259: Infidelity with Dr. Ellyn Bader
Welcome back to The Couples Therapist Couch! This podcast is about the practice of Couples Therapy. Each week, Shane Birkel interviews an expert in the field of Couples Therapy to explore all about the world of relationships and how to be an amazing therapist.
In this episode, Shane talks with Dr. Ellyn Bader about infidelity. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots, and watch it on YouTube – follow and leave a 5-star review.
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The Couples Therapist Couch 259: Infidelity with Dr. Ellyn Bader
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In this episode, Shane talks with Dr. Ellyn Bader about infidelity. Ellyn is an Author, Creator of The Developmental Model, Co-Founder of The Couples Institute, and one of the early founders of couples therapy itself. Hear how she created the concept of couples therapy, how the development of a couple’s relationship mirrors the development of a child, the top reasons people have an affair, how to start working with a couple that went through an infidelity, and what to do when a couple is stuck at any stage of infidelity work. Here's a small sample of what you'll hear in this episode:
- The transformational potential of infidelity work
- The evolution of couples therapy
- What are the relationship developmental stages?
- When independence becomes dangerous vs healthy
- Addressing guilt vs. productive change
To learn more about Dr. Ellyn Bader and her trainings, visit:
Show Notes
- 259: Infidelity with Dr. Ellyn Bader
- This episode is brought to you by Alma. Visit HelloAlma.com/ATPP to learn more
- [0:38] Welcome to The Couples Therapist Couch
- [1:26] Welcome Dr. Ellyn Bader to the show!
- [1:56] Dr. Bader's journey and the founding of couples therapy
- [6:36] The evolution of couples therapy
- [9:03] The importance of client feedback in developing your techniques
- [11:29] What are the relationship developmental stages?
- [16:42] The importance of self-esteem and emotional independence
- [18:32] When independence becomes dangerous vs. healthy
- [20:27] This episode is brought to you by Alma. Visit HelloAlma.com/ATPP to learn more
- [21:23] The types and triggers of infidelity
- [22:51] What are the first steps when working with infidelity?
- [26:06] Understanding the scope of the betrayal
- [28:01] How pre-existing dynamics continue after the affair
- [30:25] The three stages of infidelity work
- [32:21] Addressing guilt vs. productive change
- [36:15] Creating agreements and moving forward
- [39:11] The transformational potential of infidelity work
- [40:34] Check out CouplesInstitute.com
- This episode is brought to you by Alma. Visit HelloAlma.com/ATPP to learn more
What is The Couples Therapist Couch?
This podcast is about the practice of Couples Therapy. Many of the episodes are interviews with leaders in the field of Relationships. The show is meant to help Therapists and Coaches learn how to help people to deepen their connection, but in the process it explores what is most needed for each of us to love, heal, and grow. Each week, Shane Birkel interviews an expert in the field of Couples Therapy to explore all about the world of relationships and how to be an amazing therapist.
Learn more about the Couples Therapy 101 course: https://www.couplestherapistcouch.com/
Find out more about the Couples Therapist Inner Circle: https://www.couplestherapistcouch.com/inner-circle-new
Transcript
Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.
00:00
The first commitment is whether you're committed to working on it. The decision about whether you stay together or not comes at the end, not at the beginning.
00:14
to The Couples Therapist Couch, the podcast for couples therapists, marriage counselors, and relationship coaches to explore the practice of couples therapy. And now, your host, Shane Birkel.
00:30
Hey everybody. Welcome back to The Couples Therapist Couch. This is Shane Birkel, and this is the podcast that's all about the practice of couples therapy. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, and the goal of this podcast is to help you learn how to more effectively work with couples and possibly even learn how to have a better relationship. The episode this week is brought to you by Alma. They make it easy to get credentialed with major insurance plans at enhanced reimbursement rates.
00:59
Alma handles all of the paperwork and guarantees payment within two weeks. Visit HelloAlma.com/ATPP or click on the link in the show notes to learn more. everyone, welcome back to The Couples Therapist Couch. This is Shane Birkel and today I'm speaking with Dr. Ellyn Bader, author, creator of the developmental model and one of the original founders of Couples Therapy itself. Hey Ellyn, welcome to the show.
