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The Relationship Blueprint: Unlock Your Power of Connection
Colleen is a student of Dr. Harville Hendrix and Dr. Helen LaKelly Hunt who created the Imago Theory and have brought this work to over 50 countries around the world. She is profoundly influenced by this belief shared by Dr. Harville Hendrix. He said, "We are born in relationship, wounded in relationship and healed in relationship."
What are you struggling with today? Colleen believes that almost any problem we have began with a broken or unhealed relationship. The anxiety or deep sadness we feel often began with unresolved issues in our relationships with our parents, partner, family or friends. When we have unmet needs we are programed to get those needs met. When we don't get what we need we protest by protecting ourselves. this often looks like defensive, critical, demanding behaviors. these behaviors are most often ineffective. As a result we may develop unhealthy relationship with food, sex, gambling our or a substance.
Colleen invites world renown relationship specialists from all over the world to help her guests explore their own relationships and see their problems through a relational lens. She will help us explore how to create intimacy to deepen our connections. Her listeners will gain insights to create a more joyful life.
Colleen is a Licensed Professional Counselor in the state of South Carolina, a certified, Advanced Imago Clinical therapist, a clinical instructor for the Imago International Trading Institute while maintaining her clinical practice in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.
Thank you for joining Colleen today. Remember, don't let life happen to you. You can be the architect of your relationships. Join her next time on the Relationship Blueprint; Unlock Your Power of Connection.
Contact Colleen at colleen@hiltonheadislandcounseling.com for questions or to be a guest on the show!
The Relationship Blueprint: Unlock Your Power of Connection
Healing Through Betrayal: A New Perspective with Gene Shelley
When betrayal shatters trust in a relationship, the cultural script is clear: there's a victim and a perpetrator. But what if we've been thinking about affairs all wrong?
Master Imago therapist Gene Shelley guides us through a profound reframing of infidelity that moves beyond blame and judgment. With decades of clinical experience helping couples navigate the aftermath of affairs, Gene offers a compassionate perspective on what's really happening beneath the surface when someone betrays their partner.
"Affairs are not really affairs," Gene explains. "They're an acting out of unmet needs in a ruptured relationship." This thought-provoking conversation explores how our earliest attachment wounds shape our adult relationships, creating vulnerabilities that can lead to betrayal when pain goes unexpressed or unheard.
For anyone who has experienced the devastation of infidelity – whether you were betrayed or the one who strayed – this episode provides a framework for understanding that doesn't excuse the behavior but illuminates the path toward healing. Gene walks us through how couples can recover trust, establish meaningful boundaries, and potentially build even stronger connections after betrayal.
This conversation challenges conventional wisdom about affairs while offering practical insights about the recovery process. You'll learn why checking your partner's phone rarely leads to genuine healing, how friends and family often unintentionally keep hurt partners stuck in victim mode, and why approximately 50-60% of relationships experience infidelity despite the stigma and secrecy surrounding it.
Whether you're working to rebuild after betrayal or simply want to strengthen your relationship's resilience against future ruptures, Gene's wisdom offers a compassionate roadmap toward deeper understanding and connection. Listen now to transform your perspective on what affairs really mean and how relationships can not only survive but thrive after betrayal.
Thank you for joining me today on the Relationship Blueprint. Remember, don't let life happen to you. You can be the architect of your relationships. So join me next time on the Relationship Blueprint; Unlock Your Power of Connection.
Contact Colleen at colleen@hiltonheadislandcounseling.com for questions or to be a guest on the show!
Welcome back everybody to the Relationship Blueprint, where we unlock your power of connection. And today we are going to really dive deeper into the depth and complexity of human relationships, emotional connection and the tools that help us heal and grow. And as your host, I feel so honored to have with me Gene Shelley, who is a master teacher, seasoned imago therapist and deeply respected voice in the world of relational healing. Gene brings decades of clinical experience, profound insight and heartfelt presence to his work with couples and individuals. Known for his ability to guide people through some of the most difficult relational challenges, gene has a particular passion for helping partners navigate the pain and the confusion around affairs.
