Relationship Challenges

How Does Online Sexual Behavior Start?

Online chatting or e-mailing can begin simply as a distraction from boredom or emotional distress. Behaviors that were once off limits in a face-to-face situation with strangers are suddenly available through the Internet. Individuals seeking to connect with a potential partner via the Internet can present themselves in any way they choose, and can omit information they don’t want others to know. What started innocently can easily advance to a real life emotional and/or physical extramarital affair. However, even if the behavior never advances to meeting in person, many partners view cybersex chatting and/or pornography viewing as a form of infidelity, a threat to the marriage, and as emotionally distressing as a “live” affair.

Seeking Help

Reluctance to change must first be resolved. Any hesitation should be replaced by a desire to make a plan and take action to improve the relationship. In some cases, the betrayed partner may be so disgusted or angry by what the user has done, that a period of separation may be useful to cool down or reduce feelings of shame. A trained mental health professional can assess your particular situation and recommend the best course of action and treatment.

A therapist will likely want to determine if the user is addicted. If so, the therapist will offer support and assistance in the development of a plan, which might include restrictions on further computer use, accountability measures, and finding a 12-step or support group meeting. Some tips for changing behavior include:

• Use pictures of spouse, family or other important people as a screen saver so the user can see what is important to him or her each time the computer is accessed.
• Move the computer to an open area in the home.
• Do not use the Internet alone; go online only when family members or supportive friends are present.
• Use the computer only for specific, planned tasks that have been reviewed with someone who will hold you accountable.
• Have periods of time when no online behavior happens.
• Control Internet access with filtering or blocking software, or use an Internet Service Provider that already filters Internet content. You can also use monitoring software that e-mails reports of visited sites to a chosen person.

Causes and Types of Extramarital Relationships

The causes of infidelity are complex and varied. Affairs can occur in happy marriages as well as in troubled ones. Although the involved spouse may not be getting enough from the marriage, sometimes the involved spouse is not giving enough. Reasons for EMI include low self-esteem, relationship deficits (e.g., lack of affection), or a social context in which infidelity is condoned. Multiple affairs may indicate an addiction to sex, love or romance. Love and romance addicts are driven by the passion of a new relationship. Sexual addicts are compulsively attracted to the high and the anxiety release of sexual orgasm. But such release comes with a price -- feelings of shame and worthlessness. In contrast, philanderers who perceive extramarital sex as an entitlement of gender or status take advantage of opportunities without guilt or withdrawal symptoms.

A new crisis of infidelity is emerging in which people who never intended to be unfaithful are unwittingly crossing the line from platonic friendships into romantic relationships, particularly in the workplace and on the Internet. Emotional affairs differ from platonic friendships in that there is 1) greater emotional intimacy than in the marital relationship, 2) secrecy and deception from the spouse, and 3) sexual chemistry. Internet affairs, which cause marital distress despite lack of actual physical contact, exemplify emotional affairs. However, combined-type affairs in which extramarital intercourse occurs within a deep emotional attachment usually have the most disruptive impact.

Vulnerabilities for EMI can be linked to marital problems (e.g., avoidance of conflict, fear of intimacy) or life cycle changes (e.g., transition to parenthood, empty-nest). Some dissatisfied spouses begin an extramarital relationship as a way of exiting from an unhappy marriage. More frequently, however, the marital history is re-written to justify an ongoing affair. It is unreasonable to compare a forbidden love affair that is maintained by romantic idealization with the routine familiarity of a long-term marriage.

Treatment and Recovery

The first issue to be addressed in therapy is clarifying whether the purpose of treatment is rebuilding the marriage, resolving ambivalence about whether to remain married, or separating in a constructive way. One spouse may want to reconcile while the other spouse is still ambivalent or has decided to leave. Most family therapists work with the couple together as the primary approach. However, an ambivalent spouse or a severely agitated spouse may also need some individual therapy sessions. One way to help couples rebuild marriages after the disclosure of infidelity is based on an interpersonal trauma model -- a process of recovery and healing leading to forgiveness. The first stage of recovery after the impact of the disclosure establishes safety and addresses the painful emotions and traumatic symptoms. Understanding the vulnerabilities for the EMI and telling the story of the affair comprise the middle stage. Integrating the meaning of the affair into the present and moving on into the future is the final stage of healing and forgiveness. A wall of secrecy in the marriage and a window of intimacy in the affair usually characterize extramarital triangles. Reconstructing marriages requires reversing the walls and windows by erecting a wall with the affair partner and a window of honesty with the marriage partner.

