by Nathan Chua
One of the most common questions that couples ask on their road to recovery from an affair is whether it is helpful for a hurt partner to inquire about intimate details. This is quite expected and an understandable reaction. However, couples need to be sensitive to the results of such inquiries. It is also not surprising to see the participating partner feel uncomfortable sharing sexual details about the affair.
There are some experts who say that the best advice a therapist can give to a couple is to refrain from going into the sexual or graphic details of the affair. Although this may sound like good advice to many and could probably work for a majority of couples, it has the potential to backfire. The thing that I like about the work of Drs. Andrew Christensen, Brian Doss, and Neil Jacobson, is its focus on functional rather than formal rules of engagement between couples. Formal rules usually involve teaching couples to follow a rule based on what it says alone with less consideration of the unique contexts that surround each couple. It’s like following a rule just because. Functional rules are more sensitive to contexts as well as the consequences that occur when they are adapted by the couple.
A Word About Context:
When I say context, it doesn’t only mean the physical environment of the couple. Context can involve the very thoughts, feelings, and memories that each partner has going into the relationship as well as within the relationship. What mindfulness teaches us about this is that we learn to see things from each other’s context or perspective. This is rather hard to see when couples have narrowed their options to survival strategies like fight, flight, or freeze! That would take a whole set of blog posts to discuss! So let me leave it at that.
In therapy, I allow couples to engage in their conversations about an affair with a difference. That difference is to learn how to do them better. How is this done when it comes to discussing sexual details?
These questions are obviously mostly going to come from the hurt partner. Again I don’t want to give formal rules about this, so please be sensitive to what works in your relationship and what doesn’t. If what you’re doing helps you to move on in the healing or renewing process of your relationship, then go ahead and keep it up. However, formal rules can end up frustrating both parties. The couple makes a turn for the worse when these questions are asked devoid of context from the injured partner. When they turn into demands without reasons or, just because the injured partner is angry and the participating partner must pay, conversations can become fraught with anger. At times they can become rhetorical and sarcastic. Interrogation has become a way to make accusations. And for most of us who have not learned what context sensitivity means, couples can go about doing what they’re doing because sometimes they do end up getting what they want. As human beings, we have a tendency to keep doing what we’re doing even if the success rates go down on our attempts to remove difficult thoughts and feelings. Minor, short term successes can obscure long term consequences. And for couples who have experienced infidelity, the injured partner believes the participating partner is responsible for removing these thoughts and feelings. This is an impossible task for anyone who’s a human being, let alone a partner who is also experiencing difficult emotions like anxiety and fear about possibly losing the relationship, and guilt about having had an affair. The injured partner can get rewarded sporadically when the participating partner grudgingly surrenders to the demands. Unfortunately, such enduring, surrendering, or survival moves by the participating partner more often only last for a short while before the pattern of giving in to keep the peace becomes unbearable. Thus, an explosion of pent up feelings occurs and the couple escalates.
The key here is for the injured partner to be more noticing of the softer emotions inside and able to enunciate them with less criticism and accusations. Focus on asking for information and telling the partner why that is important to know. Usually, the questions involve some kind of insecurity or a wound that informs the participating partner that such questions come from images or memories of past sexual hurts or rejections, if these are out in the open. There could be strong feelings of insecurity about the injured partner’s attractiveness. These types of revelations are more likely to induce compassion rather than defensiveness or withdrawal from the participating partner and allow for a more compassionate response to happen.
So let me get back to what I mentioned earlier in this article. In the counseling room, we are not attempting to help you end your difficult conversations. We are there to help make better conversations, because like it or not, there will be conflicts in your relationship as your contexts change from situation to situation. Learning the skills to make better exchanges in conflict situations can mean that these conflicts lead you to a richer closeness rather than rip you apart.