'm not saying that masturbation is something people should be doing,
but I think that individuals should be able to explore
it without having this social construction around that says that

(40:38):
masturbation is wrong and is inherently either weak or pathetic
or unhealthy in some way. It certainly can be, definitely
it can be for both men and women. By the way,
Another thing that I just want to point out is
that compulsive masturbation or problematic masturbation, you probably in your head,

(41:00):
if you're anything like the average person, in your head,
you imagine a man. Well, this shouldn't shock you that
many women also have problems with pornography and with masturbation.
Of those people that I have treated that have been
compulsive masturbators and compulsive porn users, some of them have
been women, And so it just needs to be said, now,

(41:21):
a lot less women, but some are definitely women. Women
have the same basic brain structure when it comes to
dopamine and motivation to have sex and to do things
that engage that system in the brain, and therefore they
would have similar problems. The problem is is that because

(41:43):
it is a shameful thing even for men to have
a problem with this, it's even more shameful for women
to have a problem with this, and so you will
find that women will not talk about it and will
not get help for it. So, anyway, provided this or
this test for cybersex addiction that I thought was good

(42:04):
but didn't have the caveat that I wished it would have,
But I rarely am satisfied in this way, And the
only thing that people would have to say is something like, well,
so here are some guided here are some questions that
you can use to assess for a cyber sex addiction.
But remember that you just have to take it on
an individual basis, and you have to take into consideration culture,

(42:26):
and social construction, and you just have to be reflective
about that. That's all that I would want a trainer
to say. If they just said that, I would completely
say okay, well they mentioned it.

Speaker 2 (42:37):
At least. Another cultural issue.

Speaker 1 (42:40):
That I could see arising in this cybersex addiction test
is imagine you're a single woman and you are in
the closet about being gay, and you are in a
community where you feel you can't come out in a
safe way, and you become obsessed with looking at lesbian

(43:01):
pornography or chatting with other lesbians, or doing skype sexual
things with gay women. Now you could imagine that person
answering yes to a lot of these questions. Do you
do you hide your online interactions?

Speaker 2 (43:15):
Well yes, I do.

Speaker 1 (43:16):
Do you find yourself less invested in real life partners?
Well yes, because I feel like I can't come out
in my community. So there are issues along these lines
that definitely need to be considered. And also along those lines,
imagine someone that has a fetish that they are extremely

(43:38):
ashamed about. You know, someone's into S and M. They're
really into being you know, talked down to. They want
to find a dominant person to talk down to them,
and in a consensual way, and that turns them on,
and they're they're extremely ashamed about it because society loves
to shame people like this, and so instead of even

(44:01):
going to their husband or wife, they go online to
do it. So, if our society was less screwed up
about S and M, this person would be more likely
to work out some kind of thing with their spouse,
but instead has to turn to the internet and ends
up to some extent obsessing on it on the internet
because of the way our culture is. So again, these

(44:24):
things need to be taken into consideration in my view.
Another genderized thing that she said that slightly bothered me
was she talked about how women need to feel safe
in order to enjoy sex, and by implication, men don't,
and by implication, all women need to have a certain

(44:45):
level of safety in order to in order to enjoy sex.
And I've looked into the research on this, and it
is true that for some women it appears that if
their fear system in their brain is engaged, they can't
orgasm or they have a lot of difficulty as to
opposed to times when they don't have the fear system

(45:06):
engaged in their brain. But this is not all women
by any means, And this does not mean that men
do not share that same issue. They seem to share
it a little less than women do, but men also
share it. So again, when we say this statement men
are taller than women, that makes no sense. And so
we should not say women need to feel safe to

(45:28):
enjoy sex when many women don't and many men do.
So I have, for instance, talked with clients about this.
I had a male client years ago who had this
exact issue. When he did not feel interpersonally safe and
secure with his girlfriend, he could not orgasm. It was

(45:49):
hard for him to even begin to have sex with her.
Because men aren't that different from women.

Speaker 2 (45:54):
So again, if you.

Speaker 1 (45:56):
Talk to people in the population, they would say, oh,
don't care, they just want to get their rocks off.
They'll have sex with a tree if this tree head
of vagina, And it just is not true. Certainly there
are men like that, and certainly there are women like that.
Perhaps according to research, more men are like that, but
not all men by any means. I mean, it's sort
of an absurd notion. I mean, imagine a man, a

(46:18):
typical guy, like a friend of yours or something. Imagine
him being with a woman who he doesn't feel very
comfortable with, Well, you can imagine that sex isn't necessarily
going to go that well for him, Whereas imagine a
man who feels very secure and loved and cared for,
and you could imagine that things would go better for
him because he's not scared or intimidated or worried. So

(46:43):
when you just put it that way, it makes sense.

Speaker 2 (46:46):
Right.

Speaker 1 (46:46):
So again, just another little bothersome genderized statement. It is
tiresome to be me sometimes with all of my complaints
about society. She brought up an interesting boundary that I
think is worth mentioning. She said that if she was
talking with a client and say she was saying, well,

(47:08):
I met up with my ex boyfriend the other day,
and you know, he's just a friend.

Speaker 2 (47:14):
It's not a big deal.

Speaker 1 (47:16):
I don't want to tell my husband that I met
up with my ex because my husband will get upset, so,
you know, but I'm not cheating that there's nothing going on,
she will confront the client and say, well, do you
talk about your husband with your ex with your ex boyfriend?
Does your ex boyfriend ask you about your husband? Is

(47:36):
your husband a part of the interaction essentially even though
your husband isn't there. If not, then you are cheating
on your partner, which I think is a good guideline
to some extent, because you can imagine someone meeting up
for lunch with their ex and if the ex girlfriend
doesn't talk about her husband very much, the ex boyfriend

(47:58):
might get the impression that the ex girlfriend and is
open to having an affair, and one thing leads to another,
and before you know it, the wife is cheating with
her ex boyfriend. So yeah, I thought that was wise
of doctor Spring to mention. She mentioned Sex Addiction Anonymous
or SAA, which can be found at SAA dot com.

(48:20):
If people are sex addicts, they need to go to
these meetings and get a sponsor. She also mentioned the
movie Thanks for Sharing, which apparently has to do with
sex addiction, which I am going to go on Netflix
right now and put that movie in my queue. Some
of the audience also mentioned the movie Don John, which
I have not seen, but I wanted to see because

(48:40):
I heard it was good, so I will make sure
that is in my queue as well. I noticed at
the training that there was really no mention of how
great sex is in human lives. I find that often
in clinical settings. This applies to drug use as well,
that when psychologists talk about sex or drugs, they will

(49:05):
rarely talk about the pleasure that.

Speaker 2 (49:07):
It gives to people.

