Stronger Marriage Connection

Betrayal, Infidelity, and Affair Recovery | Dr. Talal Alsaleem | #142

• Utah Marriage Comission • Season 4 • Episode 142

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Dr. Talal Al-Saleem breaks down the complexities of infidelity from definition to recovery, offering hope through his specialized Systematic Affair Recovery Therapy approach. He challenges common misconceptions about infidelity causes and provides practical guidance for both healing after betrayal and safeguarding relationships against it.

• Understanding infidelity as a breach of the unique exclusivity contract between partners
• Recognizing that infidelity stems from three categories: relationship factors, individual factors, and socio-environmental factors
• Acknowledging that good people can make awful mistakes like infidelity
• Setting the stage for healing by staying together (if safe), avoiding contact with affair partners, and protecting children from details
• Safeguarding relationships through introspection, clear partner "job descriptions," and weekly relationship check-ins
• Seeing infidelity recovery as an opportunity to make informed decisions about the future, whether together or apart
• Understanding that vulnerability to infidelity exists in all relationships, requiring ongoing vigilance

Check out Dr. Talal Al-Saleem's resources at systematicaffairrecoverytherapy.com for clinicians and Infidelity Counseling Center for clients. His books and YouTube channel "The Infidelity Doctor" offer valuable insights for both professionals and individuals dealing with infidelity.


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Speaker 1:

One of the most challenging and heart-wrenching experiences anyone will experience in this life is infidelity. On today's episode, Dr Liz and I welcome to the show Dr Talal Al-Saleem, who breaks it all down for us, from the importance of understanding the definition and common reasons of infidelity to some of the steps of systematic affair recovery therapy. He also provides some practical tips for safeguarding your marriage against infidelity, to some of the steps of systematic affair recovery therapy. He also provides some practical tips for safeguarding your marriage against infidelity. Dr Talal Al-Saleem is recognized as the father of modern infidelity counseling. His research interests and clinical work are focused on identifying the causes of infidelity and providing the best treatment for recovery from its impact. He's the author of three books, including his recent launch of his new book Deconstructing Infidelity Causes and Myths. He is the founder of the Infidelity Counseling Center and the creator of Systematic Affair Recovery Therapy, a method of infidelity counseling that has helped hundreds of couples navigate the challenges of the healing journey from affairs. Dr Al-Saleem is an international lecturer and speaker. His engaging talks have helped many counselors broaden their understanding of infidelity and gain the necessary clinical tools to help their clients recover from affairs.

Speaker 1:

We hope you enjoy the show affairs. We hope you enjoy the show. Hey there, friends, Welcome. Welcome to the Stronger Marriage Connection podcast. I'm Dr Dave here at Utah State University and, along with Dr Liz Hale, our therapist and clinician, we are aiming to bring you the very best that we have in research and resources, along with a few tips and tools to help you create the marriage of your dreams. All right, Liz, I think many would argue that the most painful thing someone can experience in marriage or committed relationship is infidelity. This is a deep topic. It can be a painful topic, but an important one that many can find hope through as well. Our guest today is recognized as the father of modern and fidelity counseling, with years of both research and clinical experience helping countless couples through these rough waters. Welcome to the show, Dr Talal Al-Saleen.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure.

Speaker 3:

Gosh.

Speaker 1:

Yes, looking forward to this important discussion on a very important topic. Dr Talal, can we start our discussion with your definition of infidelity and why it's important to have a clear definition in clinical work?

Speaker 2:

Well, I think before we define infidelity, we have to understand the purpose of relationships. I truly believe that we all have the capacity to live alone and fulfill our own emotional and sexual needs. It's like can we survive on tofu? I'm sure we can, but it becomes a quality of life type of question. So life is more fulfilling when you choose to share it with others, to help fulfill some of those emotional and sexual needs that we're expecting our partners to fulfill in this relationship, and also to what extent the fulfillment of those needs is exclusive to the partners that we have in the relationship. So infidelity is the breach of contract of exclusivity that you have with your partners. So the moment you outsource the fulfillment of one of those needs that you agreed that was supposed to be exclusive to you and your partners, you are preaching that contract and that threshold become the definition of infidelity. Why is that important?

