Esther Perel's Blog, page 15

These are highlights from a teleclass I did with Tammy Nelson. You can purchase recordings of this class at her website: The New Monogamy; Love, Sex and Fidelity

Triangle and Trauma work always involved a rescuer, a victim, and a perpetrator. In couples work that can shift around so that as the therapist, we start out as being the rescuer; then when/if we side with the wrong person or we initiate disclosure and we cause hurt, we become the perpetrator and they have to rescue each other. To add in the lover, takes the therapist out of the triangle because you are adding in a 4th person.

By bringing in the affair partner, you create a four-sided box (therapist, 3rd party, hurt partner, affair partner). To deny that the unfaithful is having a continued relationship whether or not they’ve ended it, is to deny a whole piece of what’s happening in the affair recovery. This forces the betrayer to compartmentalize what happened to them. If they are seeking another part of their self, then healing is about getting that person to feel safe to not compartmentalize and keep it from their partner. This is how we help them grow to share that self with their partner. Otherwise, it will be buried and continue to resurface because of the attraction/longing that happens when something is forbidden.

There are 2 key parts to affair recovery:

1. When the unfaithful says with a tinge of resignation or irritation, “I’ve apologized, said I’m sorry, can’t we get over this?” We tend to see this as betrayers inability to hear/experience the pain of partner. Also, part of the impatience on part of betrayer stems from the lack of curiosity, interest, acknowledgement to the meaning of the relationship that they have had. If you are not interested in anything that I was going through, it is very hard for me to then be available to you and to be interested in what you are going through. They basically match: the closing off of one with the closing off of the other.

2. In bringing the partner to be curious about what the other relationship was like, we do 2 things: 1) we help them switch from detective mode (101 questions about the affair, when, where, how, etc.) to the investigative mode. This builds trust – trust comes with a calming understanding which is an investigative question: tell me what you were looking for; what you found there; who you became there; what was meaningful for you there; how did you grapple with being in 2 relationships at the same time? Were there moments where you loved 2 people at the same time? And what was that like because I can’t conceive of it. It’s the investigation into the meaning, the life, the predicaments and the existential contradictions of the other that calm people and build closeness, trust and intimacy. Detective mode damages; investigative mode heals. Trust is about what you don’t know and the ability to sit with that.

I invite you to tune in to the Colbert Report on Comedy Central June 9th (11:30pm ET) because we will be discussing Mating in Captivity. We will live tweet during the show and answer questions on Twitter and Facebook after the show airs. To say I’m excited is an understatement. To say I am not nervous is a big lie. Thanks for staying in the conversation with me.

Jack has been invited to conduct a workshop on collective trauma for the Ackerman Institute and we’d like to invite you to attend. Here’s all the info:

ACKERMAN INSTITUTE FOR THE FAMILY WORKSHOP SERIES presents

Addressing Collective Trauma in Clinical and Community Settings

Collective Trauma, the shared injuries to a population’s social life, may damage the bonds that attach people and impair their sense of belonging and communality. Whether the social disruptions are a result of war, persecution, disaster, chronic poverty, or endured by individuals and families as in cases of rape, abuse, and traumatic loss, the workshop will demonstrate useful clinical and community engaged approaches based on a resilience framework. Videotapes, expressive art exercises, and case studies will be used to illustrate how this approach is widely applicable to families of various classes and cultures.

Jack Saul, PhD, is the director of the International Trauma Studies Program, assistant professor of clinical population and family health at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, and author of Collective Trauma, Collective Healing: Promoting Community Resilience in the Aftermath of Disaster (Routledge, 2013).

Date: Friday, May 30, 2014

Time: 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.

Tuition: $135

CE Credits: 5

If you would like to apply online, click below.

APPLICATION FORM

If you would like to mail or fax in your application form, print it here.

If you are an Ackerman alumni or current Ackerman student, please contact the Training Department directly to register.

Journalist Charles J. Orlando decided he wanted to find out for himself what motivates women to cheat on their husbands, so he signed up for AshleyMadison.com, the leading dating site for married people to find affair partners. What he discovered in his virtual and real engagements with these women, and during an important conflict with his own wife, was that women crave excitement, adventure, spontaneity, and desire. For women who’s husbands have dropped the ball in these areas, they’re willing to go somewhere else to get it. Check out Orlando’s full telling of his tale at GoodMenProject.com.

For any students out there, this is a huge and quickly growing issue with practically no research on it.

Hightlights from a teleclass I did with Tammy Nelson. You can purchase recordings of this class at her website: The New Monogamy; Love, Sex and Fidelity

Regarding infidelity, we look a lot at Prevention and Recovery. Let’s also consider meaning and motive for affairs. Why do people engage in Affairs; what was it they were looking for; yearning for; what was the meaning that it then takes on in their relationship?

Also consider that maybe not all affairs, by definition, destroy a relationship, but maybe they can offer a stabilizer. A way to stay married. For many people, the goal is to prevent dissolution of marriage. Some affairs serve to shake up a relationship, a powerful alarm system. But affairs can become a most powerful revitalizer. We have to invite coupleS to see what good can be taken out of this. The relationship you have may no longer be the relationship you will continue to have.

Most people in the West will have 2-3 relationships in our adult lives and some of us will do it with the same person. Revelation of an affair may put to rest your 1st marriage; do you want another one? It may not be the end of a marriage – rather, the end of a 1st marriage. Give hope – this affair is not the end of everything.

These are highlights from a teleclass I did with Tammy Nelson. You can purchase recordings of this class at her website: The New Monogamy; Love, Sex and Fidelity

In the US, first the act [sexual infidelity] is reprehensible, then the character of the person is attacked, then we move to pathologize the behavior. In the US, our language enables us to approach infidelity with great judgmentalness and suspicion. We need to create a more neutral ground to help couples in pain.

The US is tolerant about divorce and intolerant towards infidelity. Countries which are more family oriented are more tolerant of infidelity and less tolerant towards divorce. Courtesy of women who have the social responsibility of keeping the family together. A burden that still hovers over women and points to longstanding gender inequalities.

As therapists, we have to ask ourselves, does the monogamous model works for everyone? Is there a way in which we can say that monogamy is something that needs to be negotiated? And not just assumed?