Podcast: Play in new window

Subscribe: RSS

Infidelity—it's a word that can send shockwaves through even the most stable relationships. In our tech-driven world, the boundaries and expectations surrounding loyalty and commitment seem more convoluted than ever. Without clear communication and defined agreements, even the most well-meaning partners can find themselves entangled in misunderstandings and unanticipated crises.

In this episode, we dive deep into the complexity of infidelity within contemporary relationships. We explore the importance of having candid conversations about monogamy and other expectations with your partner, guided by insights from experienced relationship experts. By examining real-life scenarios and discussing therapeutic concepts such as Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), we aim to equip you with practical tools for handling betrayal. Additionally, we delve into the nuanced process of forgiveness, self-compassion, and the potential for growth and transformation that can arise from relationship challenges.

Dr. Bruce Chalmer is a psychologist in Vermont who has been working with couples for over thirty years. Through his teaching, consulting, and books, his ideas have helped thousands of couples and their therapists. Together with his wife Judy Alexander, Dr. Chalmer hosts the podcast “Couples Therapy in Seven Words.” His most recent book is “Betrayal and Forgiveness: How to Navigate the Turmoil and Learn to Trust Again.”

In this episode

06:41 Dr. Bruce Chalmer’s profound exploration of forgiveness and betrayal in relationships.

10:31 How infidelity's evolving definitions complicate relationship expectations.

13:52 What forgiveness truly means: Accepting reality without condoning actions.

23:29 Three steps to forgiveness.

34:01 Struggles with emotional connection due to trauma.

40:53 How attachment system impacts security and emotional responses.

47:15 Communication issues often indicate deeper underlying conflicts.

49:16 Why only one partner can be upset simultaneously.

55:16 Why assigning good or bad is often misleading.

Your Check List of Actions to Take

• Have an open conversation with your partner to clearly define what monogamy means to both of you to prevent misunderstandings.
• Lead with vulnerability rather than defensiveness in discussions with your partner to foster a deeper emotional connection.
• Take a moment to stabilize yourself emotionally before responding to your partner's grievances, ensuring a more thoughtful and composed reaction.
• Engage in self-forgiveness and self-compassion to manage internal shame and facilitate turning towards your partner in times of conflict.
• Practice giving meaningful apologies by acknowledging your impact and inviting your partner to share their perspective on the harm caused.
• Focus on underlying messages of love and respect in your verbal exchanges to strengthen relationship bonds.
• Develop a mindset of ‘faith' in your relationship, meaning an openness to learning and understanding despite uncertainties, as an antidote to panic.

Mentioned

Betrayal and Forgiveness (*Amazon Affiliate link) (book)

My Stroke of Insight (*TED Talks link) (video)

Crucible Institute by Dr. David Schnarch (website)

Intimacy & Desire by Dr. David Schnarch (*Amazon Affiliate link) (book)

Resurrecting Sex by Dr. David Schnarch (*Amazon Affiliate link) (book)

Passionate Marriage by Dr. David Schnarch (*Amazon Affiliate link) (book)

ERP 110: How to Manage Two Majorly Conflicting Needs in Relationship

ERP 015: Do You Have a “Unity” or “Journey” Mindset in Relationship?

ERP 423: How to Transcend Trauma (And the Effects Experience in Relationship) — An Interview with Dr. Frank Anderson

The Gottman Institute (website)

Connect with Dr. Bruce Chalmer

Websites: brucechalmer.com | couplestherapyinsevenwords.com

Facebook: facebook.com/drbrucechalmer

YouTube: youtube.com/user/brucechalmer

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/bruce-chalmer-95ab70305/

Podcast: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/couples-therapy-in-seven-words/id1517231158

Connect with Dr. Jessica Higgins

Facebook: facebook.com/EmpoweredRelationship 

Instagram: instagram.com/drjessicahiggins 

Podcast: drjessicahiggins.com/podcasts/

Pinterest: pinterest.com/EmpowerRelation 

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/drjessicahiggins 

Twitter: @DrJessHiggins 

Website: drjessicahiggins.com  

Email: [email protected]

About this Episode

Bruce, thank you for joining us today.

Well, thanks for having me on. I'm looking forward to our conversation.

Likewise. This is a topic, we're going to focus on betrayal and forgiveness, you've devoted a lot of your work towards. For people who are getting to know you here, what might you want them to know about how this became important and became one of your focuses? 

Yeah. I've been working with couples for, coming up on 30 years, in private practice, and so I've seen lots of couples. This is my third book on the general topics of couples’ therapy type stuff. The first one, I was focusing a lot on how I view the whole issue of being in a couple. The podcast my wife and I do is called Couples Therapy in Seven Words. The seven words are: be kind, don't panic, and have faith. I wrote my first book, which is called Reigniting the Spark, really focused on what those seven words mean. It's three concepts in seven words. So I wrote that. Then I wrote another book that had much more to do with the nuts and bolts of therapy as I see it, couples’ therapy, sort of a look under the hood. That one is called It's Not About Communication, which is a fairly provocative title, but that's another story. 

But I realized, as I was thinking about: Gee, what do I want to write about? I did sort of a seat of the pants guess about what proportion of the couples that I see are dealing with some kind of betrayal? It's well over half, depending, of course, how you define betrayal. But I didn't have to stretch the definition very much to get the fact that most of the folks I see are dealing with some kind of betrayal when they come to see me, that's really what stimulated their coming. It could be infidelity, very often. That's probably the biggest one that I see. It could be things like between business partners or between other family members, some family member has said something insulting or betrayed someone in some other way. 