Speaker 2:

So, from a research perspective, it is important for us researchers to have an agreed-upon operational definition of infidelity. Why is that? Because the purpose of science is to observe phenomenons, help us better understand them and maybe lead to generating some recommendation to how to address those issues. So in research, we don't have an agreed-upon operational definition of infidelity, which means that something as simple as perembulance rates of infidelity we cannot predict accurately. If you look at the literature, you'll find studies that says infidelity perembulance rate is as low as 2.5% and you'll find studies that says 80+. That's a wide margin of error. But it has to do with how people are defining that infidelity and consuming the data From a clinical standpoint trust and belief.

Speaker 2:

When your clients show up to therapy, they are looking for you as that therapist to make calling on the presenting problem. So if you call it infidelity and it's something else, you exaggerated a smaller problem. If it's infidelity and you called that something else, you minimize the bigger problem. So that's why it's important from a clinical standpoint to have a clear definition of that label, because it's going to guide the whole therapeutic process what about, I'm curious, just follow a follow-up on that emotional right infidelity.

Speaker 1:

So maybe I haven't acted on anything. Is that included in the definition, or that it's its own definition of emotional infidelity?

Speaker 2:

That's a great question because I would say sexual infidelity it's somewhat easier to define because it's related to the sexual interaction we have with others. Emotional infidelity becomes more challenging because oftentimes we're not expecting exclusivity in the fulfillment of our emotional needs, because we have emotional needs that can be fulfilled by friends, family members, spiritual leaders. So it gets more tricky. So that's why my definition was really related to the unique relationship contract that couples have in their own relationship. For example, in some relationship people might see flirting as something that is normal or social flirting. That's not an infidelity behavior. In other relationships it's considered to be a form of infidelity. Same thing with folks who watch pornography. For them the act of watching pornography can be a breach of that contract. For others it might be something normal. And I think again the key, what makes that challenging to define emotional infidelity is that somehow we're socialized to think that emotional is not hurtful and I would argue sometimes it can be more devastating than sexual or physical infidelity.

Speaker 1:

Yes, okay, that's super helpful, thank you.

Speaker 3:

Mm-hmm, I don't know how you two feel, dave and talal, but it seems like we're all vulnerable to infidelity. I mean, I worry about the couples most who come in and they'll say especially like, let's say, um for pre-marriage counseling, and I'll bring up this topic of how are we going to keep ourselves close and between the two of you, since that's what you've decided you want, um, and they'll say, oh, I would never, she would never, she would never, he would never. Those are probably the couples I worry about the most. Dr Talal, what are you saying? Do you believe what I'm saying to these couples for 33 years? That we are all vulnerable? We have to really stay on guard.

Speaker 2:

I'm glad you brought this up, because I truly believe infidelity is one of those traumatic events that everybody has either a direct experience with in their own personal relationship or an indirect impact relationship of family members, loved ones, friends.

Speaker 2:

And it's interesting to me, and that's one of the things that I try to advocate in my training for therapists. I feel like infidelity recovery training shouldn't just be for couples counselors, because you're going to be dealing with kids where their parents expose them to their parental infidelity. You're going to be dealing with individuals who are still struggling because they experienced infidelity in a past relationship or maybe in their family of origin. It is something that we should all be aware of, something that we should all try to safeguard our relationship from, and it's doable if people actually accept the fact that we can all be vulnerable. It doesn't matter how strong or weak your relationship is. Relationship vulnerability is not a static thing. I always say relationships like plants just because it's healthy and thriving doesn't mean you stop watering it. It doesn't mean that you don't worry about it getting sick. You have to maintain that.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, there's just a certain level of being on guard. It seems like Dr Talal right, Because good people experience infidelity.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely so. In my most recent book, deconstructing Infidelity the Causes and the Myth, one of the myths that I tried to debunk is that good people are capable of committing awful mistakes such as infidelity. Sometimes people see the unfaithful partner as somebody who is devoid of morals or ethics, and I would say there are a lot of people who have good morals, good ethic, maybe good spiritual background, but despite that they do some things off of infidelity. That does not negate the humanity, that does not negate their ethics and morality. They just help us to zoom in on what caused them to do this.

Speaker 3:

All right, very good. Now that we've established we're all vulnerable, what have you found are some of the more common reasons that people engage in infidelity? What makes us even more vulnerable, then, besides being human?