Speaker 1:In this powerful episode, we will be unpacking one of the most tender and often misunderstood areas of relationships, which is infidelity. Together, we'll explore what affairs really mean, what they reveal about connection and unmet needs, and how, through the lens of imagotherapy, they can become the gateway to healing, growth and even a deeper intimacy. So, whether you're a therapist or someone who's been impacted by an affair, or simply curious about how relationships can heal after betrayal, this is a conversation you won't want to miss. Let's dive in with the wise and compassionate Gene Shelley.
Speaker 2:Welcome, gene. Okay, coco, I'm honored. If I can accomplish all that you said, I would be a genius.
Speaker 1:Well, you are a genius. There's something that Gene and a couple other brilliant therapists did together, and it's called a Signature Series, and one Sunday I was just really looking for something, that I wanted to learn more and deepen my understanding, and so I took this 90-minute course online that Gene offered, and I was so struck by your compassion and understanding around this very tender topic. I really felt like it's so important for people to really understand affairs, because I feel like in our society, we judge them, we judge the people that have them, we do a lot of blame and shame and the people that are in them suffer so much. So I'd love to explore this with you, gene, and learn more and share that with our audience.
Speaker 2:I'll share the tidbits of what I've come to understand about it, and I think what you may have picked up in that signature series was the way in which the theory that I began to understand kind of earlier in my practice made sense to me. And when I didn't make sense I felt like I was handicapped. I really didn't know the pain because I was so influenced by culture that, as you said, judges an affair so harshly with very little understanding.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so I think what you're saying is early on, when you were not aware of the why and how affairs happen, because we think we know how they happen on the surface, but that there's so much more to that that you too, like how do you work with a couple if you're in judgment? Is that what you're telling me, gene?
Speaker 2:Yeah, because you're handicapped, you don't really know how to be empathic or how to understand it, or I didn't have a. I didn't have a framework of understanding that made it comfortable for me to work with.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that's really you know. You just use the word framework, but I that's a big takeaway for me is how you described how the framework, how you see affairs, your understanding of affairs, how that informs your work and how you were able to work with the couple in a whole different way because of that understanding. Can you tell us more about that? How did you come to this understanding and what is your understanding?
Speaker 2:I don't remember at this point anymore who gave the first lecture that I began to grasp this, but I think it was Harville, and he connected the affairs to the developmental scale that I was very knowledgeable in and had a good grasp of, and when he did that, suddenly I had a framework.
Speaker 1:So when you for our audience, they might not know what you mean by the developmental stages or scale. Can you elaborate a little bit?
Speaker 2:more? Yes, that there's. In some sense, infants go through a stage of attachment, when that's their primary activity and function and when that succeeds well enough, they might begin to detach, and we often talk about that as the exploration stage, which is I don't need you anymore and I want to go and explore the world. Yeah, and Hartwell used to say we do that in order that we can discover. We need to attach again. Yeah, and that if you don't get to detach, you don't really understand and experience the joy of an interdependent where you can depend and not depend.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so just for our listeners. So that attachment stage is like birth to 18 months, and that's when you know you're taking delight in your baby, even when they're exhausting. But you know you're smiling, you're really mirroring them into existence. And then, after 18 months to roughly three, they are, they're exploring, they go smiling, you're really mirroring them into existence. And then, after 18 months to roughly three, they are, they're exploring, they go away from you, but they look around and make sure you're there. So I think you know what Jean's describing. Is this this developmental theory in the context of how does this impact affairs? So tell us more.
Speaker 2:Well, let me rephrase some of what you just said that in the attachment phase, if the parent is doing what you said, then the infant's experience will be internalized as it's safe and I really feel you, my caretaker, as a reliable object and you're warm and you're there when I need you, yeah, yeah. When that does not happen and I would say good enough. I don't think any of us are ever perfect at it, but when it doesn't measure up to good enough, the infant suffers a fundamental activity, which is attaching safely to another person, and I believe that affects an individual throughout their entire life. It shows up primarily in adult love relationships because it gets recycled again, because now the intimacy that started looked hopeful, was experienced as exciting and often is disappointing, and it is a parallel process to what happened to the infant in that first attachment stage.
