We Did the Disclosure… Now What? Why Healing Still Feels Incomplete (Episode #124)

Welcome to the Human Intimacy Podcast. Dr. Kevin Skinner with Marianne Michalis, licensed clinical social worker. Marianne, over the past few weeks we've been talking about you know, questions that couples ask. And I think it's been very, you know, 10 things that we need to be aware of, ask questions. Really, couples, they need to be asking questions. But today I wanted to continue that conversation, but I wanna do it in a way, Marianne, that I think many of our clients, they've been working hard. I mean, the feedback that I get from the people who are listening, they're working hard. They're listening to podcasts, going to therapy, attending groups, but still feel something's off or missing. And Marianne, today's topic is related to, we've done a disclosure, we've done an impact letter, we've done emotional restitution, we're working through those things, and we're still not connecting the way we want to connect. Your thoughts, Marianne?

I think I want to start out, Dr. Skinner, by validating this space because we don't hear it talked about very often. And I know our intent today is just to normalize and really validate the repair process of the recovery of a couple. And oftentimes when we're working on preparing for a disclosure, both partners are doing a lot of individual work and we get to this disclosure. And oftentimes we feel like, okay, we, we did disclosure. We should be at this good place. We're ready to, we might be ready to start some couples work. And our therapist said, maybe we, we don't really wanna dive into that until we get all the secrecy and all the the dishonesty addressed. And so, woohoo, here we go. And I think there can be a really big letdown. The problems still exist. There's still problems that haven't been resolved and we've been doing all these things. And so I know part of our conversation today is to validate the journey and to provide a schematic of here's what it, here's what it looks like. Let's chart out the whole recovery journey rather than getting to one point and stopping because there isn't the rides off happily into the sunset that we've all been taught from all the fairy tales that we grew up with.

But there is a mindset, right? I mean, as trained as a certified sex addiction therapist, we talk a lot about the disclosure process. We talk about finding somebody who can properly assess you, finding a CSAT, finding someone who understands betrayal trauma. We talk about the importance of that. Just recently, I was talking with an individual, Marianne, who said, I, you know, came to an intensive and said, I had no idea this kind of therapy existed. And what was being said was so much more impactful, so much more meaningful. And the reason why is because we spent a lot of time learning and developing our skills so we can help people at a deeper level. But we build up, just as an example, and we say, okay, go get a certified sex addiction therapist, everything will be better. Mentally, right? Go do this. We were talking about this before we started the podcast. These are some of the myths. We think that it's over when we get to a certain point. I think that's a problem, Marianne.

Yes. When we're dealing especially with a sexual addiction or sexual acting out behaviors, one of those myths is, okay, my partner's working with a CSAT, and so everything's gonna be better. Everything should be solved. And I recently had a rude awakening with one of my clients because we had this conversation. They started to ask their partner more questions and, oh, you mean for the last 5 or 6 months you've been doing some behaviors that aren't within our agreement? I thought everything was better and you were having accountability with your group and with your sponsor and with your therapist, and so I was thinking things were better and they're not.

And we could say the same thing with couples therapy, right? We've done a disclosure, we've done the impact letter, we've done emotional restitution. What's wrong? Why are we not all of a sudden in this marital bliss? And I think it's so much more appropriate for us to put in context this whole process.

Right?

So I might have a CSAT, I might be working really hard on recovery, and I might be working on betrayal trauma, and we might be doing couples work. Just because we're doing individual work and individual healing, and maybe even doing the impact letter and doing that whole process, the emotional restitution at the end. If, and if you don't know what these things are, we encourage you to go back and listen to previous podcasts where we talked about this process of the disclosure. An impact letter, and emotional restitution. So I apologize if those are new terms to you, but in essence, what we're doing is we're trying to create an environment where couples can talk openly, be vulnerable. And in particular, if I acted out, I'm going to do a disclosure. If I'm the betrayed, I'm doing an impact letter, talking about how this information has impacted me. And then the emotional restitution is how I lied, deceived, manipulated you. That's generally a 3-step process. But just because we do that doesn't mean we know how to connect. It actually creates a foundation that allows us to connect. So, Marianne, I would actually put it this way. I think that 3-part process is the beginning of couple healing, not the end, not the, oh, we've arrived, right?