Speaker 2:

I think the first thing that we have to do is that we have to rethink the causes of infidelity. So that was one of the other challenges that I had to address when I created the systematic affair recovery therapy model. When we look at the etiology of infidelity, there are three categories of factors. There are relationship factors, there are individual factors and there are socio-environmental factors. If you talk to the average person or the average therapist, you ask them why do people cheat? Most people will say people cheat because somebody is not happy with their relationship. Now, it is true that relationship dissatisfaction is one of the leading causes of infidelity, but it's not the only one, because we all have witnessed those relationships. When we hear about the infidelity whether we hear about it as individuals or clinicians and it doesn't make sense it seems like they seem to be with the perfect partner. Partner seems to be compatible, ready and willing to fulfill all their needs. But despite that, the unfaithful still they are finding opportunities to cheat. Well, sometimes the unfaithful is cheating. It has nothing to do with their relationship. It has to do with an individual issue that the unfaithful did not take care of and they brought with them the relationship, a common individual factor that could lead to infidelity. You have the folks who have personality disorders, specifically cholesterol B. So if you have somebody who's a narcissist, if you have somebody who's an antisocial personality disorder, those folks tend to have a higher prevalence rate of infidelity, even if their relationship has no deficit from their partner.

Speaker 2:

When we look at the relationship factors that causes infidelity, I would say the most common ones are one lacking relationship maturity, and two poor communication and conflict resolution skills. When we look at relationship maturity, there's two sources of us getting relationship maturity. One is the models that we're exposed to in our family of origin and unfortunately not all of us are lucky enough to see a healthy model in our families. The other source is the type of relationship experiences that we have as adults prior to our current one. So if you have a couple who never had a good model in their family of origin and they didn't have good, healthy relationship prior to their current relationship, you can have a couple who just not equipped to handle the relationship and that's why they struggle.

Speaker 2:

And the last one is the environmental factors. On that one we could spend hours talking about it. It's one of my favorite things to talk about with the etiology and I'll just use one small example to highlight that part. We all belong to different cultural groups, macro or micro, whether it's religion, ethnicity. It could be a group of professionals that you belong to. Even our family of origin has considered non-microculture, and with each cultural group there are cultural norms. So if you grew up or you're a part of a cultural group where the norm does not frown upon infidelity or see it as a sign of masculinity, guess what? You're more likely to engage in those behaviors because your belief system condones that. So that's when we are doing our assessments as clinicians, we have to be looking at all the different aspects that might have led to the infidelity, instead of just focusing on one domain.

Speaker 1:

I mean all kinds of factors, as I'm listening, just soaking this in. It's a variety and combination even of factors. Dr Chalal, let's dive a little bit deeper. What would you say is the primary goal of infidelity counseling and how does it support couples and individuals in the aftermath of betrayal? Perfect.

Speaker 2:

I feel that the purpose of couples counseling in general and the purpose of infidelity recovery in particular is to help people get unstuck. When we look at infidelity recovery, I think a lot of times we're also socialized to think that recovery means heal the relationship. That is not attainable for everyone. I really believe heal from infidelity and the purpose of infidelity recovery is to help the clients means heal the relationship. That is not attainable for everyone. I really believe heal from infidelity.

Speaker 2:

And the purpose of infidelity recovery is to help the clients process what happened, understand the what and the why and use that information to make an informed decision about the future. And the decision about the future was to repair the relationship. That people can address those factors and heal together. If they decide to heal separately, that's okay as well, but they still have to address those reasons that led to the infidelity so they don't repeat that pattern in their future relationship. So, really, the purpose of infidelity recovery it's an opportunity to use this awful, traumatic event as a catalyst for change, because if infidelity happened in your life, that means there's something seriously that needs to be addressed that you can get a chance to address and this is the wake-up call to do that. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'm also curious about success rates. Is there hope, I mean for couples to build back better following infidelity?

Speaker 2:

to build back better following infidelity. So if you look at just general statistics of what percentage of people end up repairing their relationship after infidelity and this is regardless of what kind of therapy they engaged in or the type of modality treatment the statistic is it's about in the 30% I would say between 30 to 33% of couples end up choosing to repair their relationship. If you are talking about the data set that I'm collecting for the folks who are using the systematic affair recovery therapy model, it would be in the 85% of those couples decide to repair their relationship, my goodness. But again, I always remind folks is that your goal as a therapist you cannot measure your success by how many marriages that I have saved, because sometimes saving a marriage is actually ending a marriage. I know it sounds crazy to say, but there are a lot of times where the relationship started on the wrong foot and if you forecast in terms of the future, you'll just not to see those patterns repeating themselves.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, some couples simply shouldn't stay together. Yeah, for sure, sure. Wow, all right, for sure, sure.