Speaker 1 (49:08):
And I just feel like I want to mention that,
even though this is way into the podcast and I
should have mentioned it up front, the reason why people
have sex, and the reason why people look at porn,
the reason why people masturbate, and the reason why people
like fetishes is because it gives people great pleasure in
a very innocent, healthy way. And the vast majority of
people's sexual activities are healthy and wonderful and make the

(49:31):
world go round. They provide not only just pure physical pleasure,
but bonding. They provide meaning to people's lives, and in
my estimation, Americans should be having much much more sex
than they do. I think that most people would characterize
themselves as physically physical intimacy wise deprived. That you know,

(49:56):
not just sex and intercourse in and of itself, but
also you know, there period of other things that are
associated with sex and intimacy and warmth and physical activity.
And I'm not just talking about your spouses, but I'm
talking about friends and family, you know, meaning hugging and
cuddling and holding hands. We are a very stuffy, non

(50:17):
touchy culture that is creating a lot of very thirsty
Americans along those lines. I was once at another training
for drugs and there were a number of different presenters
and they were all talking about different drugs and how
each drug had its physiological effects and how it can

(50:39):
become problematic in this way, and da, da da, And
then one guy got up and he started talking about
his drug that he was presenting on and at the
beginning of his presentation, he talked about why people use
the drug and why it's pleasurable and what people actually
say about why they like the drug, which I found
to be strangely unfamiliar to me. But why would that

(51:02):
be not mentioned in presentations about substance use. I mean,
the reason why people use substances is not because they
want to become an addict. It's because it makes them
feel really good. It produces effects that they love so
much that they would rather risk addiction than not have
that feeling. So I just thought I should mention that
little bit. There Another pet peeve of mine that I

(51:25):
just want to mention was again, I guess I'm just
a complainer at the training, they had, you know, that
typical banquet style room with the round tables, and you know,
each table had about eight chairs around it. The nice
part about it was they didn't put any chairs on
the side of the table that was closest to the podium.

(51:47):
You know, if you're in that unfortunate seat that has
your back to the podium for the entire presentation, you
have to be turned one hundred and eighty degrees away
from the table, which is not a very comfortable way
to sit for all people. So they only had seats
on kind of a horseshoe around each table. But the
problem that I find at a lot of these banquets
is that they don't whoever sets up the room doesn't

(52:10):
think about how much space you need in between the
tables to walk if people are actually sitting at the tables.
And I've actually been a part of this for a
friend's wedding. I was setting up tables for the reception
and we are setting up all the tables, and what
we are doing is we are putting the tables and
then we are putting the chairs, and we were scooting
the chairs in underneath the table, right, so the chairs

(52:30):
are completely pushed in without anyone sitting in it. And
when you look at a room like that, it looks like, oh,
look at all the room that you can look You
can walk between the tables. The problem is when you
actually have real human beings sitting in the chairs, and
some of them, some people are not tiny and are larger.
There's a wide variety of sizes of people. Let me
put it that way, and so when you actually have

(52:52):
human beings sitting in chairs, that will often look a
lot different than what you imagine it will look like
when you're just setting up the chairs and the tables
without anybody in it. And so at this training, I
found that that's what was lacking was once everyone was
sitting in the chairs, you couldn't navigate through the crowds.
There was no way to get around it. And I

(53:14):
was sitting, unfortunately at a major thoroughfare that looked like
there might have been room, and so when anyone wanted
to go to the bathroom or get back to their
seat or whatever, they had to walk right by me.
And many people had to be like, oh, excuse me,
Oh can you scoot in? Oh I'm sorry, And I'm
just like, oh, it was just aggravating. There was a
lot of room in that hall, and they could have

(53:36):
just spread the tables out a little bit more and
provided more walking space, but of course not everyone does that.
All right, what else can I complain about? It's kind
of fun to complain. It's kind of you know, venting cathartic.
Send me your complaints, you know, if you want to
have some of this pleasure that I'm having, you know,
just send me an email and say. You know what
I'd like to complain about is when you complain so

(53:59):
much that you ruined the podcast I'm trying to learn
here and all you want to do is talk about
chairs and tables. I mean, this is stupid. You know,
go ahead and send me that email. I'm cool with that.
I lie, I'm actually totally not completely cool with people
complaining about the podcast. It actually hurts my feelings to
some extent. But you know, it's a free country. You
can send me that email if you want. Uh, okay, wow.

(54:21):
So right after that complaint, here comes another complaint. The
other complaint complaint here is you know I said there's
about one hundred and fifty two hundred people, Well there
were almost no people of color. I am only half Asian,
which makes me a half person of color. And I
did a thorough scan of all the faces in the
room and found only three or four people of color.

(54:44):
Now that doesn't mean that there wasn't diversity in other ways,
because the color of someone's skin isn't the only indication
of diversity. But I just thought it was a little
bothersome that in Seattle, at this training of one hundred
and fifty the two hundred marital therapists, that there were
so few people of color. I saw one person of

(55:06):
color and I said, oh, great, another, I can add
another person to listen. It turned out that person was
a food server and not an attendant, so that knock
my numbers back down. But anyway, that of course, is
not a fault of the training. I think it's a
fault of recruitment programs trying to recruit people of color
into our profession. And I also think it's to some

(55:26):
extent a fault of people of color. As a person
of color myself, I will say to you, if you
are a person of color, get out there.

Speaker 2 (55:33):
Man.

Speaker 1 (55:33):
If you're thinking about becoming a therapist, we need you,
so apply. You know, whatever career you're thinking about doing,
consider this profession because we need you. Our country is
becoming more and more diverse, yet the diversity among professionals
is not keeping up with that increase in diversity. And
so come on, apply, get into the profession, profession and

(55:56):
help people. You can do it, and let's increase our
numbers of people of color. Again, as a person of color,
I feel like I can yell at you because I'm
one of you.

Speaker 2 (56:03):
Right, are we cool? Okay?

Speaker 1 (56:05):
She gave another example which I thought was interesting, of
a couple that she was seeing. The wife didn't like
to have sex for very long. She worked a lot
of hours and just liked her sleep. So the couple
came to an arrangement where the man would watch porn
for two hours while she was sleeping, and then he
wouldn't orgasm, and he would go to bed. They would

(56:27):
have sex, and then he would orgasm, and she really
liked that because he came to bed and they would
have sex for five or ten minutes and that was
all she wanted, and then she'd go back to sleep.
And the husband got what he wanted because he got
to watch his two hours of porn and also got
to have you know, a moment with his wife. So
they got a lot of laughs from the crowd. I

(56:49):
seem to remember actually having an arrangement like this once
with a client as well, years ago. I wasn't two
hours of porn watching, but it was actually a female
I think anyway, I think I remember. The details was
the wife would masturbate in bed to get herself warmed up,
and then she would call the husband into the bedroom

(57:12):
and then they would have sex, and if she didn't
get herself warmed up, then they didn't have as good
as sex, which I thought was, you know, an interesting arrangement.
Now some people might say, well, maybe he should have
been doing more for play, which is, you know, definitely
a question to ask, but there's nothing wrong with an

(57:32):
arrangement like that that.

Speaker 2 (57:34):
They came to.

