Trust and Betrayal

In all my years of counseling couples, the issue that seems to be most important is trust.  Interestingly, this was recently confirmed in a report by John Gottman that for couples who struggled the most (30% of those surveyed), the number one issue that came up for them was trust and betrayal.  He also discovered that there are different areas of trust, aside from the one that is most assumed : sexual and emotional betrayal.
The trust factor can best be defined with questions:

• Can I trust you to be there and listen to me when I'm upset?
• Can I trust you to choose me over your mother, over your friends?
• Can I trust you to work for our family?
• To not take drugs?
• Can I trust you to not cheat on me and be sexually faithful? 
• Can I trust you to respect me? Can I feel safe with you? 
• To help with things in the house?  To be involved with the children?

Trust is one of the most commonly used words in the English language--it's number 949.  When Gottman went to Amazon.com and typed in "trust," he was surprised that 36,000 books came up. A lot of them were business books, on how to set up a financial trust.  But most of them were really about trust in relationships and trust in general. (Gottman, The Science of Trust)

And it turns out that when social psychologists ask people in relationships, "What is the most desirable quality you're looking for in a  partner when you're dating?", trustworthiness is number one. It's not being sexy or attractive.  It's really being able to trust somebody.Trust is a fundamental principle for making relationships work.

Also, through Gottman's research, he found that trust is essential not only to healthy relationships but also healthy communities.  Trust isn't just important for couples. It's also vital to neighborhoods and states and countries. Trust is central to what makes human communities work as well as marriages.,

In relationships there are a number of ways trust can be undermined and betrayed, such as:

• Conditional commitment-- "I'm here for you until somebody better comes along.,"
• A non-sexual affair, otherwise known as an emotional affair with someone. This most commonly occurs with colleague friendships at work and online relationships.
• Lying, e.g. keeping secrets from your partner.
• Absenteeism or coldness, e.g. emotional distance, anger, lack of empathy, not being responsive to your partner's needs or bids for connection, all of which can lead to lack of sexual and emotional intimacy.
• Disrespect--ongoing contempt and criticism conveying a superior attitude: "Any reasonable and intelligent person would see that your way makes no sense." A loving relationship is not about one person having the upper hand--it's about holding hands.
• Abuse--emotional and physical--the most destructive way. Unless addressed and stopped,  it will completely destroy all trust. .

So how is trust built? How is it restored?  I will write about that in my next blog entry.

The Masters and Disasters of Marriage

A recent article appeared in The Atlantic magazine entitled The Masters of Marriage.  I strongly urge you to read the entire commentary (link listed below).  I have edited the article for my blog entry to give you an idea of the substance of it but I urge everyone to read it in its entirety.    The edited version:

John Gottman and his wife Julie and other social scientists have studied thousands of couples over the last four decades in a quest to figure out what makes relationships work. From the data they gathered, Gottman separated the couples into two major groups: the masters and the disasters.  The masters were still happily together after six years.  The disasters had either broken up or were chronically unhappy in their marriages. Gottman found that the more physiologically active the couples were in his "love lab", the quicker their relationship deteriorated over time.

But what does physiology have to do with anything?  The problem was that the disasters showed all the signs of arousal--of being in fight-or-flight mode--in their relationships.  Having a conversation sitting next to their spouse was, to their bodies, like facing off with a saber-toothed tiger.

The masters, by contrast, showed low physiological arousal.  They felt calm and connected together, which translated into warm and affectionate behavior, even when they fought. The masters had created a climate of trust and intimacy that made both of them more emotionally and thus physically comfortable.

Throughout the day, partners would make requests for connection, or what Gottman calls "bids." For example, say that the husband is a bird enthusiast and notices a goldfinch fly across the yard.  He might say to his wife, "Look at that beautiful bird outside!"  He's not just commenting on the bird here: he is requesting a response from his wife--a sign of interest or support--hoping they'll connect, however momentarily, over the bird.

People who turned toward their partners in the study responded by engaging the bidder, showing interest and support in the bid.  Those who didn't --those who turned away--would not respond or respond minimally and continue doing whatever they were doing.

By observing these types of interactions, Gottman can predict with 94 percent certainty whether couples will be broken up, together and unhappy, or together and happy several years later.  Much of it comes down to the spirit couples bring to the relationship.  Do they bring kindness and generosity; or contempt, criticism, and hostility?

Contempt is the number one factor that tears couples apart.  Kindness, on the other hand, glues couples together. Kindness makes each partner feel cared for, understood, and validated--feel loved.

There are two ways to think about kindness.  You can think about it as a fixed trait: either you have it or you don't.  Or you can think of kindness as a muscle.  In some people, that muscle is naturally stronger than in others. but it can grow stronger in everyone with exercise. Masters tend to think about kindness as a muscle. They know that a good relationship requires sustained hard work.