Speaker 1:So, as I'm hearing you talk about it, I think one thing that listeners probably see a lot about in our social media is attachment theory and avoidant attachment and secure attachment and anxious attachment. But I think really what you're saying, too, has some really important merit in the way that we don't remember it. So we have this experience, and let's just say that we're one of seven kids and mom's doing the best she can, and dad is too, but we're not getting those attachment needs met. We've had a relatively what we might call a good life, but what might show up in our relationships is that that early those attachment needs, as you said, weren't good enough, and so that it will show up later but we won't have memory of it. Is that right, gene?
Speaker 2:We won't have memory of it. We'll have an adaptation to it. Yes, and as you know, in our theory we will talk about the two adaptations the attachment stage will make. If it is not good enough and probably there's a range of not good enough, and to me I think I've come to the earlier the wounds, I mean in the first month or so, if the wounding of the lack of caring is there, it's a very traumatic experience for the infant, of course, not known, not remembered, but acted in.
Speaker 2:The resides in the hippocampus now and is motivating the individual in their relationships. Yes, yes. So what are the adaptations? The first one is that if it's not good enough, I will avoid. I learned to do without, so I adapt by avoiding contact. It doesn't mean I give up longing for it, it just means I've adapted to do without.
Speaker 2:That would be what we would say on the minimizing side of the energy. You begin to constrict that and avoid. If you experience the attachment more, as sometimes it was warm and good, but never enough. It's like the bottle, the nipple is pulled away from you prematurely, you're left holding with kind of a clinging reaction, wanting it to hold on to. And so we had decided that that adaptation toward a maximizing energy of trying to get it is clinging and there's a sort of parallel to a later developmental that we might talk about in terms of isolation and pursuing Very similar but less intense. I think about the early one because I think when the affair becomes known, often the regression that happens around that is very parallel to the infant's very early trauma experience.
Speaker 1:Can you tell us more about that?
Speaker 2:Which.
Speaker 1:Well, this so that when the affair is found out, how does that look in the context of what you're sharing?
Speaker 2:Well, it's pretty catastrophic for most people and sometimes it's even catastrophic for the one who's having the affair. But most of what culture does, I think, for us, is identify the victim and they see the person who did not act out that somehow this affair was done to them. While it may be experienced that way, I don't think that is the way in which the emotional world is really doing the act. So, for me, the person who is having the affair perhaps has more investment in the relationship simply because they invest more energy and take more risks. It is not necessarily a statement I don't want this relationship. They just are in pain, suffering and don't know how to articulate it. There's nobody around that might challenge them. What are you experiencing inside? What is so painful to you? And the easy route since we've already experienced romantic love, we know the joy of that that affair becomes so easy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because we all want to recapture that feeling, right, that joyful aliveness that people feel in that romantic love, and, as we all know, if you've been married for a while, that those chemicals that originally were in there, all those endorphins, that they stopped being produced, and so now we're more into the power struggle that every couple experiences, some bigger than others, right, but what you're saying is that the person that may be having the affair really may be truly suffering and not knowing how to articulate it not maybe has articulated it, but it was ignored, like I really need more sex or I really want more time with you, or whatever the issue is. And so there they are. They are also in pain, right?
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Yes, but they're not allowed to be in pain because they've inflicted the wound you know, in our culture Well, once they act out.
Speaker 2:but, as you referred to, the relationship probably is in a power struggle by this time, without very little capacity to manage it and to reflect on it and to understand why, in Imago we would say most every couple ends up into a power struggle. Because you need to go through that in order to activate the longings of the child that did not get met, that now want to get met, and to bring it into a conscious way of relating. So in the affair, that's an easy out. I'm getting my needs met. I feel really alive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when I'm with this new person, I love all these feelings I'm having because I'm back in romantic love, and what feels better than that?
Speaker 2:right, because it's sort of like original wholeness. You feel so complete with someone else who makes you feel that way. That's obviously a deeper conversation, because I'm not so sure the person makes you feel that way. You're probably just in love with aspects of yourself that you get mirrored by the other person.