I have a story in the book about a brother and sister who were estranged because the brother had ratted out the sister to her boyfriend when she was cheating on him, and the sister was really hurt that her brother had betrayed her, because she thought he was the one person she could trust. So lots and lots of folks are dealing with betrayal. So I thought, well, a way of fitting that into the general scheme of how you heal from things would be a worthwhile look, and lots of people have told me it's been very useful to them.

Love that. I agree with you, when people in partnership or in a long-term intimate relationship—be it marriage or some other construct of how they couple—are dealing with emotional injuries, some of those injuries are forms of betrayal, and you're giving us some example here. Do you go as far as to define betrayal as you focus on the topic?

Yeah, I do. I mean, if you think about what betrayal is, and I don't want to deviate too much from the general way people use the term. 

So if you're in a monogamous relationship, by definition, that would mean if somebody goes and has sex with someone else, they have betrayed that expectation. So betrayal is always about some kind of expectation you have of someone based on your relationship. It's kind of a double whammy. Because it's bad enough you get hurt by whatever it is they did, but then you have to doubt your whole relationship with them, especially you have to doubt your own judgment. It's like, how could I? I never would have thought this person would have done that to me, and yet they did. So betrayal has that extra sense. It's not merely being hurt. It's that sense of being hurt by someone who you never would have expected to do that particular thing.

So it's both the bond and the connection, and some severing of that connectedness, as well as whether or not it's expectations that weren't flushed out, and/or, would you say, agreement? Some people do get clear, and the disloyalty around that.

Yeah, and it is interesting. Because sometimes, you discover, especially true in the domain of infidelity these days, there's so many different forms of what people can interpret as infidelity than there used to be when I was a kid, pre-internet. There was cheating of various kinds. Even then, I suppose there were some fuzzy areas, like is making out with someone really cheating? Or in the Clintonian sense, did I have sex with that woman? For those of your listeners who are old enough to remember that. But that phenomenon of, have they agreed on what the expectations are, sometimes comes up. Somebody might feel betrayed, and the other person might be feeling like, I didn't betray you. I didn't do anything that is out of line, did I? And the other person might be thinking: Yeah, you absolutely did. So that does come up, especially in the domain of sexual betrayal.

Do you feel that it is important? I know that this isn't the focus of our topic. But do you think it is important for partners/spouses to be very clear about expectations and agreements?

Yeah, and I address that in the book. It's interesting. Because on the one hand, of course. There's a guy named Joe Kort, I don't know if you know that name, but he's a sex therapist. He's in Chicago. Anyway, we interviewed him on our podcast, and he's written interesting stuff. One of the things he suggests is—he happens to be gay, but he suggests this for gay couples and straight couples—that you should have conversations with what do you mean by monogamy? If you're monogamous, you need to have some definitions about what that is, because then you can avoid some of those issues. 

But I talk about it in the book, because it’s one of my favorite theses about this sort of stuff. 

One of the exciting things about being in a couple is that you never really know each other, because you keep changing.

Totally. You want there to be room for growth, both individually and relationally, and to recognize that none of this can be fully controlled. That's not the point.

Yeah. But it's when it comes up in some kind of crisis where somebody is saying: Hey, you betrayed me! And the other person is saying, I didn't think I did. On the one hand, it's painful. On the other hand, it can be just what they need. It can be the crisis they need. That something needed to happen, and maybe that's what happened. A lot of times, with couples I work with, when things go well for the couple, which is to say, go well in the sense of staying together, which obviously, they don't always do. But when they do, it's often because they're able to look at the crisis, in hindsight, as an opportunity for growth. They're like: Wow, clearly that needed to happen. 

I don't recall if I mentioned it in this book, I think I mentioned it in the previous one. But it's a story I love telling. It's a couple I worked with a few years ago, and I worked with them for, I think it was about a year and a half. When they came to me, he had cheated on her, and she was just devastated, and it was really difficult, and they did amazing work. We were having our last session, this was pre-pandemic, and we knew it was our last session because telehealth wasn't available, and they were moving. They were feeling so much better. She turned to him and said: Hey, thanks for taking one for the team. He looked at her and said, what do you mean by that? And I looked at her and said, what do you mean by that? She said: Well, you're the one who had to do the thing you feel guilty for, because he's the one who did the cheating. 

It's not like, she wasn't saying thanks for cheating. But she was saying, in hindsight, something had to happen, and you're the one who precipitated it, and you're the one who has to feel guilty. So thanks for taking one for the team. So I always found that a very inspiring story. It's like, yeah! She saw that. She was grateful for the growth that she and they had gone through in their healing, and I find that very inspiring. Another reason why I wrote the book is just that I wanted to share the stories of these couples that I've worked with for so long, because they're the folks that I learned from. 

This gives example to what healing and the journey can look like if we are willing to turn towards some of these crises with the openness, to look for opportunity for growth. It may not be that's the path. However, if there's openness to inquire and see if there's something in this for me to learn, or can I recognize, in our pattern, how I participated, that perhaps created discontent, or in our dynamic together? Can I learn from that, or can we learn from that? I mean, that's a level of awareness and growth and transformation that is not easy to get to emotionally, and also incredibly fruitful, to your point. 