Speaker 1 (57:35):
One person asked a very interesting question, which I don't
know exactly what she meant by it, but it seemed
I don't know, it just seemed like a very interesting question.
She stood up and she got the microphone and she asked, well,
to some extent, we have to ask the question, what's
the purpose of sex and what is it for? We
have to ask that question of ourselves. Of what's the

(57:57):
purpose of sex? And I don't know about you, but
there's something off about that question the purpose we have
because we're talking about addiction and sex and how couples
can relate better. And then she stands up and she says, well,
we just have to ask ourselves what the purpose of
sex is. And maybe it was an innocuous question, or
maybe I didn't understand what she was saying, but it

(58:19):
seemed to have a certain religiousness to it or something.
I mean, the only thing I can think of this
is pure speculation, is that she was saying the purpose
of sex is to glorify God. There are many religious
people who that's how they think, and there's nothing wrong
with that way of thinking. By the way, it's completely
healthy thinking. There's nothing wrong with it. But it is

(58:39):
a particular point of view. And for some people they
might insert that question in the conversation because they want
other people to have the same view that they do.
So they might say, look, sex is not just for pleasure.
It's supposed to be for procreation, and it's supposed to
be to glorify God. As someone who grew up in America,

(59:00):
I know that Christians will definitely talk like that sometimes,
and there's again there's nothing wrong with that. There is
something wrong with telling other people how they should be thinking.
For instance, non religious people can't say to religious people
that think that way and say that's ridiculous. You can't
think that way. And the opposite is true as well.
But anyway, so there's just something weird about the questions

(59:21):
she answered, and doctor Spring answered in a way that
I really liked, which is, well, we should ask what
the purpose of sex is to each client. Each client
should answer that question, what's the purpose of sex for them?
Having thought about it. Maybe the person who asked the
question wasn't asking from a place of religiousness and instead

(59:44):
was asking from a place of where doctor Spring got to,
which is, if you know, we really have to define
in a way that values the client's meaning of sex.
You know, for some people the purpose of having sex
is to bomb with their partner, and therefore masturbation is
counter to that value, whereas another person, sex is about

(01:00:07):
physical pleasure, about selfish physical pleasure, and so therefore you
can have that by yourself masturbating, and you can also
have that with someone else. You can mutually be selfish
about getting sexual pleasure while having sex with each other.

Speaker 2 (01:00:22):
So yeah, I could see maybe that's what she was asking.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:00:25):
So the next part of the training she went into
was very provocative, and she said, so she said, whenever
I talk about this, it's always very provocative. So here
goes and she laid out the three common rules of
marital therapy that she does not follow.

Speaker 2 (01:00:43):
And that was confusing to me.

Speaker 1 (01:00:44):
And again I was probably phasing in and out of attention,
but at first I thought she was saying she did
follow these rules, and I was like, wait, but anyway,
so the rules that are commonly told to marital therapists
are these.

Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
There are three rules here.

Speaker 1 (01:00:57):
One is is to never see couple's individual And as
a mayal therapist and as an educator in marital therapy,
I can say that I do hear that from people.
Sometimes some of my students will say, well, I heard
you're not supposed to ever see couples individually. I heard
that you're not supposed to do that. And doctor Spring
was saying she does not follow that rule. As I
said earlier, I think her primary mode is to see

(01:01:21):
couples individually, which is different from what most marital therapists
would do. But I and perhaps a small minority of
other marital therapists will often see couples individually. With some
of my couples, I'll alternate every other time, so I'll
see them together, and then i'll see them apart, then
i'll see them together.

Speaker 2 (01:01:38):
See part.

Speaker 1 (01:01:39):
Having said that, I would say most of my clients,
marital clients, ninety percent, I see almost exclusively.

Speaker 2 (01:01:46):
As a couple.

Speaker 1 (01:01:47):
But like I said, I'm not opposed to seeing them
individually for a number of reasons. The other rule that
is often told to marital therapists that she doesn't follow
is that the unfaithful partner needs to give up the
fair person. I thought it was interesting words. So she
had these different words, which I thought were good. Was
you have the unfaithful partner, you have the hurt partner,
and you have the affair person. So the person that

(01:02:10):
the unfaithful person is having affair with is called the
affair person. So often in the literature they will say
as soon as a couple comes into you and says
that they are having someone is having an affair, they
have to give up that a fair person in order
for therapy to move forward. And I forget the authors

(01:02:30):
that propose that, and there's some wisdom to that, for sure,
and for my understanding, the wisdom is that until that
person makes that final leap and actually ends that relationship
with the fair person, you can't begin to recover. You know,
a lot of couples will come in and the unfaithful

(01:02:51):
partner will say, well, just give me another few months,
or well, you know, I'm trying to get out of
the relationship. I don't want to hurt him or I
don't want to hurt her. And what a lot of
clinicians will say is, look, come back to me when
you give up the affair person, because until then I
can't help you. But doctor Spring was saying that she
doesn't follow this rule. She says that the unfaithful partner

(01:03:16):
will give up the therapist before they give up the
affair person, which I thought, you know, is an interesting,
probably to some extent accurate way of looking at it.
For instance, you know, you see a couple, you see
them together, and then they come separately, see them individually,
and the husband says, I'm having an affair. I don't
want you to tell my wife. I don't know what
to do, and the therapist says, look, you have to

(01:03:39):
end that relationship with the affair person in order for
us to work together.

Speaker 2 (01:03:42):
That's going to happen.

Speaker 1 (01:03:43):
Well, what doctor Spring is saying is that what will
happen is the husband will say, well, now I have
to choose between my therapist and my affair person. I
choose the affair person because the affair person is much
more compelling than the therapist.

Speaker 2 (01:03:58):
So she doesn't do that.

Speaker 1 (01:03:59):
So she, I think, basically was saying that she will
work with someone for a long time while they explore
what they want to do about the affair, which a
lot of therapists are not comfortable with.

Speaker 2 (01:04:12):
And a lot of them gasped at this.

Speaker 1 (01:04:14):
On one hand, you can imagine that if you don't
draw that boundary with a client, that you could be
seeing that couple for three years, all the while you
know that the husband is having an affair and you're
just trying to help their relationship. But you know that
there's this major piece that isn't being addressed, that isn't changing,

(01:04:37):
that is putting a major wrench into gears of therapy.
And what she said to this and what other people
were saying during the breaks, I was talking with them.
They were saying that they would do the same thing
that doctor Spring does, but they might terminate with someone
eventually that doesn't end the relationship, you know. So the
husband says, I'm having an a fair in an individual session,
you say, okay, well let's talk about it.

Speaker 2 (01:04:59):
What do you want to do?

Speaker 1 (01:05:00):
And over time, say three months later, the therapist says, so,
how's it going with the a thera person. Husband says, well,
we're still together. The therapist at that point could say, look,
I can't help you improve your relationship with your wife
if you don't make a decision here. You have to
make a decision to end the relationship and then we
can move towards recovery, or you have to divorce and
move on with your life. You have to make that choice,

(01:05:22):
or else I'm going to terminate. And if you don't
tell me what you're gonna do, I'm gonna terminate with you.
That seemed like an appropriate, helpful approach. I think what
people get caught up in is the question of so
you're just gonna let the unfaithful partner have the affair.
And this is what I hear from a lot of

(01:05:43):
novice therapists. They'll say, so, you're just gonna let your
client do that. The question is based in a paradigm
that states that we as therapists are responsible for our
client's behavior, and that we as therapists tell people what
to do with their lives. And that is, for the
most part, not the way therapists think. Therapists don't think

(01:06:03):
that they are the people that will tell people how
to behave that. Instead, we guide people and help them
explore things in a meaningful way and let the client
come up with their own solutions. And so this leads
me to my way that I talk to people about this,
and that is is that if I have a couple

(01:06:25):
and I'm meeting individually with one person and they tell
me that they're having an affair, I explore with them
and say how long, how do you feel about it,
how do you feel about your marriage?

Speaker 2 (01:06:35):
What do you want to do? What's the plan here?

Speaker 1 (01:06:38):
But what I don't do, which is what a lot
of therapists do, is they just continue to explore, and
what ends up happening in my this is just my
humble opinion, is that the therapist in the client go
into a sort of denial of the reality that the
unfaithful partner is continually hurting the hurt partner, even if

(01:07:02):
the hurt partner doesn't know that they're being cheated on.
So if the therapist just continues to explore and continues
to be accepting, so to speak, the therapist is colluding
with the client's desire to be in denial of the
reality that they are being unfaithful. Now, if the client
is a sociopath, then there's that, but most clients are not.