Speaker 1:That's right, we love who we are, right, but we love who we are when we are in love, right, we love. You know I'm so much more energetic and you know the sex is better and just the joyful aliveness of being in love is so captivating, right, so we can understand why somebody would want to chase that. I think everyone could understand it. I hope so Makes sense to me. Yeah, yeah. But what you're also saying is that, although you know, once the person who's not getting their needs met or is searching for something, whether it's a longing, a lost part that once they act out, then they become the perpetrator and then the other partner is the victim, and that's sort of how the culture sets it up. I think so.
Speaker 2:Yes. And then, of course, a lot of the friends of the victim will say get out. A lot of individual therapists will say well, you're in a lot of pain, why would you stay in this pain? Get out. And what I think is missing is a lack of understanding. How did this come about? And in most cases, can't say this 100% of the time there is something in which both partners have participated in.
Speaker 2:Reminds me of a couple that I worked with for a period of time. In their relationship and they were very religious, the woman had spent a lot of time in spiritual direction with her rabbi and she was very well known in their community. The couple was known for their commitment and their joy and what they kind of fidelity that they lived with and they were so looked up to. And then she had an affair which blew her away and nearly destroyed the husband. I mean, he thought he was having a heart attack. Sure, the pain was so extraordinary because it was outside of their bubble that they had created for who they were, and she had given him plenty of signals that I'm in pain.
Speaker 2:In our relationship, I think you're more wedded to your friends, to your business, than to me. And I've got, we've got a handicapped kid, we've got so much going on. I need you, I love you, and the signs were all there, but nobody was listening to the pain of that, and so it was a real catastrophic when I say that it was a really upheaval for them. It took them four or five weeks to even get themselves grounded again that they could even listen to me or anybody. It was so destructive and you know the people around them said get out of this, stop this. This is nonsense. You're in pain.
Speaker 1:And this is where it takes time.
Speaker 2:For the therapeutic process. It takes time. Some couples are better at it, but the earlier I think the internal wounds are there, the more time it takes to recover and to begin to get any kind of grounding where you might begin to build some trust back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's pretty. I mean, it's so challenging for the person who has been betrayed, because then they often want details when did it start? What did you do? You know? All of these sort of natural but painful questions that probably won't help anybody move forward, but it's all part of this mess that they're in right, Because when there's that much suffering, like you said, it was six, seven weeks before they even really talked to you about it.
Speaker 2:I think most of those questions are about myself. I must be inadequate. I mean they bought into the cultural thing. I'm a victim, so something's wrong with me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that's so spot on, jean is when it happens to the person, the first thought is I'm not enough. What did I not have? I'm not thin enough, rich enough, work enough, whatever the enough is. Go to that place of you know what's wrong with me and why did you have to look somewhere else, you know, to find something that I must not have right.
Speaker 2:So with most couples, it is something that, as a therapist, you cannot say to them early on. You have to wait, you have to help bring some grounding to the relationship, calm it down, bring some soothing, bring some ability to just live as separate as they need to for a period of time as they recover their senses. And at some point I think most of the time a therapist can say I really want to say something to you guys now that I'd really like you to hear, and that is that this thing that you've come in about called an affair was only one of your. It was part of the relationship. It was an issue. Nobody talked about it, and one person secretly acted out, and it wasn't about the other person, only about that person. So one of the tasks we have is to understand what was the underlying pain that caused this to take place.
Speaker 1:And I think what is so hard too, as you're describing this, is for the person who was betrayed to even look at their own responsibility in the story because of the culture saying that you know, I'm the victim, you're the perpetrator. That for the person to say, like the man you talked about, whose wife, eventually she kept asking for the things she needed. I need help with our child that's handicapped. I need more time with you. You spend so much time with your job and with your friends, and so what he's hearing is complaining and not a need. He's not hearing the I'm so desperate for connection with you and your help and support. He wasn't hearing that. He was just hearing God, she's complaining, she's complaining it's never enough. It's never enough, and then shocked right Then he's shocked when she then tries to get those needs met in a different place.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and how tragic it is. I mean, what you're really talking about, jean, is so important because you're saying, as even the therapist, you've got to be patient with these people because their nervous systems are just torn up from the tragedy of it, really. But the awakening of this is what happened in our marriage. And now where do we go? And not having cheerleaders, friends saying, hey, you know, I know a little bit about this, maybe you can work it out. You know they're not getting those messages, maybe not even from therapists right?