Yeah, absolutely. It's why I find it inspiring, because it takes enormous courage and enormous tolerance of anxiety. It's one of my little, I didn't make this up, but one of my little shticks that I often tell people is: the key skill of intimacy is tolerating anxiety. That is very difficult in those situations when something like that has happened. The folks that can do that and are looking for meaning, even when it's painful, are the ones who are apt to find healing. Of course, healing doesn't mean they always stay together. They can heal and split up too. But in general, it's the ones who are showing, the word I use for what they're showing is faith, actually. I use faith in a very specific way. I'm talking about a mindset that says, even though this is painful, reality is what it is. Reality is what it needs to be. Reality is right to be what it is. Even though that's painful, sometimes we can't possibly understand all the details, there's a rightness to it, and we have to work with it, rather than just railing against it. 

The folks who come to the first session are saying, let's say it was infidelity, and the one who did the cheating is saying: Oh my God, I'll never do it again, it's terrible, I just want to go back to how things were! And the other person is saying: Yeah, you owe it to me, and we just have to go back to how things were. It isn't going to work to go back to how things were—how things were is what set them up for what happened.

It did happen, to your point. Accepting and not necessarily railing against it, to your point, is necessarily reality or going to give opportunity for this growth that we're referring to. I appreciate your languaging, because one of the things that I'm hearing in how you're describing this, it doesn't omit or bypass the trauma or the shattering or the pain that exists, and that there's a real importance for feeling and experiencing the heartbreak. And can there also be, at some point in the process, an acceptance. This might pivot us towards even how you see forgiveness as being a part of our topic. 

I remember, I've shared this a few times in different interviews. I did two different graduate programs. One was a Master's in Counseling Psychology, and the other was Clinical Psychology. But the first one, I remember doing a literature review on forgiveness, and I can't remember exactly, but I want to say it was between 110 to 150 definitions of forgiveness. Whether or not it had some faith-based, or religious, depending on the context. It was just like, how do people get their bearings when there's so much nuance to this very fuzzy term sometimes? One of the things that I came across that I found really helpful, because I think people struggle with: If I forgive, I'm basically condoning. I know that you would probably also agree that that's not what it is. And also, just this acceptance, as you spoke about, that I'm accepting what happened and what is, and it's deeply painful. And can I be with the circumstances or the reality of that, and then what? That can enter us into more opportunity: forgiveness. Because we're not fighting against the reality of something, or trying to change it, or trying to feel justified that it shouldn't have happened. It did happen.

Yeah, that's very much the flavor of how I work with it. If I were to boil down all of those, I didn't do a review to find dozens and dozens of different definitions, but that makes sense to me. But I would divide them into two. If you boil them all down, at least as I think about it, there's two ways of using the term. I do address that in the book. There's two ways that people use the term forgiveness, and I'm deliberately picking one of them, and I can tell you why, too. One way people often use it, and this is the way I don't use it. One way people often use the term in common use is: Oh, I forgive you, that means we can restore our relationship. If somebody has cheated on you, or I use an example of, I have business partners or something. Okay, I forgive you, we can still be in business together. Or if you're in a marriage: I forgive you, we'll stay married, we'll do better, go and sin no more, or whatever the expression was.

It's like reconciliation or some type of repair.

Yeah, exactly. The reason why I think people will often feel like, well, that seems to imply condoning, is that if you're going to restore the relationship, you have to have some level of trust. Doesn't that take more work, but we'll come back around to that. But that's one way of using the term forgiveness is that it's about the relationship you're having with a person. 

The other way of using the term forgiveness is the way I use which is, and I didn't make up this expression, but forgiveness is an inside job. In other words, forgiveness has essentially nothing to do with the other person. It's only about yourself. If I forgive someone, that means I'm no longer obsessed with the pain. Or speaking of it in trauma terms, I process the trauma, which is to say, I can think about it, I can remember it. I don't like it, but it doesn't ruin me, it doesn't send me into a panic when I think about it. 

I shouldn't say it has nothing to do with whether you'd want to stay with them. You're going to want to forgive someone if you're going to want to stay with them, but it's not sufficient. 

So I tend to think, well, forgiveness is necessary to wanting to stay with someone unless you want to be miserable. But it's not sufficient. Because, to want to stay with someone in a trusting relationship, I need to know if I can trust them, and I can forgive people I don't trust at all. One of the examples I give in the book, and it addresses this very issue, like, aren't some things unforgivable? I am Jewish. Can I forgive Hitler? I can't possibly condone anything about what he and the Nazis did, killing many of my people. There's no way. I have no doubt about the moral standing there. But I can forgive, in the sense of, I don't have to fly into a rage when I think about it. I can think about it with some degree of clarity and resolve. I would fight it if necessary. I'm not a pacifist. I would go to war against him if necessary, as people did back in the 30s and 40s. But I can still forgive. That's how I define forgiveness, it's about my own inner process. Then, if you're involved with somebody, once you've forgiven them, then you can get to the point of deciding if you can trust them or not. 

I talk about three steps to forgiveness, because I don't think it's that simple. You can't just snap your fingers and let go of a lot of stuff. We are well-designed by evolution to be really pissed off at people who've hurt us, just like we're designed to be really afraid of things that have hurt us before. PTSD, as I often comment to folks who I've worked with. I used to do a lot of work with people with PTSD, dealing with trauma issues. 

Similarly, being very hurt being in betrayal is not a crazy state at all. 