(01:07:26):
You know, the vast majority of people that are cheating
on their spouses are not sociopaths. They are normal people
with the same moral values as anybody else. But they've
got themselves into a situation and they have the normal
psychological defense mechanisms that everyone has, and one of them
happens to be denial. And if you're out there thinking

(01:07:47):
that you would never do that, well I wouldn't be
so sure. For instance, I had a client that was
cheating and they were talking with their therapists for years
and had been cheating that in time time, and the
vibe I got from the client was that the therapist
was almost encouraging the client to have the affair, and

(01:08:09):
in a way that was along the lines of well,
your marriage isn't going so well, so that's why you're
having the affair, and you want to grow as a person,
so that's why you're having the affair, which you know
are valid points to explore. But to me, after a
couple weeks or months of working with this couple and
meeting individually with the one who was cheating, I asked

(01:08:33):
them what their goals were and they said, I'm using
there were they to mask gender? And they said that
their goals were to be honest and to have integrity
and to live a life that made sense to them.
And so I said, well, are you doing that right now?
And they said no, I'm not doing that right now.
And I said, well, how are you going to get there?
And they would say, well, I guess I have to

(01:08:54):
tell my spouse that I'm cheating. And I said, okay,
well how do you want to do that? And then
they would say, well, I don't think I want to.
You know, they have a million excuses. And then I say, well,
but does that meet up with your goal of being
a person of integrity? And they said no, And so
we'd go back and forth, and so basically I was
to some extent pressuring the client to tell their spouse,

(01:09:17):
but more specifically, I was pressuring the client to either
end it, and if they weren't going to end it,
then they should tell their spouse because their spouse deserves
to know. Now that brings up a whole other question
as to whether or not one should ever tell their
spouse about infidelity, And the short answer is, there is
no right answer to this question. You know, should someone

(01:09:39):
tell their spouse about past infidelity. It's a very very
tricky question. There are pros and cons to revealing the truth,
and their pros and cons to not. But if you
are in therapy and you are supposedly reflecting on yourself
and exploring and being honest with yourself and continue to

(01:10:00):
cheat on somebody, that is, unless you're a sociopath not
living within your value system and therefore should be addressed
in therapy in a very real and honest way. And
I think it's the therapist's job to ask those tough questions. Now,
at no point with this particular client did I ever
say I'm going to tell your spouse, because I would

(01:10:22):
never do that. And plus it is explicitly stated in
my disclosure statement that I wouldn't do that, And incidentally,
what ended up happening was the cheating spouse did tell
the hurt spouse, and when I saw the hurt partner
in therapy, they asked me, so, I'm under the impression
that you knew about this, and I said, yes, I did,

(01:10:43):
and they said, well, that makes me angry, and I
feel humiliated that you and my partner were talking about
the infidelity behind my back. And I said, I know,
and I'm terribly sorry, and I apologized for it, and
I said I didn't know what else to do. I
wanted to continue to talk with your partner about the infidelity,

(01:11:06):
and all the while, I felt guilty about you not
knowing about it, and I feel pain now that you
are hurt by that, by that humiliation of being outside
of that information. And so I had to repair that
relationship and I had to be very real about it.
But I told them what my justification was, and in

(01:11:28):
the end, the hurt partner really respected my decision and
came to see me as the needed catalysts to get
their relationship moving forward and into recovery. The hurt partner
saw me as the person that was very different from
the unfaithful partner's ongoing therapists, because, as I said earlier,

(01:11:51):
the ongoing individual therapist never encouraged the cheating partner to
reveal the information, or to end it or at anything.
So it's a very very tricky thing. You know, as
therapists were in general not supposed to tell clients what
to do. We're not supposed to moralize, we're not supposed
to pressure people to do things. But I think that

(01:12:13):
therapy is a funny thing, and with enough wisdom, I
think we can into it and work together collaboratively with
our clients to figure out what kind of stance we
as therapists should take to be as helpful as possible.
The unfaithful partner, this is years later now, will tell
me that they really really appreciated the pressure that I

(01:12:38):
put on them to reveal it, and once they revealed it,
felt much better about it and feel like that revelation
to their spouse was a necessary step to moving forward
in both of their lives. They're still struggling, but they're
doing so with a lot of love toward each other
and a lot of grace. They have sadness and hurts,

(01:13:01):
but they love each other deeply. And it's really wonderful
to see how people can recover from infidelity. Couples can
become stronger after infidelity. This couple that I'm working with
that I'm mentioning is much stronger now than they were before.
It doesn't mean that hurting someone is a good thing,
But it doesn't mean that when infidelity happens that that's

(01:13:26):
the end of a relationship or that things will never
be good again. Relationships, long term relationships have ebbs and flows.
They go through various different phases, so to speak, They
go through various different lives, and there is a life
after infidelity. So the third rule that she mentioned that
is often told to marital therapists that she does not

(01:13:49):
follow is that therapists are supposed.

Speaker 2 (01:13:52):
To keep no secrets.

Speaker 1 (01:13:54):
It's a very common thing for a marriage and family
therapists to say that secrets are evil and that they
will infect a family, and that if you play along
as a therapist with the secret, you're playing along with
the dysfunction and the illness in the system.

Speaker 2 (01:14:12):
And there is a lot of truth to that.

Speaker 1 (01:14:14):
There's a lot of truth to this idea, But does
that mean that we should out everyone with their secrets?

Speaker 2 (01:14:22):
Immediately.

Speaker 1 (01:14:23):
The answer to me is no, and also to a
doctor spring, I was really happy that she talked about
these sorts of things because I often will talk with
my students about this issue, and I find that they
have been told one thing, and then I'm telling them
something else, And sometimes I wonder, am I the only
one that thinks this?

Speaker 2 (01:14:41):
And therefore am I an idiot for thinking this?

Speaker 1 (01:14:44):
So I felt validated by her talking about these rules
that she does not follow. Again, the rules were never
see couples individually. She does not follow that rule. Second
rule was the unfaithful partner needs to give up the
affair person right away, again not a that's a rule
that's often told. She does not follow it, neither do I.

(01:15:04):
And the last is that therapists keep no secrets. And
her justification here is interesting. She said that in order
for therapy to move forward, the clients need to have
a safe place to talk about whatever is happening. They
need to have a safe place where they can be honest.
When she sees couples individually, she wants to set up

(01:15:25):
a situation where each partner is able to tell her
whatever is happening and not worry that the therapist is
going to turn to the partner and reveal that secret,
and a lot of marital therapists will do this, and
I think it's just this dogma that's been passed down
from the history of marital therapy, and I think that
it is not a good idea. Like I said earlier,

(01:15:48):
I don't think it's a good idea to necessarily just
explore endlessly with a client about their infidelity without putting
some pressure on them to follow their own values. But
I also don't think it's helpful to tell someone. Look,
if you tell me a secret, I'm just going to
turn around and tell your partner, because basically, according to

(01:16:09):
doctor Spring, and according to me, you're telling the client
not to tell you things. You're basically telling the client
I don't want to hear about your secrets. Just don't
even because if you're cheating, for instance, and you go
into couples therapy and then that you meet individually with
your therapist and you're very ambivalent about telling anybody about
the cheating, and your therapist is Look, anything you tell me,

(01:16:31):
I'm gonna don't. I don't keep any secrets I'm gonna
tell I'm gonna tell your partner, Well, say, you really
need someone to talk with about the infidelity, and you
don't have an individual therapist, You only have this is
your one therapist, and which is often the case, and
you say, well, I guess I'm not going to tell
this therapist about it, and then you just go through
dreamland working on the relationship when there's this huge elephant

(01:16:54):
in the room, which is you're having an affair, but
you won't talk about it because you're worried that your
therapist is going to tell in you. So in those situations,
how wonderful would it be if the client felt that
they could tell the therapist and not worry about it
being revealed right away, and it provides an opportunity for
the therapist to begin to explore that with the client.