Speaker 2:Well yeah, In our culture, people want to avoid pain. They don't ask why is the pain? What's the generator of the pain? What's fueling the pain?
Speaker 1:So when a couple is at this point or their affair has been discovered, and then you've kind of nervous systems have settled down some, then where do you begin? How do you begin to unpack? You know really what's happened. How do you help them to normalize the experience? Because I think it's something like 60% of our couples have affairs at some point or another. Is that?
Speaker 2:accurate. There's some difference between the males and the females. It's 50 to 60%.
Speaker 1:I've seen different statistics on that of us on this earth have either had an affair or have been. You know a person who's? Been in a relationship where someone has betrayed them, and then we keep it in a closet and judge it. You know how does it ever recover and get better, and it's so true about addiction too. You know just. The more we hide things in our families, the more painful they become, and the shame gets bigger than the actual event or the addiction.
Speaker 2:You're right, yeah. And then it even gets more complicated as therapists and the helping community starts labeling emotional affairs. Now it gets really complicated because there's a real lack of boundaries about. What does that mean?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so you've been defining the affair right. What is an affair?
Speaker 2:Exactly and, as I have often said, affairs are not affairs. They are really somebody in pain who acted out, and it really needs to be understood that way. Bring your pain back and let's, in our words, dialogue about it and begin the process. It takes time, it takes considerable time. Some people more, some less. Bring your pain back unless, in our words, dialogue about it and begin the process Takes time, takes considerable time. Some people more, some less, some people can get there more quickly. What tends to happen for those who want to go quickly is the person who acted out feels their shame or their, and they got some of their energy back and they want to move on. They don't want to get stuck in this because it was so painful and messy, but that has to be slowed down. You have to take time for the relationship to begin to feel safer and safer so the trust can build. It does take some time.
Speaker 1:During that period of time. I mean it's you know. I'm sure that you've heard this in your office. I've certainly heard it in mine. I want to be able to look at your phone every week. I want to look at your email. I need you to tell me where you are. Can you talk a little bit about that? Like as the healing process goes on, how do you honor boundaries, build respect and build trust back during that very, very fragile period of time as couples are trying to recover from the betrayal?
Speaker 2:I don't know the answer to that. I hear professionals all over the map on that one which way to go. I tend to want to de-emphasize the getting details and being in control, that that is masking real relationship. But I will engage you in dialogue. Let's have a dialogue about that. So the reason I want to look at your phone every what it will do for me, what it does, you know, and if there's a real opening of compassion and understanding, then I think they might go through a period of time when that's applied to their relationship and the phone is offered here. Have a look. But it's in the service of, as all other healing parts of our understanding are, in the service of healing the rupture of the pain that you're carrying. It's not focused on the activity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think too, you know, when I've had couples in my office with this issue, when they kind of want that because they think, right, it's the masking, they think that's going to be what really makes them feel better. And then when it doesn't you know, I check your phone, you haven't talked to her there really isn't any relief in that right. That's been my experience anyway. But if they can dialogue deeper on. But another way you could reassure me would be how I would feel reassured might look like, yes, would be how I would feel reassured might look like, yes, that you text me a couple times a day and remind me that you do love me and that that will help heal me. And they play with that right, because maybe that won't work either. But it's less about being the private investigator, which I think also brings a lot of shame to the person who's doing the investigation, going through pockets and feeling like a crazy person.
Speaker 1:Right, right. It can be such a humiliating place to live.
Speaker 2:It's an attempt to use control in order to manage their own pain and frustration, instead of offering their real selves that say how can I trust you? My psyche is so fragile it doesn't see how I can, when you're out of my sight, that I can know you're okay or that I'm okay. And it takes it does take a dialogue over and over again. It can last a long time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it requires really the person who did act out, and I really love the way that you said you don't really love the word affairs, that you look at it as you know. Let's unpack the pain. I think that's so important. If we could reframe that for anyone that is in a relationship, because whether you're married or not married and you're in a relationship, betrayal is a scary thing in a relationship. So how do we demystify that and talk about that more in that lens that you're using, which is wow, so I'm in this kind of pain around our relationship, and instead of complaining and shaming and blaming you all the time because you're never home or not saying anything, you know, how do we talk about our pain together? And that would be more on the prevention side of how to protect relationships from affairs right To really.
