A Family Systems Guide to Infidelity: Helping Couples Understand, Recover From, and Avoid Future Affairs

177 Pages·2018·2.282 MB·English

by  Paul R Peluso

A Family Systems Guide to Infidelity
A Family Systems Guide to Infidelity offers an explanatory model and concrete techniques, enabling therapists
and counselors to treat the core of a couple’s relationship problems instead of merely applying a therapeutic
bandage. Chapters give therapists proven techniques to help couples redevelop trust, rebalance power, increase
satisfaction, and recover from the wounds that infidelity causes. This text uses case studies from clinical
practice, examples of public or historical figures, and scenarios from popular movies to illustrate concepts, and
it provides a systemic explanatory model for understanding infidelity, one that focuses on marital
dissatisfaction, power imbalances, unfulfilled dreams, and the discovery of infidelity.
Paul R. Peluso, PhD, is Professor and Chair of the Department of Counselor Education at Florida Atlantic
University and the Past President of the International Association of Marriage and Family Counseling
(IAMFC). He is also the author/coauthor of six books—including Changing Aging, Changing Family Therapy:
Practicing With 21st Century Realities—and the past editor of the journal Measurement and Evaluation in
Counseling and Development.
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Family Systems Counseling: Innovations Then and Now
Series Editor: Paul R. Peluso, PhD, Florida Atlantic University
This series is aimed at both current practitioners and students who wish to learn about the historical power
and boldness of the family systems approach but who also need to see it applied to current problem situations.
The books in this series will reflect on the pioneering elements of family systems approaches and how they
might have been used previously with a particular issue or population.
A Family Systems Guide to Infidelity: Helping Couples Understand, Recover From, and Avoid Future Affairs
Paul R. Peluso
For more information about this series, please visit www.routledge.com/Family-Systems-Counseling-
Innovations-Then-and-Now/book-series/FSCTN.
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A Family Systems Guide to Infidelity
Helping Couples Understand, Recover From, and Avoid Future Affairs
Paul R. Peluso
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First published 2019
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2019 Taylor & Francis
The right of Paul R. Peluso to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Peluso, Paul R., author.
Title: A family systems guide to infidelity: helping couples understand,
recover from, and avoid future affairs / Paul R. Peluso.
Other titles: Family systems counseling: innovations then and now.
Description: New York: Routledge, 2018. | Series: Family systems counseling:
innovations then and now | Includes bibliographical references and
subject index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018007122 | ISBN 9780415787765 (hardcover: alk. paper) |
ISBN 9780415787772 (pbk.: alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315225739 (e-book)
Subjects: MESH: Couples Therapy—methods | Interpersonal Relations |
Family Conflict—psychology | Models, Psychological | Extramarital
Relations
Classification: LCC RC488.5 | NLM WM 430.5.M3 | DDC 616.89/1562—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018007122
ISBN: 978-0-415-78776-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-78777-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-22573-9 (ebk)
Typeset in Minion
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
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This book is lovingly dedicated to the memory of Jon Carlson, EdD, PsyD (1945–2017), for his hard work
and commitment to the field of couples and family therapy, as well as for his devotion, mentorship, and
friendship to me over the past 20 years.
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Contents
Series Foreword
Acknowledgments
1 Introduction and Overview
2 Historical Family Systems Review and Current State of the Art
3 Relationship Dissatisfaction: The Stock Market of Love
4 Power Imbalances: The See-Saw of Love in Relationships
5 The Death of the Dream, the Fantasy Unfulfilled, the Wish Un-Granted, and the Opening of the Door
to Infidelity
6 Detonation of the Bomb: Infidelity Discovered, the Partner’s Perspective, and the Decision to Pick Up
the Pieces or Pack It In
7 Exploring the Wishes, Dreams, and Fantasies Unfulfilled and/or Developing New Ones to Pursue
Together
8 Rebalancing the See-Saw: Sharing Power and Working Together
9 Increasing Satisfaction and Learning to Ride the Ups and Downs of Relationships
10 Affair Proof! How to Help Couples Make Sure An Infidelity Isn’t Happening or Won’t Ever Happen
Again
11 Conclusion and Wrap-Up
References
Index
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Series Foreword