Speaker 3:

Wow, all right, my friend, can you please share a few practical tips with our listeners, some of whom maybe have experienced impotency themselves or they know someone who has what is going to be helpful Right out of the gate? Please?

Speaker 2:

Perfect. So I'll share with you some of the things that I discuss with my clients in the first milestone of recovery of the systematic ferric therapy model. So the first milestone. It's called setting the stage for healing, and the clinical objective is to help the couple create the optimal environment for recovery so that they deal with less problems during that journey. So one recommendation that I have and it's related to a question that people ask after the discovery should we stay together, should we be living in the same household or should we live in separate households? My policy on that one I always recommend for the unfaithful and betrayed to be under the same roof while they're trying to figure out where to go from here, as long as they're able to do so while being physically safe and emotionally safe.

Speaker 2:

Physical safety is easy to assess, meaning that we don't have risk of domestic violence and people have stability for them to actually interact effectively without traumatizing each other. Emotional safety is a little bit tricky because when you're dealing with an affair, you're going to be upset, you're going to be sad. So I'm not expecting my clients to be neutral, I'm just expecting that they're able to manage their emotion to a way where it doesn't cause further damage and they have access to emotionally safe zone. Why do I recommend for the couples to stay together during this process? Because, from the betrayed perspective, if the unfaithful is not living with them, not wondering what are they doing, are they impacted by this? Are they interacting with their fair partner? And that's one more burden that the betrayed does not need. Another reason is that the betrayed should not feel that they're dealing with this trauma in isolation. They need to know that this is also impacting the unfaithful partner, because one of the things that they're basing their decision on is how is the unfaithful impacted by this? Are they guilty? Are they remorseful? So if you don't have access to that information, your judgment's going to be not based on facts. So that's one tip Stay together if you're able to do so while you're trying to figure this out, as long as you're emotionally and physically safe. Second tip couples tend to have this is mainly for the betrayed.

Speaker 2:

Sometimes a betrayed feels compelled that they want to reach out to their fair partner, and they do that for a variety of reasons. Sometimes they want to do that because they want to set boundaries, leave my man or leave my woman alone. Sometimes it's because they want to get the story because they feel that the unfaithful partner is dishonest. And I need to get that from the affair partner. The problem is that when you reach out to the affair partner or their significant others, it always ends up escalating the situation further. So end up, yeah, deloading into physical violence and somebody is going to get fired because the affair partner is in a workplace. A lawsuit nothing good come out of it. More importantly, I always think, is that why wouldn't you want to get the story from the affair partner? Because that person have their own motivations, right. Granted, there are times where the affair partner doesn't even know that the person that they're seeing is married on a committed relationship, but most of the time, I've seen the affair partners either exaggerate the narrative of the affair or minimize it based on their own motivations. So the concrete advice please don't reach out to the affair partner. Nothing's big coming out.

Speaker 2:

And the last piece of advice is that you should not be exposing your kids to the discovery of the affair.

Speaker 2:

And when I say kids, I'm not just talking about children, because when kids or young adults are exposed to parental infidelity, it impacts them in a negative way on the short term and the long term Short term at a minimum they're going to be stuck being mediator or triangulated between mom and dad, or mom and mom or dad and dad, because not everybody is going to be choosing the same parents. So sometimes it affects the division within the sibling system and that's not fair for them. Another aspect is that sometimes they're not really ready to handle those responsibilities, that they're still kids or teenagers. The long-term impact is that kids either won't have a rigid view about fidelity they're going to think everybody is going to be unfaithful because our parents were not successful or they might be very loose in the other direction, saying who cares about exclusivity If my parents fail in that? I'm just going to not hold that as a value for me. So these are the three main pieces of advice that I would have.

Speaker 3:

That's really tremendous advice, my goodness. And doesn't always happen that way, right? Sometimes we involve our family, and or it might be the child that discovered the affair right On a parent's laptop. That's not unusual, right? What would you suggest under that situation?

Speaker 2:

In those situations, I would say, because sometimes you're lucky and you're the first phone call before people make those mistakes, and sometimes people already made some mistakes. So if the kids were involved, the first thing I recommend is to do family counseling, because we need to repair that family system. But also we have to make an agreement that we are not going to disclose more information to other people, right, and whoever already knows we're going to say okay, I know I told you about this, but I'm not going to give any more details. We're working on it, we'll keep you posted, because you don't want the couple to make a decision about the future of the relationship for the wrong reason. A lot of times people stay or leave for the wrong reason, and that's unfortunate because it's not sustainable.

