Having been a marital therapist and psychologist for many years, I often wonder at the amazing ability some couples have to NOT change. These couples are often intelligent, reasonable people in other areas of their life, but nonetheless become gridlocked with each other around certain marital issues. Issues in this category are called “perpetual” issues by marital researchers; all couples have them, but not all couples fight or conflict over them.

Some couples find ways to either solve the problem or find ways to live with each other around it. What about the other couples? The ones that get stuck? Why don’t they  do what they know they should do to avoid conflict around the issues that get them into trouble? The simple answer is that they often times do not want to. Change requires both skills to change and sufficient motivation to do so. Stuck couples  are often locked into ways of thinking that prevents them from moving out of conflict into resolution.

Some common thought patterns that prevent change:

• I don’t really want to get closer to my partner. I just want to complain about my partner and keep them at a distance.
• I like the role of victim.
• I enjoy feeling superior and looking down on my partner.
• I like feeling angry and bitter.
• Our problems are all your fault, so why should I have to change?
• I’m right and you are wrong.
• You’re such a stubborn, self-centered jerk that nothing could possibly work. Why should I bother to try?

Do any of these thought patterns look familiar to you? Can you identify with any of them? Seems to me that couples who really want to improve things will work at changing these and other beliefs that prevent the change from occurring.  Often a special kind of therapist called a “cognitive-behavior therapist” can help you identify and change these and other thought patterns.

For self-help, I would also recommend a book called “The Feeling Good Handbook” by Dr. David Burns.This book is full of practical, helpful suggestions to improve your life and your marriage.

In summary, it has been my experience that many couples could improve their marriage, if they really wanted to and they were willing to do the necessary work to do so. Looking more deeply at the roots of the resistance to change on either your part or your partner’s part can go a long way helping things along.

Few things shake the foundation of a marriage more than perceived betrayal of one partner by the other. It seems that lately, in my practice at least, the betrayal is more in the direction of husband not being able to accept what they see as betrayal by their wife, but it certainly works both ways!

Betrayal, of course, is a matter of definition and expectations to begin with. The range of behaviors that may be classified as “betrayal” may include

• innocent things like talking with your parents about your marital issues
• revealing marital frustrations to an opposite-sex  co-worker over frequent lunches or text messages,
• kissing someone else at a party after 3 martinis, while basically ignoring your partner
• actually having a physical affair with someone.

Do People who Betray See Themselves as Cheating?
Some people who engage in these and other similar activities feel like they are indeed betraying their partners while others do not feel that way at all until “caught” by their partner.  Regardless of their own perception of their behavior, their partners are often devastated when they find out, even though they my have been poor marriage partners to begin with.  This is often because many married people expect loyalty and faithfulness from their partners regardless of the lack of emotional connection between them, regardless of how badly one of both act in the marriage, or regardless of their own contributions to marital misery.

What Happens when Betrayal Is Discovered?

For the non-cheating partner, discovery of betrayal often leads to complete lack of trust, emotional hurt, anger and strong feelings of retribution or emotional punishment of the other. To preserve the relationship, forgiveness is a skill that is most often needed, but often beyond reach. In our anger management classes we teach the benefit of forgiveness as well as the skills to forgive, but many people cannot forgive or trust again after perceived betrayal. Statistically, only a small percentages of marriage survive physical betrayal of one partner by the other.

For the accused, discovery of betrayal often leads to intense feelings of guilt and/or shame. The accused also often becomes very defensive and justifies what they did by listing all the problems in the marriage or in their partner which lead them to the betrayal in the first place.

Should the Betraying Partner Be Forgiven?

Of course, every person has to answer that question for themselves. Some people are incapable of getting past it, while others could if they tried harder and had stronger commitment to do it. Here are some things that you can do that many couples find helpful:

• Try putting it in a broader context. Ask yourself why your and your partner lost emotional connection with each other. You don’t have to see the betrayal as a character flaw in either yourself or your partner; if you wish, you can elect to see it as an indicator of a deeper problem in the relationship.
• Ask yourself how strongly motivated you are to repair the marriage. There are many skills you can acquire to get to forgiveness and improve your marriage, , but none of them will work for you if you don’t want to forgive your partner or you don’t really want to improve your marriage. Ask yourself honestly if there are more advantages to NOT forgiving than to actually forgiving. On the other hand, if you see more benefit in forgiving and improving your marriage than in remaining angry, resentful and bitter, you will forgive and work on improving things.

What Can the Accused Partner Do?
The accused partner can also do many things to repair the marriage, but again, you have to want to and you have to  be willing to do some hard work to pull things back together. Following are just some examples of what it may take to recover from being seen as a betraying partner by your wounded spouse:

• If you did betray your partner, start by asking for forgiveness and commit to not doing it again.
• If in your eyes you did not betray your partner, discuss with your partner what your expectations are of each other and what each of you consider  appropriate behavior for a married person in different situations.  Try to agree on these expectations of each other. Many times a therapist is needed to help you sort-out these issues.
• Start a program of trust-building behaviors so your partner can start trusting you again (e. g. let them know where you are at all times, take offending phone numbers off your cell phone, etc).
• Find ways to improve your sexual  life with each other so that you both feel more secure and more bonded with each other in this important aspect of your marriage.