(01:17:16):
She said that it's important to make sure that you
have a policy around secrets with couples, whatever it is,
and that you disclose it early and in a detailed
manner so that the couple knows what they're getting into. Now, again,
is it always a good idea to hold on to
secrets from clients? Now?

Speaker 2 (01:17:35):
Are there cons to doing it? Absolutely?

Speaker 1 (01:17:39):
But therapy is more complicated than a set of rules.
Human beings are more complicated than following a set policy.
Things have to be explored, You have to think about things,
and you have to have questions and wonder if a
spouse tells you a secret and you quote unquote allow
that secret to persist in therapy for a long time,

(01:18:01):
every day that goes by, you run the risk of
when the secret does come out, the hurt partner will
hate you forever as a therapist and will be, you know,
justifiably betrayed, will feel justifiably to betrayed, and it will
be a disaster. That certainly is a risk that you're running,
and it needs to be acknowledged. And the secrets that

(01:18:23):
she brought up, she says, don't always involve affairs. They
could involve many things that partners have secrets about. Like
she said that a husband might say, my wife's vagina
smells horribly and I don't know what to do about it.
And I've never said anything to my wife because I

(01:18:44):
don't want to hurt her feelings. But I feel like,
until her vagina smells not so bad, I don't want
to have sex with her. And you know, it might
sound like a funny thing for someone to think but
believe me, if you talk to couples, there are a
lot more things like this than you would imagine. And
I think justifiably so, because again, our culture is not

(01:19:05):
very healthy when it comes to talking about these issues.
I mean, the issue of a smelly vagina is one
of ridicule and jokes and how many people talk about it,
you know, and a lot of people would say, well,
what kind of a woman wouldn't know that her vagina
smells bad? I mean, you know, clearly something's very strange
about that person. You'd be surprised how you could get

(01:19:27):
used to a smell, or you go into denial about it,
or you think people like it, or I don't know.
There's just a lot of different reasons the reasons why
we run into these problems, and the reas the reason
why people have secrets about it is because they worry
about what will happen. And so in order to have
conversations with your clients about these sorts of things, you

(01:19:48):
need to be able to keep secrets with them, is
what she's saying. She cited an interesting Gotman statistic that
the happiest couples in America don't resolve sixty nine percent
of their conflicts. So John Gottman at the University of
Washington studied couples and observed them, and apparently according to her,

(01:20:09):
she was citing this as finding of his that the
happiest couples not not the couples that have problems, but
the happiest couples, the couples who are the happiest with
each other in the United States don't resolve sixty nine
percent of their conflicts. Essentially, what Gotman and doctor Springer
saying is that conflict is normal, and that not having

(01:20:29):
a resolution is normal, and that people need to lower
their expectations. Long term relationships are not about resolving all
your conflicts, clearly, so I thought that was a good point.

Speaker 2 (01:20:40):
She mentioned a few.

Speaker 1 (01:20:41):
Other statistics like fifty percent of first marriages fail, and
set set of people who get married a second time
sixty percent fail, and if you add step children, seventy
percent fail. So you know, pretty interesting statistic that again
most marriage end in divorce, and second marriages are more

(01:21:03):
likely to end in divorce than first marriages, and if
you add step children then or even more likely to
get divorced. And I think what her point was that
people rush into getting married and they should slow down.
I think that was what her point was. The thing
that I'll say to that is that's all finding good
and I think that what she's saying is worthy.

Speaker 2 (01:21:23):
But it's this word fail.

Speaker 1 (01:21:25):
I don't know if I've talked about this on the
podcast before, but I probably have. But another complaint I have,
and that is that the words we have for when
a marriage ends is the word fail. This marriage failed.
I have a failed marriage. My first marriage failed this way,
or other words are unsuccessful, or if there's divorce, you

(01:21:47):
call it a broken family. These are very interesting words
for something that should have different words. In my humble opinion,
let me give you an example. Let's say you had
a friendship and you became very very close with You
became best friends, and for three years you were best

(01:22:08):
best best friends. But over time you started getting on
each other's nerves, your interests started to diverge, and one
of you moved out of town. You drifted apart five years.
Ten years later, you're not that good of friends anymore.
You still touch, you keep in touch on Facebook, but
you're not best friends by any means. Well would you

(01:22:30):
call that a failed friendship? Most people in my estimation
would not. They would say, oh, we were best friends.
We were man, we're not that close anymore, but man,
we were best friends. That that person is a good
friend of mine. So the word fail you would never apply.

Speaker 2 (01:22:47):
To that relationship.

Speaker 1 (01:22:48):
You would never say that was a failed friendship because
the implication is is that any friend should be a
friend forever. But most people know that that's not true.
Most people know that friendships come and go. Some friendships
may last forever, but most don't. And it's wonderful to
have friends.

Speaker 2 (01:23:06):
When we do.

Speaker 1 (01:23:08):
It's sad when some of them end abruptly, but for
most friends, they just sort of drift away. Well, why
do we say marriages when they end fail. For some people,
they end their marriage amicably. They get married, say when
they're twenty two and they fall in love and they
have a great time. They don't have any kids, and

(01:23:29):
at thirty they have their differences, but they're nice people
and they decide to get a divorce and their friends
after the divorce. Would you call that a failed marriage,
that these two people failed at marriage, that this is
a broken family. I would say no, that is not
an accurate word for it. I would say that the

(01:23:49):
marriage ended that they got divorced, that they ended amicably.
So in my mind, I would if we're using the
fail success spectrum, I would say this young cup succeeded
in marriage. They had a number of years where they
succeeded in having a mutually gratifying marriage. At a certain

(01:24:09):
point it became less successful or less what they wanted,
and they decided to end it in.

Speaker 2 (01:24:14):
A successful way.

Speaker 1 (01:24:15):
It's disheartening to hear marial therapists using these socially constructed
words to describe something that I think harmspuples. You know,
so imagine you know, you have been divorced, and you're
already feeling shamed about it, and you're already feeling bad
and worthless, and people say that you're the only word
that we have for your divorce is failure or your

(01:24:39):
family is now broken. It's a very destructive set of
words that we apply to people, and to some extent,
I think it's purposeful in our culture. There are definitely
people who judge people who get divorced and judge step
families and blended families as lesser forms of families, and

(01:25:00):
these are extremely judgmental, harmful attitudes. But I would say
the vast majority of people don't have that point of
view and are adopting it because it's the dominant socially
constructed language and are just giving into it. And I
don't hear anyone talking the way I do. I, you know,
correct me if I'm wrong, But I don't know if anyone.

Speaker 2 (01:25:20):
I haven't heard anyone anywhere talk about this. Maybe I
should google it.

Speaker 1 (01:25:24):
And again, maybe I'm the one crank on the hill
that's screaming about nothing and meaning and saying a bunch
of you know, nonsense.

