by Marina Edelman, LMFT | Apr 29, 2020 | affair, couples, marriage
How much is too much to share with family and friends about problems in your marriage?
When you first meet someone you run to your friends and family and tell them about this great human that just entered your life. You look forward to introducing them and then hold a debriefing session, feverishly taking in their opinions and observations. You hold onto their every word, ask them for advice on how to proceed in situation X, and analyze your new found loves actions with your mates. confiding in friends about problems in marriage
After several months your love’s imperfections start to surface. You have your first fight. You might even ‘take a break’ to figure things out. Friends and family are there by your side the entire time. They help you figure out what is a deal breaker or how to help your boyfriend/girlfriend see your view point – because if they saw it from your perspective of course they would succumb to your influence. The input of your inner circle is crucial at this stage of relationship.
In front of community at large you take your vows and commit to each other for life. After a couple of years the novelty of married life has worn off and real problems and grid lock situations emerge. So what do you do? You go back to what worked to begin with, you start seeking counsel of your inner circle that helped you at the onset of your relationship.
Traditional marriage is designed to be exclusive – a unique dyad that provides a safe confidential place for each spouses heart to live. When a third party is consistently brought into the relationship, safety and sanctity of the relationship gets disturbed. It is almost impossible for your tribe to offer unbiased advice. After all they are loyal and committed to you and therefore see you through rose colored glasses. The chances a Mother will tell her daughter how unreasonable she is, are pretty low.
Yet we are social beings and need to process situations and feelings out loud. So what is one to do. One obvious answer is to find a couples counselor who can help you both find solutions to unresolved issues or guide your communication to a cleaner and healthier path. But we still want to open up to people we love and pour our hearts out to those that care about us. For the record I strongly advise against airing dirty laundry in public. Confiding to your support system sounds like a good idea at the time but can drive a wedge between your spouse and you. They might feel betrayed and ambushed. Feelings of shame can surface prior to family gatherings which would effect your spouses desire to socialize. Please take all of this into consideration prior to opening up.
In 2014 research (1) by Kirsten Lind Seal for University of Minnesota showed that 73.3% of U.S. adults reported ever having been a confidant to someone with a couple relationship problem, while 62.6% had themselves confided in someone about a relationship problem. “Women were more likely to be confidants than men, as were individuals with more education. The most common confiding relationship was between friends, followed by siblings. Confidants had a wide range of marital problems brought them, including common issues such as disagreements over money along with serious issues such as infidelity and divorce.” So now that we established we shouldn’t confide in others about our marital distress, but majority of us do, how to do it without ruining our marriage.
Best Practices of Confiding
- Set your intention in receiving help and guidance
- Find a confidant that is non-judgmental, supportive listener and offers alternative perspective
- Avoid spouse bashing
- Brainstorm solutions not just regurgitate the problem
- Tell your spouse ahead of time that this is happening to avoid an unpleasant surprise
- Share the gist of what is upsetting not the dirty details
- Limit sharing to one person
Prioritize your marriage by dealing with your problems together. If you’ve already confided about your partner to others, don’t despair it’s not too late to make things better. Consider circling back to your confidant and mention some of the things you appreciate about your partner. At times we may feel hopeless that things can get better. As a marriage and family therapist for 15 years I can tell you that I have seen couples make huge turnarounds by putting effort and time into their love. It takes commitment to see how each of you contribute to the relationship from a negative and positive position.
Marina Edelman is a Licensed Psychotherapist in private practice for 15 years. She has helped countless couples design fulfilling beautiful relationships using Gottman Method along with Emotional Focused Therapy to create long lasting results. She has been published in Huffington Post and most recently quoted in The Lily (subsidiary of Washington Post).
(1) https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/182758/Seal_umn_0130E_15233.pdf?sequence=1
by Marina Edelman, LMFT | Sep 17, 2019 | affair
This a third installment of three part series. Earlier I wrote about women’s motives for affairs as well as outlined generally why affairs happen. This blog will focus on men.