01:26
Hey, thank you, Shane. It's good to see you again and good to be with you. Yeah, good to see you again, too. For those who if you enjoy this conversation, if you haven't listened to the uh other episodes, Ellen and I spoke on episode number forty nine and episode number one fifty three. So, you know, we talked all about the developmental model in one of the episodes. We talked about differentiation, which was a good talk. But I'm excited. Maybe we'll get into working with infidelity today.
01:56
But before we get to that, why don't you tell everyone a little bit more about yourself? So I think, you know, a fun thing to know about me really is that I'm so old now that I am one of the founders of couples therapy. And when, when I started, like I couldn't get any training in couples therapy, there was very little, there was some, but very, very little. was told I would starve if I specialized with couples.
02:22
And when you look at the amount of couples therapy that exists today in the world and the amount of need for relationship work, it's kind of staggering to go back in time and really remember that I got a lot of discouragement about specializing with couples. And it is, mean, and then I remember the first time that I stood on a stage, this was in 1984. And I said,
02:50
to an audience of about a hundred people, said, you know, couples therapy is actually real therapy. Because in those days it was seen as a stepchild to real therapy, which was individual therapy. And I said, therapy is not only about behavior change, it's actually really and truly about intra-psychic change, it's about developmental growth. There's so much that you can do with a couple. And I actually got
03:19
kind of put down by a well-known male person who will go unnamed at this point, or actually having the nerve to say that. Yeah. Wow. That's so hard to believe. like you said, to think where couples therapy is today, you know, that you are such a trailblazer. And I feel like, you know, there's so many people who believe that, you know, who know that couples therapy is so important and so helpful for people. How did, how did you even
03:49
you know, at the beginning phases, you know, what, what got you into thinking that that would be helpful and how did you figure out what you were going to do with people when you got them into your office? Well, so first of all, I started out as a family therapist. Like my first case that I ever saw was a family. was in a clinic at Michigan State University. And then even when I came to California and I did an internship and my PhD program, it was all with families.
04:18
And what I kept, my dissertation was with a family therapy dissertation also, but in all those situations, I kept seeing dysfunctional couples and dysfunctional parents. And like these kids are suffering and getting the finger pointed at them, but the parents were so dysfunctional. So that's where my original interest came from. Like I wanted to see, okay, can we do something with a couple or with the parents? And so.
04:45
That's when I started getting really interested in couples. Kind of simultaneously to that, my husband and I had gotten together and we weren't even married yet, but after we'd lived together for about a year, we decided we wanted to do something together. We didn't know what it was and we called it X. So we said, we're gonna spend a year living in the ambiguity of X.
05:13
and figuring out what it was. And it actually, I think we explored a lot of crazy ideas, including importing houseboats from India was one of the things we were looking at. But the thing that tipped us over the edge was I had been asked to do a workshop in Perth, Australia, where I'd previously done a family therapy workshop.
05:39
They wanted something on couples and I had been working with couples some at that point. And on our way to Perth, we stopped and spent a week designing a workshop for working with couples. And I mean, we hammered out so much stuff in that week and we didn't know how it would go over and what would happen, but we did this workshop and the therapists in the workshop loved it. And they gave us so much positive feedback.
06:07
And we had people be a couple for a whole week in that workshop, five days where they were with, you know, role plays, but they were with somebody. And we were focused on the development and developmental issues. And so when that went so well, that sort of tipped us over into, uh oh, okay, we both do have PhDs in psychology. This is what we trained for. And we liked the work. And that's when we started saying, okay, we're really going to see if we can figure out.
06:36
what makes the difference for couples. Yeah, that's great. And I mean, my background is in marriage and family therapy. And obviously it seems so obvious today in the present that, you know, in certain cases, the, you know, these people need couples therapy or family therapy. But what would those people back then at that time, you know, if somebody had relationship issues, what were those individual therapists saying or what, like, what would they recommend to those people to get help?
07:05
The party line in those days was if people are struggling in their relationship, it's because of unresolved family of origin issues. And they need an individual therapist to focus and to resolve those issues. And so even some of the training that I got early on was, let's say a couple was actually in your office.
07:34
how do you make that referral? That was some of the training. Like how do you make the referral out of couples work to go see an individual therapist? And so the primary thinking was still, you're not going to do intra-psychic work when you have two people in the room and therefore you have to make that referral. I see. Yeah. Well, that's great. So yeah, you started working with couples, coming up with this
08:04
workshop for couples or training for therapists? Did it just take off from there or did it take a long time? The first time I ever wrote anything was actually in 1980 when I said, I think the development of a couple parallels the development of early childhood development. Oh, wow. Those are early 80s you came up with that? Yeah. 1980 was the first time I ever put it out publicly at all.