Speaker 2 (01:25:31):
But I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:25:32):
Oh my god, so many rants, so little time. Well,
at least I'm on page four of my notes out
of six, okay. Oh, another little interesting fact. She said
that she keeps us special place in her notes in
her process notes for the secrets that each person tells her,
so that she can keep track of what are quote
unquote secrets and what or not.

Speaker 2 (01:25:52):
So I thought that was interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:25:54):
Another well known fact in the recovering from infidelity community
that she mentioned is that the unfaithful partner often wants
to reveal the unfaithfulness and then move on very quickly.
They want to have one session where they apologize and
they cry together and then they feel elated that they've

(01:26:17):
come out of the closet and the truth is out,
and you know, they say they end the relationship with
the affair partner and.

Speaker 2 (01:26:23):
They just want to move on.

Speaker 1 (01:26:24):
They say, okay, good, now we can move forward with
our relationship. Well, what really happens is that the hurt
partner now begins their journey. They didn't know about the affair,
and now they are at the very beginning of their
journey to recovery. And she gave a good guideline that
it takes in general, if things go well, a year

(01:26:44):
and a half for couples to recover from infidelity, and
that this needs to be told to the unfaithful partner
because they will have unrealistic expectations about how long it
takes to recover. And I completely agree with that statement.
I have found that to be true many times with
my couples that have recovered from infidelity. The unfaithful partner

(01:27:06):
sometimes has a difficult time with empathy to begin with,
which is what led to the infidelity to begin with,
But once they actually tell the person, they have a
hard time containing the emotions that go along with recovery
and they just wanted to go away. You know, they'll say,
I said, I'm sorry, what more do you want from me?
Or when are you going to stop obsessing on this?

(01:27:28):
I'm not having an affair anymore. You know, why are
you so paranoid? And the fact is is it is
extremely normal and almost universal for hurt partners to become paranoid,
to become a little to become a little crazy, so
to speak, to be hurt forever, to go through a
difficult phase of sexuality, to have very low self.

Speaker 2 (01:27:50):
Esteem for a long time.

Speaker 1 (01:27:53):
And this is one of the things that statistics show
that unfaithful partners underestimate in a drastic manner that people
when they become unfaithful, they don't realize the amount of
emotional fallout that it will produce that you know, they'll
they'll ask couples after recovering from infidelity, you know, what

(01:28:15):
didn't what will happen that you didn't expect? And they
will say, almost universally, I had no idea how much
pain my partner would feel as a result of me
cheating on them. I knew they would be hurt, but
I didn't know they'd be hurt that much. And this
is something that we need to get out there in
the culture because I think a lot of people they

(01:28:35):
enter into affairs without being properly told about the risk
that they're taking. You know, everyone knows that when you
cheat your on your partner, your partner, if they find out,
will be hurt by that. But again, the degree of
the hurt is what they don't understand. And I think
if people understood that, that would be a big reason

(01:28:56):
not to do it. I think people take the risk
to like, well, i'll cheat, my partner won't find out.
But you know, if they do, you know, she'll get
over it or he'll get over it. But the fact
is is, yeah, they might, but only after years of therapy,
you know. And if you really drove that home with
someone before they had an affair, I think a lot
of people would think twice, holy crap. This this podcast

(01:29:23):
is going on very, very long. This might be the
longest podcast of all time. I don't know how I
feel about it. Let me know if this is too long,
because it probably is. Okay, but here I go making
it longer. One thing I often get irked by, and
it's something that doctor Spring did not do much of,

(01:29:44):
if at all, But one thing I often get irked
by is when people blame the hurt partner for the affair.
For instance, you know, someone will say, yeah, well did
you hear that Jane is cheating on her husband? And
they'll say, oh, well, what's her husband doing that is
making her one to cheat? Her husband must be a jerk,

(01:30:06):
or her husband must not be listening to her enough,
or something like this. And although one could imagine there
being a possible factor in the wife's decision to cheat,
I find it abhorrent to blame the victim for what
someone is doing on purpose. When you have someone that

(01:30:28):
is purposely having an affair, they are making choices to deceive.
They are making choices, many, many choices. You know, believe me,
When you get down to the nitty gritty with people
and you review all the different choices and the whys
in the road that the cheater was faced with, you
realize that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of choices

(01:30:51):
that these people make in order to even have the
first sexual contact with the affair person. And when you
have an affair that lasts a month, two months, two years,
you know, twenty years, you have millions of little decisions
that are made in order for the affair to take place,
and each one of those decisions was a decision to deceive,

(01:31:13):
a decision to harm. And this should not be taken lightly. Now,
as therapists, we don't shame people and we don't harm
people with our therapy, and we don't justise, but we
definitely should not be blaming the hurt partner for the
unfaithful partner's decisions.

Speaker 2 (01:31:34):
So just another little rant that I have about it.

Speaker 1 (01:31:37):
So I started thinking at the training about the reasons
why I think people will be unfaithful to their partners,
and in my experience, and it's according to my theoretical orientation,
which in this case is employing a certain brand of
psychodynamic or interpersonal theory that I like to adhere too.

(01:32:01):
But essentially, my theory is that when we grow up,
we internalize various different relational experiences. And if we internalize,
for instance, a lot of rejection, a lot of distance.
You know, for instance, you have a young boy five
years old reaches out to his parents for attention and love,

(01:32:24):
and his parents reject that child in a consistent manner,
then that child internalizes that experience, and what they internalize
is that they are not worthy of attention, that they
are not lovable, and they become internally frustrated with that.
They aren't likely to manifest that very in a very

(01:32:46):
overt way, but it becomes a part of their personality.
And then they grow up and they fall in love,
and they develop an intimate relationship with someone, and over
time the vulnerability of a long term relationship starts to
scare him, and it starts to engage that internalized representation
that they have that they internalized when they were young,

(01:33:09):
and as a way of defending against the pain that
vulnerability is associated with, and in order to defend against
the internal strife of having a part of him that
feels unworthy and having another part of him that wants
to distance himself from people. In an effort to do that,

(01:33:30):
he will have impulses to cheat, impulses to distance from
his partner, and in so doing, if he has an affair,
will recreate the original rejection that he felt as a child.
So originally his parents rejected him as he reached out
to them for love and attention, and in his adult

(01:33:51):
life he recreates this dynamic by making his spouse into
himself as a child and by identifying with his parents
who were rejecting. Ironically, what ends up happening is once
the affair is discovered, his spouse now becomes the rejecting
other and he becomes the rejected and so the paradigm

(01:34:13):
of rejection is now in full swing and he can
revel in recreating the original difficulty. There are many reasons
why people do this. One is to try to work
out an old difficulty. So if you have a problem
that was not resolved in your childhood and you were
unsuccessful so to speak, and being able to resolve it,

(01:34:36):
you might recreate it in your adult life in an
unconscious way to try to finally resolve it. And some
people manage to do that, and when they do they
get satisfaction, but some people don't and will do so
in a way that makes it almost impossible to actually
work it out. So people will recreate this rejection dynamic
in their adult life, and affairs are a part of that.

(01:34:58):
There are other different colors to this of internalized issues,
like you can internalize abuse, meaning that your parents might
have been abusive to you, and you might internalize that.
You might recreate that through affairs with your spouse. You
might internalize secret keeping. You might internalize your parents keeping
secrets from you or from each other, and through that

(01:35:20):
pain and that discomfort, you suppress it. And it emerges
as an adult as you begin to keep a lot
of secrets with your spouse, and it feels unconsciously satisfying
for some reason to have a life that is secretive.
There are people that I've treated that have this issue,
and it's very interesting to have someone that gets pleasure

(01:35:43):
from secrets.