There are a number of reasons why men have affairs and cheat on their wives. It’s actually not that hard to decipher why men cheat. A very common reason for why men stray has to do with adding more people into the mix. Also known as, children. A common scenario is that the couple had children, and the men stopped feeling important in the relationship. Period.
However, there are a number of reasons why men would cheat.
- Immaturity: Basically, he lacks the experience of being in a monogamous, long term relationship.
- Recurring issues such as drugs and alcohol that affect his decision making abilities. A party-goer with tons of substances and stimulants in their system does not make a good combination for a good decision making skills.
- He has a sexual addiction, meaning he compulsively engages in sexual fantasies and behaviors instead of facing life’s challenges.
- Insecurities. He uses sex and women to feel better about himself.
- He may want to end his current relationship, but instead of being honest, he cheats and makes his women do the “breaking off” of the relationship. Or he may want to already have someone lined up because he’s afraid to be alone.
- Lack of Male Social relationships – friends: He may be expecting a male friend in his woman partner, and when she can’t fulfill that need, he looks elsewhere.
- He’s confused about commitment and long term love.
- Childhood Abuse – the trauma of abuse can last a lifetime without the proper help. And the side effects of childhood abuse not only affects the abused, but all the people in their life as well.
- Selfishness – he wants his cake and eat it too. He wants ALL the toys. He wants everything!
- Narcissism – he feels the rules do not apply to him. He feels that he is above the laws of monogamy, and that the woman should have realized that about him before entering a relationship with him.
- Impulsiveness – pure impulsiveness. The wrong place, the wrong time, with the wrong people, and making a bad decision.
- Anger and Revenge – maybe the woman cheated first and his knee jerk reaction is to cheat as well. Even the odds.
These are just a number of different reasons why men would cheat. And everyone’s situation is unique to their relationship. Sometimes it is not just a singular reason, but a mix of different reasons. Maybe the relationship didn’t start out on the best terms, and didn’t have the best foundation. Don’t single out these reasons, or go looking for them in your relationship if you feel like your partner has been unfaithful. Instead seek help from a therapist, and communicate with your partner.
Usually men want the physical aspects of their affair, but it stems from wanting to be desired. Men also want to feel needed, desired, and important. They want to be the hero. Women AND men both want to be desired in their marriages, and when the other partner is absent from the marriage, and not making an effort, affairs happen.
by Marina Edelman, LMFT | Aug 8, 2019 | affair, couples, divorce, marriage
Women cheat and have affairs. They do. Even though it’s not as talked about as men, and in some ways, a lot more unacceptable in society, women do cheat. Why? Usually when women have their eyes set on their guy, it’s forever. She will stick by her man through thick and thin. So what would make a woman turn her back on her life with her current partner, and stray?
Below are various reasons why this would happen
- Women sometimes feel underappreciated, neglected, or ignored. Inadvertently, they feel more like a housekeeper, or nanny, than a wife or girlfriend. So they seek validation of their true selves outside of their current relationship. They want to be valued not for their casseroles, but for being women.
- They crave intimacy. Women tend to feel a connection to their significant other through other ways that does not involve sex. Situations that involve talking, having fun together, building a home and social life together usually make up their definition of intimacy. So when they don’t have this, they feel disconnected.
- She is not fulfilled by her current situation and feels overwhelmed and stressed. Studies have shown that even though some women were in very healthy, loving relationships, life’s stressors triggered a need to stray outside of their marriage.
- Loneliness can lead to affairs. Women can experience loneliness in a relationship for any number of reasons. Maybe their spouse works long hours or travels for business on a regular basis, or maybe their spouse is emotionally unavailable. When this happens, women will try to fill the void elsewhere.
- Unrealistic expectations. They expect their significant other to meet their every need 24/7, 365 days a year, and when that doesn’t happen, they seek attention elsewhere. They want it all, they need it all. All the attention, all the time. This is probably feeding into some kind of insecurity issue – or codependency issue that they may have.