Speaker 3:

My goodness, all right. Thank you for that. Those are really helpful to think about what we shouldn't think and maybe what we should do and not do. That was a great start, thank you.

Speaker 1:

We'll be right back after this brief message. And we're back, let's dive right in. Dr Todd, I'm not a therapist so I'm not familiar with the approach right, the systematic affair recovery therapy. Can you explain a little bit more about what ways it actually differs from other therapeutic approaches to treating infidelity?

Speaker 2:

Sure. So I'll talk a little bit about why systematic affair recovery was developed in the first place. So when I was a young clinician, I really wanted to try to work with as many population as I can, with different levels of cares, to learn more about my strengths and weaknesses as a therapist, as well as which population I'm passionate about. So, of course, at the end of that journey as an intern, you accumulate a lot of trainings, because each place that you work with, they're going to train you with the treatment methods that's suitable for the client population. So, long story short, I just found out that I really like working with couples, which Liz would probably know this. Most therapists not all therapists like working with couples because it's challenging but it's more suited for my personality style. So when I started having my private practice, I realized that I would see over 50% of my clients they're seeking therapy because of a current infidelity or a past infidelity they didn't recover from. So when I started looking at all this clinical tools that accumulated all these years and realized that none of them were tailor-made for infidelity which is mind-blowing because we've been dealing with this issue for a long time and it's a very complicated issue so, as they seem to need his mother for invention. So I have this vantage point.

Speaker 2:

I started jotting down my observation with the clients that I was working with dealing with fidelity and soon enough I began to see clinical themes emerge that shared between all my clients who are stuck in the recovery process, and this was the case despite the type of relationship that they had, the cultural background, their age, so they were kind of themes despite the various ways. That notes different type of relationship and that really actually set the stage for me to create systematic affair recovery therapy. So systematic affair recovery therapy is a treatment method that is tailor-made for infidelity, exclusively designed to help people who are dealing with infidelity, versus a generalized treatment method. And it's a practice-based evidence that's been ameliorated by evidence-based research. So you get the best of both worlds, because oftentimes a lot of the other treatment methods not only that they are general, but usually the folks who are creating it they don't really have enough field work with infidelity and that's one job where you really have to have a lot of clinical experience versus just on chair therapy. Does that make sense? Mm-hmm, yep, yep, wow.

Speaker 3:

So needed, dave, right, can you imagine? Oh, so needed. When you were asking about the other approaches, I'm thinking do I know of any other approaches? I mean, I know Gottman mentioned one which is a tongue-tune attach. But I mean, I don't know too much outside of that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and actually that's the two ones that I often hear people try to go to is the Gottman, because it has small component than respiglolipides and EFT, which is pretty general.

Speaker 3:

Oh yes. Yeah, it's not specific to infidelity, You're absolutely right. Yeah, good scientifically based treatments, but yeah, not specific, You're right. Oh gosh, it's very so helpful. What are some of the current challenges and limitations faced by researchers?

Speaker 2:

and clinicians working in this field of infidelity treatment. So I would say one is that researchers and clinicians, when they look at the other treatment methods, they're going to recognize a glaring heteronormative bias. And I think maybe that's reflected either the student population that the people doing most of the studies on, or just you know, the limitation of the research tool have access to a wider population. And infidelity is not just a problem for heterosexual couples or monogamous couples. It is even people who are poly deal with infidelity just looks different in their relationship as well.

Speaker 2:

Another challenge would be is a lot of the research and curriculum methods. They often conceptualize the causes of infidelity as a reflection of a relationship deficit which, as we have discussed before, sometimes that is the case, but that's not always the case. There are a lot of times where it has nothing to do with a failure or a shortcoming on the rate. It's an unfaithful issue or environmental issue. And the third challenge is the fact that there's not enough emphasis on the socio-environmental factors that lead to infidelity. And I'll give one example have you guys heard about a website called Ashley Madison?

Speaker 3:

I was going to say Ashley Madison, I knew you were going there.

Speaker 2:

So I think it was 2014,. 2015. So Ashley Madison for those listeners who don't know this this is a website designed for people who want to have an affair. So a lot of people on this website. They know they are in a committed relationship, but they're okay with making those arrangements. But they're okay with making those arrangements In 2014 or 2015,.

