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Micro-Cheating and its Insidious Risk to Marriage

Originally posted by
https://drlorischade.wordpress.com/2019/05/06/micro-cheating-and-its-insidious-risk-to-marriage/

Anyone who has read my blog for any length of time will know that I am continually harping on boundaries as an important construct for marital stability. In the current digital social climate, if there are any natural boundaries at all to prevent infidelity in a marriage, they are so diffuse and easily crossed that their existence is barely recognizable.

Micro-cheating is a relatively new relationship buzzword alluding to small behaviors that both approach and potentiate infidelity.

Common micro-cheating behaviors include contacting exes, sexting, complaining about your marriage to others, secretly maintaining contact with anyone behind your spouse’s back, and any level of flirting; but there are limitless ways to micro-cheat, because it has more to do with both a state of mind and deception than anything else.

In my clinical practice, more couples than ever are arguing about partners’ decisions for interacting with extra-marital acquaintances who feel threatening. In addition to traditional face-to-face flirtatious behaviors, a whole new threat exists in digital flirting, such as email, texting, Facebook messaging, Instagram likes, online games, and any other mechanism for messaging someone in a forum closed to the other spouse. It’s not uncommon for me to be moderating a power struggle between couples arguing about whether or not a spouse’s actions are considered micro-cheating or harmless contact. Some people are fighting for their right to autonomous decision-making, but that path can lead to unintended harmful consequences.

I believe the most dangerous aspect of micro-cheating is that people rarely recognize the very real threat to relationship stability, so they aren’t careful. While I recognize that there are exceptions, I have never heard an affair client state that they went looking for an affair. Instead, I hear things like, “I never planned to be unfaithful,” or “It just happened,” or “I just fell into it,” or “I can’t believe I’m in this situation,” or many other phrases describing a feeling of being helplessly pulled into the nightmarish drama.

The problem with crossing boundaries is that you’re safe until you’re not.

Duh, right? But what I mean by that is that in every situation, two people are exchanging playful and flirtatious messages because it’s intoxicating to get positive affirmation from another person, and they mistakenly believe that they are safe from infidelity. Most people tell themselves, “I’m not the type to have an affair so it won’t happen,” or they underestimate the emotional bonding resulting from repeated contact. Eventually, there is a predictable “tipping point.” Malcolm Gladwell, in his same titled book, describes this as overall effect when an accumulation of minor phenomena reach a critical point to create a major change.

Micro-cheating behaviors can eventually cause a tipping point. In almost every situation, couples shift from playful banter into deeper emotional connection seemingly instantly and surprisingly, when it is actually the predictable result of eventual connection from micro-cheating.

Extra-marital emotional connection has a real-life impact on disrupting marital connection. Two people can have a virtual affair without ever being in the same physical location. The feelings experienced in emotional affairs are real, and commonly starve a marriage. People in emotional affairs usually decrease their attention and effort toward their spouses, and the result is unhappiness and possible marital dissolution.

Remember, while there are a myriad of behaviors that can be labeled as micro-cheating, the concept has more to do with attitudes than behavior. Can you safely like someone’s Instagram post or make a comment and not be flirting? Of course! Can you email, text or otherwise message someone platonically without compromising your marriage? Out of practicality, yes. However, micro-cheating is ultimately the biggest problem when it is hidden or minimized. 

When you have to hide your passwords from your spouse, there’s a bigger risk for micro-cheating. 

When your spouse is feeling threatened by your extra-marital interactions, and you continue those interactions, you are very likely micro-cheating.

Ultimately, the most effective boundaries in marriage are built by creating safe emotional and physical connection within the marriage. As much as marriage experts affirm that this takes effort, I am continually surprised by the general apathy many people have toward their spouses. Without effort and energy, marriages drift. Distance leaves marriages more vulnerable to infidelity.

I loved “falling in love,” as much as the next person. The heightened motivational state, fueled by novelty and the “love cocktail,” of brain chemicals is euphoric. However, I have difficulty with the word “falling,” because it implies an absence of power to influence our own feelings of being in love.

