Healing Betrayal: The Path to Trust Again

Dr Chalmer has worked with couples for over 30 years and we're going to be talking to him about all that he is doing to help couples and their therapists . So , dr Chalmer , thank you so much for joining me today .

Now , now I started off doing both couples and individuals , but over the years I've really gotten more and more into working with couples . I just find that really inspiring . Uh , you know , people come to see me and they're dealing with really hard stuff and I it's .

It's a great privilege to be kind of admitted into their lives that way and to sit with people and to to see what they're going through , to get that sense of the struggles they're having and , um , you know it's it's difficult , but it's also really , as I say , it's inspiring .

And I noted over the years , the the more I've done it , the more I've learned from the folks I've worked with , and that's why I've written some books on the subject , because it just seems like I've learned a lot and I wanted to share that with other people .

Actually I worked at the University of Vermont as the resident statistician in their computer center and I had done my master's degree in statistics on a very psychological area , so that kind of got me involved with the folks in the psychology department .

And then I did a PhD in psychology and it wasn't until I had gone through some difficult stuff in my own life that I really got into the clinical side of things and I decided , wow , this is a really powerful thing , I want to be part of it and I felt like this is something you know . It felt more like a calling .

The other stuff I'd been doing was work I could do and it was fun , I was good at it , but this felt more like a calling . And so I got the clinical training and did my internships and that's how I got into being a psychologist .

A lot of times when somebody says , well , I forgive somebody who hurt me , what they mean is , I can get past it , I can restore my relationship , I can trust them again . I can just either I mean nobody ever forgets about it . Really Forgive and forget is sort of nonsense .

That's nobody forgets it if they've really been hurt , but they can kind of wipe the slate clean and start over . And that's often what people mean by forgive and that's not what I mean by forgive .

I mean a much different or a much maybe a narrower understanding Forgiveness when I'm talking about it and I didn't make up this phrase , but I really like it Forgiveness is an inside job .

In other words , I can forgive somebody by letting go of my anger , letting go of my obsession about it , you know , so that I don't have to freak out whenever I think about it . And I can do that with somebody that I don't trust . I can do that with somebody , I still intend to divorce .

You know I've met folks who have forgiven people who've been horribly violent to them , and you know they still have a restraining order out on them but they nevertheless can say well , I can get past the anger . I don't trust them , but I can still get past the anger .

Forgiveness is more about healing from the trauma yourself , and the reason I like to define forgiveness that way is , first of all , it means you have the power to forgive , even if the other person doesn't deserve it and you have no intention of restoring the relationship .

It gives you more power and it also means that if you can do that , if you can heal that way , then you can think more clearly about what you want to do about the relationship .

Because when you're you know , when you're in a panic , when every time you think about it , you sort of go become really angry or become really panicked or become really upset one way or another , you can't think clearly . You can't understand all right . Well , what do I want to do about this relationship ? Think clearly , you can't understand all right .

Well , what do we want to do about this relationship ? You really need to get to that place of healing , so that you can then say all right now , let me think about what do we do about this relationship ?

So what I've written about in my most recent book , which is called Betrayal and Forgiveness how to Navigate the Turmoil and Learn to Trust Again , the learning to trust again part , that's not just an inside job , that takes both parties , but it's hard to do that unless there's some level of forgiveness .

You know people come in , and it's a large majority of the couples that come in in the first session and they're telling me they need to communicate better , and I think I know what they mean by that .

You know what they mean is , every time they try to communicate about anything that they disagree even a little bit about , they end up in a big fight or they end up in a deep freeze or , you know , it just doesn't go well . And so what they're looking for is give us some tools to communicate better so that , you know , then we won't get into big fights .

And the reason I say well , it's not really about communication . At least for the vast majority of people , it's not really about communication , because the problem isn't that they don't know how to communicate . In fact , they are communicating , usually very , very effectively . The problem is what they are communicating .

If what they're communicating you know , if a couple is communicating to each other basically is love and respect and honor and you know just kinship . They're communicating the fact that they really experience each other as kin and they have a bond , even if they disagree and they can figure out how to get through it . They're communicating that very effectively .