Speaker 2 (01:35:44):
They would never say that. They don't say I love secrets.

Speaker 1 (01:35:47):
Well, some of them actually do, but most of them
will just have secrets and not know exactly why they
have so many secrets. And again it might be because
of an internalized difficulty in life that had to do
with secrets. Another way of putting it is to make
your spouse feel the feelings that you are trying to

(01:36:08):
deny in yourself. If you feel like you are a rejectable,
unworthy person, then you want to defend yourself against that
feeling and will make other people close to you feel
that way as a way of defending yourself from feeling
that way. Another reason why people would have affairs would
be due to a projective identification, which I'm basically talking

(01:36:31):
about right now. Having an affair can also be a
distraction from some other problem. If you're depressed or you
have low self esteem, then you might have an affair
to distract yourself from that. Being depressed is a very
painful experience, having low self esteem, feeling worthless, being suicidal.

(01:36:51):
These can be very painful experiences. And when you are
in a lot of pain, you will resort to various
different solutions, and when those don't work, an affair might.
Because what affairs do is they're very engaging. You have
to keep secrets, you have to think about it a lot,
you have to plan. Not only that, but you also

(01:37:12):
feel the exhilaration and the attention and the way that
the partner loves you in a way that only new
partners love each other. This can be extremely distracting to
a larger, more painful difficulty. So that's another reason why
I can imagine and have seen why people will have affairs.

(01:37:35):
People will sometimes have affairs as a passive aggression toward
their spouse. They are upset at their spouse for something.
Maybe they're shy and they feel unassertive and they don't
feel like they have power and the relationship, and instead
of addressing that in a healthy way, they will have

(01:37:55):
an affair.

Speaker 2 (01:37:56):
Now they wouldn't know.

Speaker 1 (01:37:57):
Some people are explicit about it and will say, well,
I'm having sex with his best friend because that'll show him.
But most people aren't like that, and they are only
unconsciously acting out an aggression toward their spouse in a
passive manner. So these are just a few of the
reasons why I think people have affairs. In my view,
it's rarely because of some of the reasons that people

(01:38:22):
will say. People will say, well, I'm having the affair
because we fell in love, or I'm having the affair
because my partner is not satisfying to me anymore. To me,
these rarely are what I find to be the core
reasons why affairs take place. It's usually due to some
of these other reasons. Because, for instance, if you were
unsatisfied with your partner, wouldn't you merely break up with

(01:38:45):
that partner and then start dating in a way that
was in accordance with your values and in a way
that was functional. Most people would say, yeah, that's what
you do. When you aren't getting along with your partner,
you try to work on it. And if that doesn't work,
then you consider ending that relationship in the best way possible,

(01:39:06):
and then after that you start dating. If you're having
an affair because you're unhappy with your relationship, that is
not a functional way of dealing with the situation. For
most people would agree with that. Right to enter a
life of deception and lies and potential pain is not
the way most people would consider a healthy and mature

(01:39:27):
way of approaching a problem. So why would someone approach
an immature solution to a problem, Well, because they have
these unconscious needs. Now, having said all that, there are
some people that are in marriages or relationships in which
they are being abused and systematically kept down. They are
intimidated and dominated by their partners, and in these situations,

(01:39:50):
all bets are off. If someone cheats in a situation
like that, I have a completely different view of that.
I'm not saying it's the right thing to do. But
when you are in abuse the spouse and you have
been beaten down emotionally, that is a very different situation,
and your behavior to some extent can be understandable under

(01:40:10):
circumstances like that. Now it might it might sound like
I'm a judgmental, moralistic person. I'm not with my clients.
They will tell me that I give them the vibe
that I am very accepting and caring and compassionate with them.
But at the same time, I think that it's very
important that we as therapists do not at least have

(01:40:34):
some sense of what is right and what is wrong.
If a client comes to you and says they plan
on breaking into their neighbors home and slapping them around
and taking their car, not many therapists would say, Oh,
tell me more, what makes you want to do that.
That's very interesting. Maybe that's because your father beat you around.

(01:40:56):
I think that makes sense. Most people would not say that.
They would say most therapists would say, that is not
moral behavior.

Speaker 2 (01:41:04):
You should not do that.

Speaker 1 (01:41:06):
There is no justifiable reason for that. Well, I think
to some extent, to a lesser degree, the cheating behavior
is the same thing. It's a harmful act. It's hurtful.
Adults will enter into it knowing that they are harming
their partner, and therefore it should be treated with a
similar tact. That we don't shame people and say how

(01:41:29):
dare you? There's something wrong with you, but we also
don't ask questions like how does this match up with
your values? And other questions might be how do you
think your spouse is going to feel when they find out?
If they find out? What if your spouse finds out
about the affair, how do you think they will feel
about it? Is that okay with you? And if not,

(01:41:50):
what do you plan to do? I think these are
important questions, and without these questions, I think we're being irresponsible.
I'm having a hard time with some of these words,
like calling some therapists irresponsible for not pressuring clients to
think about their own morality. I don't like talking like this.
It doesn't sit well with me. I think I might

(01:42:12):
have to reflect upon it more. But at this point,
this is how I feel, and I think this paradigm,
this idea, this understanding manifested with compassion, can be very helpful.

Speaker 2 (01:42:25):
And effective with people.

Speaker 1 (01:42:27):
Another thing that she recommended, which I actually recommend to
people too, is sex dates. She referred to him as
sex states. I referred to him as like scheduling sex
or something. But basically, the idea goes that if you're
in a long term relationship, say you're in a marriage,
you have young children, and if you wait for sex

(01:42:49):
to happen the way it did when you were first dating.
You will never have sex if you wait for those
magical moments where you're at a candle at dinner or whatever.
People don't have inlet dinners anymore, but there's probably an
app on your iPhone for that, you know, candle at
dinner app. Anyway, if you wait for those moments that
sex just emerges in order to have sex, you will

(01:43:11):
never have sex. And so when she was talking about it,
I was saying, Amen's sister, I completely agree. It feels
very unromantic to people to make sex into a schedule,
for instance, with couples that I find you have to
make a schedule. You say, okay, when can you have sex?
All right, Well, the kids are in bed at this time,

(01:43:33):
but I'm usually too tired on these days, and on
these days you blah blah blah. Okay, on Friday afternoon,
we're both at home and the kids. Aren't you back
from school yet? And it's you know, I have a
little bit of a window there from two to two fifteen,
that's when we're going to have sex. It seems so unromantic,
but to me and to doctor Spring, it is incredibly

(01:43:55):
romantic and sexy. In order to do that, you have
to want to have sex with each other. You have
to be dedicated, you have to put effort, and there's
nothing more sexy than that, in my opinion and a
doctor Spring's opinion. And so without scheduling sex states and
without actually having sex, what ends up happening is marriages

(01:44:17):
slowly dwindle and their power slowly goes out.

Speaker 2 (01:44:22):
The light bulb slowly burns out. These are all.

Speaker 1 (01:44:26):
Really bad metaphors that I'm trying to come up with.

Speaker 2 (01:44:28):
But at any rate, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:44:30):
The magic goes away without sex, without physical contact, without cuddling,
without naked skin touching, the reasons why people stay together
end up diminishing. It has an inherent bonding effect. It
has a way of putting things in perspective when you
have sex with each other. It has a way of

(01:44:51):
alleviating any little hurts you may have accumulated over the week.