- Childhood or early adulthood abuse. Sometimes women who experienced profound early-life (or adult) trauma, especially sexual trauma, will re-enact that trauma as a way of trying to master or control it.
- They’re not having enough satisfying sex at home. Not only men enjoy sex, this is a common misconception. Women also enjoy sex, and will seek it elsewhere if it’s not being given at home. Sex should be fun, and common, in a relationship. It’s a deep intimacy that allows partners to fully explore and connect to each other.
Women stray too. That’s a fact. When the needs of woman is not met, she will also find them elsewhere. At the end of the day, we are all human. Men, women, all humans. And we need to feel that love and connection, that desire, with our partner. We need to feel like they are all in, as we all should be. GIving love, support, and helping each other grow. Without the connection between two people, the relationship is sort of stagnant, and not growing. When a relationship grows stagnant, it becomes suffocating. Which will develop a need for a person to want to seek other means of love and connection elsewhere.
There is a way to affair proof your relationship. If you are considering betraying your partner, see a therapist first. Therapy can help you understand what is driving your unhappiness and come up with ways to talk to your partner about lack of fulfillment. Some things cannot be undone – an affair is one of them. Managing your impulses will help you not feel guilt and shame in the long run.
by Marina Edelman, LMFT | Aug 1, 2019 | affair, Blog, couples
When we are newly married, happy, and carefree, usually a time before children are in our lives, the thought of an affair seems impossible! Why would anyone stray from this marriage? This person? The person you married is incredible, sexy, and fun!
However, a few years down the line could potentially paint a different picture! Imagine your beautiful, sexy, fun wife as a tired, rundown, working mother with a full time job and a toddler. OR is she a stay at home mom with multiple schedules, children, a newborn baby, and a house to take care of! A husband who feels like he doesn’t see himself in his wife’s eyes anymore. A husband who feels insecure and invisible to his wife when the kids are involved.
Sometimes in a marriage, the fun disappears. The validation disappears. You no longer feel wanted or needed by your spouse. Or you feel insignificant as a person, and you are no longer receiving the validation and security that you used to feel from your spouse. So you stray.
This is a three part series. Next blog will explore in greater detail why do women and men cheat. Some reasons overlap and some are unique to the gender.
In marriage, there are three different reasons why people have affairs.
- When affairs begin, a person is falling in love with an imagined way of life, an imaginary person who they think will fill their needs.
- Affairs signify validation, and the need to be wanted or needed by another person.
- That “NEW” feeling. The beginning of something exciting, and also the need to be bad sometimes is very alluring. Usually the need to be in a situation that is considered taboo, and the thought of getting “caught” brings excitement to one’s life. But the feelings of others involved is not usually considered.
What can we do to prevent an affair from destroying our marriage?
- Appreciate your partner/spouse
- Be intimate – not just with sex. Share your innermost desires and thoughts with each other.
- Be empathetic – sometimes the most you can do is listen and provide an empathetic ear.
- Support each other’s friendships outside of the marriage – we need friendship.
- Grow together! Personal growth is necessary in all stages of life, support each other through your personal growth journey.
- NO subject is off limits – talk about everything, anything, all the time! Communication is Key!
- Be Active together! Find an activity that you both enjoy and want to do together regularly.
- Independence – this is important! Have a life outside of your marriage that features all the things that make you, YOU!
The most important thing to remember is that an affair usually means a deep longing for your own identity. A sense of self. You are not getting something that you used to from your spouse – validation. You can give yourself validation, so that your spouse no longer has to provide that for you, and you will also not have a longing to stray! Be good to yourselves and each other. Remember the person you were that your spouse fell in love with, and remember your spouse and the good times you had in the past. The memory of those good times can help to rekindle a flame that is dying out. The validation of knowing who you are and gaining the security you need can help you to fix anything that may be breaking up your marriage.
Couples counseling
Couples counseling can help prevent affairs before they start, but it can also help heal from an affair. Understanding the unique needs of each couple and creating marriage 2.0 is my strength. Contact me to find out how I can help create a relationship of your dreams!