The problem is , if what they're communicating is disrespect and contempt and anger and mistrust , they're communicating that very effectively too . And no matter how many clever techniques we teach and you know there's all kinds of books and all kinds of people who will be happy to teach you active listening , and you know different ways of different procedures .

For you know , first make sure you understand what the other person said and then say it back to them till they agree that , yes , you've got what I said , and then you can say your part . You know , a couple that is functioning well sort of does that . They don't do it formally , but they sort of do those things .

A couple that is functioning well sort of does that . They don't do it formally , but they sort of do those things . A couple that is not functioning well , it doesn't matter if they do those things , they're still not functioning well . You know what I compare it to ?

It's the reason couples that are functioning well more or less follow those communication rules , maybe informally . The reason they do that is because they're functioning well . They're not functioning well because they do that . They are doing that because they function well . Just teaching people to follow the communications rules won't make them function well .

And you know , my favorite , probably pretty silly analogy is if you think about tennis players , you know , like think about

. The one that comes to my mind is Rafael Nadal . He's one of many who do this , and you know , when they're playing tennis at the top level , when they're hitting the ball , they're grunting loudly . They're making a big , huge , loud grunt .

And so if somebody said , well , okay , if you want to learn to be a top tennis player , all you have to learn to do is grunt really loud , because that's what the top tennis players do , well , that wouldn't work very well because the grunting they're not top tennis players because they're grunting .

They may well be grunting because that's associated with being a top tennis player , but that won't make you a top tennis player . It's the same thing . Teaching communication rules won't make a couple function better . They have to function better in order to follow the rules and then you don't need the rules . So that was kind of the whole idea of that book .

It's not about communication . I actually had . I have a bunch of other stuff in that book too about . You know , if the therapist thinks that rigidly following these rules is going to get people any place , they're probably doing harm , not good , and that I extend that idea pretty broadly .

You know , if we all have ideas and ideas , ideas are good things to exchange and people often disagree , and when they can actually hear each other disagreeing about their ideas , then both parties are learning something and maybe being challenged , but certainly their knowledge is being deepened .

If people's ideas harden into ideologies , in other words when it's no longer about exchanging ideas , it's about defending your side , then they don't hear each other anymore . And that happens with couples and that happens more broadly . It happens in politics , it happens in relationships in the world .

And when ideas harden into ideologies , they're no longer good ideas , they become caricatures of themselves , and so that happens a lot with couples and it happens a lot with therapists . Unfortunately , therapists will sort of fit people into their favorite boxes and it doesn't work well . So that's kind of what that book was about as well .

But the first session I almost always give a little mini lecture on the two needs that we're trying to fulfill by being in a couple . You know why do we human beings pair up the way we do ? You could say well , you know , we're mammals and that's how we reproduce . We reproduce sexually . So you need one of each .

Yeah , that's true , but obviously that doesn't account for all the relationships people have where they're not having kids . It doesn't account for people who are past the age of childbearing but still want to pair up . You know why do we want to pair up ?

So there's a lot of reasons why people want to do that , but among them , what I say is we're trying to fulfill these two sets of needs and I call them stability and intimacy , and they're both really important .

But the reason I talk about them separately is the skills you need for stability are very different from the skills you need for intimacy , so I I'll talk briefly about each one . If you think about what does it take for a couple to be stable , first of all , what do we mean by stability ?

I just mean in a pretty simple way I just mean if it's stable , it's not shaky , so you're not worried about it much . It's about the anxiety level . You know if , if somebody's in a stable relationship what I mean by that is neither party is terribly worried about it . They're thinking well , we're doing good , so we're fine .

And of course , in the first session , nobody , ever , no couple , has ever consulted me just to tell me how stable everything was . You know , if it's that stable , what do they need a couples therapist for ? So I realized there's always some degree of instability happening or they wouldn't be consulting me .

But many of the people I would say most , pretty substantially , most of the couples that consult me , they're pretty good in the stability department in the sense that , you know , maybe they've been together a long time . Just that itself speaks of stability . They're probably . I almost always say this to every couple in the first session .

There have been very few exceptions over 30 years where I will note about 20 minutes and I'll say well , I can tell something about the two of you now that we're old buddies because I've known you for 20 minutes . Neither one of you is totally crazy and they will usually laugh and look .