Thirty-eight year old Lisa (a stay at home mom) was absolutely convinced that Jose, her husband of five years, was cheating on her. She secretly checked his cell phone messages daily, timed how long it took him to return her numerous calls during the day when he was out of town on business, and constantly monitored his facebook and myspace entries.  If he left the house to shop, she yelled at him on his return that “that was just an excuse to meet a girl in the park.”  If he even glanced in the direction of a female when they were out together she accused him of “wanting” her.  When they made love, and it ended too quickly for her, she yelled at Jose for “wanting to get it over with so you can be with your girlfriend.”

In therapy, Jose pleaded innocence and stated with absolute conviction that had never been unfaithful to Lisa. When pressed for concrete evidence, even Lisa had to admit that she had none, despite  her obsession with finding such evidence.

Jose was tortured

Jose was a tortured man. He felt he could no longer put up with the daily unfounded accusations of his wife, yet he loved his three children and did not want to cause them to grew up in a broken home, as he had as a boy. So, he tried to cope as best he could, but everything he tried seemed to make the situation worse.

What can both Jose and Lisa do to help the situation? While there are no easy answers to complex problems  like this, the following guidelines may be helpful, which we teach both in individual and marriage therapy, as  well as in our anger management classes.

Guidlines for Jose:

• Assuming his innocence, it is not up to Jose to “fix” Lisa. Most of the time, this is not even possible. Lisa has to fix Lisa, probably with outside professional help.
• Jose may have to decide if he feels he can cope with his wife, or if she is too “toxic” for him to continue the relationship. Sometimes “anger management” requires protecting ourselves from toxic people in our lives before common arguments turn into domestic violence.
• Jose should focus not so much on defending himself from his wife’s verbal assaults, as on re-assuring her that he loves her.
  
• Jose should find ways to make her feel more secure in the relationship.
• Joe should find ways to increase trust with Lisa by being open constantly about his whereabouts, his activities, and his associations.

Guidelines for Lisa:

• Lisa has deep feelings of insecurity and low self-esteem. She probably will need therapy to overcome these issues. She should not be defensive or feel shameful about needing therapy. Her problem stems from childhood experiences which will require a competent professional to help her sort out.
• Lisa should increase  self-confidence by finding things in life to help her feel better about herself such as getting more education, acquiring job skills, and developing healthy friendships with other women and couples to serve as positive role-models in her life.

Married for 10 years, Mary and Joe rarely argued, yet were slowly drifting apart from each other, each feeling emotionally distanced from the other. Underneath their emotional distance was anger, but it was “hidden” and lived as resentment, passive-aggression toward the other, and emotional detachment. In therapy, it was learned that a fairly common patterns of estrangement had developed between Mary and  Joe who at one time were deeply in love with each other.

The pattern started with Mary not doing what Joe considered to be her share of the household chores. She worked only part-time while Joe rose at 4AM every day, worked until 2PM and then came home and did all the housework, the yardwork, and then often started dinner. She spent much of her time with her family of origin and her friends. Joe slowly developed resentment toward Mary for having to “do it all.” He complained to her, but she didn’t see what the problem was. Her attitude toward household chores and standards of cleanliness were much more relaxed than his:

“So will the world stop turning if we do the laundry this weekend instead of today?” was a common Mary retort while looking at mountains of dirty clothes. Joe,  meanwhile,  was smoldering inside because of what he saw as her “laziness” and irresponsibility.

After awhile, he stopped complaining and simply stuffed his negative feelings toward Mary, while continuing to do almost all of the household chores.   But, he found himself losing sexual interest in her, which greatly wounded Mary who placed a high value on being sexually attractive to her husband. Of course, sexual deprivation led to further emotional distance and estrangement between them.

The Solution?

Often the problem is the other way around: many married woman justifiably complain that they too work yet are expected to do their “second job” once they get home at night.

Either way, a major breakthrough can be achieved by a  couple sitting down with a pencil and paper, listing all the household chores, drawing a vertical line down the center of the paper, and deciding who is going to do what and when it will be done.And then doing it!!

Sound like a simple solution? As we teach in our local anger management classes, our online anger program, and our local clinical clients (in marriage therapy with us), many times simple practical changes in how a couple does things often snowballs into other, more substantial changes in the relationship. Of course, there were more problems than just division of labor between Mary and Joe, but once Mary started doing more of the home tasks, Joe’s resentment lessened and his sexual interest in Mary picked up. This, of course, motivated Mary to try even harder to do more of her share of household chores.

Do they now have a perfect marriage? Of course not, but they are happier, have less conflict, and are feeling closer to each other.