Reflection on Listening Skills (learnt from Pastoral Skills & Methods)

I am working as a full time GP. As I reflect back on my development of empathetic listening skills this semester, I felt doing the Pastoral Skills & Methods not only helped me work-wise, but also in my everyday interactions with family and friends. The other two units I took are Cross-Cultural Communications and Introduction to Christian Ethics. Although busy, these units worked in good synergy with each other: knowledge from one subject actually helps the other subject. I tried to be cautious about keeping a balance in life, as Stairs[1] notes that people are not going to feel heard by someone who is in a hurry. If we fail to suspend our own agenda, many opportunities for listening pass us by.[2]

Moodle videos:

Leadership Training

https://youtu.be/ESujTCel6lM

Everybody Loves Raymond

https://youtu.be/4VOubVB4CTU

Poor communication

https://youtu.be/W1RY_72O_LQ

The Moodle videos gave me important reminders. The video on leadership training reminded me that active listening is an empathetic way of reflecting back of the words and feelings the troubled person has expressed to see if I’ve understood correctly. Occupationally, I often reflect back the words and feelings of my patients to see if I’ve understood correctly, but probably not in a very empathetic way. I find it difficult to be empathetic when I am busy and behind schedule. The video “Everybody Loves Raymond” reminds me that sometimes judgmental comments can sometimes slip out of my tongue especially if I am stressed, which is obstructs communication. Another words, I am sometimes prone to falling into the trap of evaluative listening, where as I listen, I am judging what the other person is saying as good/bad, right/wrong, acceptable/unacceptable, likable/unlikable, relevant/irrelevant, etc. Therefore, I sometimes start challenging people prematurely. Egan^[3] notes that while what comes out of the counsellor’s mouth might well be sound advice, but counselees should first be understood, then, if necessary, challenged or helped to challenge themselves. I find the video on “Poor Communication” very exaggerated. I am glad that we had some communication skills training in medical school and I haven’t seen any doctors communicating to people as poorly as the one in the video. 

My first observation sheet was on the topic of personal frustration. The opening was very difficult because the interviewee didn’t seem interested in talking. However, I think it was a good simulation of a scenario where the counselee was brought in against his/her will. It was a slow start where he only answered in monosyllables or even silence in response to open ended questions! So I had to resort to a more targeted form of questioning quite similar to the history taking I do with patients during my job as a doctor in order to collect enough facts to help me detect the underlying issue. I was aware that sometimes it is easy to fall into the trap of fact-centred listening where one is so focused on collecting the facts that one misses the person. Egan^[4] believes the antidote to this is to listen to clients contextually, trying to focus on themes and key messages. I tried to focus on that, so the questions I asked and the reflective statements I made eventually led us closer to the issue, and the whole pace of the session got faster.

My second observation sheet was on the topic of a person who was getting stuck on the same matter. The evaluator probably thought I handled the session ok because most of the ticks were “pretty much there”. However, the “other person centred approach” and “sense of warmth and openness” were just “getting there”. The lecture that week was on confrontation and challenging, so I remembered trying to use the technique of challenging on the counselee, who was stuck on having a poor relationship with her mother. I think it can be difficult to challenge somebody and be warm and open at the same time. The counsellor needs to establish a good relationship with the counselee to build up enough trust, or else challenging will break the relationship. This level of relationship requires a number of sessions to build up. Pembroke[5] notes that in counselling, a personal quality and availability is more important than any skill or technique. We must have their trust, or they are not going to feel free to talk to us about intimate personal problems.[6] I believe empathetic listening is essential in building a trusting relationship. Empathetic listening centres on the kind of attending, observing, and listening needed to develop an understanding of clients and their worlds. The counsellor must put aside their own concerns to be fully with the counselee. Furthermore, Carl Rogers points out that these deeper understandings of the counselee remain sterile unless it is somehow communicated to them. Although the counselee can appreciate how intensely they are attended and listened to, they and their concerns still need to be understood.^[7]