I don't mean to make fun of serious mental health issues , because again , every once in a while I haven't said that because somebody is maybe having a manic episode or somebody is having a psychotic break or something like that . But most of the folks I work with aren't crazy and they're not evil and they're not stupid . So they're usually pretty good in .

You know , those are those , especially the part about you know being fundamentally not crazy . That helps with stability . So typically they're pretty good at stability . But intimacy is a whole different thing and you know , if you think about stability , all the skills of stability are about keeping the anxiety level relatively low .

Intimacy I mean something different , and here I better define my terms because I don't just mean sex there . What I mean is more generally . Intimacy is when you show up with yourself , you know , honest with yourself and honest with each other in the relationship . And you know no couple is intimate 24-7 in that way .

You know I get distracted from myself , we all do , but when a couple can actually be in each other's presence , both letting themselves know what they think and feel and letting each other know what they think and feel . That's what I mean by intimacy . That can happen in a conversation , that can happen sexually , that can happen all kinds of ways .

So intimacy is every bit as much of a need as stability . And if you think about it , I mentioned stability is all about keeping the anxiety level low . The chief skill of intimacy is to tolerate anxiety rather than avoid it . To tolerate anxiety without totally freaking out . And why do I say that ?

Well , because if you think about what intimacy entails , you know when it's a lovely encounter , when you're having a lovely conversation or having great sex or something like that , that doesn't involve anxiety . But think about other things that involve being honest with your partner . What if you want to just complain about something ?

What if you just want to say , hey , I wish you wouldn't do

X , y or Z that you're doing , or I wish you would do more of X , y or Z that you're not doing ? You know that's going to raise anxiety . It's not fun to hear a complaint from somebody .

So since you know it's going to raise anxiety , that's probably going to raise your own anxiety as well , and especially if a couple has had difficulty with conversations that raise anxiety . A lot of times that's what goes off the rails and they get into a fight or , you know , they get into a deep freeze or something like that .

Then that's going to raise anxiety even more because they you know they have a history of that not working out well . And the problem is , if they avoid that and so people will start to do that , they they worry about you know they don't want to rock the boat too much because they want things to be stable .

They worry about you know they don't want to rock the boat too much because they want things to be stable , so they won't bring up things that they need to bring up , and over time that builds up and people get into a fight about anything or nothing .

So , basically , my favorite metaphor about stability and intimacy is if you think about a plant , a seed , that gets planted in fertile soil , and what will it do ? It'll germinate , it'll sprout , it'll start to grow , and then somebody comes along and paves the sidewalk over it . Now , why would anybody pave a sidewalk over it ?

Well , they put in sidewalks because it's more stable . That helps with stability . Well , what's that seed going to do . It's going to try and crack the sidewalk or it will die trying one or the other . It won't just sit there , and that's what I point out .

If you think about that plant , the roots provide stability , but intimacy is the energy for growth and we all of us are living organisms and a couple is a living organism , more than just the two people in it . And living organisms want to grow . They want to interact with their environment and grow . And it feels really dead if you don't .

And what happens is if intimacy gets compromised because people aren't able to be , or willing to be , honest and honest with themselves and each other . What happens over time is somebody tries to crack the sidewalk . Metaphorically . Now , what does that look like in a couple ?

Well , when a couple tries to crack the sidewalk , it will look like something like , for example , infidelity . It'll look like an affair . Sometimes It'll look like somebody getting very depressed .

It'll look like somebody all of a sudden , you know , without warning , just saying I'm out of here , I'm leaving you , I'm done , you know , sort of blindsiding the other person . All kinds of possibilities . But often those things are the symptoms , if you will , of lack of intimacy . So a lot of the work I do with couples .

You know I orient people to this because it seems like it's really helpful and people keep telling me it's helpful . A lot of the work with couples is helping them tolerate that anxiety so that they can then actually be honest with themselves and each other , and then they can get someplace . Then they can actually start to hear each other .

Even though it's scary , they can start to hear each other . And when they do , that's when you know , that's when the magic happens . It's not really magic , but that's when change can happen .

You know , stability is really important , especially when you have kids , and so they perhaps start to avoid rocking the boat . And that's what I mean by that death spiral .