Speaker 2:It would be prevention, yes, but I think it's also true that that would be an ongoing conversation. Affairs are not the only pain in a relationship. Unfortunately, culture tends to elevate it as one of the major ones, and it's really not that much major than any other rupture in a relationship.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, there's so many ways that we leave each other Can you talk a little bit about that, just briefly, because I think we do.
Speaker 1:It's almost like a hierarchy Okay affairs are the worst betrayal, and then there's this ladder, and what you're saying is all of it is hurtful, all of it is pain, and it's just unresolved pain that has not been expressed or heard. Maybe it's been expressed but not heard. If you could talk a little bit about the other ways that we could maybe normalize the affair with some of the other exits that we use in our relationships that are just as damaging.
Speaker 2:Yes, I think the relational context, as you know, we talk about it in the Imago world is that this space in the relationship, the space between, is a sacred space. It's space that is not contaminated until we enter it and contaminate it. It's there for us to cherish each other. So when we begin to bring it into our personal, into the individual, sometimes that really contaminates it because it's not an understanding about the relational component, it's just a self component. One example would be when I'm always telling you I'm not safe with that or I don't feel safe with you. That's a very self-determined comment. A much safer comment, a comment that respects the space, is to say how can I keep it safe for you to be with me when I focus on the relationship in that space? It's the same thing with the affair. How can I make it safe enough for you not to take your pain somewhere else and try to deal with it? Yeah, can I be that? That's the preventive, that's the place that says we really care about our relationship.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and having those conversations about. You know, yes, this could happen to us, and how do we protect our relationship from that? What would that look? Happen to us and how do we protect our relationship from that? What would that look like for us? And how do we express those like unmet needs and in a way that our partner can hear us? And all of that is, you know, not a natural language for people, because we didn't really watch our adults, our loving parents if they were, if they were loving, but we didn't get to see a lot of that. So how would we know how to do that without having someone to guide us?
Speaker 1:Which is why one of the reasons I do this podcast is to say couples therapy is for everybody. If I want to go learn how to play golf, I'm not going to go have my husband teach me. I'm going to go to a golf pro that is a professional that's going to help me do that right. But we're, I think, as a culture again, we're, so I don't need couples there because we're okay, like we're really pretty good, interesting. Couldn't you be better? Couldn't you feel better? Couldn't you get closer? And all of that kind of ability to learn new skills in order to prevent some of these not just affairs, but some of these other huge ruptures that happen in relationships.
Speaker 2:But I think I also take your sentence about we're okay, this couple's okay, like I don't need help to really say tell me more about that.
Speaker 1:How good is it?
Speaker 2:Enjoy it, celebrate what is good, and usually that will open up the real relationship.
Speaker 1:So you're saying if we could focus more on and it is most of us, you know it's like stubbing your toe. When you stub your toe, that's all you can think about is your bad toe. So when your partner's late or interrupts you or does something, you're mad at them and you kind of focus on the thing or the stubbed toe and it feels like in that moment that everything's bad. But when we really think about it, you know we could change our perspective and look at, like, what's really going right with us and am I going to really pay attention to this one thing and allow that to permeate everything else? Yeah, but it's a natural thing, right, that we focus. We have a negativity bias. We don't want to have it. It's part of our human nature, but it's not very helpful. Yeah, so now the couple is with you, they're making progress. You've talked about unpacking the pain. Is there anything else that you would say to our listeners around this tender period of time?
Speaker 2:that's very helpful in their recovery tender period of time that's very helpful in their recovery. Well, I was thinking to make mention of the fact that often when there is an affair, one that is not having the affair feels really abandoned. Now that wouldn't be their language. They feel left, they feel your word was betrayed, these negative words cheated on all that kind of stuff. Rather than really under that is that it will activate any kind of abandonment issues you had as a child.