My third observation sheet was on the topic of a close Christian married friend who is having an affair. The evaluator thought I gave appropriate responses and listened well. The interviewee thought that I was quick to give advice and he would have wanted to get listened to more. I thought I listened and understood the issue quite quickly. However, I didn’t communicate this understanding in a way that made the counselee felt he was understood. Furthermore, I think I fell into the trap of playing a doctor role instead of a counsellor role in being quick to give advice, as doctors usually start explaining “management/treatment options” to the patients towards the end of the 15 minute consultations! Clinebell^[8] believes counsellors should avoid falling into the trap of the need to prove one’s counselling competence by solving people’s problems quickly with wise advice. Instead of concentrating on solutions, caregivers should focus on understanding and being with people. I think this is something I should watch out for. Doctors are trained to recognise issues, eg. Recognising someone with depression. But to counsel or pastorally care for someone with depression is a different ability/skill: I may be able to recognise it and refer the person on, but I am not necessarily effective in counselling or motivating this person. This is something I can improve on.

Stairs[9] believes that we are listening for more than what is consciously expressed. Continual spiritual formation is critical. Listening for the soul means paying attention to the signs of God’s voice and graceful activity and inviting others to become more aware of God speaking through such signs.[10] A person can act as a vehicle for the Holy Spirit’s encouragement. The Scriptures describe the Holy Spirit as ‘another counsellor’[11]; the awesome power of God that brings lasting change which might never come otherwise.[12]

Interestingly, during my trip to Israel, a sister with a strong gift in intercession prayed for me using the following verse (even though she had no idea what subjects I am doing at Morling College):
The Sovereign Lord has given me a well-instructed tongue,
    to know the word that sustains the weary.
He wakens me morning by morning,
    wakens my ear to listen like one being instructed.
(Isaiah 50:4)
Guess this is an aspect God wants me to grow further in.

Bibliography:

Clinebell, Howard John and McKeever, Bridget Clare. Basic Types of Pastoral Care & Counseling: Resources for the Ministry of Healing and Growth. Updated and revised by Bridget Clare McKeever. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2011.

Collins, Gary R. Christian Counseling. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007.

Egan, Gerard. The Skilled Helper: A Problem-Management and Opportunity-Development Approach to Helping. Belmont: Brooks/Cole, Cengage Learning, 2014.

Geldard, Kathryn and Geldard, David. Counselling Skills in Everyday Life. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

McGilvray, Jill. God's Love in Action: Pastoral Care for Everyone. Brunswick East, Vic.: Acorn Press, 2009.

Pembroke, Neil. The Art of Listening. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002.

Stairs, Jean. Listening for the Soul: Pastoral Care and Spiritual Direction.

Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000.

Wang, Ying-fan Yvonne. Dr Yvonne Wang’s Blabberings. Last modified October28, 2015. http://dryvonnewang.blogspot.com.au.

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[1] Jean Stairs, Listening for the Soul: Pastoral Care and Spiritual Direction, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 20.

[2] Stairs, Listening for the Soul, 23.

[3] Gerard Egan. The Skilled Helper: A Problem-Management and Opportunity-Development Approach to Helping, (Belmont: Brooks/Cole, Cengage Learning, 2014), 101.

[4] Egan, The Skilled Helper, 102.

[5] Neil Pembroke, The Art of Listening, (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002), 74.

[6] Kathryn Geldard and David Geldard. Counselling Skills in Everyday Life, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 29.

[7] Egan, The Skilled Helper, 82.

[8] Howard John Clinebell and Bridget Clare McKeever. Basic Types of Pastoral Care & Counseling: Resources for the Ministry of Healing and Growth, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2011), 74.

[9] Stairs, Listening for the Soul, 17.

[10] Stairs, Listening for the Soul, 29.

[11] Jill McGilvray, God's Love in Action: Pastoral Care for Everyone, (Brunswick East, Vic.: Acorn Press, 2009), 22.

[12] Gary R. Collins, Christian Counseling, (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007), 10. A comment made by Collins based on his own experience: It does not take long for Christian counsellors to see what God can and does do, usually in his own ways in his own timing.

From repentance to hope

(notes taken from Donald Capps’ two books: 1) Agents of Hope and 2) Pastoral Care: A thematic approach.)