Kindness doesn't mean that we don't express our anger," Julie Gottman explained, "but the kindness informs how we choose to express the anger.  You can throw spears at your partner.  Or you can explain why you're hurt and angry, and that's the kinder path.."

We've all heard that partners should be there for each other when the going gets rough.  But research shows that being there for each other when things go right is actually more important for relationship quality.  How someone responds to a partner's good news can have dramatic consequences for the relationship. In one study from 2006 a group of psychologists brought young adult couples into the lab to discuss recent positive events from their lives. They wanted to know how partners would respond to each other's good news.  They found that, in general, couples responded to each other's good news in four different ways that they called: passive destructive, active destructive, passive constructive, and active constructive.

Lets say that one partner had recently received the excellent news that she got into medical school.  She would say something like "I got into my top choice med school!"

If her partner responded in a passive destructive manner, he would ignore the event and say something like: "you wouldn't believe the great new I got yestereday! I won a free t-shirt!" If her partner responded in a passive constructive way he would acknowledge the good news, but in a half-hearted, understated way.  A typical active destructive response is saying "That's great , babe," as he texes his buddy on his phone.

In the third kind of response, active destructive, the partner would diminish the good news this partner just got:  "Are you sure you can handle all the studying? And what about the cost? Med school is so expensive!

Finally, there's active constructive responding.  If her partner responded in this way, he stopped what he was doing and engaged wholeheartedly with her: "That's great! Congratulations! When did you find out?  Did they call you?  What classes will you take first semester?"

Active constructive responding is critical for healthy relationships. Research has discovered that the only difference between the couples who were together and those who broke up was active constructive responding. (Being there for each other)

There are many reasons why relationships fail, but if you look at what drives the deterioration of many relationships, it's often a breakdown of kindness. As the normal stresses of a life together pile up--with children, career, friends, in-laws, and other distractions crowding out the time for intimacy--couples may put less effort into their relationship and let the petty grievances they hold against one another tear them apart.  But among couples who not only endure, but live happily together for years and years, the spirit of kindness and generosity guides them forward.

( If you are interested in reading the entire article, which I recommend, go to: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/happily-ever-after/372573/?single_page=true )

How To Recover Sexual Desire

     During the initial stages of infatuation and love, chemical changes in the brain (PEA) create an intense level of sexual desire and passion.  Everything is on fire.  Chemistry provides sexual arousal without any need to communicate sexual preferences or create sexual desire.  Sexual problems related to early childhood abuse, negative attitudes, conflict and resentment, sexual inhibitions, or a low libido which may be overpowered by early passion often re-surface when the fire simmers down, which can sometimes become problematic in your relationship.  --Shirley Glass  

Much has been written by sex and marriage therapy professionals about how to recover desire.  Shirley Glass, who has written about infidelity in her book, Not Just Friends, also writes about the loss of sexual desire and the causes.  See:   http://www.shirleyglass.com/reflect_sex.htm (or copy and past)

Based on the causes of low desire, she lists the following things to consider to recover desire:

1. Rule out medical conditions and possible side effects of medications.

2. Explore childhood messages about sex.

3. Work on healing from emotional, physical, and sexual abuse.

4. Improve marital communication.........
              Develop conflict resolution skills.  Discuss marital issues assertively with respect and consideration for each other.  Talk to each other openly about your wishes, hopes, and dreams.  Communicate your sexual feelings and desires.  Share your turn-ons and turn-offs.

5.  Focus on sensuality and romance..........
                Have a moratorium on sexual intercourse.  Decrease the pressure for orgasms.  Create warmth and comfort in touching each other--especially outside the bedroom.  Go dancing.  Give each other back rubs, facial and foot massages before attempting whole body massages.  Take showers and hot tubs together.

6.  Don't make desire a prerequisite for sexual intimacy.........
                  Desire does not necessarily have to precede arousal.  If you allow yourself to be open to being sexually stimulated by your partner, desire can follow your arousal.

7.  Understand and work on individual, medical and relationship issues that contributed to the problem.  Consider individual and couples therapy.  Remember that problems with sexual desire usually don't occur overnight, so healing and recovery will take time.

The Complexities of Sexual Desire

Over the years of working with couples, I have come to appreciate the complexities of sexual desire.  Sexual desire is affected by many factors: hormones, physical health, psychological issues, child-birth, menopause(female & male), past experiences, emotional wiring and emotional distancing due to unresolved conflict, to name a few.

So it is not surprising that couples often have differences in sexual desire, which sooner or later leads to problems for most couples.  Desire problems are the most common sexual complaint for couples.  Based on recent research by David Schnarch ( Intimacy and Desire), couples rated their overall sexual relationship as  follows:

• 12% had no sex in the last year.
• 21% have sex several times a year.
• 34%  have sex once or twice a month.
• 26% have sex once or twice a week.
• 7% have sex 4 or 5 times a week.