Because what happens is if you avoid telling your partner how you feel about something that's important to you , you know , I mean , people can let stuff slide all the time and it's not a problem . If you can just laugh it off , it's no big deal .

But if it is a big deal but you don't do anything about it , over time that builds up and that's what happens . What happens is if people start avoiding saying how they feel , that is what . What follows from that is lack of intimacy . They lose touch with each other .

They sometimes lose touch with themselves , and a couple that has lost touch with each other doesn't stay stable .

Uh , as I say , somebody is going to try and metaphorically crack the sidewalk , and so that's that's what I mean by the death spiral for intimacy and it , you know , and I say a lot of the folks consulting me , I did for one of my books , I did sort of an informal guess .

It really wasn't a count , but I did an informal guess about what percent of the couples that I see in the first session are dealing with infidelity or a similar kind of betrayal . And it's close to half . Close to half dealing with infidelity per se .

And often not always , but often infidelity is all about that sense of you know they've gone through that death spiral for passion and it feels dead and somebody you know , one or both of them , are tempted by somebody else because they are so missing that sense of feeling alive .

We must've been talking about couples therapy because we were getting up to leave and one of the other therapists , who was a friend of mine also , we were walking out the door and he turned to me and he said how do you do couples therapy anyway , which is kind of a silly question to ask ?

We've just had a whole meeting on it and we both had years of training in it . And like , how am I supposed to answer that ? Walking out the door ? But I had actually been giving it some thought over the time I'd been in training and the time I'd been doing it in private practice .

And if you really boil it all down this is what I was thinking initially If you boil it all down , what am I really trying to convey to the folks I work with ? I'm trying to convey basically be kind and don't panic . And what I mean by be kind is simply don't .

I don't just mean be nice I mean , yes , we should all be nice to each other but I mean be recognize that you are kin , you are family , you are a team , you know You're in the same tribe with people . Recognize that sense of kinship , because that's what keeps a couple wanting to stay in a couple when they feel that sense of kinship strongly .

And I , if you're in a panic , you can't be kind . If you're in fight or flight or freeze mode , it's very difficult to feel that sense of kinship if you're really feeling at risk . So a lot of the work of therapy I was realizing was about helping people not panic . It's like , well , we teach these techniques that maybe you can manage to avoid panic .

So be kind and don't panic . That's five words , not seven . And I started sharing that with some of the folks I worked with and they would tell me wow , that's a really interesting idea . I get why , in order to be kind , you need to not panic . Now what the problem is . How am I supposed to not panic ? And I realized , yeah , that's a problem .

How do I answer that ? I know I don't have a simple answer , for how do you not panic other than just saying don't panic , which really doesn't help much . But I did notice something about the couples that I worked with . What I noticed was that the couples that

seem to be able to not panic , even though they're dealing with really hard stuff I mentioned , like infidelity or you know , things of that sort the couples that would come in and they were hurt and they were , you know , in a lot of pain .

But the ones who could manage it had a particular mindset and I decided what I would call the mindset is faith , and I don't necessarily mean religious faith , although it's not inconsistent with religious faith .

But what I mean by faith is they had this mindset that says , even though this is painful , there's got to be something important about it , there's got to be something right about it . Even though somebody did something that was morally wrong and nobody was disagreeing about that , still there was something meaningful about it . We better look at .

That's what I mean by faith . The couples that came in and just said , oh no , we just want to go back to how it was , it was fine . They're not showing faith . They're basically trying to deny reality . The couples that could really accept reality and accept that there was something important about it , something right about it .

Those are the ones that we're able to not panic . So I added two words to my little formula and it came up with a seven word formula which is be kind , don't panic and have faith . You have to count and to get seven words , be kind , don't panic and have faith . And that has been really helpful in just sort of organizing my thinking .

And you know I've I've worked with a lot of couples where they'll put it on the refrigerator . You know , be kind , don't panic and have faith , because it reminds them . Especially the have faith part is the tricky part , it's a practice . It reminds them that if they can recognize , they're both valid people . You know that's a statement of faith .

They're valid people . If things are going wrong it's not because they're crazy , evil or stupid , it's because things can go wrong even for really good people and they have to be able to hear what's happening enough to be able to possibly work through it . So that's where the seven words came from .