08:33
which was actually in a workshop in Boston. And therapists got very excited about that idea. So that also encouraged me to keep developing it. But the other thing that I think helped a lot is Pete, my husband and I started doing weekend workshops for couples and five day workshops for couples. And we were sort of unrelenting about after those were over, asking those couples,
09:03
what helped you and what didn't help you? What was good? What did you benefit from? What didn't you? And we put a lot of stock in their answers, you know, and really tried to dig down deeply into what made a difference for people. And some of the things that I thought would make a big difference, they went, oh, ho, ho, that really didn't matter much. ah And some of the things that, in fact,
09:30
You know, we have this whole process that you and I think talked about before called the initiator inquire that we use a lot. And that really came out of those workshops and how much people felt like they benefited from learning that and doing it. So, you know, if you go back and read our first book, the Inquest of the Mythical Maid, it's only a few pages maybe in that book. And we hadn't fleshed it out to the level we have now and how we use it now. But
09:59
The reason that became a core part of what we teach therapists is so many couples, like every workshop, that was the thing they said they found the most helpful. That's such a great way to develop how you work is to ask the actual people to see, you know, what parts of this is working for you? What parts of this could you take it or leave it, you know, and kind of just keep learning and creating it from that. Yeah. oh
10:29
feel very indebted to some of those original people. And I'll tell you another sort of funny story, which is the beginning of our book, we wrote about a couple that were just so hostile. They were just unbelievably hostile. And we wrote about them at the beginning of our book. And I ended up working with that couple on and off for about three years or so at the time. And then a little bit once after. And then recently he came back.
10:59
Oh my gosh. I'm talking about like, how many years later is that? Like 30 some years later, he came back and they have such a sweet marriage now. I mean, I I would have never ever guessed at the day that I wrote that about the way that they fought. Cause that was at the beginning of their work. It wasn't, but they, it's so sweet now to see the marriage that these people have. Oh, that's great.
11:29
That's great. I feel like ah you could probably, I'm going to ask you a question. You could probably talk about it for like five hours and I hate to sort of pressure you to do the like, you know, the brief overview of it, but you said something before and I know it's kind of the basis of your, developmental model, but you had, you said, you know, you started coming up with this idea that the, uh, development of a couple relationship might, there might be some
11:57
mirroring of the development of a child. And I'm just curious if you'd be willing to sort of give a little bit of the overview of that for those who haven't sort of heard that before or seen your information before. Sure. I mean, I'll do it really quick. And like you said, sometimes I do it in three hours or whatever. basically, I think when two people fall in love,
12:23
that actually falling in love is a developmental capacity. It's a capacity to really deeply connect with somebody. I call it a period of temporary psychosis sometimes because you're not necessarily looking at reality. But anyway, so there are some parallels to the mother-infant bond to that ecstatic feeling of falling in love.
12:50
And there's a lot of fantasy that goes in that period of time too. So the first stage of a marriage is often a stage of exclusivity, merged boundaries. We call it a symbiotic stage, but it's healthy at the beginning. And then just like a child begins to develop and move out of that symbiosis, adult partners do the same thing.
13:20
They begin to more actively, again, when, development is proceeding well, they begin to more actively define their thoughts, their feelings, their wishes, their desires. And they'll kind of have some disillusionments. They'll have that sense of, you're not the person I thought you were. of that. And so again, but the process of differentiation, which can go on throughout life, but it's.
13:49
it's a process of moving out of that initial intensity of that symbiosis. So for a child, it would be the time during childhood when they're realizing that they have different needs and wants than the parent, that they start exploring, start trying to have more independence, more boundaries. Let me stop you because- Or am I getting ahead? ahead. You're getting a little bit ahead. I think the early part of differentiation in an infant,
14:19
is even things like putting their fingers in their mouth and then their parents' mouth or pulling their parents' hair and getting a reaction. I mean, some of the very early sense of, there's a being out here that's not me, and then this is me over here. So that's the very beginning of it. Adolescence is certainly another strong differentiation-based stage when kids start to...