So when I talk about three steps, I always talk about the first step being to forgive yourself, because we always blame ourselves to some extent when we get hurt. Because, again, it's a natural thing to do. Because otherwise, we feel like we have no control over life. I've talked with adults who were sexually abused when they were three, and they still blame themselves for it. Obviously, they have no moral culpability for it, and that's not rational. But it's understandable, because otherwise they would have had to feel that life was just completely uncontrollable. So we always have some element of blaming ourselves. How could I have let that happen? Why didn't I see it coming? There's always that. When I can get to the point of feeling like: You know what, I was doing the best I could, knowing what I knew, not knowing what I didn't know. Being who I was at the time, given my experiences, I was doing the best I could. That's what it feels like to forgive yourself. 

Step two is to forgive whoever hurt you. That, I claim, is a pretty short step from step one. Because if I can say, well, I was doing the best I could, then I could say: Well, damn it, they were doing the best they could, too, even though it was awful. Yeah, they shouldn't have done that. But given who they were, given what they thought, given the particular forces operating on them, that's what they came up with. Bummer! But there's no point railing against reality. That's what they came up with, they were doing the best they could. I don't have to be angry anymore. Now I have to figure out what to do. 

I do have one third step, which is sort of oddly named, especially given that I'm not coming from any sort of fundamentalist perspective, and that is forgiving God. I say that it doesn't matter if you have a concept of God that isn't the usual Western theological type. It's forgiving the fact that these things happen in this universe, that we can get hurt. Even though we have this tantalizing sense that we have some control over our lives, but we still get hurt. That's what I mean by faith. When you have a mindset of faith, that's what lets you do those three steps. Then you can figure out what to do with the relationship. 

Super important, and there's so much to what you just said. One of the echoes that I'm hearing throughout what you're describing is this sense, as you spoke about being a strong component of your work, is tolerating anxiety, tolerating discomfort, and to feel the horror of certain things in life, whether or not it's the Holocaust or something else similar. 

I had a professor, he taught at Stanford. He also was teaching at the school that I was going to, and wrote books about forgiveness. His name is Fred Luskin. He would talk about really working in these different populations who had experienced horrific things, and just what you're describing around how to have some level of equanimity, or even to go as far as peace with what happened. Even though they would never wish it or want it or condone it, to your point, and also the control about it. One other thing that stuck with me, the analogy, he said, it's almost as if you're driving along through town and you're noticing violations, and you're frantically writing parking or traffic tickets. But you have nowhere to put that. You can't give it to them, so you put it in your glove compartment. Then you have all the stacked up violations, and you're holding it all. I think this is where the kind of older school, I don't know if you would quite call it a platitude, but it's like that notion of having resentment is like drinking poison, expecting the other person to be injured by it.

Yeah, that's Anne Lamott's thing, I quote her in the book. Not forgiving someone is like drinking red poison and expecting the rat to die.

Okay, there we go. So to recognize the pain and the awful, the betrayal, the injury, and also to your point, what to do about it. There's layers to this. Some people might go to the place around, what did I do? Am I not good enough? Am I not worthy? Or how did I call this into myself? I remember, I was in high school and I had a conflict with a friend or something, and it was actually not pretty, and I felt very victimized. I felt very justified, and was seeking comfort and validation from my mother. The first thing she said is, what did you do? What did you do to attract this, or what did you do to participate in this? In hindsight, I would have liked that question a little later, after a little bit of comfort. However, people go there quickly, where other people will go to blame to the other person, or even to God, to your point, or some higher power, around why is this happening to me, and how unfair, and all the things. At some point, that doesn't get us very far, and we can perpetuate a place of stuckness.

Yeah, that story is a great story. In high school, indeed, I can well imagine you would have hoped your mom would have been more comforting first. Having said that, boy, I can think, in my own life, anybody who's old enough can think of this, all kinds of things where I'm feeling very justified, and then I think about it later and said: Ah, damn, that was partly at least on me! So that bit about forgiving yourself, you do of course need to look at your own contribution, because there usually is one. In an adult situation, it's usually not all one way. So that can bring us up short sometimes, but that's often an important part of it.

Do you think people have to have a certain level of ego strength or self-assuredness or security in themselves, to tolerate some of this discomfort, to take ownership? Some people really struggle. Can you say more about that?

Absolutely. I talk in the book about apologies, and later on, I actually have a chapter for if you're the one who did the betraying. I write about apologies. I don't know what your language standard is for this podcast, but I will say anyway. So I have one little section called apologies, non-apologies, and bullshit. I'm sure we've all heard the non-apologies/bullshit approaches. Mistakes were made, which isn't even an apology. Oh, that wasn't me, how did I do that? Yes, I did that, but that just wasn't me. Well, then who the hell was it? It was. That sort of bullshit. 

But in terms of what you're asking about, to be able to do a valid and useful apology—useful in actually offering the possibility of reconciliation—you have to feel valid yourself. Because otherwise, it feels like annihilation, and nobody is going to do that. Nobody is going to go to annihilation. So just to be able to say: I am so sorry, I just messed up terribly. And offer to hear what effect you had. Because I think that's another important piece of an apology, is willingness to recognize you probably don't know the harm you caused. You might have some idea of it. But that's another thing, people say: Oh, I know just how you feel. No, you probably don't actually, you need to invite that. It's like: Oh my God, I can only imagine how this has hurt you. If you want to tell me, I am willing to hear it. I understand if you're not, but I would like to hear it. That's an element of a potentially useful apology. I say potentially, because you can't control how the other person is going to receive it, or if they're willing to at all. 