There are three attitudes where, once internalised and well established, poses a powerful threat to the maintenance of a hopeful attitude toward life: despair, apathy and shame.[1]

Despair is the perception that what is wanted will not happen, the sense that what is realisable for others is not realisable for me, in spite of the fact that I very much desire it.[2] It essentially takes two forms: It may be projected outward in the form of disgust directed against other persons or institutions, or it may be deeply internalised in the form of depression. What makes it so difficult to combat is that it feeds on itself in a downward spiral of hopelessness. It involves the perception that the future, already narrowed, is foreshortened, either because it is too late to start over, or because the future is blocked.[3] In despair, we place a great deal of blame on ourselves for the failure of our hopes to materialise. It is our deficiency, the inadequacy of our own skills and abilities, which is primarily responsible for the frustration of our hopes.[4] It is only when one recognises the grace of God that our hopes are kept alive.[5]

Apathy is the state of desirelessness together with a strong element of “not caring” about what is happening around us, to us, or within us.[6] Humans are by nature desiring beings since we are always experiencing the presence of an absence. Apathy is a condition that is the very antithesis of human nature.[7] It sees no meaningful connection between short-term activities and long-term goals, eg. I will become my father’s successor as the CEO of the family business when he eventually retires.[8] The sociopathic personality is one who have no realisable hopes beyond the most immediate present. Even short-term desires are difficult to entertain because there are no long-term aspirations or desires to which these more immediate desires are related. The sociopath, beginning in childhood, has never had much hope for the long-term future and is therefore “geared primarily to getting immediate gratification in the present and near future.”[9] Boredom and indifference are characteristics of apathy, because they have ceased to love: no love for the other, no love for self, and no love for the world of nearly infinite possibility. Perhaps the only way for apathetic selves to find hope again is to rekindle the fires of love that have long since been extinguished, for love is the ultimate source of all desire.[10]

Shame is the painful realisation that events have in fact turned out very differently from what was hoped for and confidently expected. Another words, we have made a serious misprojection of ourselves.[11] In fact, the pain of realising that we have been wrong, stupid, or naïve, that we have assumed too much, is usually considered punishment enough. And we may have invested a lot in these hoped-for outcomes.[12]

In summary, the three major threats to the maintenance of a hopeful attitude in life. Despair occurs when we have reason to believe that what we desire so much to come about is not likely to occur after all. Apathy occurs when we no longer invest desire in anything that is happening to us, and it usually results from the fact that the future is already determined. Shame occurs when what we confidently expected to happen does not occur and we are faced with the painful realisation that we put our trust and confidence in a reality that was not there.[13] What is so devastating about these threats to hope is not only that it makes us more reluctant to entertain specific hopes, but that we allow them to affect our basic sense of who we are, our very selfhood. The capacity to hope is the core of human selfhood, and this is why despair, apathy, and shame are so destructive of the human self.[14]

Three attitudes that undergird hope are trust, patience, and modesty.

The general meaning of trust is a confident expectation, anticipation, or hope for the future. Another more specific meaning is a firm belief or confidence in the honest, integrity, relationship, or justice of another person or thing.[15] It is like the “general state of trust” found among infants where they have learned to rely on the sameness and continuity of the outer providers.[16] Another meaning of trust involves the act of entrusting something of value to us into the hand of another person or institution, eg. entrusting our children to the care of teachers and schools. We have relinquished control over the fate or future of what is of value to us by entrusting it to the care of the other. Entrusting is a voluntary act.[17] Fear is the experience that threatens our natural disposition to trust and our willingness to entrust ourselves and that is dear to us to another. The source of fear can be outside of us as the world is not a uniformly safe place to be. It may also be due to the fact that persons on whom we must rely are unreliable or even abusive.[18] In order to hope, we must have the experience of trust.[19]