14:47
maybe adopt the values of their friends and start standing up to their parents and saying things, I don't think the same way you do, I don't agree with you. And so you have some active differentiation that's going on between adolescents and their parents. The third stage is a stage of where you are going, where there is much more independence and exploration. And to me, with a couple,
15:16
the value of that stage is that people build their sense of self-esteem apart from how their marriage is going. So, I mean, and especially for people who get together really young, very often how they feel or think about themselves are dependent on whether the relationship is good or bad on any particular day. They're very susceptible to depression, to anxiety.
15:44
when their relationship is not going well. And so that exploration stage, that independent stage that starts in two-year-olds, but then again, occurs throughout life. But in the adult couple, it's that ability to have separate activities that are really fulfilling. In my marriage to Pete, one of the things that happened early on that was around this kind of an issue was,
16:13
I really love to travel and do training. I was doing some training workshops in Europe. I really loved that work. He's more of a homebody. He would much rather stay home and he doesn't love to travel as much as I do. And so we came to a place where we had to say, okay, it's okay for me to go alone. And it's okay. There's nothing wrong with him that he doesn't want to do as much of that. And he has other things that he wanted to do at home that were more fulfilling for him.
16:42
Yeah, so that takes a lot of maturity to be able to accept that that's okay, right? It doesn't have to mean anything about the relationship. It's just like accepting that we have different preferences. And even on an emotional level, right? I think this is a particularly masculine thing. If the other person has strong emotions, then there's this feeling of like, well, I...
17:07
Why is this person having emotions? I'm, doing a lot of things as a husband. I'm trying to show I'm doing my best. What, how come they're upset? Um, and there's this sort of defensive feeling about it. Totally. And you know, a powerful concept to teach couples is the other person's emotions are not personal. Right. Right. You you can back up and hold steady and hear what your partner is thinking or feeling.
17:36
without taking it on. Yeah. And I think that has everything to do with the self-esteem that you mentioned before. Yeah. And when I think what happens in a lot of couples is when that period of independence happens and somebody really like gets very invested in something, an activity, something away from the relationship.
18:04
If there isn't a base of differentiation underneath it, that can be a time very likely for affairs to happen. When there is a strong base of independence underneath it, then the couple can work out, hey, sure, go enjoy yourself, have a good time, do whatever you, but they have a way, but here's what I'd like while you're gone, or here's how, can we manage it this way?
18:32
I worked with a couple many years ago where he ended up going to a master's program on the East coast and she lived here and they decided to live separately for that full year. But they worked it out really well. Like they were a couple with enough differentiation and with a little bit of therapy that were really able to support his master's program, her staying here, continuing in her job.
19:01
they developed. in those days, there weren't even as many cell phones and texts and all the things that enable connection that we have now. But they worked it out really well because they weren't fighting over, are you leaving me? How could you do this to me? Things like that, that a less differentiated couple would tend to be fighting about. And can you say a little bit more? why would that lead to
19:30
affairs happening if there isn't that differentiation or self-esteem. I forget what you said, self-esteem or whatever. Yeah, I mean, think like here's a common thing. Let's say that person goes to the East Coast in their master's program, but every time they talk to their partner, they're mad that they left them. Okay. The interaction with the partner is how could you do this to me or I miss you so much. Won't you come home extra or
20:00
And then they meet somebody in the master's program who understands them, who's excited to get to know them. And all of a sudden you can have an affair taking place very easily because there's back to that symbiosis and excitement of a new person. And they really understand me. My partner doesn't understand me. Building a private practice can be challenging.
20:27
Filing all of the right paperwork is time consuming and tedious. And even after you're done, it can take months to get credentialed and start seeing clients. That's why Alma makes it easy and financially rewarding to accept insurance. When you join Alma, you can get credentialed within 45 days and access enhanced reimbursement rates with major payers. They also handle all of the paperwork from eligibility checks to claim submissions and guarantee payment within two weeks of each appointment.
20:55
Plus when you join Alma, you'll get access to time-saving tools for intakes, scheduling, treatment plans, progress notes, and more in their included platform. Alma helps you spend less time on administrative work and more time offering great care to your clients. Visit helloalma.com backslash A-T-P-P or click the link in the show notes to learn more. When you think about the ways that affairs happen, I mean,
21:23
Are there different ways that it might, or different things that might be connected to based on different developmental phases for people? Sure. I mean, I think there's just different things that tend to precipitate infidelity. You know, one is what I just said, like there's an exciting new person in an exciting part of somebody's life. That's one.
