Patterns of Infidelity and Their Treatment (2nd Edition)

Rating:
Summary: Baseless and ill-advised
Review: This book depends on a premise that lacks any empirical support and makes no theoretical sense: That affairs are functions of the marriages in which they occur.

That an affair has occurred obviously means that the marriage was vulnerable to an affair--that the pattern of marital interaction allowed for an affair to happen. That does not imply that the affair is a function of that pattern.

Here's a plain fact: There simply is no decent research showing Ms. Brown's premise. None. It simply does not exist. And it can't: the idea is untestable, for at least two reasons.

First, it is unfalsifiable. You can always find a way to believe it if you want to. In every marriage, as in every human relationship, there are always conflicts and disappointments, and if you want to assert that some of them caused a certain behavior, you can always do so. Like the idea that everything is God's will, the idea lacks any proof in its behalf, but people who believe it can always deploy it to interpret events.

Second, the idea is a poorly formed hypothesis in the first place. The unfortunate notion that affairs reflect the state of the marriage in which they occur is part of a shibboleth of marriage and family therapists, called "systems" theory. However, nothing in general systems theory, as understood outside M&F counseling, would suggest that a family is a system in the sense necessary for the theory to apply: No marriage or family is sufficiently isolated to allow the systemic dynamics, such as they are, to determine the behavior of the components--namely, the family members.

Every person is part of many systems--his or her extended family, work colleagues, friends, social strata, local community, larger society, and so forth--all of which have something to do with determining behavior, insofar as systems theory has any applicability to human behavior at all.

So the very idea that family dynamics even COULD cause an afffair rests on an indefensible idea. You simply cannot isolate a family well enough ever to create a test for the hypothesis--and no one outside M&F therapy would ever think you could, since a family so obviously does not fit the initial conditions necessary for applying the theory.

Ms. Brown's typology of affairs is likewise lacking in empirical testing. There simply is no research validating that these are the types of affairs. And it is ridiculously easy to show that the types of affairs she countenances do not encompass all the reasons affairs take place.

Sometimes a spouse is mentally ill, for instance. Sometimes a spouse's early upbringing left him or her with serious ethical lacunae. Sometimes we just marry the wrong people, because we are young and naive or otherwise obtuse when marrying, and the person we marry chooses a dishonorable path. Sometimes we choose dishonorable ways of feeling better because of our own shortcomings. None of those are functions of the marriage.

And sometimes an affair reflects the simple facts that affairs are fun and people believe they can get away with them. The well-known "Coolidge effect," that (for the most part) sexual excitement increases with new partners, is one reason for affairs, and it is part of basic psychology, not a reflection of the marriage.

If you try to fit your spouse's infidelity, or your own, into Ms. Brown's views, you may be taking on responsibility for managing someone else's mental illness or moral shortcomings, or you may be shifting your mental illness or ethical immaturity to your marriage, where they can never be fixed.

Nothing ever makes an individual trustworthy except his or her own good character. An affair need not show anything wrong with the marriage, but it ALWAYS shows unreliable character--a person who does not keep promises and engages in deceit is (by definition)unreliable. If you are the betrayer, you will never become a reliable partner without reforming the moral callousness that enabled you to use betrayal to make yourself feel better. If you are the betrayed, you make a serious mistake in believing that anything you can do will make your partner more reliable. Yes, you might be able to decrease the partner's unhappiness; but then you will have taken responsibility for keeping the partner happy enough that he or she won't do what they should never be willing to do anyway.

In my many years as a therapist in New York, I've seen marriages destroyed by well-meaning but muddle-headed therapists who convince partners that something is wrong with the marriage, when there isn't, really--when some individual therapy or moral education for the betrayer could have saved the marriage. I've seen therapists ratify the betrayed person's broken sense of self by telling them they had a role in bringing it on themselves, thus forever warping their understanding of themselves and of the moral demands of marriage.

And I've seen people spend years and thousands of dollars in therapy chasing down mythical "system dynamics" that there is no sound reason to believe exist at all.

Ms. Brown invites more of the same.

All in the name of dogma that lack empirical support and make no theoretical sense.