Patience is concerned with keeping hopes alive. It is the will or ability to wait or endure without complaint; and it is steadiness, endurance, or perseverance in performing a task. One is to wait in an uncomplaining manner, accepting and serene. Patience is what we develop by engaging in difficult tasks without giving up: steadiness, endurance, perseverance.[20] Frustration is the experience that creates the need for patients. Basic to apathy is the experience of frustration and patience is the human capacity to enable us to endure it. Patience is the assurance that the hoped-for outcome is worth the frustration and therefore keeps us steadfast in our hope.[21] As patience develops into an enduring attitude, it, in turn, enables us to keep our sense of frustration at manageable levels so that we do not abandon our hopes.[22]

Modesty the avoidance of excesses or extremes, whereby we remain situated within the real world and do not try to distance ourselves from it. It is a self-referential statement about ourselves where in hoping, we try to avoid the self-deception that occurs when we take leave of the real world and enter a fantasy world.[23] It is an appropriate reaction to the failure of hope to materialise and a positive alternative to shame. By recognising our place in the world and accepting the fact that our hopes are vulnerable to events and circumstances beyond our power to control, an attitude of modesty regarding ourselves can emerge which fortifies us against shame. Our power to influence and control events is necessarily limited, as we are not omniscient beings who are able to anticipate everything that may or may not happen in the future, and we will continue to hope in spite of this knowledge.[24]

Because we trust, we are able to exercise greater patience. Because our attitude is one of modesty, we are conscious of the necessity of trust. These, then, are not discrete virtues, but a system of dispositions that support and enhance one another. Most importantly, the three of them together assume a life of their own and sustain the hopeful self even as specific hopes may go unrealised.[25]

The meaning any event has for us depends upon the frame in which we perceive it. When we change the frame, we change the meaning. Reframing is changing the frame in which a person perceives events in order to change the meaning. When the meaning changes, the person’s responses and behaviours also change. There are two reframing methods in which pastors may use to encourage hopefulness. One is the method of envisioning the future, the other is the method of revising the past. The first method encourages us to take a future persepective on the present. The second invites us to locate our past with a new frame, thereby revising the meaning it has held for us, and thus “changing” the past from a basis for hopelessness into a basis and resource for hopefulness.[26] Revisiting and rebiographing it is one way of reframing. One possible meaning of repentance is that one’s sinful past is blotted out, like an erased debt. Another is that one’s sinful past is rectified. The story of Joseph is a biblical example of rebiographing[27], whereby he turned his brothers’ act of betrayal into a “useful event for humanity”, a viable method of reframing because it is grounded in the boundless mercy of God, who is able to take sinful actions that we or others committed in the past and make them something better than we would ever have imagined. Therefore, rebiographing makes the past as open and possibility-filled as the future.[28]

Theological themes in pastoral counselling:

l   Providence: trust vs. mistrust. The theological theme focuses on the counselee’s sense that the world is under God’s guidance and therefore trustworthy. The psychosocial theme concerns the counselee’s sense of being able to rely on the sameness and continuity of other providers.

l   Grace or gratefulness: autonomy vs. shame and self-doubt. The theological theme recognises that the counselee often rejects the kindness and generosity of others[29] because he has an excessive sense of his own unworthiness. The psychological theme focuses on the counselee’s capacity to appropriate the goodwill of others when he is not overcome with feelings of shame and self-doubt.

l   Repentance: Initiative vs. guilt. The theological theme focuses on the counselee’s acceptance of an appropriate level of moral responsibility for his situation. The psychosocial theme focuses on the counselee’s capacity not to allow himself to become immobilised by guilt on the one hand or to display excessive self-righteousness on the other.

l   Vocation: industry vs. inferiority. The theological theme focuses on the counselee’s sense of purpose, dedication, personal competence and effectiveness.[30] The psychosocial theme centres on the counselee’s capacity to participate in a productive situation and bring it to completion.

l   Faith: identity vs identity diffusion. The theological theme focuses on the counselee’s affirmative attitude toward life; his religious proclivities as widening his scope of engagement. The psychosocial theme centres on the counselee’s desire to affirm and be affirmed by others; it manifests itself in a concern to integrate one’s experiences to date into a widening radius of psychosocial commitments and expressions of fidelity.

l   Communion: intimacy vs. isolation. The theological theme focuses on the counselee’s sense of being accepted into social groups that matter to him. The psychosocial theme focuses on the counselee’s capacity to commit himself to concrete affiliations, even though they may call for significant sacrifices and compromises.