And we slow down here, because I think that this is really important that some people get stuck. If we're looking at a dyad, a couple, and one person has a complaint or a grievance of some sort that they want to broach, they raise their hand, they approach. Now, I do agree there's ways of approaching that solicit more empathy or actually prompt a little more defensiveness.

I'm thinking of John Gottman's work here.

Oh, the startup, or even the EFT. How do we lead with more of the vulnerability, rather than the protective, to allow the person to see on the receiving end? Then the person on the receiving end, where I want to slow down is, likely it's not either/or. It's some gray mixture of vulnerability, and then a little bit of maybe criticism or protective evidence. Like, here's the evidence of why I feel the way that I do, which is the characterization people often struggle with, or the mischaracterization. I will raise my hand here, my husband and I still get in this. He'll approach something, and all I'm hearing is him talking about me and how I X, Y and Z. I'm like, I really want to know what you're feeling, but I can feel defensive and then explain. But when I can slow down enough to calibrate, and this is what I wanted to slow down with you around, is: Okay, if I can validate myself, I didn't intend to do anything harmful, I'm okay. I love him, we're good. Okay, can I stabilize a little bit and orient? Then: Okay, he's got something he's wanting to bring to me, he's got a pain that he's wanting to bring to me. Now, I don't know that we're always, in the heated moment, able to get that grounding, that it feels a little off. 

Actually, a client comes to mind. He has struggled a lot with his wife being empathetic and apologizing, hearing his side. She's very, in a lot of ways, uncomfortable going to the emotion. So she's like, your emotion is yours. It sounds like you might be a little familiar with David Schnarch's work, the differentiation.

Yes, I am indeed.

He is very far, almost where it feels a little dismissive. I don't work with him as a couple, but almost dismissive, kind of avoidant of the emotional connection around even just hearing him and engaging in some way. Not even taking responsibility, but just hearing. So he really, really struggles to get what you're describing, of some genuine hearing and seeing and caring around his grievance or complaint. My wonder has been, has this been too painful for her in her past that she doesn't have the organization to feel stable to enter into that, based on previous trauma for her? Anyway, all this to say, can you give a little bit more for how people can feel, whether or not it's forgiveness of self or self-validation, to get that ground, to be able to turn towards the other? Because I don't think we talk about it enough.

Yeah. I wish I had a wonderful formula for it, and I really don't. It's hard work. My three steps of forgiveness, it's all in that first step, forgive yourself. As I mentioned earlier, even to be able to offer that to someone else, to offer an apology to someone else. That sense, that solid grounding, that feeling like you are a valid human being, which, again, I throw that in the word faith. That sense that okay, we're not a mistake to be who we are. We make mistakes, Lord knows we make mistakes, but we are not mistakes to be, and neither is our partner. We are valid people to be who we are. It starts with that. I often think that what I offer couples more than any clever techniques I might have been trained in or invented, is faith. I have this sense that the three of us in the conversation, me too, we're all valid people doing the best we can here. To own, to feel that yourself. I can tell that with lots of folks I work with. I mean, I've lived, and I've had doubts about that myself at various times, because I think most of us have. That makes it really difficult. You sort of dissolve in shame. 

Yes, thank you. I was thinking, shame, shame, shame.

Exactly, it's about shame. It's so interesting, because Brene Brown talks a lot about, and I'm sure I'm going to misrepresent, so I don't want to represent what she says. But it's like, guilt: necessary and good, shame: bad. I tend to think, no, we need them both. We've evolved them both. Shame has its place. Without guilt, there would be no morality. Without shame, there would be no culture. Shame is how we pass on that we don't do this in this culture. It turns out to be important, even though it's awful. It can be really devastating. Certainly, the vast majority of folks I've worked with over the years have too much shame, rather than too little. Every once in a while, I've encountered someone who says: Oh, you need more shame, not less. But not often. Because what are they doing in a therapist's office? So usually not. It's usually folks who are just drowning in shame, and that feeling makes it really difficult to be able to hear someone else saying: Hey, you really hurt me, I wish you hadn't done whatever it is. It's a risk. 

I talk about that usually in a first session. The first session is the only thing I really have structured, everything else is improv, which is funny. I no longer accept insurance. I'm old enough now, I've finally decided I don't need to do that anymore. But when I did, they would want treatment plans, and I would always laugh at that. Because the thing about couples’ therapy is, it's not treatment, and it's not planned. Other than that, I'm happy to give you a treatment plan. But my first sessions, generally, I do have a structure to them. One of the things I often things I often give is a little lecture, and actually, I got some of this, not only from David Schnarch, but the Bowenians. It was a Bowenian influence. I talk about, we need stability and we need intimacy, and the skills are different. 

So to be able to tolerate that anxiety, you have to not be overwhelmed with shame. And when someone can pull it off, it's really quite beautiful. 

Again, I do give a couple of examples. Actually, it was a different book. Anyway, it doesn't matter. In one of my books, I give an example of two different couples, where one says to the other: Hey, would you mind? I forgot what example I used. I think it was an example out of my own life. My wife saying, would you mind wiping down the sink after you brush your teeth? Because she doesn't like it to be a mess. Of course, I, being a guy, didn't even notice that it was a mess. A couple that's doing well, whoever says it to the other, the person says: Oh sure, I didn't know it bothered you, and I'm happy to. Of course, I want to make you happy, no problem. The couple that's not doing well is saying: You're always complaining about something, what is it now? I can never do anything right. That's a sign that there isn't that solid sense of: Of course, it's fine if my wife complains about something, God knows I'm annoying. When we can all recognize that. 