Family Systems Theory, or Systemic Family Therapy (and everything that followed from it), was based on a
“crazy” idea. No, literally, it was. In the 1950s Murray Bowen and his team attempted to work with the one
condition that neither the Freudian Psychoanalysts or the Skinnerian Behaviorists were able to effect any
change: schizophrenia. He decided that the disease was formed and maintained within the emotional processes
(or “system”) of the family and that only by changing the family system could the individual patient’s
schizophrenic symptoms (delusions, hallucinations, etc.) be abated. That was the crazy idea, and it sparked a
movement that revolutionized the way that children, couples, and even individuals (to say nothing of families)
were treated.
One of the guiding forces for Bowen (and subsequently other practitioners) was the work of Gregory
Bateson in General Systems Theory. Ideas like feedback and homeostasis took practitioners away from the
focus on strict, linear “cause and effect” and instead ushered into the practice of psychotherapy and counseling
the idea of circular causality, where each member of the system impacts other members (and vice versa). The
search for a person to “blame” for a family’s problems was replaced with an exploration of system-wide
communication, disrupting problematic interactions and creating collaborative solutions that required
everyone’s cooperation.
The methods that these early pioneers would employ were equally as radical. Some would do literally
anything to disrupt a family’s dysfunctional processes and try to effect change. From Salvador Minuchin
watching families with anorexia eating meals together, to Carl Whitaker pretending to fall asleep while couples
bickered, to the Milan group calling families in between sessions and giving homework “rituals” for families to
complete, to Jay Haley prescribing “ordeals” for clients, or to Virginia Satir physically moving family members
around to communicate more clearly or experience a perspective change, these were all radical uses of systems
theory to help families in pain. These clinicians were creative, courageous, and, at times, counterintuitive. And
while some of their practices might seem odd, outlandish, or even borderline unethical to us today, the
underlying principle was to disrupt the family’s unhealthy systemic functioning and replace it with a healthier
systemic functioning. They wanted everyone to change altogether, not just make individual change. They
recognized that this required a boldness and a commitment to the principles of systems theory that underlie all
couples and family therapies today.
However, today many practicing couples and family therapists do not fully understand or embrace the
systemic approach that gave family therapy its power. This is in part due to the rise of the cognitive-behavioral
approach, which emphasized individual thought over systemic communication. Related to this, the rise of the
evidence-based movement made studying systemic change more difficult than individual change (which
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy was able to do well). Last, there was the rise of “managed care,” which changed
the way practitioners were paid by insurance companies by emphasizing limits on individual sessions (and
virtually eliminating reimbursement for family therapy sessions). These movements, taken together over the
last 25 years, have drastically changed the training of couples and family therapists as well as the practice of
couples and family therapy. It has taken away much of the original systems focus (and thus the power) of
family therapy approaches. At the same time, many private practitioners and agency providers find that they
frequently have situations that call for them to provide family therapy, couples counseling, or some type of
consultation for parenting or relational issues. Often they have to “wing it” and try to apply individual therapy
models to family systems work; however, this is ultimately frustrating to clinicians and leads to poor outcomes
for clients.
This series is aimed at both current practitioners and students who wish to learn about the historical power
and boldness of the family systems approach but who also need to see it applied to current problem situations.
The books in this series will, where possible, reflect on the pioneering elements of family systems approaches
and how they might have been used previously with a particular issue or population. Where some of the
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historical approaches might be unacceptable by today’s standards, authors will be asked to provide a
contextually based discussion of relevant issues from all sides of the approach (in favor of and opposed to) in
the hopes of synthesizing a dialectical solution that reflects the original intent of systemic change.
Paul R. Peluso
Boca Raton, FL
January 2018
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