Speaker 2:And then you know, all your defenses will come into play to protect yourself, and usually do that with blaming and criticizing the other for activating this pain.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:So if it's going to again take time for dialogue to keep at it, to really build back, I'm not abandoning you. I was really at fault for taking care of my needs and not coming to you with them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it sounds like what you're saying is a lot of personal responsibility. You know, for the person who did act out to really be patient and reassuring and opening up about you know, for the person who did act out to really be patient and reassuring and opening up about you know why it happened and what they'd like to do to make it better. But also for the person that was betrayed that that natural kind of defensiveness and criticism and shame that if they can look at how that behavior in the moment may make them feel better, but it really has no long-term benefits to. You know, shame your partner and criticize them for acting out. It's really an empty hole, you know, because it won't get you what you want.
Speaker 2:Right yeah.
Speaker 1:There's no real relief in it. Thinking about friends and family who then support the person who has been portrayed as the victim, how that really can keep them stuck in that role as victim and not really be able to move on themselves, even if they decide to leave the marriage. You know the bitterness, the pain around that.
Speaker 2:Staying in that picture of victim is so unhealthy being connected and taking the time to keep it safe enough to begin to reconnect. Part of the genius, I think, is that if they can get there and begin to own their own participation that led to the experience in their lives, that will be helpful. But, coming out of that, it is also important to begin to teach what boundaries look like. There's a temptation for boundaries to start being presented as black and white and that's not true. That's really a myth and it will cause people more pain in the future and it will trigger some people are very, very sensitive to.
Speaker 2:Now that you've betrayed me, I've got to watch your every move. That's an activation of terror that's not really healed and there's a need that underlies that we need to help people understand you do like some people more than you like other people. You are drawn toward some people more than other. Like other people. You are drawn toward some people more than other people and, yes, you have married one person, but there are plenty of other people on the planet who would have made up the unconscious needs that you needed fulfilled and you will be drawn to them. But boundaries are essential that you can be drawn, but where's the limit, and that needs to be dialogued about, also with the couple.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's so important what you just shared, jean, because if you're like, if you're, I'm just thinking about any marriage right now how does the marriage on the front end protect themselves from that kind of vulnerability with boundaries? Can you talk a little bit more about?
Speaker 2:that State. That again, I'm thinking, I'm thinking.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So I guess what I when a lot of things are percolating as we're talking, but what I was thinking about if, if, yes, naturally, after the affair, we need to talk about those boundaries and what they look like, but I'm also thinking about, like the, the prevention of the of the acting out. What we could really do as a couple on the front end is talk about how do we protect ourselves from this. What boundaries do we need to put in place that would really help support us, because we are going to be attracted to other people and there's going to be vulnerable moments and we're going to get a lot of attention from this one or that. But what do we do as a couple to help us really understand that those boundaries that we can help each other with now can maybe really protect this sacred space, as we've talked about in Imago?
Speaker 2:I think that when you feel safe enough in the relationship, You're not having to protect anything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I agree. I think that for me in my own marriage I'm very careful about if I think someone's paying too much attention to me, how I need to behave, how I need to not feed that and it has really nothing to do with my partner because he's not there or present but that if I can make myself aware of other people's behavior and then not feeding into that, that that's an important boundary for me to set that protects the relationship.
Speaker 2:How do you set that boundary? By knowing what your needs are. Yes being really aware that that? Am I vulnerable to attention? Well, I love attention, but I have a boundary on that. I know where it stops.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I think you know you just brought up another percolating idea. Is that what if I don't really need attention, but if I did?
Speaker 2:That's a vulnerability.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a vulnerability.
Speaker 2:Yeah, especially, I think it's vulnerable in the identity stage of development that we're very sensitive to being validated, mirrored, paid attention to by others, and if somebody really suffers with self-esteem or with their low esteem, they're very much more vulnerable to that. So, knowing these things, so dialoguing and just communicating with each other about where our vulnerabilities are, how can I make it safe enough for you to be strong? How can I help you, not control you? How can I be a participant without controlling, trusting instead?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I really love that, gene, and when we did, I just want to circle back to kind of a question we toyed with, which is you know how do we define an affair, and I know that we're trying not to use that language, but it's the language of our culture. So when people talk about emotional affairs, for example, or reaching out to an old high school boyfriend on Facebook or girlfriend, like a lot of these different things now with technology have really changed the way people are connected and how they can be more vulnerable to a lot of things coming into that sacred space. So do you typically have the couple talk about even? What would that mean for you? What is crossing the line right? For some people it's.