That was another thing I said. We were going to do a podcast, and the guest no-showed for what turned out to be an emergency. You might be able to relate. I don't know if you've experienced that, but whatever. So here we are, and we wanted to do a podcast, and I said: Oh, I know what to say here, I've got the one insight that will cure all relationship problems. Not too grandiose, is it? So that's what we did for our silly little podcast on that day. I'll tell you what it is, this is for all of your listeners. We can all give up here, because all we need is this, and it solves all relationship problems. It is the ability to be mildly annoyed. That’s it, the ability to be mildly annoyed. When a couple is mildly annoyed, it's just funny. Because you have that solid sense that, basically, the world is okay. 

It's interesting what you were saying when you're talking about, with your husband, you're kind of getting hold of yourself and saying: I'm okay, I love him. We're okay, it's all right. All of that stuff. Then you can be open to whatever. Then it's just like: Okay, well, we can deal with this, because we're fine. That phenomenon, when that's there, that's when you can tolerate that anxiety, because the anxiety isn't so high.

I also think that perhaps the attachment system working in someone plays a part in this. So what I mean by that, if someone does have a level of lived experience of feeling safe in the world—that people care, that I'm a good person, this type of sense, what we might call more secure functioning—that that might be a little bit more easily accessible. I'm not speaking about myself. I'm just saying, for people who don't go into shame, or don't go into this highly defensive stance or feeling freaked out that: Oh no, something bad is going to happen! For people that are still working towards earning more security in themselves or in relating, do you and your couple sessions slow down? Because I know, sometimes in the EFT framework, that would be a bit of a block, what one might call block, around like: Okay, so you're bringing a grievance to me, I'm actually preoccupied by my worry that I'm not okay. I'm feeling so much shame that I can't respond to you, and maybe it is appropriate to say. I do respond to you. Can you remind me? Or I'm feeling freaked out that this is going to be a huge threat to our relationship, or that I'm not a good person. Can we orient a little so I can feel more stable, so then I can hear you? Do you feel like that's fair?

Oh, absolutely. A couple of different things occurred to me as you were saying that, a couple of approaches to that. They're different, but I like them both. One is, do you know the work of Jill Bolte Taylor, the neuroscientist? 

No, not well. 

You may recognize the name of her famous TED Talk, and she also wrote a book with the same title. It's called My Stroke of Insight. She's a neuroscientist. She's now, I think, in her 60s. When she wrote the book, she was maybe in her 40s, whatever. When she was in her mid-30s, is when she had this massive left-hemisphere hemorrhagic stroke. It basically wiped out most of the functions of her left hemisphere for years. Now who better than a neuroscientist, as she recovers from that, to write about all that? Well, she ended up writing another book. She's written two books. So the first one was My Stroke of Insight. 

The second one, just a few years ago, came out. It's called Whole Brain Living, and it's funny, among other things. It's just whimsical. But it points out that we're all at least four different people, and I love that concept. We're all at least four different people. She just bases it on our physiological structures. We've got two hemispheres, and we've got an upper part and lower part. The limbic system, left hemisphere, is the part that freaks the fuck out. That's the part that freaks out. The other three aren't freaking out, though they each have a very different understanding of the world. They're all there all the time, but it's that freak-out one that can sometimes take over. And when it does, exactly as you were describing: Well, I can't hear you, I'm freaking out. 

So I love pointing out that idea that, well, we're really a bunch of people. I like that notion. It's only part of me that's freaking out, but that part can take over. So to become aware of that possibility offers a different way of people understanding themselves and each other. It's like, that alerts people to the idea. Wait a minute, part of this is that I'm freaking out right now. I need to get ahold of myself before we have more of this conversation. I do respect what you're saying, but I'm freaking out.

One of my other favorite metaphors, I often say to people, I feel like I'm a bad Borscht Belt Comic. I have shticks. I have my catchphrases and shticks. I have been doing this for a long time, that's what happens. So one of my other shticks is the notion of closed-captioning. You know what closed-captioning is on a video. You turn it on and you can see the text. Of course, if you can't hear or if they're speaking a language you don't speak, that gives you some information on what's going on. Well, what I claim is, anytime anybody is talking to anybody, but especially people who are super important to each other, there's what they're saying, the visible stuff, body language and everything else. 

There's also the closed-captioning, and there's some assumptions I suggest people make, whether they're accurate or not. Which is, anytime your partner is saying something to you, they are saying what they're saying. Of course, you should listen and respect that and hear it and attend to it. They're also saying, by the way, do you love me, are we okay? The very stuff you were talking about. Are we basically okay here, what's going on in our relationship right now? So please pass this all, by the way, do you love me? The closed-captioning answer is going to be more important. You should pass this all, by the way. Unless they have issues with their blood pressure, maybe you shouldn't. I don't know, that's another story. But in other words, listen to what they say. But also, you want to convey in your closed-captioning, ideally you want to convey that: By the way, we are okay! Yes, you're complaining about something. But I know you love me, and I know I love you. So I can hear that complaint, and I do really want to make you happy. Believe it or not, even though I'm annoying as hell, I want to make you happy. So of course, I want to hear your complaint. That's, again, Gottman's thing about it wasn't just the startup, of course. 