Speaker 2:

There was a data breach for that website, which allowed researchers a golden opportunity to analyze a lot of socioeconomic data about who tends to have affairs, and one of the findings that they have found is that they tend to be certain type of jobs where are more highly represented on that website. For example, there was a lot of people on this website who were from the military. There is a reason why that is so one if you're working in the military, oftentimes you're going to be deployed, which means that we have a lot of stress on the relationship, right, because you're not seeing your partner. There is another aspect of an increased level of anonymity. You're in a different state or different country, so when you're there, nobody's going to know Less risk for discovery. And there is also a cultural norm that this is what everybody does when you're deployed. So if your peers aren't doing it, you're less likely to stay away from it.

Speaker 2:

So to me, that highlight that was the opening of really there's so many things. Even where you live can actually increase or decrease your likelihood of infidelity. For example, research shows that if you are in smaller cities, you're less likely to engage in infidelity because smaller community, everybody knows everyone, so more risk of exposure. If you live in a bigger city, higher rates because you can blend in, you're more anonymous. So there are so many things that has nothing to do with the individual or the relationship factor that amplify pre-existing individual relationship issues or create nuance for the couples. Do you want better? And please be patient with me because this is one of my favorite topics Global events, think COVID, think wars.

Speaker 2:

I'll give you a classic example with COVID whether to vaccinate or not vaccinate. So all of a sudden you have maybe a couple who were compatible for a long period of time. Boom, you have COVID. Now they are polar opposite on a political view, right, and now we have a misalignment in the relationship. So there's so many things that lead to infidelity that oftentimes being ignored other than well, somebody is not happy with their relationship. Well, there's more to it than that.

Speaker 3:

So, like the presidential election or politics, people will become divided. Is what you're saying? Absolutely yeah, and then there's a higher incidence of infidelity.

Speaker 2:

That's one example. We'll go with the recent. I worked with a couple of recently with the war with the Ukraine. If you have somebody who is from the Ukraine, all of a sudden now the power dynamic in the relationship is shifted. If your homeland is no longer a place that you can visit and you live here and you thought you have an equal power dynamic between you and your partner, and now you don't have a home to go back to, that's a shift in the power dynamic in the relationship. So go back, remember when you said how everybody's vulnerable Everybody's vulnerable, but sometimes we don't really know where our vulnerability is and sometimes we're blindsided because we never imagined something like this would happen. Yeah, that's powerful.

Speaker 1:

Dr Chalot, I'm curious about maybe flipping the script a little bit. And Liz mentioned we're all vulnerable and I agree we've got to be on guard. Are there some things, are there some tips, I guess, to not necessarily maybe a fair proof your marriage, but to you know, are there some intentional things that our listeners right now, you know they're hearing this and like, oh my goodness, you know, what can I do to prevent this? Are there some things, does that make sense? Some positive things that couples can be doing right now to strengthen their marriage connection to, I guess, lessen the risk?

Speaker 2:

I'll talk about it on a high level, but I'll also give some concrete things. So, if we're thinking about high levels, what are some of the things that people should do to safeguard against this? One is introspection. I really feel that if you are really paying attention to your thoughts and feelings and the changes that happens to you as an individual, you're more likely to address it before it causes a problem for you in your relationship. Because if you know what's going on with you and you're able to communicate effectively with your partner, guess what? The two of you still have a chance to adapt and grow together. But if you don't know what's going on with you, right, let's say that you're not happy in your relationship, but you don't really know why, and then you're building up this resentment and then you act on this resentment without really clarity, like no, there is a problem, there's a reason why I'm not happy. If I talk to my partner, this would have been fixed. So I feel like if you have introspection and you have healthy communication and conflict resolution, most people will avoid relationship deficit.

Speaker 2:

Concretely, I think we should all know what's our job description. How do I know what is my job description? To be the best husband that I can be, or the best boyfriend or the best wife or girlfriend, because if I know what that is, I can have my own metric. Am I doing a good job? And guess what, if I know that I'm going to fail and delivering on my end of what you expect from me as my partner, I can talk to you about it to say, hey, I know we agreed to do A and B and C, but this thing is coming up. I have this new job, new promotion. My ability to meet your needs might be less. Is that okay? Can we adapt? It will save a lot of people a lot of trouble, right? So having a job description of what is the metric, what is your partner expecting from you, of what is the metric, what is your partner expecting from you?

Speaker 2:

And the other piece, because this is back to the business aspect of relationship, healthy relationship. People should have a business meeting for their relationship. This is your own therapy session without the therapist Once a week. Sit together with your partner, talk about the things that you like, talk about the things that you appreciate Thank you so much for doing this.

Speaker 2:

I like this more of this and talk about the things that you have concerns about, because, if you know for a fact, once a week you can bring up the issues that you have concern about, guess what? You're not going to be impulsive, you're not going to spit it out or wait for the next time your partner say something mean and now you yell at them Because I know how I handle my meaning. I I handle my meaning. I can write down what am I going to talk about, how many issues, what's the best way for me to bring it up and what is the best solution. If people do this on a regular basis, you don't have to worry about negative equity in your relationship, because you're addressing conflict as they come up and you will know, sooner rather than later, if the two of you are on the same path or beginning to diverge.

Speaker 3:

Fewer surprises? Yeah right, well, that was a great question, dave.

Speaker 1:

thank you for asking that yeah, it just feels like this proactive way is like taking vitamins and getting enough sleep, you know, for your physical health it's it's doing these positive things that can safeguard in a sense. Uh, the interesting part.

Speaker 2:

I like how you brought this up, david, because sometimes for a lot of couples to seem like okay, okay, well, life is busy, I have work, kids and sports, all this thing. This seems to be like a waste of time, but I swear, if you invest that time, you're actually saving yourself more time. And all of the clients that I work with when they get introduced to this tool, they're always like it's so simple. I wish we would have done this sooner. We wouldn't be in this situation, but of course, hindsight is always 20.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah that's right, wow. Well, it's tradition to hear on our show Dr Cholala. We ask all of our guests the following question In your opinion, what is the key to a stronger marriage connection?

Speaker 2:

It would be compatibility, and I know it's not the romantic part that everybody wants to hear, but I really believe. And when I say compatibility I don't mean sameness, right. So there's nothing in the rule book that says in order for you to be happy, you have to be with somebody who is exactly like you. I think that's actually boring, if my wife was a copy of me, that I differences in rich, rich life because your partner introduced you to things that maybe you didn't know about. What I'm talking about is incompatibility, major differences, polar opposite differences on important areas of life spirituality, politically, sexually.

Speaker 2:

If you have people who are too far on one of those main domains, they're going to struggle making compromises because in order for one of them to have their needs met, one of them have to give up who they are. Even if we use the example, somebody who is identified as vanilla on the sex end and somebody who is on the deep end of the pool of the cake, right, they're not going to be able to make compromises that would make both parties fulfill. And the key with compatibility is sometimes make the mistake that well, once you find it, it stays there forever, no One. A lot of times people jump into a relationship without assessing compatibility. Sometimes people assess compatibility and they find it, but the nature of the line is that we all change and grow. So just because you're compatible for five years, it doesn't mean you're going to stay compatible. You have to continually assess are we still going in that direction?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, well said, I love that.

Speaker 3:

Dr Talal, you have some wonderful resources for our listeners. It was your latest book that caught my attention most recently. Please tell us what the central themes are of each of your three books and tell us who you wrote them for.

Speaker 2:

Perfect. So the first book is Infidelity the Best, worst Thing that Could Happen to your Marriage, and in that book I described the seven milestones of recovery in the systematic affair recovery therapy model it talks about. You know in a general way, you know what causes of infidelity and what are the steps that couples need to go through in order for them to make an informed decision about the future. So it's an A to Z guide to happily recovering, but I always say it's not a substitute for mental health. This is just a blueprint to help you better understand the process.

Speaker 2:

Second book is called Unfaithful and Unrepentant Affairs Beyond the Hope of Repair, and that book was designed for the great partners and the therapists who are struggling to see like we're doing all the right things but this is not working.

Speaker 2:

Why is this not working? Well, sometimes the failure is not because the betrayed is not doing the right thing, or the therapist is bad or not don't know what they're doing. Sometimes you have a specific archetype of unfaithful partner that makes it really difficult to repair the relationship. So in that book I described the nine archetypes of unfaithful partners that makes it extremely challenging to heal by repairing the relationship and how that manifests in therapy and the clinical challenges to therapists, as well as the betrayed, and the most recent book is Deconstructing Infidelity Causes of the Myths. This is a really deep dive. Think a bit about the encyclopedia of etiology of infidelity. So something that I recommend for clinicians who truly want to understand all the different individual, relational, as well as environmental factors that causes infidelity and some of the myths that we are battling. It's also something I recommend for clients who really want to deeper understand infidelity as well.

Speaker 3:

Oh gosh, you're a guest. You truly are. Where can listeners go to find out more about you, other resources and what you specifically offer? Officer, please, dr Chalal.

Speaker 2:

So if you are a clinician who wants to learn more about systematic affair recovery therapy and if you want to be certified, there is a level one training completely online. You do it in your own pace and you earn up to 17 CEU units and you can be certified level one therapist at systematic affair recovery therapy. So for that one, you go to systematicaticAffairRecoveryTherapycom. If you are a client who are interested in infidelity recovery for yourself Infidelity Counseling Center you'll find a lot of resources there about my books, as well as my YouTube channel, the Infidelity Doctor. You can actually see my work. You can see Systematic Affair Recovery Therapy in Action. There is a docu-series that I created. It's called Fidelity Chronicles and you'll see the whole process 22 hours of real couple therapy, no edits. Just what real therapy looks like, wow.

Speaker 1:

Very cool, fascinating. I've never heard of it. I need to check that out For our listeners. We're going to put those links in the show notes. You've, I'm going to check that out, all right, and we, for our listeners, we're going to put those links in the show notes. You've got to go and check these out. Resources both for clinicians as well as lady on the late audience. Those who are in the trenches are want to learn more about this important topic. Uh, hey, before we let you go, dr falal, we'd like to kind of end with a takeaway of the day. If there's a bit of information, a nugget, if you will, something you want our listeners to remember from our discussion today, what would that be? That?

Speaker 2:

the awful aspect of trauma has us all reliving that this. Even though you're hurting right now and you're struggling, I swear to you that this is a catalyst for change, and change is hard right. You don't want change that we obtain easily, and then sometimes we'll say, oh, is this the only way for me to get my life on track? No, it's not. But this is a good opportunity to clean house and actually be in the relationship that you deserve to be in.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, well said, love it, liz. What about you? What's your takeaway today?

Speaker 3:

Gosh, there's so much, dave, right? Oh, my goodness, I really appreciate the three crucial steps right out of the gate is if you can stay together, if you can stay emotionally, physically safe, stay in the same home so that it leaves further questioning, further trouble. And I love really the planting the seed for not reaching out to the other, to that third party. It just escalates things further. And don't be expressing the affair to family members, to kids, if at all possible. Yeah, really, just a great start. So much richness here. It just really is a beautiful gift to our listeners who can really relate to what this is like up close and personal. Dave, what about you? What's the richest nugget you're hoping that all of us will remember today? What do you think?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, there's been so much. I appreciate just this hope, this idea of this hope, and the prevention right. I'm a relationship education specialist, love teaching this area. There are some things, specific things you can do, but it's these daily deposits, it's these small and simple things. Over time it's work, right. It is work to build a relationship. It's even more work to rebuild a relationship. But all of it is going to take intentional effort, mindful effort and this mental and a lot of work. And I'm a huge fan the more and more lists that we have experts come on. Anything like this highly, highly recommend finding a well-trained therapist. Trying to navigate this on your own, I don't know, it just seems like a real danger in being really difficult. So big fan of getting professional help in this area.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, In particular right from Dr Talal. I mean, I'm so inspired myself, I'm so grateful to have this resource for me as a professional.

Speaker 1:

Love that the approach is tailored specifically. I mean unbelievable right Revolutionary. He's the father of this area. This has been fantastic, Dr Cholal, so thank you so much for joining us today and sharing so much wisdom. My pleasure, All right, friends, that does it for us. We will see you again next time on another episode of the Stronger Marriage Connection podcast.

Speaker 3:

Yep and remember it's the small things that create a stronger marriage connection. Take good care now of yourselves and each other. Bye-bye.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for joining us today. Hey, do us a favor and take a second to subscribe to our podcast and the Utah Marriage Commission YouTube channel at Utah Marriage Commission, where you can watch this and every episode of the show. Be sure to smash the like button, leave a comment and share this episode with a friend. You can also follow and interact with us on Instagram at Stronger Marriage Life, and Facebook at Stronger Marriage, so be sure to share with us which topics you loved or which guests we should have on the show. Next, if you want even more resources to improve your marriage or relationship connection, visit StrongerMarriageorg, where you'll find free workshops, e-courses, in-depth webinars, relationship surveys and more. Each episode of Stronger Marriage Connection is hosted and sponsored by the Utah Marriage Commission at Utah State University. And finally, a big thanks to our producer, rex Polanis, and the team at Utah State University and you, our audience. You make this show possible. The opinions, findings, conclusions and recommendations expressed in this podcast do not necessarily reflect the views of the Utah Marriage Commission.