Absolutely no contact!

Recently on the Marriage Builders Radio show I heard Dr. Harley comment that the advice he gives works – but it isn’t always easy to follow.  Dr. Harley has written “The plan I recommend for recovery after an affair is very specific. That’s because I’ve found that even small deviations from that plan are usually disastrous. But when it’s followed, it always works.”  Most couples get tripped up on the very first part of Dr. Harley’s recovery plan: complete separation from the affair partner.  That means absolutely, positively no contact whatsoever between the spouse who had the affair, and the affair partner, for the rest of his or her life.

This is pretty drastic, but now that I have seen many couples deal with the aftermath of an affair, I can tell you positively that 100% of marriages I’ve seen failed when an unfaithful spouse maintains contact with an affair partner.

Continued contact with an affair partner is not just a chance for an affair to rekindle.  Even if the unfaithful spouse has grown to hate the affair partner and feels he or she could never love the affair partner again, the continued contact will have a devastating effect on the betrayed spouse.  Devastating.  There are not words to describe what I have seen betrayed spouses go through when their spouse has contact of any sort with a former affair partner.  It is an offense to the betrayed spouse, it usually causes the betrayed spouse to worry and wonder about the affair rekindling, and under all circumstances it is a reminder of the most painful trauma the betrayed spouse ever went through in his or her life.  It prevents healing because it is like reopening a scabbed wound over and over again.

Unfortunately many times these betrayed spouses have approved of the choice to maintain contact.  The result is that whatever they wanted to get out of allowing their spouse to maintain contact with the affair partner becomes the death of their marriage.

The unfaithful spouse should not see or talk to the affair partner ever again, and needs to remove reminders of the affair partner from his or her life (including things like photos, mementos, and social network connections).  There is a good chance that the couple will need to move.  And there is no way in the world that the unfaithful spouse can continue to work at the same job as the affair partner.

This is drastic.  But an affair is a drastic trauma, and if you want to heal from it, this has to happen.  Bargain, deny, get angry all you want – if your marriage has been through an affair you are going to have to create a whole new life and a whole new marriage.  And if your spouse will not end contact with their affair partner, then eventually you will have to create a whole new life without them if you want to recover.

I’ve seen dozens of couples try to maintain some form of contact with an affair partner, with lots of different reasons and excuses offered.  Maybe you know of some situation where this appeared to work.  I’ve known people who smoked tobacco heavily and lived into their nineties, but I wouldn’t recommend smoking tobacco because I know that if you do it, you will probably not live into your nineties.  I had a cousin who survived and overcame a hard drug addiction, but I wouldn’t recommend you take hard drugs because I know that if you do it, you will probably not overcome the addiction.  I’ve never known a couple that maintained contact with an affair partner and had a good marriage.  And there’s no way I would recommend that you take such a damaging course of action.

The plan [Dr. Harley] recommends for recovery after an affair is very specific. That’s because he’s found that even small deviations from that plan are usually disastrous. But when it’s followed, it always works.

Whistling in the dark

Sometimes when a married person suspects that a spouse is having an affair, well-meaning friends will try to reassure them.  They will tell them there might be an innocent explanation for the evidence they are seeing of their spouse’s infidelity, or that perhaps their spouse is “just friends” with the suspected affair partner, or perhaps their relationship is “just business.”

Dr. Willard Harley recommends that if you suspect your spouse is being unfaithful, you find out the truth.  He encourages married people to check up on each other, even secretly snooping if necessary, to get the truth.

My wife and I can both tell you from experience that when you check up on your spouse and find out that they are completely faithful, it builds a powerful feeling of trust.  Dr. Harley even goes so far as to suggest that you snoop “until snooping is boring,” especially one of you has had an affair.  In other words, the more you snoop and find that your spouse is acting trustworthily, the more you will feel trust and confidence in your spouse, to the point that eventually when you check on your spouse you will not expect to find anything interesting or unusual.