And I think the disclosure process— and I say this before every disclosure when we sit down— this is a model. What we're doing right here, this is a high-level model for your future relationship. It is when either partner does something that can hurt their other partner, when they break agreements, when there's anything that they need to be accountable for, we show up and say, hey, I did this. And then the other partner says, oh, let me tell you how this impacted me. Let me share with you. My hurt, my pain, my sorrows, everything. And then we come back and say, I acknowledge that. I take responsibility for that. I want to help repair that. That is the process that we're really— the disclosure is, is we're working up to with that, but we are expecting that to continue moving forward. So these are skills. And I know part of what we want to talk about today is helping our listeners and viewers realize this disclosure process, it needs to continue in the relationship over and over and over again. And sometimes people get stuck thinking, we did the disclosure and, and now what? Or things haven't gotten better. So we're saying, here's some tools, but oftentimes as we begin that couples work, we really need help to continue moving that process forward.

You know what's interesting, Marianne, for the last 10+ years, when I do my couples intensives, this is actually where I take couples. This is the pinpoint, right, right here. Because in order to come to one of my intensives, you need to have done that 3-step process. Now, once they've done that, they're still coming because they're stuck. They feel lost. They don't know how to repair. Again, I've often said, you can work recovery, you can work through trauma. It does not mean you know how to be relational. It doesn't mean that you know how to communicate in vulnerable ways, how to be open, how to share your deepest thoughts, and then how to listen. I— there's a concept that I talk with couples, and it's really powerful. It comes from a book, Deep Listening. Um, that's a concept in the book, but deep listening is really this concept of being able to be present with a person and not just hear what they're saying, you're feeling what they're experiencing. So the general concept, we sit in a relationship and we want to— I can hear what you're saying, but if I'm really hearing what you're saying, Marianne, I'm also feeling elements of what you're feeling. And if I'm not prepared for that, we've had this conversation on the difference between empathy and compassion. If I'm not prepared for that, If I truly feel what you're saying, I might be activated in my nervous system. I say, that's too much for me. That's why deep listening is a skill that has to be learned. And that's what I do in the intensive, is teach people how to listen deeply to what's actually happening to their spouse and to each other in the relationship.

As a musician, if I'm sitting in front of a piano, I can push my finger down onto maybe a D And then I can hit another D someplace else that's on the piano keyboard. And the D where I have my finger depressed, that's just holding it down, that I didn't go clink with it or anything, it's just being held down. When these other keys get hit, that D will also sound. I think it's really fascinating as we're talking about how this is about, how do I get to that place where one, I have to be open. I have to have some things cleared out so that I can be open so that I can even resonate with what's coming up. If I've got big emotions, they're gonna cloud, they're gonna obscure, they're going to make it really difficult for me to hear and understand my partner, be open to even recognizing, oh, my partner has some stuff because my stuff gets in the way and murks, makes it a little bit more murky.

And so as we work with couples, again, you've done a disclosure, you've done this process, and you're still having arguments, you're still fighting, there's still questions being asked, why did this happen? Usually what's happening there is— we're going to go back into the Zeigarnik effect— there are still things that the brain is trying to figure out. It's not finished. And so when we do this process, the disclosure process, we're going to call it that, we have to understand we're not done. We get to continue working. And if I could give anything to, to our clients or those who are listening today, to say this process actually is an educating process of what's happening not only before the acting out was discovered, what's happening right now as we do the disclosure, and then how we're going to project forward. Marianne, we've got to figure out how to communicate. We've got to figure out how this template you're talking about, this, this pattern How to continue doing that.

So I think that oftentimes couples see, and maybe as CSATs we portray this, but we might talk about the disclosures being like the end. When I get to the disclosure, that's the end. And what I'm hearing you say, or you mentioned earlier, this is actually the beginning. We've just kind of cleaned some things out. So now the path might be a a little bit less. We don't usually do couples work if there's affairs, addictions, or abuse happening, and we are addressing those behaviors and acknowledging them, acknowledging their impact. That is where we then start walking and moving forward. And I'm hearing you say like, yes, and we have to start learning the skills and the tools to do that coupleship work because there was so much damage before. The couple wasn't growing. There was a lot of pain. So now we're figuring out how to do the healing work.