l   Vocation: generativity vs. stagnation. The theological theme focuses on the counselee’s sense of purpose, dedication, personal competence, and effectiveness. The psychosocial theme centres on the counselee’s capacity to play a productive role on behalf of other people, especially the younger generation.

l   Awareness of the holy: integrity vs. despair. The theological theme focuses on the counselee’s relationship to powers or forces beyond himself. The psychosocial theme centres on his sense of comradeship with the cultural forces that have shaped his life.[31]

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[1] Donald Capps, Agents of Hope: A pastoral psychology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 98.

[2] Capps, Agents of Hope, 99.

[3] Capps, Agents of Hope, 105.

[4] Capps, Agents of Hope, 105.

[5] Capps, Agents of Hope, 107.

[6] Capps, Agents of Hope, 107.

[7] Capps, Agents of Hope, 108.

[8] Capps, Agents of Hope, 116.

[9] Frederick Townes Melges, Time and the Inner Future (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1982), 187.

[10] Capps, Agents of Hope, 122.

[11] Capps, Agents of Hope, 123.

[12] Capps, Agents of Hope, 125.

[13] Capps, Agents of Hope, 135.

[14] Capps, Agents of Hope, 136.

[15] Capps, Agents of Hope, 138.

[16] Erik H. Erickson, Childhood and Society (New York: W. W. Norton, 1963), 248.

[17] Capps, Agents of Hope, 141.

[18] Capps, Agents of Hope, 144.

[19] Capps, Agents of Hope, 145.

[20] Capps, Agents of Hope, 148.

[21] Capps, Agents of Hope, 151.

[22] Capps, Agents of Hope, 152.

[23] Capps, Agents of Hope, 156.

[24] Capps, Agents of Hope, 157.

[25] Capps, Agents of Hope, 161.

[26] Capps, Agents of Hope, 165.

[27] Capps, Agents of Hope, 173.

[28] Capps, Agents of Hope, 175.

[29] Donald Capps, Pastoral Care: A Thematic Approach (Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2003), 113.

[30] Capps, Pastoral Care, 114.

[31] Capps, Pastoral Care, 115.

Infidelity: A Survival Guide, by Don-David Lusterman

Infidelity: Breaking of trust. When people marry they pledge before their friends, families, the state, and in most cases, their god, that they will remain faithful to one another until separated by death. This expectation of mutual trust is the foundation of their commitment to each other. One significant element of this trust is the unspoken vow that the couple will remain sexually exclusive. Another is that there is a certain level of emotional intimacy that is reserved for the couple, not to be shared with others. Having pledged faithfulness, it is not surprising that the discoverer experiences shock upon finding that a mate has violated it. Infidelity occurs when one partner in a relationship continues to believe that the agreement to be faithful is still in force, while the other partner is secretly violating it. You do not have to be married to experience infidelity, as many people are in long-term, exclusive relationships. They may remain unmarried, but in some way “wedded” and this includes long-term gay or lesbian relationships.[1]

Most of Lusterman’s patients report that at the moment of discovery their predominant feeling is that all hope is lost and that the relationship is over. However, the majority of marriages that he had treated because of infidelity have not only survived, but improved. In many instances there are factors that have led to the infidelity, and that if both partners work together to repair these circumstances, their relationship will be greatly enhanced.[2]

Even though the revelation of an infidelity is overwhelming and shocking to both the discoverer and the discovered, reflection often leads them to recognise a series of actions, hints, and behaviours that preceded not only the discovery, but the infidelity itself. Each partner has been engaged in hiding many other thoughts and feelings from him or herself, often for a long period of time. The term describing the ability to hide things from yourself is denial, which is an unconscious act. It can be defined as a way of resolving emotional conflict and allaying anxiety by the unconscious disavowal of thoughts that would be otherwise unbearable.[3] However, sometimes an unfaithful mate is such a skilled liar that it is all but unthinkable that an infidelity has occurred. At other times, people are very conscious of what they are doing, but develop the ability to disconnect that awareness from other aspects of their lives.[4] For example a person might be able to feel energetic about seeing his colleague whom he’s having an affair with, but when he goes home, he totally forgets about the colleague and makes love to his wife, feeling no guilt or strangeness. It was as if there was one box in his mind for the colleague and another for his wife, each absolutely separate from the other. Some psychologists call this phenomenon compartmentalisation, which is a conscious act.[5]