Of course, many other couples are witness to the fact that if your spouse actually is being unfaithful, it is vital for you to find the truth.  Dr. Harley has a very successful plan for you if your spouse is being unfaithful, described in his book Surviving an Affair (co-authored with his daughter, Dr. Jennifer Chalmers).  But the very first thing you need to do is to find the truth.

If well-meaning friends give you reasons why your spouse’s activities might be innocent or might not be so bad, they may give you a false sense of confidence.  If your spouse is having an affair, it is vital that you find out as soon as possible, both for your own well-being, and also for the best chance of saving your marriage.  And if your spouse is not having an affair, finding out the truth will strengthen your feelings of trust for your spouse.  Finding out the truth might be a frightening and emotional decision.  You might be tempted to take any reason you can to assume the best and avoid this difficult and emotional task.  You might prefer to “whistle in the dark” and hope for the best.  But eventually the truth will come crashing down on you.

I have seen some extreme examples of whistling in the dark, including people who were looking for explanations for how they and their spouse had contracted sexually transmitted diseases.  Sometimes the truth is obvious to most objective observers.  Sometimes the truth is not so obvious and it is not so certain that the spouse has been unfaithful.  But in this case checking up on your spouse and finding the truth is still the best choice.

Whistling in the dark doesn’t happen only about infidelity, but it’s a striking example of the damage that can occur if people focus only on reasons why everything might be okay, instead of finding out whether or not things really are okay.

Don’t mix and match

Every week I hear of people trying to mix the marriage principles that I am writing about here with things they got from another marriage book or a marriage counselor.

The difference between this plan and what you will get from other marriage advice sources is that this plan teaches couples how to fall in love with each other, and how to stay in love.  Almost all other counselors, books, and advisers believe that sustaining the feeling of love for a lifetime is impossible and unnecessary.  So instead of teaching you how to create or recreate the feeling of love, they try to persuade you to just tolerate a marriage without that feeling.

Most marriage counseling does not succeed.  That should make you very cautious when you read or listen to anything about marriage.

Many people spend a lot of time and money with a counselor learning communication skills or how to resolve conflicts or all of the standard stuff and still end up divorced or miserable because they are still not in love.

I searched for the phrase “I love you but I’m not in love with you” on the web last week.  I found a blog post by a marriage advising institute I had not heard of.  It was a very long post, and it was dedicated to telling people that they were failing if they expected to stay in love for their whole marriage.  The author was in a near panic that if people believed the feeling of love could be sustained, that they would go out and have an affair to get that feeling.  The author believed that if people believe that the feeling of love should last for a lifetime, they will throw away their spouse and their children for it.

But falling in love is a well-understood process.  Create certain conditions, and the feeling of romantic love is created.  Do that with your spouse, and don’t do it with anybody else.  Falling in love with your spouse will not hurt your spouse or your children – in fact, it will benefit them.

Please don’t dabble with other counseling materials.  They don’t work because they aren’t even trying to work  – they don’t believe it’s possible to remain in love for a lifetime, and so they do not even try.  If you want to mess up this plan, the best way to do it is to try mix and match with other marriage approaches.

For the same reason, if your spouse won’t follow this plan, but is willing to see a counselor, I wouldn’t get too excited or too optimistic.  If you’re in that boat, send me an email, because I have some suggestions for you: MarkosOnMarriage@gmail.com  The last thing you want to do is go to a counselor who will try to tell your spouse they should just be content with what they have.

If you haven’t already, be sure to take a look at this article by Dr. Jennifer Chalmers: Romantic Love: Is it a Realistic Goal for Marital Therapy?

What causes infidelity

As I’ve written about in several other posts, it’s possible for two people to fall in love simply by doing the right things together: meeting each other’s emotional needs.  Once two people fall in love they are irresistible to each other.

This falling in love process happens every day.  Teenagers fall in love.  Grown singles.  Married couples fall back in love.  And people fall in love with someone when they are already married to somebody else: they have an affair.