Speaker 2:I don't think I as a therapist introduce a lot of subjects. I let the couple and then I may give them sentence stems that go there if that's where they're going. But I really want to honor every couple's different. Every couple has their own notion about what their relationship really should look like and be, and I want to honor that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm thinking of a couple that wasn't married very long and he was using porn and she discovered it and for her she used the word almost as bad as being with someone else. And so what they ended up talking about is that they never really discussed that before they got married, about his desire to use porn occasionally, like it was not a way that he didn't have sex with her or pay attention to her, but it was in addition to that, and yet it was something she couldn't tolerate. So for her it was huge, for him it was not a big deal. So they talked about in my office how they kind of wish that they had cleared that up before they got married. Of course, it's not generally the kind of thing that you say hey, by the way, this is off limits for me, but so what you're saying is in your office, like mine, you kind of work with what comes in the office, you don't create the problem for them.
Speaker 2:I would really try to help her express what is it she's lacking that stirs up in her.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:That she now projects onto porn something terrible.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:So again we're having this unmet, what we would call unmet needs, or I call it longings from childhood that did not get fulfilled, being acted out in this adult form.
Speaker 1:So I think what I'm hearing today from you, who you have such a lovely, compassionate idea about these unmet needs and, excuse me, suffering from emotional pain, and that what couples really need to do is get really honest, don't they, with themselves about their emotional needs, their unmet needs, their longings and their pain, you know.
Speaker 2:Again, I want to say, I want them to hear you don't have to do this. You're invited to do this at the level that you are at. You may not go as deep as your neighbor. You may not go as deep or somebody else, or, as I have, you will go at your own depth. It is my job to hold it safe enough for you to reach what's satisfying to you and your partner.
Speaker 1:So, Gene, before we close today, is there anything that we haven't talked about in the context of this topic that you want to share with our listeners?
Speaker 2:I think you know we've covered sort of basics about. Affairs are not really affairs, they're an acting out and they are part of a ruptured system that we in this culture have tended to place in a tier value system. And if we can stop that and go and listen to what are you longing for, that generated this in the first place and begin to, once you can get to talk about that and begin to listen to each other, the quantum world for this relationship is immense. I mean, it's just full of possibilities. We don't know, you might have another affair, I don't know. All I know is you have this moment and it's your moment to really rectify what's needed and just connect safely, keep it safe for your partner.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, just connect safely, keep it safe for your partner. Yeah, yeah, and I also think that what you're saying is so important about you. Know what can we learn from what happened? You know what can I learn about? What did I miss when you were giving me all the signals that you know I wasn't available?
Speaker 1:And can I get really honest with myself about that and stop villainizing people, because it is so much around just really people having longings and unmet needs and not always having the safe way to talk about those things. It's just, and that's why we love the dialogue so much, because it really does create that framework for talking about hard things in a safe way. Well, jean, I've just loved having you on the podcast today and I love this idea of not even using the word affair and really just talking about this in a way that is about just really having a rupture in the relationship and having unmet needs. And I think the fear that I have as I say that around our audience is that I don't think that you and I are trying to normalize affairs in the way that we say that they're okay, that we're saying that it's just fine if that happens. We're not saying that. We are saying that when it happens, it's really like that alarm system of the relationship. It didn't get its needs met and if we can look at it that way and stop villainizing and shaming and blaming, then we have a lot of hope for recovery, because what I've seen is couples actually thrive after the affair when they do work.
Speaker 1:It's possible. You said it so well. It's possible. Well, jean, thank you so much, and I want to thank our listeners today for being part of the Relationship Blueprint. We will be back in two weeks with another episode. There's a little vacation for us coming up, so I can't wait to see you then, and we're going to sign off for today. Have a wonderful day.