According to psychologist Janoff-Bulman, people who experience severe psychological trauma suffer from a shattering of their basic assumptions about the nature of the world, and the three fundamental assumptions are: the world is benevolent, the world is meaningful, and the self is worthy. After the trauma many say their world has fallen apart, the world stinks, nothing seems to make sense, and there must be something terribly wrong with you if something so awful has happened to you. People who react to trauma this way are said to be suffering a post-traumatic stress reaction.[6] Kaslow studied a group of people who believed that they had good marriages and found that the qualities mot valued by these couples were “trust in each other that includes fidelity, integrity and feeling safe,” and “permanent commitment to the marriage.” Even people involved in unmarried romantic relationships often hold this unspoken assumption of monogamy, whether heterosexual, gay or lesbian relationships. Cheating in these relationships is also experienced as very traumatic.[7] 

An affair takes place over time. People may have an affair without sex, and they may have sex without having the emotional involvement. Once a committed relationship is established, if there is a secret sexual and/or romantic involvement outside of the relationship, it is experienced as an infidelity.[8]

Lusterman describes how he often heard patients in tripod relationships tell him, after the breakup of first their marriage, followed by the ending of their tripod affair, that they couldn’t believe how blind they had been to the faults of the person with whom they were having the affair. In many instances, people later regret that they couldn’t see their affair as an unheeded sign that their marriage was in trouble.[9]

Some people begin to panic as they lose the infatuated feeling. They confuse being “in love” with the more complex idea of married love, and became desperate to recapture that lost feeling. This often triggers the start of an affair.[10]

Special personal qualities crucial for a happy relationship: commitment, sensitivity, generosity, consideration, loyalty, responsibility, trustworthiness. Mates need to cooperate, compromise, and follow through with joint decisions. They have to be resilient, accepting, and forgiving. They need to be tolerant of each other’s flaws, mistakes and peculiarities. These qualities are the very opposite of those we feel while infatuated, where the other person is more a product of our imagination than a real person.[11] Having illusion is, unfortunately, the best preparation for disillusionment. It is easy to confuse the loss of illusion with the loss of love and lead a person to the false conclusion that the marriage is over.[12]

Married love is different from affair love. In marriage, some days you feel the way you did when you first fell in love. Other days you feel dispirited, tired, distracted, disappointed, angry. Even if marriage begins with romantic love, it finds its continuity in married love, with peaks of real passion, valleys of disappointment, and plateaus of “okay” days. Successful couples know this.[13]

When one or both partners in a marriage are not good at talking with one another, feelings get buried, sometimes for years. Little disappointments and angers are hidden away. Problems are not solved. When a person in this sort of marriage suddenly experiences infatuation again, but now with someone else, it is nearly impossible to talk about it. Secrecy is part of the excitement of an affair. The danger of discovery can be as pulse-tingling as the new relationship itself. It adds spice to life when the marriage seems bland, and it is addictive, carrying with it a powerful emotional rush. As with other additions, the rush is often followed by a sense of loss, real life doesn’t seem as good, so the person is drawn to return to the source of rush.[14] The secrecy also carries with it fear, which makes addicts into liars.[15] People who are otherwise honest become remarkably skilled at lying when they fear the loss of that to which they have become addicted. For some, lying is associated with shame: being ashamed of what one had done.[16]

Sometimes one can never again sure of the cheating partner, and never even really sure that the partner stopped contact with the third party.[17]

The first meaning the discoverer may attach to the discovery of infidelity is that their partner no longer loves him/her, or that the harm to the marriage is irreparable. Upon reflection, they may find a very different meaning.[18]