Frequently I read or hear of somebody who had an affair explaining that their emotional needs weren’t being met in marriage.  (They might use different terminology.)  They say that something was missing in their marriage, and frequently this is true.  Then they say that this caused them to go looking for it somewhere else.

This is incorrect.

First let me point out that for the faithful spouse back home, usually there was something missing in their marriage, too.  In fact, frequently there was a whole lot more missing for them, while the unfaithful spouse was out engaging in their affair.  Their emotional needs were not being met either, and yet this does not cause all of them to have an affair (though some do).

The fact is that falling in love is a predictable process.  It would happen to any one of us who do the right things with someone: do those things, and you will fall in love.  And affairs are rampant!  We are all so wired for falling in love that, unless you take precautions to avoid the circumstances that cause you to fall in love with someone else, there is a high chance that you will have an affair.  This turns out to be true for people regardless of their background, economic status, or religious beliefs and practices.

If you are married and you spend enough enjoyable time with somebody of the opposite sex besides your spouse, engaging in enough conversation, getting enough of those emotional needs met, it is almost dead certain that you will have an affair.

Also, because of something called the contrast effect, it’s extremely likely that you will feel that your emotional needs weren’t being met in your marriage before, even if they were.  The Love Bank has a way of stomping out competition: have a great time every day with a good looking girl half your age, and your wife hasn’t got a chance and will be unable to meet your emotional needs, because you are making it impossible through the contrast effect.

It’s not unmet emotional needs that cause affairs.  Plenty of people who are not having their emotional needs met don’t have affairs – and plenty of people who are having their emotional needs met have affairs anyway.  It comes down to this:

• met emotional needs + extraordinary precautions to avoid an affair = no affair
• unmet emotional needs + extraordinary precautions to avoid an affair = no affair
• unmet emotional needs + no extraordinary precautions = affair
• met emotional needs + no extraordinary precautions = affair

What causes an affair?  There’s a particular lifestyle that leads to affairs: it’s the lifestyle that doesn’t take steps to avoid an affair, that sees no problem with having an enjoyable time with someone of the opposite sex when you are married to someone else.  Live like that and an affair is going to result almost every time.

You can find a great list of extraordinary precautions to avoid an affair in the latest edition of the book Surviving an Affair.  As always I recommend the latest editions of these books – this one was revised in 2013.

Shortcuts

When Dr. Harley set out to figure out how to get couples to fall in love with each other, he surveyed a lot of husbands and wives about what their spouse could do to make them feel good.  He found that most of their responses fit into a standard set of categories – he would see the same responses over and over from different people.  Eventually he wrote a book about his findings – His Needs, Her Needs – which has helped many people recover their marriages.  By describing the ten most commonly listed emotional needs and how to meet them, Dr. Harley was able to help couples learn the habits that would cause their spouse to fall in love with them.

One of the striking results Dr. Harley found was that the way men and women ranked their emotional needs was usually very different.  A typical man rated the emotional needs of sexual fulfillment and recreational companionship very highly – while a typical woman did not rate these needs very highly at all.  And a typical woman would rate the emotional needs of intimate conversation and affection very highly – but a typical man did not rate these needs highly.  It might not be so surprising that men and women are very different, but this difference really shows up when men and women describe what their spouse can do for them to make them feel good.

When a man and a woman are in love, they are almost always spending a lot of time alone together meeting what Dr. Harley calls the four intimate emotional needs.  These needs are the two needs that men typically rate highest and the two needs that women typically rate highest.  (In fact in practice with couples, Dr. Harley usually worked on these four needs with them regardless of how they rated their individual needs, because if a husband or wife is in withdrawal they will frequently rate these needs lower because they do not feel like having their needs met.)  Here are the four intimate emotional needs:

• Intimate conversation
• Sexual fulfillment
• Affection
• Recreational companionship

If a couple is in love, they usually feel like doing most of these things.  Sexual fulfillment might not be ranked highly as an emotional need by a particular woman, but when she is in love with her husband, her emotions prompt her to want to meet his emotional need for sexual fulfillment.  And conversation might not be a particular man’s favorite pastime, but when he is in love with his wife, his emotions prompt him to want to engage in a lot of conversation with her.