21:53
Another that's very common, and I'm going to use some sex role stereotypes for a minute, but let's say a guy who travels a lot for work and he's gone a lot can get into, easily get into a pattern of a lot of one night stands because it's easy, it's accessible, they're lonely. That's another. Sometimes affairs take place when uh empty nesting, when the kids leave home.
22:22
is a common time for infidelity. Ironically, another time is around the death of a parent or the death of an in-law. So when you have somebody who's grieving and they're looking for something to fill that void, that can be another time for infidelity to take place. And so if you're the therapist working with a couple, how would you start?
22:51
you you find out there's been infidelity, like what are some of the things that you're interested in exploring with them? Um, well, first of all, I think a lot of therapists have the experience of seeing a couple pretty soon after infidelity is revealed. So it's more common that it wouldn't come out during the therapy, but it would have been exposed before the couple comes in. And so,
23:19
you have a couple often who are coming in in crisis. Right. And there's a ton of pain usually in the partner who did not have the affair. And so often that very first stage of therapy is managing the crisis of infidelity. Right. And so it's like finding out, do you actually have a couple who are committed to some therapy?
23:48
Right. That's an important part. Like you don't want to just dive in and start all kinds of disclosure and stuff when you don't even know if you have two people who are committed to therapy. I talk to people about the first commitment is whether you're committed to working on it. It's not
24:11
Like I say, I often say the line, the decision about whether you stay together or not comes at the end, not at the beginning. Yeah. Oh, that's good. I like that. So it's like, can you commit, let's say, can you commit to three or four months of couples therapy? And then of course you could get divorced at that point if you wanted to, but we're just committing to this process. Like there, at least there's enough here. It doesn't mean you have to
24:39
you know, stay with this person after it's all said and done. Right. The work of the therapy often involves a lot of painful revelation. Yes. And so again, I want to know that they're going to come enough times and for a while that I'm not going to have a really awful painful session and then I never see them again. Yeah. I saw a couple that I started with.
25:07
Right before Covid, like weeks before Covid, it actually took almost a year to decide if they were going to work on their marriage or not, because she was thinking she was very traumatized and she was thinking about leaving. He really didn't know if he wanted to like he vacillated back and forth between I don't want to lose my family and I don't want to lose.
25:37
my marriage and hey, I'm having a lot of fun over here with all these other women in their own ways. They were each ambivalent. Yeah. And so that's a different kind of couple than one who comes in and says, okay, we really want to work on our marriage and see where we are after we've done that. Right. Right. No, but I love what you're saying about, I guess you could, you could say creating the safety for the work to happen. I mean,
26:06
So like you said, a lot of times it's very chaotic. If the information has just been revealed, it can feel very high conflict. it might take quite a bit of time just to establish safety, establish the ability to have the conversation with people. Absolutely. And another thing that I'm trying to assess for really early on is what kinds of lies and what
26:35
kinds of deception actually went on. Right. Because the more overt lies you've had and the more gaslighting that you've had, number one, the less likely I'm going to know if the person who was lying is telling me the truth, but also there's going to be a lot more to repair.
27:01
Yeah. And I don't know what you would say, but I absolutely think that those circums... like there's a big difference between somebody who had a one night stand and it was a one time mistake and it hadn't happened before. And they told their partner right away. And that's much different than somebody who is, you know, keeping a, you know, having a secret for the last three years and having an affair and, you know, pretending like everything was fine at home during those three years. Totally.
27:31
Totally. Yeah. I mean, the one night stand couples in general are much, much easier. Yeah. It can still be devastating, but it's absolutely, it's a different type of work. Different. Yeah. Very. mean, I can tell from what you're saying that, you know, you've been in the trenches yourself with that. One of the hardest, most wrenching cases I ever saw was one where the husband had actually had an affair with her best friend for 10 years.
28:01
And the friend and the husband had kept it from her for 10 years. And when that got exposed, oh my God. Yeah. It was like double betrayal from both of the two people closest to her. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's interesting to look at, you described, you gave that example where, you know, one partner lives on the West coast. One partner goes to grad school on the East coast.
28:30
right? And let's say that it's not the healthiest of situate, not like the good example you gave, but you know, let's say the partner still at home is complaining all the time. You're never here. You're never there for me. You know, you left me, you abandoned me. And then that partner ends up having an affair. The other partner ends up having an affair. You know, one of the things I find that's interesting is it's almost like the same patterns that they had before the affair.
28:58
continue to play out, but it's just they had now they have the affair to sort of focus the attention on, but it's the same, you know, it would, that partner would still be feeling like, you abandon me? You weren't there for me. You know, the, the same themes continue to come up for that partner. And maybe the other partner is very avoidant or something like that, you know, and they're replaying the same dynamic, but now it's just focused on the affair situation. That makes it harder to disrupt. Yeah.
29:28
You know, what I talk about couples who don't progress beyond the first stage, who don't get into solid differentiation are couples who have usually hostile, angry, hostile, competitive relationships, or they're extremely conflict avoidant. Those two types of couples never moved into any kind of successful differentiation.
29:56
So what you're talking about a couple who probably were already fighting and now the fights are around the infidelity, but the fights are not that different. The fights they had before. And that's why, like when I start with a couple, I talk to them about three stages of infidelity work because the first stage is the crisis.
30:25
And it is deciding, it's the crisis and it's deciding, are we actually gonna work on it? And then I say, if you're really gonna work on it, there's two things that are gonna happen in that middle stage. One thing that's gonna happen is your own level of emotional development, emotional capacity has to get farther than what it was previously.
30:54
And there's going to be intrapsychic work. So there's differentiation work and there's intrapsychic work that goes on for the couple in that second stage. And that's why you wait until the end, rather than the beginning, to know whether you're going to stay together because what can happen, luckily it doesn't happen too often, but what can happen is in that middle stage, only one person does the work. Uh huh.
31:24
And then the reality is that that's a relationship waiting for another affair. As a therapist, I think we have to be willing and able to call that out. Yeah. I mean, call out that, Hey, your partner's doing a lot, but you keep coming in and saying you're going to do homework or you keep coming in and saying, you're going to bring up the things that are of concern to you, but yet you don't, we're not ready for you to, make a decision about.
31:52
what the future is going to look like. Is that just as likely to be either the affair partner or the betrayed partner? Yeah, it's both. Yeah, I mean, I have a video that I did with a trainee that I love this video because she was role playing her client who was a guilty affair partner. So he had the affair, but he was very guilty.
32:21
but he was using the guilt to actually not do anything. So he would come into sessions and talk about what a terrible person he was. And, yeah. Like go into a shame spiral. Yeah. Shame spiral. I'm guilty. I know I did wrong. And it, know, at the beginning that some of that of course makes sense, but he wasn't doing anything about his part in it.
32:50
at all, or like he wasn't working on himself at all. What I demonstrated in that role play was how to meet him where he was. So I started talking to him about how great it was that he was guilty. The fact that you're guilty shows that you have some internal turmoil. So that's great. Let's start bringing your internal turmoil into the room.
33:18
instead of just bringing your guilt into the room. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's the kind of, so you're right. It can be either partner, the betrayed partner, of course, would love to just stay angry. Right, right. Sometimes a person who had the affair is like, I'm ready to make this better. And, uh, it's the person who's been betrayed, right? Who's so stuck on that and just unwilling to receive any sort of, you know, anything from their partner.
33:49
Right, right. You know, they're scared to start to trust again. They're scared to open up again for good reasons. I mean, there's there's good reasons. And so sometimes you have to tiptoe a little bit into the work that they're avoiding. Right. Yeah, and I always find it's good to give them permission or validation for their fear and for their taking their time, you know, so they know we're not trying to push this forward faster than you need to, but
34:18
whatever you feel comfortable with. One thing that I find can be helpful in that situation, like if I've done some history of the couple and I know they were stuck at stage one, like this is a couple without much differentiation, they were fighting and hostile in their own ways before the affair. And that affair, the betrayed partner is not, they're really afraid and they're not opening up at all.
34:48
I'll say like let's start with you being able to identify what it is you actually do want when you're triggered. many times they can't identify it like that would be an example of early differentiation to actually know either what it is they want to hear or what it is, you know.
35:14
Do they want to hug? Do they want to be held? Do they want to be left alone? Like, what is it that they actually want when they're triggered? And so knowing that the differentiation was so missing enables the therapist to promote some differentiation slowly, but promote it so that you're building the capacities that they need to be able to move forward.