It's how you respond to each other's bids.

The man's response, it's if he actually responds by accepting influence, if he turns towards her and says: Yeah, I actually do want to hear you. That's really powerful. So I lump that under closed-captioning. It's like, the closed-captioning is basically: By the way, yeah, absolutely, I want to hear you, which implies, I love you, respect you, we're okay. Then you can handle pretty much anything. Of course, the folks who come to me, and they literally can't have a conversation about who should pick up the kids. It's often because of the closed-captioning, there is all hostility and mistrust. The reason I titled my previous book, It's Not About Communication, which obviously it is. Large majority of people who come to see me are all saying we want to communicate better. I get that. I'm not being too ridiculous. But they're all good at it, unless they're on the spectrum, which most of the folks I work with are, occasionally. Unless they're on the spectrum or literally don't speak the same language, I've met folks where one of them barely speaks English. If they're talking to me, at least one of them speaks English, but the other one barely does. Okay, you have a communication problem, you're going to have to work on that. But usually, it's not a communication problem. They are clearly communicating their mistrust and hatred and dislike and anger, and a lot of it is happening in that closed-captioning.

Well, I don't want to geek out too much as we're talking. 

I am prone to that.

No, I am too, and I'm appreciating what you're describing. As you're giving this two focuses and the brain science and the different parts of ourselves. I don't know if you would think that that could also fit with the Internal Family Systems, that when it's an inner game, that the part of ourselves that is more vulnerable or injured, that there's a different part of ourselves—the wise part, or the higher self, or the one that has a little bit more resource—could almost re-parent or nurture or show up for that part. So that's more the inner game. 

I will say, Joe Bolte Taylor, in that book Whole Brain Living, has a chapter where she maps her four onto ideas from IFS, which I found really enjoyable. 

Excellent! Then the second part is that we can make some of these more core emotions, that oftentimes we're not fully aware of, or these inner longings or attachment needs. If we can be more aware of them and make them a little bit more explicit or visible, that perhaps our partner can respond and very easily calm the nervous system, to be able to have a little bit more connection, to then be able to tolerate some of the maybe complaint or issue.

Yeah, of course. As I will sometimes point out to couples, you do realize, only one of you is allowed to get upset at a time. I also tell them. Actually, I don't tell them this, but I've had occasion to joke in a session. You mean you didn't actually put the entire rest of your life on hold and make sure that your children never get sick and have to be in three places at once and you never have any stress at work? That's a requirement for doing this work, is that everything else is fine.

Well, only if it was like in the research, where you make everything else stable, and then all the variables are stable so we can focus on this one variable and change that to get findings. So I realize our focus is betrayal and forgiveness, and I really wanted to stop and slow down for this piece, as I think it's where some people get stuck. So thank you for doing that. You gave the three steps of forgiveness, so I do think it's really related. Was there more you wanted to say about the mindset of faith as being essential? Because you've really mentioned it, and I wonder if you want to say more here.

Yeah, that's kind of my brand, I suppose, if anything. Because there's lots of good books out there, what am I writing about that's different? I mean, I do tend to emphasize faith, and not necessarily religious faith. In fact, I do something of a differentiation, that fundamentalism, in my definition, is actually the opposite of faith. 

Aha, good point!

I mean, it's not merely not what I'm talking about. It's the opposite of what I'm talking about. Because fundamentalism presumes certain knowledge, which is nonsense. It's simply nonsense. We don't have certain knowledge. Why are there so many different opinions? Of course we don't have certain knowledge. So fundamentalism basically closes down openness to any sort of learning or understanding. So I exclude that. But faith, in my description, again, it's not the opposite of any kind of religious faith. People with very traditional beliefs in God, I have met many who are very much people of faith as I describe it. I've also met many people with very traditional beliefs in God who are not. So it's different from that.

Or people who are not religious that are very much in practice of faith.

Absolutely, very much so. So it isn't tied to religion. But faith, I think, is really central, because that's the antidote to panic. The seven words of our podcast, did I talk about that already? Be kind, don't panic, and have faith. It's the seven words of our podcast, Couples Therapy in Seven Words. The have faith part is the antidote to panic, and if you're panicking, you can't be kind. So be kind, don't panic, and have faith. The have faith is what'll let you be kind ultimately. Because you're not in that place of railing against reality, you're actually willing to work with it.

And tolerate some of that anxiety.

Yeah, that's what lets you tolerate that anxiety. The notion of mindset was that, Carol Dweck, is that her name? I'm trying to remember her name. Anyway, she wrote all sorts of stuff on mindset. If you have kids in school, or maybe it was 10 or 20 years ago, I don't know when it was. My kids are all grown up now. But they talk a lot about growth mindset versus fixed mindset. 

Yes, I've done a lot on that. 

Faith is kind of similar to a growth mindset. It's like: Okay, we're open to learning, we can adapt. I don't know how, but by golly, old dogs can learn new tricks, and younger dogs are better at it. It is possible. So when I talk about faith, it overlaps with that notion of a growth mindset. It's like: Okay, I haven't encountered this before, it's different from what I would have thought. Betrayal itself is like, I couldn't have believed this was possible, but guess what happened? So I'm going to have to grow, I'm going to have to understand that better. That is what I talk about with faith, and faith is what facilitates it. Or it's not so much that faith facilitates that, I think that's what faith is. Faith is the ability to do that.

