The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

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Male 1:             Of course I love her. But it’s a different kind of love. I mean, it doesn’t burn with the passion and intensity of a Tristan and [inaudible 00:00:13], it’s more comfortable and familiar. Marris and I are old friends. We can spend an afternoon together – me at my jigsaw puzzle, she at her Autoharp. Not a word spoken between us and be perfectly content.

Dr. Kenner:      That is from Frasier. That is Niles talking about his incredibly unexciting relationship with his wife Marris. Obviously he does not have a romantic relationship with her and what happens when you don’t have a romantic relationship with your own partner for many years? What happens when you go out and someone pays a little attention to you? And they tell you you’re pretty or that you’re handsome and you smell so good or you dress so nicely. And they maybe just touch your shoulder in a way that you haven’t felt in a long time. It goes through your body like electricity and you start to feel emotionally involved with someone outside of your marriage. What happens when you have an affair? I am going to be talking today with Dr. Tiffany Kisler. She’s an assistant professor of couple and family therapy at the University of Rhode Island she teaches courses in couple and family relationships and in sexuality and in sex therapy. Dr. Kisler has published and presented at national and international conferences on her clinical research, which includes sexual functioning, relational and sexual satisfaction – something we all want – and sex therapy techniques. Dr. Kisler is the co-founder of The Psychological Center for Sexual Health in Providence, Rhode Island, and welcome Dr. Tiffany Kisler.

Dr. Kisler:        Thank you very much for having me.

Dr. Kenner:      You’re very welcome. So what can a couple learn from an affair? Assuming an affair has happened, is it possible to grow stronger as individuals from an affair?

Dr. Kisler:        I think it’s a question that comes up often and absolutely, couples can grow stronger from the affair. When we look at research, about a third of people don’t really recover well, a third of people stay the same, and a third of people report that not only did they recover, but they grew even stronger than before.

Dr. Kenner:      That’s the best outcome.

Dr. Kisler:        Absolutely.

Dr. Kenner:      If you can use, what do they call it, making lemons into lemonade, if you can use something that is so excruciatingly painful in your life, finding out that your partner has had an affair, cheated on you behind your back, betrayed you, how do you grow from that as an individual? What type of questions might you ask yourself?

Dr. Kisler:        So you might ask yourself, “Where did we come from?” What sorts of dynamics were present in our relationship before? What was our communication like? What type of conflict resolution skills did we use? Where was the friendship? And where are we now? So as you take that journey, examining where you came from, where are we now, they can help give you a roadmap for where you want to go next. This is a time where couples are really taking time to look into their relationship and identify changes that they want to make. Often times, they’re more motivated to engage in some of these changes that they might have just taken for granted for some time.

Dr. Kenner:      So if they just let the relationship go on autopilot and it starts to die, this is a wake-up call. And they can actually, it sounds like what you’re doing is you’re helping them look at their pattern, their trajectory. Where did we start off? Oh my God, can you remember making love on the porch when my parents were away? Wasn’t that fun, or in the fields under the trees. Wasn’t that unbelievable? Where did that go to? I don’t want to have sex with you. So boring. So drab. And then the affair happens and it’s a wake-up call. How did we get from holding each other’s hands, looking into each other’s eyes to glaring and swearing at each other?  

Dr. Kisler:        Absolutely. I think couples lose track of a lot of the strengths and the resources and those positive moments and memories that they once shared. And rediscovering them again and re-instilling hope for the future can be very exciting.

Dr. Kenner:      So you use it as a learning opportunity and how did they recover trust though? Trust is … many people say, “Just trust me. Believe me, I’ll never do it again. I promise you. You have my word.”

Dr. Kisler:        You know, I heard Douglas Snyder, who is big in the field of studying affairs, once say that he uses a bank investment metaphor, or maybe a stock metaphor. So if you invest in a stock and you lose a lot of money, you’re going to be hesitant to reinvest in that again. Before you reinvest, you’re going to want to make sure that the factors that put it at risk are no longer present. So here, we’re going to apply this to the relationship. To re-instill trust and security, we want to examine again where we came from. What were the factors that put our relationship at risk? And how can we adjust those factors so that we’re no longer at risk and we feel safe investing in for the future?

Dr. Kenner:      So you go over specific issues that have ruptured the relationship and you look at it more, what I’m hearing is, you’re not getting into, “You did this,” and “You did this! Why the heck did you do this?” “You’re at fault!” “No, you’re at fault!” It’s not the blame game. It’s definitely taking a learning stance and looking at what are the factors that separated us? And what strategies can we use to rebuild, recover trust, and to recover the intimacy? That requires time also, in order to restore that sense of predictability.

Dr. Kisler:        Yeah, definitely. I think it’s important, as we’re looking for what the vulnerabilities or risks were, that we don’t think that means that this caused this, this caused the affair. We’re not saying that in any way. But both partners contribute to the overall state of the relationship, whether it’s low intimacy, high conflict, just too busy with life, so how do we take a look at that and adjust it for the future?

Dr. Kenner:      In terms of moving forward, I’ve worked with so many couples who have gone through affairs and I know you have. One of the worst pains is that you’re living in that affair every single day. You take your kids to school or you talk with the in-laws. But the background screaming noise is, “I’m in pain. I’m in pain.” How do you help a person release the pain and how do you help them not harangue their partner forever?

Dr. Kisler:        Often times, when an affair is disclosed, the injured partner does a lot of monitoring, because they’re uncertain and they’re so hurt. So checking phones, checking emails, and at some point in time, the injured partner has to eventually reduce this behavior and start to relinquish the right to keep punishing the partner. Here’s where the concept of forgiveness is really important. It’s important to remember that forgiveness doesn’t mean you’re saying it’s okay, and it’s not a one-time event, but it’s a process and it’s kind of a release from being dominated by this hurt and these negative feelings and these behaviors that you don’t want to keep doing.

Dr. Kenner:      So a rational view of forgiveness is that it’s a way for me to recognize everything that happened without whitewashing it, and to move on, to not feel dominated by these horrible feelings, and to learn more about myself and the relationship and to move on and maybe reconnect or maybe decide to split up and move our separate ways, but at least it will be much more knowledgeable at that point? And I don’t have the right to forever continue punishing my partner, that that’s not a weapon that I should always hold. I need to come to some terms with it if I’m the hurt partner, the injured partner in the case of an affair. I need to figure out how to over time rebuild the trust or separate if that’s the case, but not to always carry that urge to badger the person.

Dr. Kisler:        Exactly. You can’t really heal if you stay stuck in that place, so you can’t let the wound heal if you don’t find a way to let go.

Dr. Kenner:      I want to thank you so much for joining us today. This is Dr. Tiffany Kisler and you can reach her at tkisler@uri.edu. Thank you so much for joining us today Tiffany.

Dr. Kisler:        Thank you for having me.