35:45
Yeah, that's great. mean, it's so easy to just focus on the affair, so to speak, you know, even as a therapist, eventually, I think to really help people change, we have to kind of look beyond that as well. Yeah. Yeah. What is stage three of the infidelity work? That's the stage where basically people are making a decision.
36:15
of, we committing to stay together? And if so, what are some of our agreements around staying together? One agreement that I think is a good one often is if either partner wants to see a therapist for any reason, the other one agrees that they'll go. Because sometimes people get scared again, or they think there's something going on.
36:45
Or sometimes the old dynamics are starting to come back and the person who had the affair doesn't want to be hollered at and told you're abandoning me and whatever. so either partner needs to be able to. Surrey up some therapy if they start to feel like they're stuck. Yeah, that's great. So that's an agreement of that stage. Sometimes there is a decision to separate. Right. Right.
37:14
Well, and I think it's so the idea that we never know what's going on inside someone else's head or what someone's doing when they're not with us, right? And that's where the trust comes in. And I think it's so hard. mean, that being said, people still try to, you know, I think it's super helpful to come up with agreements, to have a plan in place, to feel like my partner is willing to, you know, make some commitments about how we're going to work with this. You can just see a huge difference in couples where
37:43
that's working well and they've, you know, they're slowly trying to build the trust back and that they're able to make some of those agreements versus sometimes where that's just, it's just still feels very hard. Yeah. I mean, one of the things that I see that helps a lot is when the partner who had the affair or the infidelity, when that partner gets to a place where they're proactive about triggers, for example, in a recent couple,
38:13
there was a reason they were going to the resort where she knew he'd had an affair, but there was a reason they needed to go to a wedding at this resort. But he was able to say, Hey, I appreciate that you're coming. I know this can be really triggering. I know it's my fault that it's triggering. That's a very different partner than the one who's avoiding it completely and leaves it to the spouse to bring it up.
38:41
and then get some like, aren't you over it yet? Yeah, that's a huge move. Even just watching a movie, right? Where there's like an affair scene on it, you know, for that partner to be proactive and say, Hey, are you okay? What's it like for you to see that? You know, and, and versus that, you know, trying to avoid the conversation all the time. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. You know, I, I love working with infidelity, but I always say, I don't love the pain.
39:11
Yeah. But I do love possible when people are motivated. Yeah. I'm sure you've had a lot of experiences where in my mind, I don't know if I could say it's like the biggest transformation that's ever happened, you know, with couples I've worked with, but there's so much potential for like to see a huge amount of progress in a very positive way that that's really fulfilling, you know, for us as therapists to work with.
39:40
But like you said, the journey through that can be very hard. be hell. Yeah. Well, thank you so much. I know we're getting to the end of the conversation here. Anything you want to mention for people, uh your trainings or your website and things like that that people can check out? Sure. Thank you. Yeah. I do do a year long training program virtually for therapists.
40:09
that we open up twice a year. So I love for people to come find us. Probably the best way to find us really is at couplesinstitute.com, which is our main website. There's lots of free blogs and articles there. We even have a starter series on there about the developmental models so people can for free just throw themselves into learning more about the model.
40:34
and they can sign up for our newsletter and get information about training or sign up. There's a sign up bar for the waiting list. So we have a pretty cool community at this point with therapists all over the world who really are supporting each other in this work. And it's something I feel pretty proud of and pretty happy about that we've been able to create. Yeah, that's great. Absolutely. And I know that, um, anytime somebody asks me, I haven't even done the,
41:02
the training program with you. But anytime somebody asks me, you know, what couples therapy models should I train in? You you're, you're one of the handful that I mentioned for sure, because I, I know you do a great job with it and, and, you know, you're so well regarded and I just really appreciate all the teaching that you've done and all that you've done for the field of couples therapy. Thank you, Shane. Thank you. Absolutely. Well, uh, hopefully we can catch up again at some point soon, but, um
41:32
Take care and yeah, we'll talk again soon. The episode this week is brought to you by Alma. They make it easy to get credentialed with major insurance plans at enhanced reimbursement rates. Alma handles all of the paperwork and guarantees payment within two weeks. Visit HelloAlma.com/ATPP or click on the link in the show notes to learn more. And thank you again, everybody. This is Shane Birkel and this is The Couples Therapist Couch.
41:58
podcast. It's all about the practice of couples therapy. I hope you have a great week and we'll see you next time. Bye, everybody!