Or they didn't know how to do those things early on, which created relationship ruptures, using a Sue Johnson term. And then we didn't know how to repair from those ruptures. And when you have that rupture and you don't repair it, then it's naturally gonna create this distance. And in that distance, we often see inappropriate, unhealthy behaviors, everything from acting out to arguing to fighting. To put down, so criticism, all the things that don't work. And so the repair process, again, it's not just the sexually acting out betrayal. It's the betrayal of how I'm showing up in the marriage, how I'm showing up in the relationship, how I'm choosing to show up in this relationship. How many times have you seen people say, I don't want to act this way, but we get into these patterns and we do them repetitively because we don't know any different. That process is is what needs to be broken, and it needs to be emphasized after that process of the disclosure so they can get out of those— because they just did something really painful and really difficult. That disclosure process is hard, Marianne. You do all that work, and what I'm saying is, is if we were exercising a muscle, don't quit then. You've worked so hard to get to this point. Now let's take you to the next level.

So I think what I'm hearing, you know, as we're talking about this, I might be listening to this going, okay, yeah, but what do I do? And so I want to synthesize this. So here's some clear things that we're talking about. I heard you talking about communication. So we've got to learn how to communicate effectively and clearly. We've got to learn how to acknowledge our emotions and address our emotions. Once again, that's part of that communication. And this probably just ties into our intimacy pyramid, but we've gotta learn how to— that, that communication, our emotions are, are really important, that emotional regulation, that's gonna be a really important part. We probably have some of our own personal work that we've needed to do with individual therapy, working possibly through some trauma work and exploring patterns from our childhood that may be showing up as triggers and just some personal insight, to be in a place of personal insight. I think we also probably need to have worked through some, or have learned how to show up really with a lot of vulnerability. So we need to have done some shame work. And these are some of the goals if we're mapping out, okay, I've gone through disclosure. What do I need to be doing next? These are all part of getting to disclosure, but these are also our path forward. Here are the tools we now need to start learning and working on so that we can continue the repair process. What did I miss, or what do you want to add to that?

Well, I'm just fascinated because you're just doing this off your mind and you just described the Intimacy Repair Method, not in the order, but the structure of it, because those are the skills that need to be taken from, again, this whole relationship skill building. I really do believe this. I think we need to be in a culture today where we're learning how to have healthy relationships. And I often say this, I don't mean to disparage the reality of where we all come from, but I think is every time I ask the question, how productive were your parents at teaching you how to be relational, Marianne? I just, people struggle with this. They did not get the model. So I often say, Marianne, it's easier to get a marriage license than it is a driver's license. My son just completed driver's ed, has his driver's license. 30 hours driving hours, but in some it's probably 70 to 80 hours. If I wanted to get married, I go to the courthouse, somebody can marry me on the spot, and there's no instructions.

Don't have to take a test, don't have to read a book, don't have to get a provisional permit to practice. You're right.

And so we have a culture where we spend most of our time thinking about relationships, conflict, arguments, work relationships, family relationships, marital relationships, parent-child relationships. And we spend very little time studying how to effectively do it. In my mind, that's a travesty of our society. If I could influence our society, we would spend much more time in our educational experiences learning how to develop the relationship skills. If I could have an influence on our society, that's what I would wanna do.

Well, and I think it's really interesting in my state of Washington, if parents get divorced, they're required to take parenting classes. That's part of the divorce process. I wanna be clear, we're not shaming any parents or systems of growing up, but oftentimes our parents are doing the very best they can with the tools they have. And they're working on education. They're working on so many challenges that can create barriers to us having the connection or seeing the modeling. And our parents are just trying to survive as well. And so if we're growing up in a system where our parents are trying to survive and they have their own junk and they have their own challenges and they're trying to figure out their relationship, it does make it difficult to model.

Healthy.

And as you said, I didn't have to take a test to get into a relationship. I didn't have to learn anything to get there. And then we often repeat patterns that we saw growing up or that we experienced growing up.

Yeah, you know, it's hard to do what you haven't been taught. There are certain skills, mechanically related, that are not— I don't have those skills. And so it's amazing to me when I watch somebody with that skill, how, how efficient they are. I, I just like changing a tire in a car. I can do it, but when I watch professionals do it, I'm like, wow, just their comfort level with it. Somebody can go look at an engine or they can look at certain things and say, oh, this is probably the problem. And I would have been like, well, this is way too complex for me, right? So again, it's hard to do what we haven't been taught. And I really believe when we look at relationship skills I think if we really wanted to be great at relationships, then we should be actively engaged in learning about healthy relationships, how to develop these skills. And that's the part that I think after the disclosure process, we really need to start emphasizing as a community. And I've talked with CSATS about this, like, it's not enough to work recovery and betrayal. It really needs to be about relationship skill building. And that's where I really want our attention to be. Is how do we develop these skills so when people get through this difficult process of the disclosure, then they're like, oh, how do I do this? Thank you. