September 2, 2025 • 32 mins
When someone you trust deeply hurts you in a way you never expected, how do you move forward? Dr. Bruce Chalmer, couples therapist and author, joins us to unravel the complex journey from betrayal to forgiveness.
Dr. Chalmer challenges common misconceptions about forgiveness, offering a perspective that might surprise you: "Forgiveness is an inside job." Rather than focusing on whether to restore your relationship with someone who hurt you, true forgiveness is about your internal healing process.
The conversation distinguishes between forgiveness and trust, making it clear that you can forgive someone without ever trusting them again. For those considering rebuilding trust after betrayal, Dr. Chalmer emphasizes the crucial role of accountability. Without genuine accountability from the person who caused harm, trust becomes virtually impossible to restore.
We also explore how healthy relationships require balancing two fundamental needs: stability and intimacy. Stability provides security, while intimacy fuels growth and connection. As Dr. Chalmer explains, "Roots provide stability, but intimacy is the energy for growth." When couples sacrifice intimacy for too long in pursuit of stability, the relationship becomes vulnerable to betrayal as someone inevitably tries to "crack the sidewalk."
Thanks for listening!
Check out this site for everthing to know about women's pleasure including video tutorials and great suggestions for bedroom time!!
https://for-goodness-sake-omgyes.sjv.io/c/5059274/1463336/17315
Take the happiness quiz from Oprah and Arthur Brooks here: https://arthurbrooks.com/build
NEW: Subscribe monthly: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1805181/support
Email questions/comments/feeback to tamara@straightfromthesourcesmouth.co
Website: https://straightfromthesourcesmouthpod.net/
Instagram: @fromthesourcesmouth_franktalk
Twitter: @tamarapodcast
YouTube and IG: Tamara_Schoon_comic
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Straight from the Source's Mouth
podcast.
Frank talk about sex and dating.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Hello, Tamara here.
Welcome to the show.
Today's guest is Dr BruceChalmer, a couples therapist and
author, and we'll be talkingabout betrayal and forgiveness.
Thanks for joining me, Bruce.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Well, thanks for having me on.
I'm delighted to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Yes, this is a new topic for the show, so it'll be
good, and I know a lot of peoplehave experienced this topic
betrayal and then whether or notthey should forgive so I'm
curious to hear your thoughts onthat.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Yeah, indeed, I wish I could say it wasn't common,
but it's very common and that'swhy I end up writing a book
about it.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Yeah, and did you?
I know you're also a therapist,so is that, I'm assuming that's
how you found out, that it wasvery common or everyone knows
that kind of thing?
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Yeah, and and you know I of course it depends on
how you define the concept ofbetrayal.
Anybody who's over I don't know, fill in a age.
Anybody who's over 20, you know, I mean we've all had our
hearts broken one time oranother, or somebody's done
something that you know wasreally hurtful, I mean betrayal.
When I talk about betrayal,it's not just somebody hurting
(01:08):
you, it's somebody hurting youin a way that you never would
have thought they would hurt you, based on your relationship
with them.
That's what I mean by betrayal,and so you know, a stranger can
hurt you, but they can't betrayyou.
It's somebody that you thought,oh my God, I never would have
thought you'd do that, and soit's really hard to deal with.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Yeah, yeah.
As soon as you said that, I'mlike, oh yeah, I can totally see
that when it's not expected andlike totally out of character
in your mind, yeah, yeah, that'swhat makes it a betrayal.
Yeah, for sure.
And then do you in your therapy?
Have you helped people?
I know you said the forgivenesspart.
Is that something you recommendor just depends on each couple?
(01:46):
Or like, what's your philosophyon forgiveness or not?
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Well, yeah, therein lies a tale, right?
Because it depends on what youmean by forgiveness.
And people use that termforgiveness in a lot of you know
well basically two differentways, and there's the way I like
and the way I don't.
And I'm not saying it's wrongto use it the way I don't, but
there's a reason why I use it aparticular way.
A lot of times, when people sayforgive, what they mean is okay
, if I forgive the person, I canrestore my relationship with
(02:12):
them.
You know, it means there's thatridiculous expression forgive
and forget, which is absurd,because if there's actually
something to forgive, you don'tforget it.
I mean barring dementia orsomething like that, you don't
forget it.
So it isn't about forgetting.
But sometimes people use theterm well, if I forgive somebody
, that must mean I'm going tosay I guess it wasn't so bad or
I guess I can trust them, andI'm saying no, that's not how I
(02:34):
want to use the term forgiveness, because that's a whole
different set of issues.
When I use the word forgive, Iuse it and I didn't coin this
phrase, but I like a way ofsaying it.
Forgiveness is an inside job.
In other words, if I forgivesomeone who hurt me.
It actually has almost nothingto do with my relationship with
them.
It has to do with my internalprocess.
(02:54):
If I can let go of the shock,the trauma, the pain, you know
if I can actually think about itand say, well, that sucked, but
now what?
That's what it feels like toforgive someone.
So that that takes time andthat takes work.
There are circumstances wherethat's not a good idea to do.
(03:15):
Yet, um, because if somebody,for example, somebody is in a
relationship where they arecontinually being hurt you know
some sort of abusiverelationship or something like
that they need the panic.
The panic is there for a reason.
They need that's a message fromyour body saying you got to
change something.
This is not tolerable.
So that's not the time toforgive someone.
(03:35):
But when?
If you're not in that kind ofsituation, if you're not, like,
acutely at risk, if it's just Idon't mean to trivialize it, but
if it's just painful but it'snot dangerous and you really
wonder, what do you do aboutyour relationship, you're going
to need to figure out how toforgive so that then you can
think clearly about trustingsomeone, because you know you
(03:55):
can forgive somebody.
According to the way I'mdefining forgiveness.
You can forgive somebody youdon't trust at all.
You know you can forgivesomeone and say, okay, I can
think about this and not freakout anymore.
But now I got to figure out canI trust this person Can?
Do I want to stay in arelationship with them?
You can forgive someone youhave every intention of
divorcing.
You can forgive someone youhave every intention of suing in
(04:16):
court or prosecuting orwhatever.
So all of those things you knowone, the the issue of of
trusting and restoring arelationship is a whole
different thing, and what I'msaying as I write about this is
it's hard to make a gooddecision about whether or not
you want to trust someone andstay in a relationship with them
unless you've attained somelevel of forgiveness, because
(04:39):
then you can't think clearly.
So how do you get there?
Of course, that's what peoplewill often wonder, and I always
love to point this out.
I talk about there are threesteps to forgiveness.
Beware of authors who saythings like there are three
steps to forgiveness.
Beware of people like me.
(05:00):
You know I mean don't take ittoo.
Don't take it too literally.
You know like I make it soundso simple.
You know well, step one, steptwo, step three.
No, it isn't that simple, butit is I.
The reason I wrote about itthat way is it's a way of
thinking about it I think helpspeople kind of.
First of all, it can give yousome sense that maybe it's
possible, because early on it isone of the first things you
(05:21):
have to do is recognize maybeit's possible to get there,
otherwise you're not going toeven take the first step.
So I like the idea of sort of,you know, laying it out in three
steps, but again, don't take ittoo literally.
Step one what I say is in termsof forgiving someone.
Step one is just about alwaysto forgive yourself, and
sometimes people say, well, waita minute, that no good
(05:42):
so-and-so cheating on me.
Why do I have to forgive myself?
You know it wasn't my fault.
Well, no, it's not that it was.
It's not that it was my faultif I got hurt.
But there's always some elementwhere I'm going to blame myself
, if for nothing else for notseeing it coming, for not
preventing it, for lettingmyself get so hurt.
You know, there's always inbetrayal it's there's always
that piece.
(06:03):
It's like how can I be sostupid, how can I be so blind?
People were trying to tell meand I wouldn't listen to them.
You know, all of those thingsare very common and to be able
to forgive myself is often thehardest step.
And well, I didn't know what Ididn't know.
I mean, I knew what I knew, butI didn't know what I didn't
(06:31):
know.
And I can say, well, I shouldhave known.
Well, okay, maybe I should have, but I didn't.
On that level I was doing thebest I could.
And when I can reach that placeof saying, damn, you know, I
wish that hadn't happened, but Iwas doing the best I could,
that's what it feels like toforgive yourself.
It's like, okay, well, I don'thave to keep beating up on
myself.
You know that the, the um, thatfeeling is associated with a
(06:52):
feeling that says, well, okay,hard lesson learned.
You know, okay, I learnedsomething.
You can't learn stuff withoutgetting it wrong first.
You know that's what learningsomething means.
If I already knew, I wouldn'thave gotten it wrong.
But you know, you learn morefrom when you get something
wrong than when you get it right.
You know.
So when I can accept that, whenI can say, okay, bummer, that I
didn't figure this out sooner,but I didn't do the best I could
(07:15):
, here I am.
When you can do that, I claimthat the second step, the second
step is forgiving the personwho hurt you, and I claim that's
a pretty short step.
Oddly enough, you know it maysound odd.
It's like, well, wait a minute,what does that have to do with
the other person?
Well, if I can really sense inmy heart, in my gut, I was doing
the best I could, I can extendthat to the person who hurt me.
(07:42):
It's like, well damn, you know,I wish they hadn't been so
resentful.
I wish they hadn't had thethoughts they were having.
I wish they hadn't beeninfluenced by the conspiracy
theory they were influenced by,or whatever the hell it was.
You know, but they were.
Human beings are like that.
You know that can happen.
On that level, I guess theywere doing the best they could
too.
They shouldn't have cheated.
They shouldn't have done, youknow, they shouldn't have lied.
(08:02):
They shouldn't have done thethings they did.
I'm not saying it's okay, I'mjust saying, well, given who
they were, they were.
That's what they came up with.
They were doing the best theycould too.
I don't have to be, I don'thave to be furious about it when
I think about it anymore.
I can just recognize wish ithad been different, but it
(08:26):
wasn't.
You know, lesson learned aboutother people too.
And then you can.
That's what it feels like toforgive.
It's like, okay, I don't haveto, I don't have to go into a
panic whenever I think about it.
It's very similar to recoveringfrom trauma, because betrayal is
a kind of trauma, and earlierin my career, before I was
concentrating mostly on couples,I did a lot of work with folks
who were recovering from trauma,people with PTSD and various
other kinds of you know traumamanifestations and I've always
(08:48):
pointed out, you know, traumaisn't the effects of a PTSD, for
example, isn't a disease in thesense that there's something
wrong with your brain.
Ptsd is your brain trying toprotect you.
It sucks.
I'm not saying it's easy todeal with, I'm just saying, yes,
you're, you're overcompensating.
But.
But evolution favors those whopanic too much rather than those
(09:09):
who panic too little, becausethose who panic too little
didn't become our ancestors.
They got eaten right.
Yeah, so you know it isn'tsurprising.
That's what we tend toward togo through a betrayal, when
you're traumatized by betrayal,if the trauma is still active,
in the sense that anytime you'rereminded of it, you freak,
you're not going to be able tothink clearly about going
(09:30):
forward.
So forgiveness is really a wayof getting past that.
Forgiving the person who hurtyou.
You get past it.
It's like, well, okay, I don'thave to freak when I think about
it.
You know, initially it's hardto wrap your brain around the
idea that somebody that you loveor somebody that you trusted or
you know would do that to you,whatever it was.
But once you get past thatsense of disbelief and panic,
(09:53):
then you can figure okay, nowwhat do I want to do about this
relationship?
And that's that's.
That's harder.
So I mentioned three steps toforgiveness.
So step one forgive yourself.
Step two forgive whoever hurtyou.
Step three I give a funny nameto, and you don't have to be
religious to appreciate this.
So there's a little, you know,spoiler alert here.
(10:14):
I call it forgive God.
So what does it mean to forgiveGod?
You don't even have to believein God in any traditional sense
to appreciate this.
It means, okay, I can acceptthat I only knew I was doing the
best I could.
I can accept that the personwho hurt me was doing the best
they could.
Now I have to accept that theuniverse is like that.
You know, damn it.
That shouldn't happen, shouldit?
(10:34):
You know, why do bad thingshappen to good people?
The classic question, you knowWell, because it does.
And not only does it.
But when I say forgive God, it'snot merely saying, oh, you know
, life's a bitch, and then youdie.
I don't mean that.
I mean there's something rightabout it, even though I wish it
was so painful sometimes.
You know, it's like.
You know the theologians willtalk about it.
(10:56):
The why do bad things happen togood people will say, well,
it's all about free will.
You know, if we didn't havefree will, we couldn't.
You know, if we couldn't doevil, we wouldn't have free will
.
And it's good to have free will.
So it kind of has to be thatway.
It's sort of like that.
It's like, yeah, damn it.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
It has to be possible to get hurt this way, even
though I wish, yeah, they saylike you can't have joy without
hurt and all the all theopposites like that, yeah, yeah.
And then I know, um, also likeoprah talks about you, for if
you don't forgive, it'sbasically you think you're
poisoning them but you'repoisoning yourself.
So she, she mentions that likeyou're holding a grudge, the
other person has no idea, likepotentially, yeah, I mean,
depending on how close you are,obviously, if it's uh intimate.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
And anna lamott uh, I like to give credit to Anne
Lamott.
I think her quote is she's anovelist, but she's written a
lot about this.
Her quote is to not forgive islike drinking rat poison and
waiting for the rat to die.
It's like, yeah, you got to getthe poison out of yourself and
then you can think about the rat.
You might still be dealing witha rat no question you might but
if you poison yourself, it'snot going to do you any good,
(12:00):
and so forgiveness is really allabout getting the poison out of
you as a therapist, have youever recommended like for sure,
or I'm sure you let the couplesdecide, but are there some
betrayals that are like extrabad?
Speaker 2 (12:10):
I mean I know you said the abuse for sure, yeah,
like a one-time cheat versuslike you know or just whatever,
like examples of that differentkind of betrayals and what you
would, for sure you know, thinkharder on or it's interesting,
you know, as you point out, yeah, of course the couple's going
to decide for themselves what todo.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
It is I.
The longer I've done this work,I think, the less inclined I am
to give advice in the sense ofthis is what you should do.
It's funny.
Early on in my career I waslike really precious about that.
You know, I would never want tosay anything that sounded like
advice.
After a while I realized thatpeople are coming to me because
they think maybe I knowsomething and so I could
(12:51):
actually share.
You know, I'm happy to offer myopinions.
You know, the one thing I amreally convinced of, and remain
convinced of, is I don't knowbetter than they do how they
should live their lives.
I do not know that they're theexpert on living their own lives
.
They're the ones who have thepower to do it.
They have to do it.
You know, when you're talkingabout betrayal, kind of by
(13:12):
definition, it's always big.
Now there are some couples Iwill work with where the the
work turns out to be the personwho felt betrayed deciding oh, I
guess it really wasn't abetrayal, was it?
It was unpleasant, but itwasn't.
I guess I don't have to thinkof it as a betrayal, you know, I
don't have to think of it as,oh my god, I can't imagine
(13:33):
someone I was trusting would dothat.
It's like, well, maybe I canrealize that, you know.
You know, the classic exampleof that is and it's almost
always gendered this way is acouple comes in, heterosexual
couple comes in, the woman ispissed because the guy was
looking at porn and she feelslike it was cheating.
And often where that goes isshe realizes.
(13:54):
Now I guess I don't have tothink of it as cheating or a
betrayal, I just don't like it.
And sometimes you never knowwhere that conversation is going
to go, because sometimes wherethat goes and the guy the guy's
got to understand where she'scoming from or won't you know
won't do either of many good.
And sometimes where that goesis the guy realizes oh my God,
yeah, I've been using that inways that are to the detriment
of our actual relationship.
(14:14):
And sometimes it goes thatshe's realizing wait a minute, I
can relax about this.
It isn't really cheating, it'sjust you know, men as a group
(14:37):
tend to get turned on has anydifficulty understanding that it
was a betrayal and often itlet's say infidelity of some
kind in a monogamousrelationship and the one who did
the cheating is feeling like Iwill often say I wouldn't have
thought in a million years I'dbe sitting here saying I cheated
on my spouse.
And the other person is oftensaying I wouldn't have thought
in a million years that if myspouse cheated on me, I'd still
(14:59):
be here trying to save therelationship.
And so you know it's, it'salmost always big in that sense,
and where they go with that it,it really varies.
You know, it's what I, what Icount as success isn't
necessarily that they staytogether or not.
You know, what I count assuccess is that they come out of
it feeling like okay, we, itfeels right to do what we're
(15:23):
doing, whether that's staytogether or not.
And it is often the case thatthe you know when, when you
evaluate success in couplestherapy, there are three
opinions, at least there's mine,which is ought to be the least
important of the three, and thenthere's the couple, and they
don't.
They sometimes don't agree inthat.
You know, sometimes a couplecomes in for some sessions and
(15:43):
the one who would kind of hadone foot out the door is
realizing, yep, I am now moreconvinced than ever that I need
to break up, and the otherperson is devastated, feeling
that I hope this was going tosave our relationship and, and
they're both right.
I'm relationship and and andthey're both right.
And you know what am I supposedto say?
Was that a success or a failure?
Yes, it was.
It was both, depending on who'sasking about it yeah, yeah, I
(16:05):
was actually in that scenarioonce.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
He brought me in, hoping it would, and I was like,
no, like I know for sure I wantto, but yeah, and then, um,
have you after.
Do you follow through with them?
I'm assuming, like once you've,if they to stay, how often do
they stay together?
Does it end up working Like in?
Do you know, like a percentageor potential?
Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
And it's funny because in my former life,
before I was a, before I didclinical work, I was a
statistician.
So you think you know, oh, I'dbe all about keeping track of
the numbers.
It's not that I'm afraid tokeep track of the numbers, it's
that I don't know how toevaluate success in the way I
was just describing.
It's like I know a lot of themstay together and a lot of them
don't.
How's that?
You know it's not.
(16:49):
I don't think of it in that,doesn't?
Those don't fit perfectly withwhether I think it's a success
or not?
So I, you know that's sort oflike do they stay in town or do
they move somewhere else?
That's sort of.
I don't think of that as therelevant thing, you know.
So I'm constantly asking peoplequite explicitly to evaluate
(17:10):
how's it going.
You know it's not like I'mafraid to wonder out loud like
is this helping?
In fact, the very firstquestion I ask people I've been
doing this for decades now thevery first question I ask people
, after my little spiel aboutconfidentiality and you know
that stuff, I say, okay, here'smy favorite opening question how
will you know if this ishelping?
I focus them on that right inthe beginning.
(17:32):
It's like maybe this will help,maybe it won't.
You know, pay attention to thatand I'll ask it as we go.
If it's, you know, unless it'sobvious to all one way or the
other, I will ask it veryexplicitly because I want them
to know.
But I don't.
Yeah, I don't keep track oflike and I see people who do and
I am highly suspicious of that,frankly.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Yeah, I guess I'm more curious, like, if they stay
together, have you found thatsome were like really happy?
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Like you know, like it totally worked out and they
don't regret it at all and theywork through it and kind of
thing.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Yes, in fact that's one of the most inspiring parts
of it.
You know the work.
It's really fascinating.
It's basically more or lesskind of generalized.
The couples that are coming inwith betrayal and end up staying
together pretty much only staytogether if things are better
than they were before and theyvery often will express
(18:27):
gratitude.
I've never heard anybody sayhey, thanks for cheating.
Haven't heard that one, butI've heard almost like that and
it's one I tell in one of mybooks.
Actually it's kind of one of mygo-to stories.
I was a couple I was workingwith a few years ago now,
actually, yeah, before thepandemic, and before the
pandemic is significant becausewe were having what we knew to
(18:50):
be a last session.
It's before I was doing anytelehealth and we knew it was
going to be the last sessionbecause they were leaving town.
They were going to be moving.
It turned out, and I'd workedwith them for about a year and a
half, I think.
When they first came to see methey were just a mess.
She had just found out abouthis cheating with some coworkers
a couple of different times.
He was realizing he had adrinking problem, was in serious
(19:14):
trouble at his work because ofthat I think she said she had
lost like 30 pounds in the pastsix weeks, or it was that kind
of that.
She was she.
I think she said she had lostlike 30 pounds in the past six
weeks, or, you know, it was thatkind of thing.
She couldn't eat, she was justin terrible shape.
And they did this amazing workwhere he was just so, so
accountable and she was too.
Interestingly, she wasn'tblaming herself for his having
(19:34):
affairs, but anyway, they endedup.
She said our last session we'rekind of reviewing this great
work they had done.
They were so much better off,both happier.
She turned to him and said hey,thanks for taking one for the
team.
And he said oh, what do youmean by that?
And I said what do you mean bythat?
And she said well, you're theone who has to feel guilty
because he's the one who did thecheating.
(19:56):
You know which?
Of course he felt guiltyappropriately, because he's the
one who did the cheating.
You know which of course hefelt guilty appropriately.
You know it's like yeah, thatwas wrong.
He knew he shouldn't do that.
She knew he shouldn't do that,but she was appreciating the
fact.
You know, what she was sayingwas clearly we now know we were
headed for trouble.
Our relationship was clearly introuble.
This was a manifestation ofthat.
She wasn't blaming herself forhis cheating, but she was part
of their relationship being introuble.
(20:17):
And she said not only are we somuch better off, but she was
saying I'm better off with myfriends, I'm better off with my
coworkers, I'm better off withthe kids.
I'm not freaking out about allkinds of things I used to freak
out about.
So thanks, this was really whatwe needed.
Yeah, it's like thanks, Ineeded that.
You know, so that they willoften do that.
I do find that inspiring.
(20:38):
So the ones that stay togetherusually, it's something like
that the ones that split upoccasionally, it's something
like that Not usually,occasionally they'll say well,
we kind of knew this is where ithad to go.
Thanks for clarifying.
That'll be the case.
So, yeah, that does happen.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
And I imagine accountability, like you said
earlier, is the thing that mostwomen especially, I'm guessing
or either side would want to seefrom the other side.
If there is betrayal, oh,absolutely, just admitting it
and yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Yeah, that would seem .
If there isn't that, you canforgive, but it's very hard to
trust.
That's the difference.
So you know, if you can get tothat place of sufficient
forgiveness so you're notfreaking out, Then you got to
worry about trust.
And if the person isn'taccountable, there's no way you
can trust them.
And I kind of mean that almostas synonymous.
It's like yeah, you can,Accountability is pretty much
(21:32):
the same thing astrustworthiness.
You know it's like OK, whatwill help somebody develop trust
again is if they realize andit's interesting because this
goes both ways no-transcripttrust that that wouldn't happen
(22:10):
again, because if things startedto go off the rails, they they
would deal with it, they talkabout it, they they'd identify
it rather than acting it out.
So that's the one who gotcheated on has to trust.
The one who cheated has totrust that the other person is
capable of trusting them again,that they're not going to live
constantly where they're thepermanent villain and the other
(22:30):
person is the permanentprobation officer, because
nobody wants to live like that.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Yeah, I can see that.
And then, as far as likeprevention, is there anything as
a couple therapist you see thathelps people stay in healthy
relationships, like what keeps arelationship healthy?
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Yeah Well, that actually relates to a little
spiel I give in almost everyfirst session.
In fact, I write about this inone of my books, not the
Patronal Forgiveness book, butthe previous one, which has a
funny title, by the way it'scalled.
It's not about communication,why everything you know about
couples therapy is wrong.
Is that a snarky title or whatsnarky title?
(23:12):
That?
And the the second part, whyeverything you know about
couples therapy is wrong.
A little spoiler alert Imentioned later in the book that
applies to me too.
Everything I know about couplestherapy is wrong too.
You know, it's not the ideas,it's claiming that you know.
You know, claiming that youknow.
That's the problem.
So, but that actually relatesto the first session I do.
(23:33):
It's the only one I do that Ihave a pretty specific structure
for, and part of that structureis this little spiel I give,
which relates to what you'retalking about in terms of
preventative.
You know what?
What will help a couplefunction?
Basically to one way ofunderstanding what.
What is it that helps a couplefunction?
It's when two sets of needs areadequately fulfilled, and I
(23:56):
reason I talk about two sets isthe skills you need for one are
very different from the skillsyou need for the other.
In fact they're kind of inconflict, but they're both needs
, you know I mean that wordneeds I'm using carefully, it's
like no, and they're not desires, they're needs.
If they're not adequatelyfulfilled, something's broken,
it's not going to work.
So what are the two sets ofneeds?
They are stability and intimacy, and so short answer to your
(24:19):
question.
I've already made it somewhatlong, but short answer to your
question is what makes a couplework well is when they have both
of those adequately fulfilled.
The interesting thing is, theskills of stability are about
avoiding anxiety.
The skills of intimacy areabout tolerating anxiety, and
they're both important.
(24:39):
So you know, why would peopleavoid anxiety?
Well, like, for example, one ofthe things I will always ask in
a first session, if theyhaven't already said, is has
there been any infidelity?
I mean, I'll ask about itspecifically and if the answer
to that is no, that's in favorof stability.
Which is to say, infidelity ishugely destabilizing, it drives
(25:00):
anxiety through the roof.
You know sobriety.
I'll ask about substance abuse,if anybody's having serious
substance abuse issues or arethey worried about it?
You know too much of something.
Whatever they decide is toomuch is not for me.
I'm not evaluating that, but ifthey're saying no, we really
don't have any issues aroundthat.
That also works for stability,because if somebody is
(25:20):
habitually not sober, it'sreally destabilizing.
Not sober, it's reallydestabilizing.
So, and you know, they get intoan argument and if they've been
drinking, it usually goes offthe rails or often goes off the
rails.
So all of that relates tostability Basically.
I will often point out to peopleand this is true almost all the
time there have been over 30years of doing this work, there
(25:41):
have been a few exceptions Iwill almost always say to the
couple, when I'm talking aboutstability, well, I can already
tell something about the two ofyou.
Neither one of you is batshitcrazy, right, and they usually
smile and occasionally saysomething like well, you haven't
seen me yet.
You know.
I know we all have our moments,but and I don't mean to make
fun of serious mental healthissues, but what I'm referring
(26:02):
to there is they're not,apparently, they're not
psychotic, they're not thinkingthe FBI is controlling signals
in their brain, they're nothaving a untreated manic episode
where they're just nuts.
You know, they're not nuts.
That's about stability.
So all those things areimportant, you know, uh and, and
you do things like you knowmake a life together, fall in
love, have kids, get married,buy a house.
(26:24):
All of that stuff.
All of that privilegesstability.
You want to keep things stable,especially having kids.
Most parents don't want theirkids to feel like the marriage
is shaky, so all that's aboutstability.
The chief skill of intimacy Imentioned is to tolerate anxiety
, and the reason for that is ifyou're going to be, what do I
(26:45):
mean by intimacy?
By intimacy I just mean to be.
What do I mean by intimacy?
By intimacy I just mean to bepresent and honest with yourself
and each other.
That's what I mean by intimacy,and to do that sometimes that
means you're going to saysomething that you're pretty
sure will not be fun for yourpartner to hear.
It's going to raise anxiety, acomplaint, you know, a simple
complaint or not just acomplaint.
(27:05):
But what if you want to talkabout a dream or a fantasy or
something you know, be that inthe sexual domain or just more
generally?
You know you're worried.
Your partner will hear it andthink you're weird or be
repulsed by it, or who knowswhat they'll think will often do
because they privilegestability, they'll avoid that
(27:26):
and maybe start to walk oneggshells because there's
something bothering them, butthey won't say it, especially if
they've tried to say it andit's gone off the rails and over
time.
What happens is they shut downin the intimacy department.
Sometimes that's reflected in acouple's sex life Often it is.
It's not a perfect correlationwith intimacy more generally,
but it's often a pretty good one, and so they end up more and
(27:50):
more estranged from each other,even though they're all about
stability, and that becomesdestabilizing.
And so that's, you know, and myfavorite.
I'll give you my favoritemetaphor about stability and
intimacy.
If you think about a plant, youplant a seed in soil and it
germinates and sprouts starts togrow.
Somebody comes along and pavesa sidewalk over it.
Well, why do they do that?
(28:11):
Well, because it makes it morestable, it's easier to walk on.
You know what's that plantgoing to do?
It's going to either crack thesidewalk or die.
Trying to crack the sidewalkbecause it won't just sit there.
Roots provide stability, butintimacy is the energy for
growth, and that's true in aplant, it's true in an
individual, it's true in acouple.
Couples want to interact andfeel alive and grow, and if that
(28:36):
gets compromised, somebodytries to crack the sidewalk.
And what does cracking thesidewalk look like An affair.
Or they fight about everythingand nothing except what they're
really worried about.
Or somebody all of a suddengets depressed or maybe not all
of a sudden, but somebody getsvery depressed.
Or somebody all of a suddensays I'm out of here, I can't
stand it, blindsiding the otherperson.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Various kinds of betrayals often result from
compromised intimacy yeah, I wasjust going to add one thing
about aging as well.
Like, Like both sides, you know, menopause for women stuff
changes down there, For menstuff changes and they're both
afraid to potentially talk aboutwhat's going on really and just
stop doing it because it'seither painful or unable or less
(29:19):
able.
So, yeah, that's definitelypart of it too.
I would think.
Yeah, that's definitely part ofit too.
I would think.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Yeah, absolutely, and that's you kind of.
You identified the thing.
You know, of course, over thelifespan, of course, stuff
changes, everything changes andthe key there and you identified
the keys to be able to talkabout it rather than avoiding it
.
It's like, oh my God, thishurts, you know, rather than
just saying so, I'm not going tohave sex anymore.
(29:44):
It's like let's talk about that.
Maybe there's ways, things wecan do, or maybe there's things
we have to accept.
You know, as you get older,there are medical conditions
that happen to people thatrequire them to accept some new
realities.
But there are ways of adaptingto all those things if you can
actually risk talking about it.
And that's where a lot ofcouples have trouble.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Yeah, and I have several episodes on that, like
menopause for women and all thestuff you can take and do
differently, and then Edie a fewepisodes on that and some toys
and stuff.
So I just wanted to throw thatout there.
But do you want to talk abouthow people can reach you or work
with you or check out yourbooks and your information?
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Absolutely yeah.
The easiest way for all of thatis just to go to my website,
which is brucechalmercom, so ifyou spell my name right you'll
get it B-R-U-C-E-C-H-A-L-M-E-R,brucechalmercom.
That has information about mypractice, information about my
books and my wife.
I'll put in a plug for thepodcast my wife and I do.
My wife is Judy Alexander andwe do a podcast together called
(30:45):
Couples Therapy in Seven Words.
So I'll put in a plug for thatas well, and people are welcome
to check that out.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
Very cool?
Yeah, definitely All right.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
And then are there any takeaways you want to leave
the listeners with before weyeah, my favorite takeaway in
fact I have it on a cup forthose of you who are watching
the video I mentioned, ourpodcast is Couples Therapy in
Seven Words.
Well, those are the seven wordsBe kind, don't panic and have
faith.
That's the seven words and Iwrite a lot about.
(31:14):
You know that's seven words,but you know three concepts
there.
I write a lot about that andthat's what I would leave people
with.
It's kind of a way ofunderstanding the whole business
of couples work.
Be Understanding the wholebusiness of couples work.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
Be kind, don't panic and have faith.
Yeah, awesome, All right.
Well, thank you very much forbeing on.
Great information andespecially because it's a new
topic for my show.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Especially like that.
Yes, thank you again, and ifyou love this episode, be sure
to tell your friends about itand rate it as well.
And be sure to check out hiswebsite, brucechalmercom.
All right, thanks everyone.
Welcome to the Straight from the Source's Mouth
podcast.
Frank talk about sex and dating.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Hello, Tamara here.
Welcome to the show.
Today's guest is Dr BruceChalmer, a couples therapist and
author, and we'll be talkingabout betrayal and forgiveness.
Thanks for joining me, Bruce.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Well, thanks for having me on.
I'm delighted to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Yes, this is a new topic for the show, so it'll be
good, and I know a lot of peoplehave experienced this topic
betrayal and then whether or notthey should forgive so I'm
curious to hear your thoughts onthat.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Yeah, indeed, I wish I could say it wasn't common,
but it's very common and that'swhy I end up writing a book
about it.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Yeah, and did you?
I know you're also a therapist,so is that, I'm assuming that's
how you found out, that it wasvery common or everyone knows
that kind of thing?
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Yeah, and and you know I of course it depends on
how you define the concept ofbetrayal.
Anybody who's over I don't know, fill in a age.
Anybody who's over 20, you know, I mean we've all had our
hearts broken one time oranother, or somebody's done
something that you know wasreally hurtful, I mean betrayal.
When I talk about betrayal,it's not just somebody hurting
(01:08):
you, it's somebody hurting youin a way that you never would
have thought they would hurt you, based on your relationship
with them.
That's what I mean by betrayal,and so you know, a stranger can
hurt you, but they can't betrayyou.
It's somebody that you thought,oh my God, I never would have
thought you'd do that, and soit's really hard to deal with.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Yeah, yeah.
As soon as you said that, I'mlike, oh yeah, I can totally see
that when it's not expected andlike totally out of character
in your mind, yeah, yeah, that'swhat makes it a betrayal.
Yeah, for sure.
And then do you in your therapy?
Have you helped people?
I know you said the forgivenesspart.
Is that something you recommendor just depends on each couple?
(01:46):
Or like, what's your philosophyon forgiveness or not?
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Well, yeah, therein lies a tale, right?
Because it depends on what youmean by forgiveness.
And people use that termforgiveness in a lot of you know
well basically two differentways, and there's the way I like
and the way I don't.
And I'm not saying it's wrongto use it the way I don't, but
there's a reason why I use it aparticular way.
A lot of times, when people sayforgive, what they mean is okay
, if I forgive the person, I canrestore my relationship with
(02:12):
them.
You know, it means there's thatridiculous expression forgive
and forget, which is absurd,because if there's actually
something to forgive, you don'tforget it.
I mean barring dementia orsomething like that, you don't
forget it.
So it isn't about forgetting.
But sometimes people use theterm well, if I forgive somebody
, that must mean I'm going tosay I guess it wasn't so bad or
I guess I can trust them, andI'm saying no, that's not how I
(02:34):
want to use the term forgiveness, because that's a whole
different set of issues.
When I use the word forgive, Iuse it and I didn't coin this
phrase, but I like a way ofsaying it.
Forgiveness is an inside job.
In other words, if I forgivesomeone who hurt me.
It actually has almost nothingto do with my relationship with
them.
It has to do with my internalprocess.
(02:54):
If I can let go of the shock,the trauma, the pain, you know
if I can actually think about itand say, well, that sucked, but
now what?
That's what it feels like toforgive someone.
So that that takes time andthat takes work.
There are circumstances wherethat's not a good idea to do.
(03:15):
Yet, um, because if somebody,for example, somebody is in a
relationship where they arecontinually being hurt you know
some sort of abusiverelationship or something like
that they need the panic.
The panic is there for a reason.
They need that's a message fromyour body saying you got to
change something.
This is not tolerable.
So that's not the time toforgive someone.
(03:35):
But when?
If you're not in that kind ofsituation, if you're not, like,
acutely at risk, if it's just Idon't mean to trivialize it, but
if it's just painful but it'snot dangerous and you really
wonder, what do you do aboutyour relationship, you're going
to need to figure out how toforgive so that then you can
think clearly about trustingsomeone, because you know you
(03:55):
can forgive somebody.
According to the way I'mdefining forgiveness.
You can forgive somebody youdon't trust at all.
You know you can forgivesomeone and say, okay, I can
think about this and not freakout anymore.
But now I got to figure out canI trust this person Can?
Do I want to stay in arelationship with them?
You can forgive someone youhave every intention of
divorcing.
You can forgive someone youhave every intention of suing in
(04:16):
court or prosecuting orwhatever.
So all of those things you knowone, the the issue of of
trusting and restoring arelationship is a whole
different thing, and what I'msaying as I write about this is
it's hard to make a gooddecision about whether or not
you want to trust someone andstay in a relationship with them
unless you've attained somelevel of forgiveness, because
(04:39):
then you can't think clearly.
So how do you get there?
Of course, that's what peoplewill often wonder, and I always
love to point this out.
I talk about there are threesteps to forgiveness.
Beware of authors who saythings like there are three
steps to forgiveness.
Beware of people like me.
(05:00):
You know I mean don't take ittoo.
Don't take it too literally.
You know like I make it soundso simple.
You know well, step one, steptwo, step three.
No, it isn't that simple, butit is I.
The reason I wrote about itthat way is it's a way of
thinking about it I think helpspeople kind of.
First of all, it can give yousome sense that maybe it's
possible, because early on it isone of the first things you
(05:21):
have to do is recognize maybeit's possible to get there,
otherwise you're not going toeven take the first step.
So I like the idea of sort of,you know, laying it out in three
steps, but again, don't take ittoo literally.
Step one what I say is in termsof forgiving someone.
Step one is just about alwaysto forgive yourself, and
sometimes people say, well, waita minute, that no good
(05:42):
so-and-so cheating on me.
Why do I have to forgive myself?
You know it wasn't my fault.
Well, no, it's not that it was.
It's not that it was my faultif I got hurt.
But there's always some elementwhere I'm going to blame myself
, if for nothing else for notseeing it coming, for not
preventing it, for lettingmyself get so hurt.
You know, there's always inbetrayal it's there's always
that piece.
(06:03):
It's like how can I be sostupid, how can I be so blind?
People were trying to tell meand I wouldn't listen to them.
You know, all of those thingsare very common and to be able
to forgive myself is often thehardest step.
And well, I didn't know what Ididn't know.
I mean, I knew what I knew, butI didn't know what I didn't
(06:31):
know.
And I can say, well, I shouldhave known.
Well, okay, maybe I should have, but I didn't.
On that level I was doing thebest I could.
And when I can reach that placeof saying, damn, you know, I
wish that hadn't happened, but Iwas doing the best I could,
that's what it feels like toforgive yourself.
It's like, okay, well, I don'thave to keep beating up on
myself.
You know that the, the um, thatfeeling is associated with a
(06:52):
feeling that says, well, okay,hard lesson learned.
You know, okay, I learnedsomething.
You can't learn stuff withoutgetting it wrong first.
You know that's what learningsomething means.
If I already knew, I wouldn'thave gotten it wrong.
But you know, you learn morefrom when you get something
wrong than when you get it right.
You know.
So when I can accept that, whenI can say, okay, bummer, that I
didn't figure this out sooner,but I didn't do the best I could
(07:15):
, here I am.
When you can do that, I claimthat the second step, the second
step is forgiving the personwho hurt you, and I claim that's
a pretty short step.
Oddly enough, you know it maysound odd.
It's like, well, wait a minute,what does that have to do with
the other person?
Well, if I can really sense inmy heart, in my gut, I was doing
the best I could, I can extendthat to the person who hurt me.
(07:42):
It's like, well damn, you know,I wish they hadn't been so
resentful.
I wish they hadn't had thethoughts they were having.
I wish they hadn't beeninfluenced by the conspiracy
theory they were influenced by,or whatever the hell it was.
You know, but they were.
Human beings are like that.
You know that can happen.
On that level, I guess theywere doing the best they could
too.
They shouldn't have cheated.
They shouldn't have done, youknow, they shouldn't have lied.
(08:02):
They shouldn't have done thethings they did.
I'm not saying it's okay, I'mjust saying, well, given who
they were, they were.
That's what they came up with.
They were doing the best theycould too.
I don't have to be, I don'thave to be furious about it when
I think about it anymore.
I can just recognize wish ithad been different, but it
(08:26):
wasn't.
You know, lesson learned aboutother people too.
And then you can.
That's what it feels like toforgive.
It's like, okay, I don't haveto, I don't have to go into a
panic whenever I think about it.
It's very similar to recoveringfrom trauma, because betrayal is
a kind of trauma, and earlierin my career, before I was
concentrating mostly on couples,I did a lot of work with folks
who were recovering from trauma,people with PTSD and various
other kinds of you know traumamanifestations and I've always
(08:48):
pointed out, you know, traumaisn't the effects of a PTSD, for
example, isn't a disease in thesense that there's something
wrong with your brain.
Ptsd is your brain trying toprotect you.
It sucks.
I'm not saying it's easy todeal with, I'm just saying, yes,
you're, you're overcompensating.
But.
But evolution favors those whopanic too much rather than those
(09:09):
who panic too little, becausethose who panic too little
didn't become our ancestors.
They got eaten right.
Yeah, so you know it isn'tsurprising.
That's what we tend toward togo through a betrayal, when
you're traumatized by betrayal,if the trauma is still active,
in the sense that anytime you'rereminded of it, you freak,
you're not going to be able tothink clearly about going
(09:30):
forward.
So forgiveness is really a wayof getting past that.
Forgiving the person who hurtyou.
You get past it.
It's like, well, okay, I don'thave to freak when I think about
it.
You know, initially it's hardto wrap your brain around the
idea that somebody that you loveor somebody that you trusted or
you know would do that to you,whatever it was.
But once you get past thatsense of disbelief and panic,
(09:53):
then you can figure okay, nowwhat do I want to do about this
relationship?
And that's that's.
That's harder.
So I mentioned three steps toforgiveness.
So step one forgive yourself.
Step two forgive whoever hurtyou.
Step three I give a funny nameto, and you don't have to be
religious to appreciate this.
So there's a little, you know,spoiler alert here.
(10:14):
I call it forgive God.
So what does it mean to forgiveGod?
You don't even have to believein God in any traditional sense
to appreciate this.
It means, okay, I can acceptthat I only knew I was doing the
best I could.
I can accept that the personwho hurt me was doing the best
they could.
Now I have to accept that theuniverse is like that.
You know, damn it.
That shouldn't happen, shouldit?
(10:34):
You know, why do bad thingshappen to good people?
The classic question, you knowWell, because it does.
And not only does it.
But when I say forgive God, it'snot merely saying, oh, you know
, life's a bitch, and then youdie.
I don't mean that.
I mean there's something rightabout it, even though I wish it
was so painful sometimes.
You know, it's like.
You know the theologians willtalk about it.
(10:56):
The why do bad things happen togood people will say, well,
it's all about free will.
You know, if we didn't havefree will, we couldn't.
You know, if we couldn't doevil, we wouldn't have free will
.
And it's good to have free will.
So it kind of has to be thatway.
It's sort of like that.
It's like, yeah, damn it.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
It has to be possible to get hurt this way, even
though I wish, yeah, they saylike you can't have joy without
hurt and all the all theopposites like that, yeah, yeah.
And then I know, um, also likeoprah talks about you, for if
you don't forgive, it'sbasically you think you're
poisoning them but you'repoisoning yourself.
So she, she mentions that likeyou're holding a grudge, the
other person has no idea, likepotentially, yeah, I mean,
depending on how close you are,obviously, if it's uh intimate.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
And anna lamott uh, I like to give credit to Anne
Lamott.
I think her quote is she's anovelist, but she's written a
lot about this.
Her quote is to not forgive islike drinking rat poison and
waiting for the rat to die.
It's like, yeah, you got to getthe poison out of yourself and
then you can think about the rat.
You might still be dealing witha rat no question you might but
if you poison yourself, it'snot going to do you any good,
(12:00):
and so forgiveness is really allabout getting the poison out of
you as a therapist, have youever recommended like for sure,
or I'm sure you let the couplesdecide, but are there some
betrayals that are like extrabad?
Speaker 2 (12:10):
I mean I know you said the abuse for sure, yeah,
like a one-time cheat versuslike you know or just whatever,
like examples of that differentkind of betrayals and what you
would, for sure you know, thinkharder on or it's interesting,
you know, as you point out, yeah, of course the couple's going
to decide for themselves what todo.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
It is I.
The longer I've done this work,I think, the less inclined I am
to give advice in the sense ofthis is what you should do.
It's funny.
Early on in my career I waslike really precious about that.
You know, I would never want tosay anything that sounded like
advice.
After a while I realized thatpeople are coming to me because
they think maybe I knowsomething and so I could
(12:51):
actually share.
You know, I'm happy to offer myopinions.
You know, the one thing I amreally convinced of, and remain
convinced of, is I don't knowbetter than they do how they
should live their lives.
I do not know that they're theexpert on living their own lives
.
They're the ones who have thepower to do it.
They have to do it.
You know, when you're talkingabout betrayal, kind of by
(13:12):
definition, it's always big.
Now there are some couples Iwill work with where the the
work turns out to be the personwho felt betrayed deciding oh, I
guess it really wasn't abetrayal, was it?
It was unpleasant, but itwasn't.
I guess I don't have to thinkof it as a betrayal, you know, I
don't have to think of it as,oh my god, I can't imagine
(13:33):
someone I was trusting would dothat.
It's like, well, maybe I canrealize that, you know.
You know, the classic exampleof that is and it's almost
always gendered this way is acouple comes in, heterosexual
couple comes in, the woman ispissed because the guy was
looking at porn and she feelslike it was cheating.
And often where that goes isshe realizes.
(13:54):
Now I guess I don't have tothink of it as cheating or a
betrayal, I just don't like it.
And sometimes you never knowwhere that conversation is going
to go, because sometimes wherethat goes and the guy the guy's
got to understand where she'scoming from or won't you know
won't do either of many good.
And sometimes where that goesis the guy realizes oh my God,
yeah, I've been using that inways that are to the detriment
of our actual relationship.
(14:14):
And sometimes it goes thatshe's realizing wait a minute, I
can relax about this.
It isn't really cheating, it'sjust you know, men as a group
(14:37):
tend to get turned on has anydifficulty understanding that it
was a betrayal and often itlet's say infidelity of some
kind in a monogamousrelationship and the one who did
the cheating is feeling like Iwill often say I wouldn't have
thought in a million years I'dbe sitting here saying I cheated
on my spouse.
And the other person is oftensaying I wouldn't have thought
in a million years that if myspouse cheated on me, I'd still
(14:59):
be here trying to save therelationship.
And so you know it's, it'salmost always big in that sense,
and where they go with that it,it really varies.
You know, it's what I, what Icount as success isn't
necessarily that they staytogether or not.
You know, what I count assuccess is that they come out of
it feeling like okay, we, itfeels right to do what we're
(15:23):
doing, whether that's staytogether or not.
And it is often the case thatthe you know when, when you
evaluate success in couplestherapy, there are three
opinions, at least there's mine,which is ought to be the least
important of the three, and thenthere's the couple, and they
don't.
They sometimes don't agree inthat.
You know, sometimes a couplecomes in for some sessions and
(15:43):
the one who would kind of hadone foot out the door is
realizing, yep, I am now moreconvinced than ever that I need
to break up, and the otherperson is devastated, feeling
that I hope this was going tosave our relationship and, and
they're both right.
I'm relationship and and andthey're both right.
And you know what am I supposedto say?
Was that a success or a failure?
Yes, it was.
It was both, depending on who'sasking about it yeah, yeah, I
(16:05):
was actually in that scenarioonce.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
He brought me in, hoping it would, and I was like,
no, like I know for sure I wantto, but yeah, and then, um,
have you after.
Do you follow through with them?
I'm assuming, like once you've,if they to stay, how often do
they stay together?
Does it end up working Like in?
Do you know, like a percentageor potential?
Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
And it's funny because in my former life,
before I was a, before I didclinical work, I was a
statistician.
So you think you know, oh, I'dbe all about keeping track of
the numbers.
It's not that I'm afraid tokeep track of the numbers, it's
that I don't know how toevaluate success in the way I
was just describing.
It's like I know a lot of themstay together and a lot of them
don't.
How's that?
You know it's not.
(16:49):
I don't think of it in that,doesn't?
Those don't fit perfectly withwhether I think it's a success
or not?
So I, you know that's sort oflike do they stay in town or do
they move somewhere else?
That's sort of.
I don't think of that as therelevant thing, you know.
So I'm constantly asking peoplequite explicitly to evaluate
(17:10):
how's it going.
You know it's not like I'mafraid to wonder out loud like
is this helping?
In fact, the very firstquestion I ask people I've been
doing this for decades now thevery first question I ask people
, after my little spiel aboutconfidentiality and you know
that stuff, I say, okay, here'smy favorite opening question how
will you know if this ishelping?
I focus them on that right inthe beginning.
(17:32):
It's like maybe this will help,maybe it won't.
You know, pay attention to thatand I'll ask it as we go.
If it's, you know, unless it'sobvious to all one way or the
other, I will ask it veryexplicitly because I want them
to know.
But I don't.
Yeah, I don't keep track oflike and I see people who do and
I am highly suspicious of that,frankly.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Yeah, I guess I'm more curious, like, if they stay
together, have you found thatsome were like really happy?
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Like you know, like it totally worked out and they
don't regret it at all and theywork through it and kind of
thing.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Yes, in fact that's one of the most inspiring parts
of it.
You know the work.
It's really fascinating.
It's basically more or lesskind of generalized.
The couples that are coming inwith betrayal and end up staying
together pretty much only staytogether if things are better
than they were before and theyvery often will express
(18:27):
gratitude.
I've never heard anybody sayhey, thanks for cheating.
Haven't heard that one, butI've heard almost like that and
it's one I tell in one of mybooks.
Actually it's kind of one of mygo-to stories.
I was a couple I was workingwith a few years ago now,
actually, yeah, before thepandemic, and before the
pandemic is significant becausewe were having what we knew to
(18:50):
be a last session.
It's before I was doing anytelehealth and we knew it was
going to be the last sessionbecause they were leaving town.
They were going to be moving.
It turned out, and I'd workedwith them for about a year and a
half, I think.
When they first came to see methey were just a mess.
She had just found out abouthis cheating with some coworkers
a couple of different times.
He was realizing he had adrinking problem, was in serious
(19:14):
trouble at his work because ofthat I think she said she had
lost like 30 pounds in the pastsix weeks, or it was that kind
of that.
She was she.
I think she said she had lostlike 30 pounds in the past six
weeks, or, you know, it was thatkind of thing.
She couldn't eat, she was justin terrible shape.
And they did this amazing workwhere he was just so, so
accountable and she was too.
Interestingly, she wasn'tblaming herself for his having
(19:34):
affairs, but anyway, they endedup.
She said our last session we'rekind of reviewing this great
work they had done.
They were so much better off,both happier.
She turned to him and said hey,thanks for taking one for the
team.
And he said oh, what do youmean by that?
And I said what do you mean bythat?
And she said well, you're theone who has to feel guilty
because he's the one who did thecheating.
(19:56):
You know which?
Of course he felt guiltyappropriately, because he's the
one who did the cheating.
You know which of course hefelt guilty appropriately.
You know it's like yeah, thatwas wrong.
He knew he shouldn't do that.
She knew he shouldn't do that,but she was appreciating the
fact.
You know, what she was sayingwas clearly we now know we were
headed for trouble.
Our relationship was clearly introuble.
This was a manifestation ofthat.
She wasn't blaming herself forhis cheating, but she was part
of their relationship being introuble.
(20:17):
And she said not only are we somuch better off, but she was
saying I'm better off with myfriends, I'm better off with my
coworkers, I'm better off withthe kids.
I'm not freaking out about allkinds of things I used to freak
out about.
So thanks, this was really whatwe needed.
Yeah, it's like thanks, Ineeded that.
You know, so that they willoften do that.
I do find that inspiring.
(20:38):
So the ones that stay togetherusually, it's something like
that the ones that split upoccasionally, it's something
like that Not usually,occasionally they'll say well,
we kind of knew this is where ithad to go.
Thanks for clarifying.
That'll be the case.
So, yeah, that does happen.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
And I imagine accountability, like you said
earlier, is the thing that mostwomen especially, I'm guessing
or either side would want to seefrom the other side.
If there is betrayal, oh,absolutely, just admitting it
and yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Yeah, that would seem .
If there isn't that, you canforgive, but it's very hard to
trust.
That's the difference.
So you know, if you can get tothat place of sufficient
forgiveness so you're notfreaking out, Then you got to
worry about trust.
And if the person isn'taccountable, there's no way you
can trust them.
And I kind of mean that almostas synonymous.
It's like yeah, you can,Accountability is pretty much
(21:32):
the same thing astrustworthiness.
You know it's like OK, whatwill help somebody develop trust
again is if they realize andit's interesting because this
goes both ways no-transcripttrust that that wouldn't happen
(22:10):
again, because if things startedto go off the rails, they they
would deal with it, they talkabout it, they they'd identify
it rather than acting it out.
So that's the one who gotcheated on has to trust.
The one who cheated has totrust that the other person is
capable of trusting them again,that they're not going to live
constantly where they're thepermanent villain and the other
(22:30):
person is the permanentprobation officer, because
nobody wants to live like that.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Yeah, I can see that.
And then, as far as likeprevention, is there anything as
a couple therapist you see thathelps people stay in healthy
relationships, like what keeps arelationship healthy?
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Yeah Well, that actually relates to a little
spiel I give in almost everyfirst session.
In fact, I write about this inone of my books, not the
Patronal Forgiveness book, butthe previous one, which has a
funny title, by the way it'scalled.
It's not about communication,why everything you know about
couples therapy is wrong.
Is that a snarky title or whatsnarky title?
(23:12):
That?
And the the second part, whyeverything you know about
couples therapy is wrong.
A little spoiler alert Imentioned later in the book that
applies to me too.
Everything I know about couplestherapy is wrong too.
You know, it's not the ideas,it's claiming that you know.
You know, claiming that youknow.
That's the problem.
So, but that actually relatesto the first session I do.
(23:33):
It's the only one I do that Ihave a pretty specific structure
for, and part of that structureis this little spiel I give,
which relates to what you'retalking about in terms of
preventative.
You know what?
What will help a couplefunction?
Basically to one way ofunderstanding what.
What is it that helps a couplefunction?
It's when two sets of needs areadequately fulfilled, and I
(23:56):
reason I talk about two sets isthe skills you need for one are
very different from the skillsyou need for the other.
In fact they're kind of inconflict, but they're both needs
, you know I mean that wordneeds I'm using carefully, it's
like no, and they're not desires, they're needs.
If they're not adequatelyfulfilled, something's broken,
it's not going to work.
So what are the two sets ofneeds?
They are stability and intimacy, and so short answer to your
(24:19):
question.
I've already made it somewhatlong, but short answer to your
question is what makes a couplework well is when they have both
of those adequately fulfilled.
The interesting thing is, theskills of stability are about
avoiding anxiety.
The skills of intimacy areabout tolerating anxiety, and
they're both important.
(24:39):
So you know, why would peopleavoid anxiety?
Well, like, for example, one ofthe things I will always ask in
a first session, if theyhaven't already said, is has
there been any infidelity?
I mean, I'll ask about itspecifically and if the answer
to that is no, that's in favorof stability.
Which is to say, infidelity ishugely destabilizing, it drives
(25:00):
anxiety through the roof.
You know sobriety.
I'll ask about substance abuse,if anybody's having serious
substance abuse issues or arethey worried about it?
You know too much of something.
Whatever they decide is toomuch is not for me.
I'm not evaluating that, but ifthey're saying no, we really
don't have any issues aroundthat.
That also works for stability,because if somebody is
(25:20):
habitually not sober, it'sreally destabilizing.
Not sober, it's reallydestabilizing.
So, and you know, they get intoan argument and if they've been
drinking, it usually goes offthe rails or often goes off the
rails.
So all of that relates tostability Basically.
I will often point out to peopleand this is true almost all the
time there have been over 30years of doing this work, there
(25:41):
have been a few exceptions Iwill almost always say to the
couple, when I'm talking aboutstability, well, I can already
tell something about the two ofyou.
Neither one of you is batshitcrazy, right, and they usually
smile and occasionally saysomething like well, you haven't
seen me yet.
You know.
I know we all have our moments,but and I don't mean to make
fun of serious mental healthissues, but what I'm referring
(26:02):
to there is they're not,apparently, they're not
psychotic, they're not thinkingthe FBI is controlling signals
in their brain, they're nothaving a untreated manic episode
where they're just nuts.
You know, they're not nuts.
That's about stability.
So all those things areimportant, you know, uh and, and
you do things like you knowmake a life together, fall in
love, have kids, get married,buy a house.
(26:24):
All of that stuff.
All of that privilegesstability.
You want to keep things stable,especially having kids.
Most parents don't want theirkids to feel like the marriage
is shaky, so all that's aboutstability.
The chief skill of intimacy Imentioned is to tolerate anxiety
, and the reason for that is ifyou're going to be, what do I
(26:45):
mean by intimacy?
By intimacy I just mean to be.
What do I mean by intimacy?
By intimacy I just mean to bepresent and honest with yourself
and each other.
That's what I mean by intimacy,and to do that sometimes that
means you're going to saysomething that you're pretty
sure will not be fun for yourpartner to hear.
It's going to raise anxiety, acomplaint, you know, a simple
complaint or not just acomplaint.
(27:05):
But what if you want to talkabout a dream or a fantasy or
something you know, be that inthe sexual domain or just more
generally?
You know you're worried.
Your partner will hear it andthink you're weird or be
repulsed by it, or who knowswhat they'll think will often do
because they privilegestability, they'll avoid that
(27:26):
and maybe start to walk oneggshells because there's
something bothering them, butthey won't say it, especially if
they've tried to say it andit's gone off the rails and over
time.
What happens is they shut downin the intimacy department.
Sometimes that's reflected in acouple's sex life Often it is.
It's not a perfect correlationwith intimacy more generally,
but it's often a pretty good one, and so they end up more and
(27:50):
more estranged from each other,even though they're all about
stability, and that becomesdestabilizing.
And so that's, you know, and myfavorite.
I'll give you my favoritemetaphor about stability and
intimacy.
If you think about a plant, youplant a seed in soil and it
germinates and sprouts starts togrow.
Somebody comes along and pavesa sidewalk over it.
Well, why do they do that?
(28:11):
Well, because it makes it morestable, it's easier to walk on.
You know what's that plantgoing to do?
It's going to either crack thesidewalk or die.
Trying to crack the sidewalkbecause it won't just sit there.
Roots provide stability, butintimacy is the energy for
growth, and that's true in aplant, it's true in an
individual, it's true in acouple.
Couples want to interact andfeel alive and grow, and if that
(28:36):
gets compromised, somebodytries to crack the sidewalk.
And what does cracking thesidewalk look like An affair.
Or they fight about everythingand nothing except what they're
really worried about.
Or somebody all of a suddengets depressed or maybe not all
of a sudden, but somebody getsvery depressed.
Or somebody all of a suddensays I'm out of here, I can't
stand it, blindsiding the otherperson.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Various kinds of betrayals often result from
compromised intimacy yeah, I wasjust going to add one thing
about aging as well.
Like, Like both sides, you know, menopause for women stuff
changes down there, For menstuff changes and they're both
afraid to potentially talk aboutwhat's going on really and just
stop doing it because it'seither painful or unable or less
(29:19):
able.
So, yeah, that's definitelypart of it too.
I would think.
Yeah, that's definitely part ofit too.
I would think.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Yeah, absolutely, and that's you kind of.
You identified the thing.
You know, of course, over thelifespan, of course, stuff
changes, everything changes andthe key there and you identified
the keys to be able to talkabout it rather than avoiding it
.
It's like, oh my God, thishurts, you know, rather than
just saying so, I'm not going tohave sex anymore.
(29:44):
It's like let's talk about that.
Maybe there's ways, things wecan do, or maybe there's things
we have to accept.
You know, as you get older,there are medical conditions
that happen to people thatrequire them to accept some new
realities.
But there are ways of adaptingto all those things if you can
actually risk talking about it.
And that's where a lot ofcouples have trouble.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Yeah, and I have several episodes on that, like
menopause for women and all thestuff you can take and do
differently, and then Edie a fewepisodes on that and some toys
and stuff.
So I just wanted to throw thatout there.
But do you want to talk abouthow people can reach you or work
with you or check out yourbooks and your information?
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Absolutely yeah.
The easiest way for all of thatis just to go to my website,
which is brucechalmercom, so ifyou spell my name right you'll
get it B-R-U-C-E-C-H-A-L-M-E-R,brucechalmercom.
That has information about mypractice, information about my
books and my wife.
I'll put in a plug for thepodcast my wife and I do.
My wife is Judy Alexander andwe do a podcast together called
(30:45):
Couples Therapy in Seven Words.
So I'll put in a plug for thatas well, and people are welcome
to check that out.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
Very cool?
Yeah, definitely All right.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
And then are there any takeaways you want to leave
the listeners with before weyeah, my favorite takeaway in
fact I have it on a cup forthose of you who are watching
the video I mentioned, ourpodcast is Couples Therapy in
Seven Words.
Well, those are the seven wordsBe kind, don't panic and have
faith.
That's the seven words and Iwrite a lot about.
(31:14):
You know that's seven words,but you know three concepts
there.
I write a lot about that andthat's what I would leave people
with.
It's kind of a way ofunderstanding the whole business
of couples work.
Be Understanding the wholebusiness of couples work.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
Be kind, don't panic and have faith.
Yeah, awesome, All right.
Well, thank you very much forbeing on.
Great information andespecially because it's a new
topic for my show.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Especially like that.
Yes, thank you again, and ifyou love this episode, be sure
to tell your friends about itand rate it as well.
And be sure to check out hiswebsite, brucechalmercom.
All right, thanks everyone.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.