Not "Just Friends": Rebuilding Trust and Recovering Your Sanity After Infidelity - Hardcover

Glass, Shirley

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 074322549X ISBN 13: 9780743225496

Publisher: Free Press, 2002

Synopsis

Good people in good marriages are having affairs. Well-intentioned people who never intended to be unfaithful are unwittingly forming deep, passionate connections before they realize that they've crossed the line that separates platonic friendship from romantic love. Today's workplace and the Internet have become the new danger zones of attraction and opportunity -- the most fertile breeding grounds for affairs. In the new crisis of infidelity, more and more marriages are being threatened by friendships that have slowly and insidiously turned into love affairs. Yet you can protect your relationship by recognizing the red flags along the slippery slope. You're right to be cautious when you hear these words: "I'm telling you, we're just friends."

Shirley P. Glass, Ph.D., one of the world's leading experts on infidelity, draws on more than two decades of original research and hundreds of clinical cases to chronicle the human story of what occurs before, during, and after the trauma of betrayal. In NOT "Just Friends," Dr. Glass reveals that the disclosure of infidelity is a traumatic event that can reverberate for months -- even years. An important therapeutic breakthrough, her trauma recovery approach helps couples cope with the obsessions, volatile emotions, flashbacks, and other post-traumatic reactions of betrayed partners.

In NOT "Just Friends," infidelity is any secret sexual, romantic, or emotional involvement that violates commitment to an exclusive relationship. An emotional affair, in fact, can be even more destructive to a marriage than extramarital sex. An extramarital affair that involves both sexual intercourse and a deep emotional attachment poses the greatest threat -- and this is the kind of intense infidelity that is becoming more common. In the new crisis of infidelity, more men are getting emotionally involved, and more women are getting sexually involved.

Dr. Glass provides a step-by-step guide through the stages of suspiciousness, revelation, and healing. She gives couples in the midst of turmoil the tools to reestablish safety and foster hope. Healing is not possible until the full story of the affair has been shared. Dr. Glass gives concrete advice about how to tell, what to tell, and when to tell. Eye-opening quizzes help you explore personal vulnerabilities and outside influences to ensure safe friendships and secure marriages. With Dr. Glass's profound, practical guidance, recovery and healing is possible for both partners.

Whether you are an involved partner, a betrayed partner, an affair partner -- or a therapist who would welcome a proven, trauma-based approach to healing infidelity -- you will find wise, nonjudgmental counsel in NOT "Just Friends."

About this title

About the Author

Shirley P. Glass, Ph.D., is a licensed psychologist with a diplomate in family psychology. She is also a licensed marriage and family therapist and a fellow of the American Psychological Association. The New York Times has referred to Dr. Glass as "the godmother of infidelity research." She has been conducting research on extramarital relationships since 1975. In addition, she has learned about the trauma of infidelity from the couples she has treated in her private practice in the Baltimore area. Her relationship expertise has made her a media favorite who is frequently cited in USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, Psychology Today, Redbook, Glamour, Ladies' Home Journal, Men's Health, and Newsweek. She has appeared on Good Morning America, Oprah, Today, and Fresh Air on NPR. She has been married for more than forty years and has three adult children.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction

Good people in good marriages are having affairs. More times than I can count, I have sat in my office and felt torn apart by the grief, rage, and remorse of the people I counsel as they try to cope with the repercussions of their infidelity or their partner's betrayal. In two-thirds of the couples I've treated in my clinical practice over the past twenty years, either the husband, the wife, or both were unfaithful. Broken promises and shattered expectations have become part of our cultural landscape, and more people who need help in dealing with them appear in my office every day.

Surprisingly, the infidelity that I'm seeing these days is of a new sort. It's not between people who are intentionally seeking thrills, as is commonly believed. The new infidelity is between people who unwittingly form deep, passionate connections before realizing that they've crossed the line from platonic friendship into romantic love. Eighty-two percent of the 210 unfaithful partners I've treated have had an affair with someone who was, at first, "just a friend." Well-intentioned people who had not planned to stray are betraying not only their partners but also their own beliefs and moral values, provoking inner crises as well as marital ones.

This is the essence of the new crisis of infidelity: Friendships, work relationships, and Internet liaisons have become the latest threat to marriages. As these opportunities for intimate relationships increase, the boundary between platonic and romantic feelings blurs and becomes easier to cross.

Today's workplace has become the new danger zone of romantic attraction and opportunity. More women are having affairs than ever before. Today's woman is more sexually experienced and more likely to be working in what used to be male-dominated occupations. Many of their affairs begin at work. From 1982 to 1990, 38 percent of unfaithful wives in my clinical practice were involved with someone from work. From 1991 to 2000, the number of women's work affairs increased to 50 percent. Men also are having most of their affairs with people from their workplace. Among the 350 couples I have treated, approximately 62 percent of unfaithful men met their affair partners at work.

The significant news about these new affairs -- and what is different from the affairs of previous generations -- is that they originate as peer relationships. People who truly are initially just friends or just friendly colleagues slowly move onto the slippery slope of infidelity. In the new infidelity, secret emotional intimacy is the first warning sign of impending betrayal. Yet, most people don't recognize it as such or see what they've gotten themselves into until they've become physically intimate.