Whereas many people think sex once or twice a week is average for most couples, that's really a minority, one out of four couples (26%).  Only 7% are really burning up the sheets. The vast majority of people (67%) are having sex once or twice a month or less. Given these statistics, by any scientific standard it is prudent to say normal people have sexual desire problems. Arguably, you are abnormal if you don't!

When there is a low sexual desire problem, a number of issues, which I listed above, should be checked out and when unresolved conflict about other issues in the marriage is the problem, marriage counseling should probably be sought.  It is said that while the sexual relationship accounts for only about 10-20 percent of marital happiness, that percent remains very important for most couples, because a good sexual relationship makes you feel close emotionally.  Actually, sex produces "feel good" chemicals such as endorphins and oxitocyn (the bonding hormone).  The sexual connection is not the only route to intimacy, but remains important nevertheless.

Most people believe that love automatically creates sexual desire in healthy people.  At first glance, this makes a lot of sense.  But once you buy into the belief that sexual desire comes "naturally," you're in for a load of eventual problems.  You'll feel pressured to create something that just isn't there.  You'll get defensive and despondent when problems surface in your sex life. You (especially if you are male), begin to feel defective and ashamed and withdraw from your partner even more. While women are more likely to have low desire, we now know there are more men with low sexual desire than has been assumed. And then when your spouse starts criticizing that you are too sex driven or sex depriving, it only makes matters worse.

David Schnarch writes that "there's always a low desire spouse and there's always a high desire spouse--and there's one of each in most marriages."  The most freeing point of this view is that neither the high desire position or the low desire position is right or wrong.  There are simply differences.

So what to do? I will try to answer that question in my next blog entry, but basically it comes down to this: spouses having gentle conversations about their own sexual needs and anxieties without criticizing one another and finding a way to bridge the differences of their sexual desires so that sexual intimacy is not lost altogether.

Unnecessary Divorce

It is a pretty good sign-of-the-times when the NY Times Modern Love series features Children-of-Divorce two weeks in a row. It seems there is a growing number of children of divorce who are tying hard to avoid making the same mistakes of their parents.  Many of today's Modern Lovers have walked out of the ashes of their parents' marriages and don't want to repeat it with their own children.  The title of the essay in NY Times, August 24, is We Pledge Allegiance.  (see http://tinyurl.com/mbmig88  )

The author of the essay, Debbie Greene, writes: "As a child of divorce, I have tried over the years to figure out the secret to a lasting marriage.  In college, I started dating a boy named Josh.  We were both children of divorce, and although marriage and a family seemed 1,000 years away, we did agree on one thing:  We would never mess up our children with divorce.  It wasn't easy, but now their children are grown and they feel grateful about the promise they made to one another, not only because of the children but also how they have grown over the years through the good times and the "precipice" bad.

As we know, we do live in a divorce culture.  The divorce rate has fallen a bit, but it is still up near 50%--and even higher for 2nd marriages.  When divorce leaves the realm of "it couldn't possibly happen to us" and creeps into the domain of "maybe that's what I will have to do," the idea often gains a tragic momentum of its own.  Unfortunately, if you have reached this point the pain and fear you feel may be enough to blur your perception of reality and your judgment about the best course of action for you and your marriage.  Some couples don't take the warning signs seriously until it feels too late and in some cases IS too late.

Surveys in the United Sates and Australia have shown that 40 percent or more of divorced people regret their divorce and that the great majority of divorced people believe that one or the other of them could have worked much harder to save the marriage.

William Doherty (Take Back your Marriage), believes there are hard reasons and soft reason for divorce. The hard reasons include emotional and physical abuse, ongoing infidelities, and untreated addictions.  The soft reasons include ongoing misattunements which lead to blaming attacks, defensiveness and emotional distancing.  The soft reasons can be repaired if both spouses take responsibility for their part of their repetitive cycle.  With the unexpected changes, challenges and stresses of life (children, economy, illnesses, etc), unmet emotional needs and misattunements are inevitable in marriages, as in any relationship. What matters is that couples acknowledge those misattunements in a nonjudgmental manner and then learn to repair those misattunements and not allow them to fester.

In unnecessary divorces, I believe that both spouses should carry the responsibility for leadership.  Leadership is not just fighting for your own needs, but also fighting for the marriage--for the "us".  In the best marriages, both people are leaders.  In other words, each spouse takes personal responsibility for accepting his/her role and finding a way back from the precipice before it is too late and the emotional bond becomes irreparable.

Debbie Greene writes at the end of her Times essay:  ....my more mature self realizes that after 23 years of marriage, the key for our relationship to grow and thrive is taking responsibility and finding a soft place to land between the rules we make and the reality we live.