When people report “falling out of love,” I respect their experiences and don’t dispute their perceptions. However, I also know that staying in love is an active endeavor. I always wanted a good marriage. I have also consistently focused on my spouse by promoting time together and adjusting my own desires and needs to fit his desires and needs. I admit that I have a spouse who is easy to love, and I’ve seen many individuals I cannot imagine spending a life with, but I am also committed to “staying in love,” which requires focus, practice, repetition, conflict resolution, forgiveness, repair,  and commitment. I’m going to love my spouse because I said I would. As long as he is respectful and loving in return, “falling out of love,” is not an option.

Ultimately, if you don’t want to “fall out of love,” with your partner, evaluating and curbing your own micro-cheating is a good place to start.

Reference: The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell (2000), Little, Brown.

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Our Anxiety Is Rooted in the American Way of Over-Analyzing | Psychology Today

Source: By Mivolchan19

As most people are aware by now, mood disorders like depression and anxiety are on the rise, and are even being seen as “diseases of modernity.” Western cultures in particular see the highest rates of anxiety-related disorders compared to Eastern and other non-Western cultures. So what’s to blame for the influx of anxiety and stress?

There are likely several factors at play. Many people have pointed to the rise of smartphones and the erosion of meaningful social connection, growing levels of sleep-deprivation, and an overall increase in sedentary lifestyles. But we’re not satisfied with these answers, partly because these trends aren’t unique to Western living; they’re happening everywhere. We suspect the issue goes deeper—down to the level of our basic psychological functioning.

Our heightened anxiety has its roots in the way we think. More specifically, how we think—our default style of cognition—is different from the way it is in most other places in the world. We’re analytic thinkers, meaning we see the world in a linear fashion, carving out separate events and peering at them through a lens of cause and effect. We are rule-bound and systems-oriented and we are drawn in by focal events. We care less about context. You know the old saying, “can’t see the forest for the trees?” That’s us: We Westerners are tree-obsessed.

In contrast, the majority of the world’s population (around 85 percent and comprising mostly of Eastern culture) are holistic thinkers. They see the world non-linearly, recognizing the contextual and overlapping features of a given event or situation. Most phenomena, to them, consist of complex interconnections that fit together in greater harmony.

A simple example highlighting the difference in cognition comes from what researchers call the “triad test.” Suppose you’re presented with a dog, a rabbit, and a carrot, and then asked which two belong together. The analytic thinker chooses the dog and rabbit because both satisfy the internally held rule of “animal category.” The holistic thinker, on the other hand, chooses the rabbit and carrot because of the interconnected and functional relationship between the two: A rabbit eats carrots.

A consequence of analytic thinking is that its adherence to rule-based reasoning breeds a type of hyper-rational mindset. We believe every problem has a solution. It’s simply a matter of analyzing, solving, striving, looking, doing, working, acting, thinking. Because our world can be logically reduced to a set of basic cause-and-effect principles, we think answers can always be found. Even answers to problems related to personal anxiety. Ironically, it’s the constant striving for answers and solutions that makes anxiety worse in the long run. Solving for anxiety through calculated, analytic-based reasoning just doesn’t work. You can’t analyze your way out of an anxious state.

To understand how these two thinking styles link to differences in anxiety, we have to look at the philosophical and historical traditions of East versus West. In many Asian cultures, holistic thinking traces its roots back to ancient Eastern philosophies, most notably Confucian and Taoist traditions. The teachings of the Chinese classics, the I Ching and Tao Te Ching, continue to shape the holistic cognitive style of East Asian populations today. It’s a remarkable feat of cultural transmission occurring across eons of generational change.

(Quick aside: A similar enculturation process holds for us in the West. Our thinking of hyper-analytic style can be traced back to the atomistic philosophies of the Ancient Greeks like Socrates and Plato.)

And there are two prominent Eastern teachings in particular that help to explain the Western anxiety trap. The first is a principle called Wu Wei. A famous Taoist concept, it’s roughly translated as non-action. It says that we shouldn’t hurry to action. We shouldn’t constantly strive towards “doing” in attempt to resolve an issue, since things will resolve themselves if left alone. Ironically, the lesson here is that often the best way to resolve our stress and anxiety is, well, to not do anything at all. (You can see how this opposes our Western bias.)

Here’s the good news: Westerners can reach Wu Wei by turning up an intuitive style of thinking and turning down an analytical, deliberate style thinking. Recent advances in cognitive psychology are showing that this shift can be done through routine mental exercises.

