Digital Betrayal

DEAR Mr. Pfister, my husband and I have been married for nearly twenty years. We haven’t had a perfect marriage, but we’ve always seemed to bounce back no matter how difficult things became. This all changed when, nearly two years ago, I found out that my husband was talking with other women online. Since this time, we’ve had countless arguments about it without resolution. He will apologize for his behavior one day and defend it the next. Despite my pleading and the hurt it is causing me, he won’t stop. I have been experiencing feelings of intense anger and sadness since I found out. I believe God can heal our marriage and therefore I will not leave it, but how can I help my spouse to better understand the pain and hurt this situation is causing for me?

I would like to commend your faithfulness to the Sacrament of Matrimony despite the pain your spouse is causing you by his behavior. Your desire to address your concerns, while being heard and understood by your spouse, is certainly a healthy way to address this situation. The problem, as you indicated, is that you don’t leave the conversation feeling loved, heard, and respected. When it comes to our interactions with our spouse, the goal should be that we both leave feeling loved, heard and respected. When they don’t, it’s often because of shortcomings in our communication, whether it be what we’re saying, how we’re saying it, or how it’s being received by our spouse. This leads to having the same conversation over and over again without reaching a resolution.

This often occurs in conjunction with a difficulty in communication called “stonewalling.” Stonewalling is when one person – such as your husband in this particular situation – shuts down and withdraws from the conversation. The person experiencing stonewalling will at times become unresponsive, give short, incomplete answers or even walk away from the conversation. They also tend to show signs of emotional overwhelm and being emotionally disconnecting in their body language and words, such as by belittling or disregarding altogether the concerns of the other person.

This response is often driven by feeling emotionally overwhelmed and physiologically flooded. To help your spouse avoid stonewalling, and therefore engage in a more productive conversation where your concerns can be fully addressed and a functional plan for change made and executed, it is important to take short breaks within the conversation – based on one of the parties signaling that they are beginning to feel overwhelmed – focusing on actively listening to the need behind the aversive behavior (e.g., seeking emotional connection with others because we have lost it with our spouse, etc.), and avoiding “you” statements that increase the likelihood of overwhelm and subsequent shutting down (e.g., “You don’t care about me or how you’re hurting me”).

It can also be helpful to express the goals you have for the conversation to your spouse to set the tone from the beginning. For example, “I feel both sad and upset when you talk to other women online because I do not feel loved or respected by those actions. As your spouse, I need to feel loved and respected by you. I want to make a plan together so that we can both feel this way.”

Lastly, remember that the suffering you are experiencing can, in the end, be the impetus for your spouse’s conversion of heart. Unite your suffering with that of Our Blessed Lord and ask Him to use the grace you are obtaining by your faithfulness to shower your husband with the necessary grace for his healing and change of behavior.