1. Establishing safety. Recovery cannot begin until contact with the affair partner is terminated. Stopping an affair does not just mean ending sexual intercourse. All personal discussions, coffee breaks and phone calls must also be stopped. When the affair partner is a co-worker, the contact must be strictly business, and necessary or unplanned encounters must be shared with the spouse in order to rebuild trust.
2. Telling the story of the affair. A guiding principle is how information will enhance healing. However, a destructive process of interrogation and defensiveness never promotes healing, even if the answers are truthful. The initial discussions commonly resemble the adversarial interaction between a detective and a criminal. Simple facts such as who, what, where and when can be answered during the early stage to relieve some of the pressure for information. It is preferable to delay complex questions about motivations and explicit details about sexual intimacy until the process itself is more healing. The disclosure process evolves in therapy from a truth-seeking inquisition to the neutral process of information seeking – similar to a journalist and an interviewee. The final phase is one of mutual exploration with an empathic process.

How Do You Know When to Seek Help or Suggest Doing So to a Friend?

No one has a perfect marriage, and almost every couple can benefit from some help at times with their marriage. Pre-marital preparation and marital enrichment programs such as the Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program (PREP) and the Relationship Enhancement Program are available in many localities and most people find them helpful regardless of how well their relationship is going. And many people seek couple counseling with a trained therapist to improve their marriages even when their marriages are not unduly distressed. You don’t need to be in a distressed marriage to be in marital therapy. Many people with very solid marriages choose this path to enhance their relationships. Experiencing marital distress, however, represents a different state from the ups and downs of life in marriage that most people experience. In distressed marriages, people feel fundamentally dissatisfied with their marriages.

Disappointment in the relationship doesn’t just come and go; it is a constant companion. Most frequently, couples with high levels of marital distress fight a good deal and their fights don’t lead to resolution, but simply a sense of being worn out. Or they may not fight, but simply feel completely disconnected. People stop doing nice things for each other, they stop communicating, and things tend to go from bad to worse. Frequent arguments that don’t get resolved, loss of good feelings, and loss of friendship, sex and vitality are other signs that a marriage is distressed. Other signs, such as contempt, withdrawal, violence, and a complete loss of connection signal that a marriage is in desperate trouble and that it is at high risk for divorce. And you need not be legally married to have “marital distress.” Serious, long-term, committed relationships can experience these kinds of major problems, too. Sometimes marital problems are purely about problems in the relationship such as communication, solving problems, arguing, intimacy, and sex.

These kinds of problems often begin with partners simply not having a good sense of how to be married and how to communicate and provide support. Other times couples may do well for a while, particularly in the earliest stages of their romance, but they are not ready for the longer-term tasks in marriage. Studies of couples show that while the risks for marital distress and divorce are highest early in marriage, these risks also grow just after the transitions that occur when couples begin to have children and when the children reach adolescence. Other times, marital problems are directly the result of individual problems, such as substance abuse. And marriages can even seem to be going well, but one shattering event like an extramarital affair will throw a marriage into distress. Marital distress has powerful effects on partners; often leading to great sadness, worry, a high level of tension, and problems such as depression. If prolonged, it even has been shown to have direct effect on physical health. The effect on families is also profound, especially when conflict is high. Children raised in high conflict homes tend to have many more problems than other children. And once marriages are distressed, a progression begins that easily becomes a cascade downward, ultimately leading to the ending of a marriage.

What Should You Do if Your Partner Won’t Go to Therapy?

Some people with marital problems won’t seek help even when it is essential. If your partner won’t go to therapy, try to encourage them. It’s hard to fix a distressed marriage on your own. Still, if they won’t go, you can begin to do some things yourself. A marriage and family therapist is likely to have some useful ideas about how to improve the relationship without both of you getting into therapy and about how to find better ways to approach your partner about the idea of entering treatment together.