The second principle embodies a collection of Taoist virtues, which are loosely translated as naive dialecticism. This is the essence of the yin yang. The defining aspect of dialectic thinking is that things in life have mutual dependence, and two sides of an apparent contradiction reveal a greater harmony and truth. In other words, two things can be mutually opposed, and at the same time, mutually connected. You can be, for example, in an anxious state and still have perfect control of your situation and your life. Thinking in this way allows a person to tolerate contradictions and to accept the uncertainties that inevitably present themselves.

In fact, dialecticism is such a powerful buffer against negative emotions that we’re seeing its teachings come through in one of the fastest growing Western-based clinical therapies: dialectical behavior therapy (DBT). The goal of any DBT treatment is to find a balance between acceptance and change strategies; to be tolerant of one’s current state and emotions while still striving towards personal growth. It’s effective in resolving the dialectic (i.e., finding the balance) and avoiding certain extreme positions that amplify destructive emotion states.

Remarkably, for many people struggling with anxiety and stress, DBT has shown to be a superior form of therapy than, say, cognitive behavior therapy and even drug interventions.

Even though these differences between East and West are deeply rooted in both cognitive functioning and historical learnings, we’re not doomed to live forever in our Western-biased anxiety trap. We can break out of it. The mind is highly plastic, capable of rewiring itself based on changing inputs from internal and external experiences. That means we can, in fact, think more like Easterners. We can engage in certain practices like the art of non-action and dialecticism and have it positively impact our mental well-being.

So what are you waiting for? You need to do, well, nothing. Nothing at all.

Nick is an applied behavioral scientist. Come on over to The Behaviorist to learn more fun things about psychology and behavioral science.Psychology Today

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How To Overcome Rejection

SOURCE:  Dr. John Townsend

Rejection. The word itself can make us wince. It brings up marriage and dating failures, job problems, and friendship and family snafus. Simply defined as “dismissing”, rejection is the act of turning away from someone or something. Actually, rejection is not a bad thing, we do it all the time. We reject one menu entrée for another at dinner, and we reject one Netflix show for another. But when we are rejected in a personal relationship, it can be very painful and derailing. Oh yeah, and 100% of us have been rejected at some time or another in our lives. So it is a normal human experience. So here are some tips to help you overcome it. You can’t overcome the reality of rejection. People have the freedom to reject us, and we do as well. But you can do something about the emotional disruptiveness that occurs.

Be honest about the feeling. Just say or write down, “X has rejected me. He is no longer in my life, and I feel unlikeable, cut off, unimportant, not valuable”, whatever. That’s just the reality of how you feel. Neuroscience research tells us that when we don’t face a negative, we can’t fix it. So bite the bullet and be clear about the feeling.

Parcel out the causes. There are very few cases where rejection is 100% the other person, though they do exist. So take a hard look at the relationship. What was the other person’s responsibility? Maybe they were critical, judging, dishonest or perfectionistic person. That’s bad! But go beyond that, to what your part was: perhaps you chose to overlook issues instead of addressing them, didn’t respect yourself, or didn’t admit your own flaws. That needs to be recognized. And then get to work on whatever was the beam in your own eye. That will also help decrease the pain of the rejection.

Bring to mind the “rest of” yourself. Sure, you were rejected. But that doesn’t mean that you’re a worthless person at all. Remember that you are also a pretty decent and kind person as well. Don’t get lost in the “I’m totally unlovable” thinking pattern, it will get you nowhere.

Replace the one who left. No one should be alone. Make sure you have other people in your life who “get” you, who are good listeners and who believe in you. The more you are isolated after a rejection, the more powerful the rejection. And if we’re talking dating or marriage, don’t rebound. I know it feels great. But the statistics say that if you use romantic attachment as a self-soother, you are very likely to be in the same position a few months down the line. Get with non-romantic, deep, faithful friends before you venture out into romance again.

Here is a goal: get so balanced and healthy that the next time you are rejected you’ll say, “Ouch, that’s sad. Oh well, I’ll call some friends and learn from it and have a great dinner.” Well, it won’t be that easy, but it will be better!

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Q&A: Did I Make a Mistake Ending My Affair?