Speaker 2 (01:44:56):
It feels good.

Speaker 1 (01:44:57):
It shows the other person that you care enough to
do it and to put effort into it. There's a
lot of benefit from it. It affects your brain. It
releases certain chemicals that we know about that will enhance
a lot of positive relationship things, and so you need
to be having sex. In my view, I think most

(01:45:19):
married Americans are deprived of the sex that they should
be having, and many are not having sex at all.
I see couples frequently that come to me telling me
that they haven't had sex in months or years, and
I find this to be a tragedy, and I wonder
how they have stayed together for so long.

Speaker 2 (01:45:39):
Without having that. And I'm not just talking about sex.

Speaker 1 (01:45:42):
I'm talking about all kinds of intimacy, because sex is
usually just one manifestation of a greater intimate life. So
if they tell me they haven't had sex, in all likelihood,
they also haven't cuddled. They also haven't showered together. They
also haven't been naked in front of each other. And
these are all in important things for a couple, and
how beautiful and how wonderful it can be and is

(01:46:05):
for couples when it's working well. So I agreed with
her about the sex dates thing.

Speaker 2 (01:46:10):
She was.

Speaker 1 (01:46:12):
Doctor Spring was extremely brave in that she talked about
her own personal life with infidelity. I won't go into
the details because you really just need to read her
books or see her in person and hear her speak
because it's quite a powerful story that she has to
tell and has so much to do with what she

(01:46:33):
is an expert in, and has so much to do
with the books that she's written. But one of the
things that she said that I will talk about is
that she said that often in our culture we talk
about how we need to forgive when we are harmed,
and forgiveness helps us move on, and holding on to
anger only hurts us. It hurts our psychology, it hurts

(01:46:55):
our physiology to hold on to that anger and to
not forgive. But she said that she didn't believe that
it was healthy to forgive before you want to forgive,
And she also said that it's to some extent. She
didn't use us words, but she didn't use this word,
but I'm thinking she was saying that it's unjust to
forgive someone who doesn't deserve it. If the person that

(01:47:19):
hurt you that does not meaningfully and sufficiently and comprehensively
apologize for their behavior, then they don't deserve your forgiveness,
and it's not healthy to force yourself to forgive. And
so she talked for a while about that, and she
has a whole book on that.

Speaker 2 (01:47:38):
I think called How to Forgive? What's it called?

Speaker 1 (01:47:41):
The book is called how Can I Forgive You? And
her other book called After the Affair, But her book
Life with Pop, which is her conversations with her or
her the lessons she learned from her father, who was elderly,
also has a whole bit in there about forgiveness for infidelity.
She also talked about out her technique of having a

(01:48:02):
funeral for the affair partner. So when she's working with
a couple and they want to recover from the infidelity,
she will have what she calls a funeral for the affair,
in which the unfaithful partner will end the relationship with
the affair partner by writing a letter that is very

(01:48:23):
well thought out and goes through a number of drafts,
and the hurt partner participates in the writing of this letter,
and the letter says something to the effect of I'm
writing this letter as a formal ending to our relationship.
So again the unfaithful partner is writing to the affair
partner and for the affair person, I should say, I'm

(01:48:44):
writing this letter as a formal ending to our relationship.
I love my spouse very much. We are in therapy
to rebuild our relationship. I will never contact you again,
and I will never receive communication from you again, and
I wish you well. So she says that a letter
along these lines, with perhaps much more detail in there,

(01:49:05):
is written by the couple and given to the affair person.
She says that it's a healing opportunity for the couple,
and it's also a way for the couple to draw
a boundary with the affair person that without this boundary,
it's hard to recover. And I agree with this, and
I think that her technique here is sound. She mentioned

(01:49:26):
a number of reasons why affairs happens, why affairs happen,
and I won't go into them because I'm way over time.
I think this is a record for the longest episode,
by the way. But one of the reasons that she
mentioned that I have seen in the research and completely
agree with is alcohol use. When people drink, their chances

(01:49:48):
of cheating on their spouses skyrockets. You know, our frontal
lobes are supposed to help us with managing our behavior,
planning for the future, thinking about the future, editing our behavior,
managing our impulses, and when we drink alcohol, that function diminishes.
And we end up acting on impulse, we end up

(01:50:11):
forgetting a future even exists, We end up doing things
that we would not do normally. If you want to
increase the risk of cheating, then start drinking a lot.
If you are out with an x that you think
there's a you know, a very small chance that you'll
get together with.

Speaker 2 (01:50:29):
When you are in a committed relationship.

Speaker 1 (01:50:31):
So you're in a committed relationship and your ex calls
you up and says, hey, let's go out, and you think, yeah,
what's the harm in that, and you drink alcohol, then
your chance of getting getting together with that person increases dramatically.
And I think this is a fairly obvious point, but
one that doesn't get talked about very much. The idea
is that if you didn't if you if you went

(01:50:53):
out with your ex, say you're in a committed relationship,
you go out with your ex, you want to meet up,
you want to socialize with your ex, and you didn't
drink alcohol. Again, the chance of cheating if you are
on the fence goes way down. So if you want
to plan for your life and you are thinking, hmm,
I don't want to cheat, there's a part of me
that wants to cheat, but the bigger part of me
does not want to cheat. Then I Am not going

(01:51:14):
to drink alcohol tonight because that might impair my judgment
that It's an important point because for a lot of people,
drinking is the only way that they socialize. For a
lot of not only Americans but people around the world,
they when they socialize, they'll drink. Drinking leads to a
lot of affairs. And once you have that one affair moment,

(01:51:35):
say you get drunk and you make decisions that are impaired,
but you make decisions to end up getting together with
your ex. Well, now the cat's out of the bag.
And for a lot of people, they think, well, I've
already cheated. What's another time, I've already had sex with them?
What's sex twice with them? You know, if I get caught,
it's not like if I did it twice, it's that

(01:51:55):
much worse than if I did it once, So I
might as well do it again. And so you know,
I've heard people say things like that, and so it's
a slippery slope. And it's a decision that you can
make early. If you decide to not drink before entering
into a risky situation. So in conclusion, I will say

(01:52:15):
that the presentation given by Janice abram Spring was great.
I learned a lot, was very interesting, and again the
most interesting and powerful moment was when she was talking
about her own personal experiences. I thought that was incredibly
brave and moving. She at the end showed a clip

(01:52:36):
from the movie Hope Springs, which is a movie that
I've reviewed on this podcast and really liked, and it
was a nice touch at the end of the presentation.
But anyway, I thought it went really well and I
recommend her books and her trainings highly.

Speaker 2 (01:52:52):
Well.

Speaker 1 (01:52:52):
That does it for another episode of Psychology in Seattle.
Thanks for joining me, and please take care of yourself.
And boy, that was long, wasn't it. And let me
know what you think. Go to Psychology and Seattle dot
com and click on the support us page and donate
or send us an email. It's always wonderful to hear
from our listeners. I always wonder what you think as

(01:53:14):
I'm talking. I'm like, man, is this interesting at all?
Or am I even making sense? What are people thinking
as they're listening? So it'd be great if you could
send me a quick email, even if it's just you know,
a couple of words like hey, cool something like that.

Speaker 2 (01:53:30):
Anyway, all right, checkulator. Bye.

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