Marriage means more than the husband-wife relationship. You may have raised children together, developed important relationship with one another’s families, and have a common network of friends. The loss of a home can also be very traumatic as people often become wedded to a place, even a favourite spot.[19]

In many cases, people divorce in rage, often causing their children the continual pain of having to take sides.[20]

Psychiatrist Victor Frankl was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp during WWII. During his imprisonment he wondered why some inmates were able to survive this unbelievably demeaning and degrading experience without losing their own humanity while others crumbled. He came to the conclusion that those who survived emotionally were able to find some form of meaning in this most ununderstandable of circumstances.[21]  

Psychologist Harriet Goldhor Lerner points out that women learned from childhood that they are to nurture, serve and sooth. They also learn that the direct expression of anger is “unladylike.” They often learn to “deself.” This occurs when women “betray and sacrifice the self in order to preserve harmony with others.” A deselfed woman turns her anger inward, and can endlessly wonder what she did wrong that led to her husband’s affair, rather than examining the relationship itself. Some of the ways women express anger include silent submission, ineffective fighting and blaming, and emotional distancing.[22]

The loss of trust is the most painful result of the discovery of infidelity. When trust is lost it’s hard to sit down and talk about what has happened, what it means to each of you, and what the future holds for your marriage. Many people report that their attempts to begin talking are disastrous. What may start as a quiet conversation can become a heated argument within seconds.[23]

In most cases it’s only after the truth is told that it becomes possible to communicate once again. Lying creates an all but impenetrable barrier. Many people report that once they’ve been told the truth, they understand that at some level, they knew all along. But along with relief comes hurt. Both partners need to understand that restoring trust won’t be easy. The first response most people have to an honest admission is very emotional, for example crying, shouting, and throwing things.[24]

The restoration of honest communication must first come from the person who has acted dishonestly. To do this, there are two tasks that must be accomplished. The first deals with clearing the air by admitting what has happened. The other is accepting responsibility for the pain caused by the lying that is always part of cheating, eg. express remorse saying, “I understand that, because of the many lies that I have told you, I have hurt you deeply and destroyed trust.” (Note that the remorse is not about the act of infidelity, but specifically about the lying.)[25]

The normal reaction to trauma is to be on your guard.[26] Honesty is the necessary prelude to trust. Trust is the prelude to intimacy.[27] Regaining trust and putting the infidelity aside are not sufficient to move a couple toward a better marriage. The marriage review is a process that helps both partners develop a new set of skills that will enable them not simply to withstand the crisis but to find in it the seeds of a stronger relationship. To begin this review, it’s necessary to make a serious commitment of time as the future of your marriage may well depend on this effort.[28]

Lusterman, Don-David. Infidelity: A Survival Guide. Oakland: New Harbinger Publications, 1998. 

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[1] Don-David Lusterman, Infidelity: A Survival Guide (Oakland: New Harbinger Publications, 1998), 3.

[2] Lusterman, Infidelity, 4.

[3] Lusterman, Infidelity, 5.

[4] Lusterman, Infidelity, 7.

[5] Lusterman, Infidelity, 8.

[6] Lusterman, Infidelity, 12.

[7] Lusterman, Infidelity, 12.

[8] Lusterman, Infidelity, 18.

[9] Lusterman, Infidelity, 33.

[10] Lusterman, Infidelity, 37.

[11] Lusterman, Infidelity, 39.

[12] Lusterman, Infidelity, 40.

[13] Lusterman, Infidelity, 40.

[14] Lusterman, Infidelity, 41.

[15] Lusterman, Infidelity, 41.

[16] Lusterman, Infidelity, 42.

[17] Lusterman, Infidelity, 53.

[18] Lusterman, Infidelity, 63.

[19] Lusterman, Infidelity, 70.

[20] Lusterman, Infidelity, 85.

[21] Lusterman, Infidelity, 86.

[22] Lusterman, Infidelity, 97.

[23] Lusterman, Infidelity, 105.

[24] Lusterman, Infidelity, 107.

[25] Lusterman, Infidelity, 109.

[26] Lusterman, Infidelity, 120.

[27] Lusterman, Infidelity, 121.

[28] Lusterman, Infidelity, 123.