But after a couple gets married and the problems of life get a little more complicated, they often find themselves pressed for time.  They aren’t meaning to shortchange each other, but with time at a premium they are likely to want to skip the things that are less important to them.  So a husband may often want to take a shortcut: let’s spend the time we have together meeting the need for sexual fulfillment, and the need for recreational companionship.  We can skip needs like intimate conversation and affection – I think I would feel perfectly fine without much of those.  We’ll make the most of our time by concentrating on what’s most important.

Meanwhile, his wife may be tempted to make the exact same mistake in reverse: we’re short on time, so let’s not spend it on recreational companionship or sexual fulfillment.  I won’t miss those if they are absent this week.  Let’s concentrate on the important stuff like intimate conversation and affection.

In wanting to take these shortcuts, it’s entirely possible that the husband and wife have no idea that their spouse would feel different.  She doesn’t have the same craving for sexual fulfillment and recreational companionship that he does.  Even if she knows these are important to him, her emotions don’t prompt her to get these needs filled as strongly as others – so they are easy for her to overlook, and it is hard for her to empathize with the lack of fulfillment her husband would face if these needs go unmet.  And in the same way, her husband doesn’t have the same craving for intimate conversation and affection that she does, and doesn’t crave them anywhere near as strongly as he craves sexual fulfillment and recreational companionship.  He may know that they are important to her, but if they went missing for awhile he might not notice, because his emotions aren’t going to react as strongly to their absence as hers would.  Even if the husband and wife care for each other deeply, it may be hard to empathize with each other and to realize just how strongly the other would be impacted for their most important needs to go unmet.

Dr. Harley’s solution is to make sure that a married couple allocates enough time each week to meet these emotional needs.  He encourages them to plan several events each week where they will be alone and all or most of these needs will be met, all as part of the same event.  The husband gets his needs met, the wife gets her needs met, they feel good together, and both perceive the relationship as romantic.  Get enough of this in their marriage, and they will be in love with each other!

Shortcuts are great if they get you where you want to go.  But a husband’s natural instinct to take a shortcut in the most important emotional needs of marriage will not lead to a happy marriage.  And a wife’s natural short-cutting instinct will lead them astray as well.  If you want to have a happy marriage, make sure you are on the right path and are not taking a shortcut that won’t meet your goal.

Not just pro-marriage

Many people looking for a marriage counselor worry that they need to seek a counselor who is “pro-marriage.”  There are lots of stories of a counselor whose advice led to the end of a marriage.  Counselors may bring all kinds of anti-marriage biases into their work.  They might believe in seeking your own happiness regardless of how it makes your spouse feel; they might have infidelity in their history; they might have even divorced a spouse to marry an affair partner.

But what I want you to know is that finding a “pro-marriage” counselor is not enough.  Most people and counselors really are “pro-marriage” to some extent.  It’s not as if there’s a bunch of big bad counselors out there who intentionally make it their goal to break up marriages.

But “pro-marriage” counselors may still be giving marriage-wrecking advice.  There are a lot of bad ideas in the marriage counseling industry, even among “pro-marriage” counselors.  Even counselors who believe in marriage “till death us do part” may give advice that leads to a very unhappy marriage.

Some of the bad advice I have heard of from “pro-marriage” sources:

• Even couples in good marriages fight sometimes, so you just have to learn to accept it
• You should learn to “fight fair”
• Some things should be kept secret from your spouse “for their own good”
• After a few years, the feeling of romantic love fades.  After that, it’s commitment that sustains marriage.
• Privacy in marriage is very important.  Trust your spouse, and if you worry that they are having an affair, give them the benefit of the doubt.

All of these ideas have led to the end of marriages I have seen, but all of them are put forth by “pro-marriage” people who care a great deal about saving marriages.  Unfortunately, they don’t know how to actually do that, and they don’t know what a danger these bad ideas are.