You know that helps , but that really is about faith . It's about I have faith in the people that I work with . You know , when I made that sort of statement in general , the kind of blanket statement in general , the folks I work with are not crazy , evil or stupid . They're just not .

You know , another element of faith that's part of my own understanding is I know something I know I do not know better than they do how they should live their lives . I am not there to tell them how they should live their lives . I am there to help them figure it out because my faith says they're valid .

You know , we all have the experiences we have and they're all different and there's a validity to it . And again , I'm not , I'm not excluding morality is important , morality is very important . But even when somebody has done something flat out immoral , you know , like cheating on their spouse or something that doesn't make them an invalid person .

It means , you know , even good people do bad stuff sometimes , and if you can look at it with curiosity , that's what lets people then see gee , how did I do that ? You know , how could I have done something that was so wrong ? And I know it's wrong , but yet I did what made that possible ?

They can look at that with some understanding and that's what will help them heal , that's what will help them regain their sense of being a good person . So my own faith that's really where I'm coming from .

If I didn't really believe that people are fundamentally valid to be who they are , you know , in a religious sense I mean , I'm Jewish and I'm very active in my Jewish faith and I think it's certainly fundamental to Judaism and I'm pretty sure it's fundamental to Christianity as well .

Of all the folks I've talked with , the vast majority of people I work with , of course , are Christian . Where I live , it's a small Jewish community here , and so I know many of the people and so I couldn't work with them professionally , you know . But it's certainly true in the faiths .

I'm aware of that basic sense of recognizing that people , we're all children of God and we're you know we're valid in that sense , even when we mess up .

Well , just in time , I released a book , just in time for everything to shut down because of the pandemic , so couldn't do any sort of in-person , you know , book signing event or anything like that . So my wife and I decided well , let's do a Facebook live event .

So we did a Facebook live event and I asked my wife to do it my wife , judy Alexander because she just has a wonderful voice and a wonderful way about her and she's you know , she's really , she's really good in that kind of situation and we have a lot of fun doing it together .

So we did that Facebook live and a lot of people said , oh , you guys were great , you should do a podcast . And then , right around the same time , I got interviewed on a podcast much like yours , about my book , and the person we did the interview with she said , hey , you should do a podcast . So I said , all right , why not , it was fun .

So we started it back in 2025 . I mean back in 2020 .

It's now been , as of the time of this recording , almost five years , and what you'll hear , if you hear it , is oh , over half of our we've had 200 and I don't know 210 or something like that , some number like that episode so far , and well over half of them we have a guest again , much as you do , and we interview all kinds of fascinating people , anything

to do with relationships we're apt to talk about . So we've interviewed people all over the map , literally all over the map , because we've interviewed people all over the map , literally all over the map , because we've interviewed people from as far away as Australia and Europe and all over the world .

And if it's something about relationships , we probably talk about it , and that's what we've been doing . And so we've also recently started to do what I call some short takes , where I just do , for example , the little talk I gave a little while ago about stability and intimacy . I do a short take on stability and intimacy .

So if people want to hear our podcast , it's on all the podcast platforms . If you just look for Couples Therapy in 7 Words . Or you can go to our podcast website , which is

CTin7, . That's the number 7 , ctn7 . That's for couples therapy in seven ctn7.com . That'll get you there . And you can also go to my website , which is brucechalmercom .

So as long as you spell my name right , you'll get it brucechalmercom , where there's information about my practice , about my books , and you can get a link to the podcast through that and also I have a newsletter that I do on Substacks . All that stuff's available through BruceChalmercom .

I also do a lot of music . I have on my sub stack I actually put a tab there about some of the music projects I've been doing . I'm a composer and I sing in a choral group and I also lead the choir at our synagogue .

Maybe , if that was something I forgot to talk about , that you would like to touch on , or any final thoughts you ?

to summarize it , that seven words kind of just summarizes it . Obviously you have to think about those three principles Be kind , don't panic and have faith . But I find that's a really useful summary for folks just as a way of getting started , and so I invite people to consider that .

And you know it tends to give people a little bit of perspective on things that I think is really useful when they're dealing with serious problems .

Thank you for listening and supporting the show and , dr Chalmer , thank you for all that you do and thank you for joining me .