How Love Fails (Part II)... and how love lasts.....

Following up on my last blog entry in July:  Research confirms that the erosion of a couple's love bond begins with absence of emotional support.  Unsupportive behavior such as minimizing the scope of the problem, discouraging the expression of feelings, offering offhand or unhelpful advice, insisting that their partner follow recommendations--was especially predictive of relationship distress.

The second stage is the escalation of conflict, especially negative patterns, such as harsh criticism, defensiveness and withdrawal.  This becomes a cycle in the relationship which actively destroys any sense of emotional safety partners have with each other.

Sue Johnson (Love Sense) describes a couple's first session with a marriage counselor:  George yells at Barbara. "I am a damned psychologist.  I am supposed to understand this stuff, and I can't believe how angry I am.  In my head, I rage at you as I am driving to work.  I hear the sarcasm in my voice and sometimes I wonder who I am turning into.  I watch every minute for you to blame me for everything and turn away from me.  The more I push you to be with me, the more untouchable you become.  I am married to the Ice Queen herself.  You don't care about anyone but yourself.  I want a wife, not a business partner."

Barbara crossed her long legs slowly, tilts her head, and calmly replied. "Then it would be good to try being polite and treat me like a wife.  I do not see the point in all this shouting. And so you are right; I often prefer to leave and be elsewhere."

Lost in a dance they do not understand, their dance takes on a life of its own.  George does not see how his anger makes Barbara fear that she is being rejected, and she does not hear the frantic call for connection underlying his irascibility.  If they can't find a way to step out of their repetitive cycle and risk reaching for each other in another way, their bond cannot be repaired, and the end state--disillusionment, despair, and detachment--will set in.

How love lasts:  Let me be clear, a love relationship is never static; it ebbs and flows.  If we want love to last, we have to grasp this fact and get used to paying attention to and readjusting our level of emotional engagement.  What matters is if we can repair tiny moments of misattunement and come back into harmony.  Bonding--being there for each other and feeling supported by your partner-- is an eternal process of renewal.  Relationship stability depends not on healing huge rifts but on mending the constant small tears.  Without the mending of disconnections as we go along, then couples will most likely fall into the criticism-defend-withdrawal cycle that I have described above.

The mending of those disconnections is one of my primary goals when I work with couples in my office. The other goal, just as important, is to help a couple build a stronger, more durable emotional union.  It can be done, if a couple hasn't waited too long and both partners take responsibility for what needs to change for the mending to happen.

I also suggest my blog entry on Poisonous Criticism.  While you are on my blog, just scroll down to the month of March..... Click and you will see it.

How Love Fails

How--not why--but how does love fail?  Sue Johnson, author of Love Sense, maintains that theories that focus on bad behavior in conflicts alone and lack of communication skills may not always be enough.  Sometimes communication issues are symptoms of something else more important:  the overwhelming fear of being emotionally alone or abandoned.

I am inclined to agree. As I see it, it is not negativity per se that undermines partners' love for each other. Fights can be tolerated, provided there is support and affection in a relationship.  Decreases in positive connection create "disillusionment" and precipitate distress which leads to criticism and/or withdrawal.

The absence of positive, intimate, supportive exchanges has been compared to a virus that takes down the body relational.

Conflict (persistent arguing) is the inflammation that results from this virus.  In a prolonged troubled love relationship, problem solving and practical assistance alone may not be curative.

The potential for unresolved conflict increases as partners are filled with unruly emotions that they do not understand, and find themselves out of sync with each other.  Angry protests at the loss of physical and emotional connection escalate. A slow unwinding of the tie begins.  Lack of comfort and closeness feeds distrust and disagreement, and each failed attempt at a reconnection and repair breeds more distance. So what happens?  Couples build walls when they need bridges.  And that is how love fails.

To shape love and keep it alive, we have to be open and responsive, emotionally as well as physically. When emotional starvation becomes the norm, and negative patterns of outraged criticism and obstinate defensiveness and withdrawal take over, our perspective changes. 

Our lover slowly begins to feel like an enemy.  Our most familiar friend turns into a stranger.  Trust begins to wither and die.  And that is how love fails.

When this happens, can the love connection be restored? Yes.  I have seen it happen in my office many times, especially when couples seek help sooner rather than later.  But it takes time, commitment, and a willingness of both partners to understand and attend to the emotional needs behind every distancing conflict in the relationship.

The bottom line is this:  the way we perceive our partners and the meaning we attribute to his or her actions depends on our sense of emotional connection. 

------ If you are interested in watching a 23 minute lecture about this subject by the master herself, Sue Johnson, go to:   http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-14364/how-to-make-love-last-in-the-age-of-instant-gratification-dr-sue-johnson.html