How would you define faith, for people that maybe aren't as in the practice of this or incorporating this?

Life's a bitch, and then you die, that sort of old expression. I don't mean that one. I mean, no, it's right to be what it is. There's some rightness, even though I can't possibly perceive what it is. A tsunami happens, and 1000s of people are killed. What can I claim is right about it? I can't claim there's anything to celebrate about it. But on some level, we wouldn't exist if we weren't on an earth that had tectonic plates, and that means tsunamis. We wouldn't have life without death. Start from that. It's like, damn! I like living, why do I have to die? Well, yeah, but we wouldn't have life without it. It's that kind of thing. It's like, there's a rightness to this whole business. Even God-awful things that people do, again, I'm not excluding morality at all. There are horrible things that people do that, as I say, I would oppose violently if necessary. As I say, I'm not a pacifist. Yet, there's a rightness to the way people are. It's like, evil is part of the deal, and we have to work with it.

Perhaps that we might not be able to see it all. I was interviewing someone, and I was meeting with a client, she was sharing a story. I don't know if it was a fable of some sort, and maybe there's many versions of this. But it's like an elder and a young one, I think it had to do with a racehorse. The racehorse won, and he's like, isn't that great? The elder was like: I don't know, maybe good, maybe bad. Then the horse gets stolen, and then he's like: Oh, isn't this horrible? He's like: I don't know, maybe good, maybe bad. Like, you can see throughout the whole story that some of what we would have deemed bad actually ended up having rightness or goodness in it, and that it's easy to want to assign a label of good or bad and then get caught into that narrative. But what you're saying is, if we can have faith, perhaps trust that there is some rightness in it. I guess I'm adding to this, and you're nodding, that we may not have the vantage point to see the value of it or how it has benefit. 

Yeah, that's really tied to when I was saying fundamentalism is the opposite of faith. That idea that we can understand it all, it's nonsense. We're in the middle of it, we can't perceive it all. We don't have whatever God's-eye view of the universe is, we don't have that. It's not possible to have that. It's right that we don't have that. So where does that leave us? Well, that doesn't absolve me of responsibility. On the contrary, it means I have to be responsible for making choices, knowing that I'm not going to make perfect choices.

With the information that you do have.

Exactly, I'm going to do the best I can, and occasionally I'm going to blow it. But I'm going to keep on trying. That's the best you can do. It suddenly makes me think of parenting. It's like, my kids had parents, and they had the right ones, must be. That's another aspect, I often will say that to people: No, you have the right kids, and they have the right parents. And you're going to blow it occasionally, but to do the best you can. I never wanted to apologize to my children for having parental power, but I certainly had occasion to apologize to them for how I would use it. It's like: Yeah, I think I blew that one. I probably should've let you do that, or I probably shouldn't let you do that, or whatever. But I think kids need parents. It is that acceptance that we absolutely do not have perfect knowledge, can't have perfect knowledge, and it's a good thing we don't have perfect knowledge. I will sometimes say, if I were appointed God for 10 minutes, I would destroy the universe with the best of intentions, because I'd get it wrong! I wouldn't understand how everything is connected. I would blow it.

Well, this is really helpful. When we talk about intimacy and relating the humanity of being in the place of imperfectness, that maybe the essence of love is perfect, but as humans, we are imperfect. How this fits with forgiveness, and then also misstepping, in the sense of betrayal, whether or not it's known or unknown, and how to navigate that. You've done a beautiful job with your book. Do you want to share a little bit about your book here?

I would be delighted. For those of you, if there is some video associated with it, there it is. There's the book.

Will you read the title, for people listening? 

Yes. It's Betrayal and Forgiveness: How to Navigate the Turmoil and Learn to Trust Again. It's available, as they say, anywhere books are sold, and you can just have your bookstore order it. It's available as a Kindle version, also paperback, and also an audiobook version that I narrated. 

You narrated? Great. 

I did narrate it. I had a little bit of voiceover training years ago, and so I enjoyed narrating it.

Wow, I could see you being great at that.

So you know the guy who's doing the narration, at least he knows what he's saying in the book. I'm not saying I know what I'm talking about more generally. But by golly, the guy who narrated that audiobook really believes in what he was saying because he wrote it. So it is available that way as well. If people want more information about me and my practice in general, but also about the book, they can go to BruceChalmer.com, and there's a Books section there. You can look up my various books and other information as well.

Wonderful! So I'll have the link to your website, as well as to your books. 

Oh, and I should mention our podcast as well. I'll put in a plug for that as another plug. That's one I do with my wife. It's called Couples Therapy in Seven Words. That website, I just kind of grabbed, CTin7.com. So that is our podcast website, which also links to my books and stuff like that. 

Excellent. I'll put the link to your podcast, your website, and your books, on today's show notes. Thank you, Bruce, for sharing all that you've shared and all that you're doing in the world to really help support navigating intimacy, connection, and also just growth.

Well, thank you so much for having me. It's been delightful.

Sign off

If you have a topic you would like me to discuss, please contact me by clicking on the “Ask Dr. Jessica Higgins” button here. 

Thank you so much for your interest in improving your relationship. 

Also, I would so appreciate your honest rating and review. Please leave a review by clicking here. 

Thank you!  

*With Amazon Affiliate Links, I may earn a few cents from Amazon, if you purchase the book from this link.