Most people mistakenly think it is possible to prevent affairs by being loving and dedicated to one's partner. I call this the Prevention Myth, because there is no evidence to support it. My experience as a marital therapist and infidelity researcher has shown me that simply being a loving partner does not ensure your marriage against affairs. You also have to exercise awareness of the appropriate boundaries at work and in your friendships. This book will help you learn to observe boundaries or set them up where you need to. It will tell you the warning signals and red flags you need to pay attention to in your own friendships and in your partner's.

Most people also mistakenly think that infidelity isn't really infidelity unless there's sexual contact. Whereas women tend to regard any sexual intimacy as infidelity, men are more likely to deny infidelity unless sexual intercourse has occurred. In the new infidelity, however, affairs do not have to be sexual. Some, such as Internet affairs, are primarily emotional. The most devastating extramarital involvements engage heart, mind, and body. And this is the kind of affair that is becoming more common. Today's affairs are more frequent and more serious than they used to be because more men are getting emotionally involved and more women are getting sexually involved.

Consider this surprising statistic: At least one or both parties in 50 percent of all couples, married and living together, straight and gay, will break their vows of sexual or emotional exclusivity during the lifetime of the relationship. It has been difficult for researchers to arrive at this absolute figure because of the many variations in how research has been conducted, in sample characteristics, and in how extramarital involvements have been defined. After reviewing twenty-five studies, however, I concluded that 25 percent of wives and 44 percent of husbands have had extramarital intercourse. This is startling news indeed.

Vast numbers of Americans are preoccupied by an actual or potential betrayal of an intimate relationship. Their anxiety is not confined to a particular class, occupation, or age. Infidelity can occur in any household, not just in situations where partners are promiscuous or rich and powerful. No marriage is immune.

There are, however, steps you can take to keep your relationship or marriage safe. There are also steps you can take to repair your relationship after emotional or sexual infidelity has rocked it. And there are things you can do to help yourself through the trauma of betrayal. And you'll learn them all in NOT "Just Friends."

A Word about Where I'm Coming From

I was prompted to write this book first by my natural desire as a therapist to offer help and comfort to more people. Every time my work on infidelity has been featured in the media, I have received an outpouring from desperate people who say that I've helped them survive their partner's betrayal, rebuild their marriage, and get on with their lives. I have also given relationship advice on the Internet, which has connected me to a large number of people mired in the pain of infidelity and looking for a way out. Although I'm gratified to know that I've helped many people personally through these venues, I am hoping that I can reach many more through this book.

Second, I wanted to bring a new, fact-based, scientifically and therapeutically responsible approach to the guidance that couples receive. Frankly, there are no generally accepted standards for therapists and counselors who treat infidelity. As a result, people often receive bad advice from professional helpers as well as from well-intentioned friends and family members. Many of our cultural beliefs about the behavior of others come from projections of our own attitudes and personal experiences. Unfortunately, these personal biases also affect the work and recommendations of many counselors. In this book, I draw from research and documented evidence to give you solid predictors about who tends to be unfaithful and why, as well as proven recovery strategies for healing your relationship.

Some of the research on which I draw is my own. Twenty-five years ago, my first research project on infidelity grew out of a challenge to my traditional beliefs. At that time, I, like many others, believed that infidelity could occur only in an unhappy, unloving marriage. Then I learned that an acquaintance, an elderly man who had an exceptionally loving marriage, had been having sexual flings for many decades without his wife's ever knowing. Until the day he died, his wife believed that she was deeply and exclusively loved. After this revelation that an affair could indeed happen in a loving marriage, I felt compelled to search the psychological literature on relationships to learn more, but found very little that shed light on this seeming contradiction. The lack of research indicated a void that needed to be filled and I wanted to be the one to do it. So I pursued my investigations into extramarital relationships as a doctoral student at Catholic University of America. As you might imagine, that raised a few eyebrows.

What I discovered from the study I conducted forced me to revise many of my own beliefs about infidelity, which naturally had been limited by my own experience as a conservative young woman who had married at the age of nineteen. Over the years, I've done several other major studies on infidelity that have formed the foundation of my research-based approach to understanding and treating infidelity. My commitment to this field and method is so strong that I am currently writing a book for professionals, The Trauma of Infidelity: Research and Treatment.

Here's a brief overview of some of my professional work, so that you'll see the kind of factual information on which I'm basing this book's guidance for you and your relationship. Some of my discoveries are counterintuitive and definitely go against the grain of popular opinion.

· Psychology Today Study (1977). This is the study I was inspired to do by the elderly philanderer. It compares the marital satisfaction of people who had affairs early in marriage with those who had them later. At first, I had no idea where I would find subjects for such a study. I ended up calling Bob Athanasiou, one of the authors of a sex questionnaire in Psychology Today, who offered to give me the data on the responses of 20,000 people. When I analyzed the data, I found that infidelity in young marriages either meant dissatisfaction or was a predictor of divorce. In addition, I found some very interesting differences between the sexes that piqued my curiosity: In long-term marriages, unfaithful men were as satisfied as faithful men, but unfaithful women were the most distressed subgroup of all. I speculated at the time that the reason for these differences was that women's affairs were more emotional and men's more sexual. Today, however, in the new infidelity, both sexes are citing emotional reasons for their affairs.

· The Airport Sample (1980). This dissertation research was designed to explore further the sex differences I had found in the Psychology Today study regarding reasons for having affairs. I handed out 1,000 questionnaires to people at the Baltimore-Washington International Airport and at a downto...

Edition details

• Publisher: Free Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 074322549X
• ISBN 13: 9780743225496
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 448