Source: Michele Weiner-Davis, LCSW

Question:

Years ago, I had an affair. My wife found out, and I stopped the affair. But I can’t get the other woman out of my mind. Did I make a mistake ending the affair? Should I have left my wife?

Answer:

When people decide to end affairs, they often expect the feelings about their affair partners to fade away in short order. After all, they have made conscious decisions to reinvest in their marriages, so shouldn’t the longing for their paramours simply go away?

Although the saying Out of sight, out of mind often has merit, when it comes to infidelity, it often doesn’t work that way. This is particularly true if the affair was long-lasting, deeply meaningful and/or sexually passionate. People frequently say that their affairs made them feel greatly appreciated, sexier than they’d felt in years and even “alive again”—and it’s hard for whatever comes afterward to compete with that.

That’s why when an affair ends, even if it’s for all the right reasons, there’s a sense of loss. With loss comes grief. Sometimes when people grieve over an affair that has ended, they feel guilty about the grief. They tell themselves they “should” be over the relationship. To compound matters, betrayed spouses seem to have radar for their partners’ lingering feelings of love or lust for their affair partners and often (understandably) become upset and accusatory, only adding to the complexity of the situation.

The truth is, overcoming loss takes time. Feelings do not come and go on a schedule. Judging oneself for reflecting on the importance of an affair and mentally reliving meaningful moments only serves to prolong the challenges in letting go—but it’s all understandable.

That doesn’t mean you have to just live with it. Rather than allow your continued thoughts about the affair to make you question the wisdom of staying in your marriage, why not ask yourself the reasons you decided to end the affair and recommit to your wife in the first place?  Did you value your history together?  Were you unwilling to break up your family? Did you realize that despite your decision to have an affair, you really love your wife? Is there a part of you that recognized that in many ways, the excitement of the affair was just that it was a responsibility-free relationship?  Did you recognize that your marriage would improve if you funneled your energy toward your spouse rather than your affair partner?

Chances are you had good reasons for deciding to stay in your marriage. Don’t lose sight of that. At the same time, don’t judge yourself for having lingering thoughts about the past. And after considering all the above, if you still feel torn about your decision to remain with your wife, you can seek professional help to sort things out. Be sure to reach out to a therapist who specializes in marriage therapy. Although the best way to find a referral is word-of-mouth, you also can search through a directory on the website for the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT.org).————————————————–Source: Michele Weiner-Davis, LCSW, founder of The Divorce Busting Center in Boulder, Colorado, that helps on-the-brink couples save their marriages. She is the best-selling author of eight books including Healing from Infidelity, The Sex-Starved Marriage and Divorce Bustin

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You Don’t Have to Live with Guilt

SOURCE:  Rick Warren

“A man who refuses to admit his mistakes can never be successful. But if he confesses and forsakes them, he gets another chance” (Proverbs 28:13 TLB).

God is always ready to give you another chance.

That’s a bedrock piece of Christianity. We’ve all been irresponsible. We’ve all screwed up. The Bible tells us, “Not a single person on earth is always good and never sins” (Ecclesiastes 7:20 NLT).

God doesn’t want you living with a heavy guilt trip about all the irresponsibility in your life. Guilt destroys your confidence, damages your relationships, keeps you stuck in the past, and even hurts your health. I read a report a few years back that said 70 percent of people in the hospital could leave if they knew how to resolve their guilt.

God wants far better for your life than that. You don’t want to live with guilt.

And here’s an important truth to always hang on to: You don’t have to.

God wants you to live with a sense of promise and hope. God can even bring good out of the stupid decisions that you’ve made in your life if you’ll give those failures to him.

How do you do that?

Admit to God you’ve made a mistake. It doesn’t surprise him. And it won’t change his perception of you. I hope you’ll take this step today. When you do, here’s what you can expect from God:

  1. God forgives instantly. The very moment you admit your sin to God, he forgives you.
  2. God forgives freely. You don’t need to earn it, and you’ll never deserve it.
  3. God forgives completely. He wipes your sin absolutely clean.

If you’re mired in guilt and shame, you’ll likely perpetuate whatever problem you have. You’ll tell yourself that you blew it, so you’re bad. Since you’re bad, you believe you’ll blow it again. It’s a nasty cycle from which we often can’t seem to escape — at least not on our own.

You need a power beyond yourself.

You need a Savior.

You need Jesus.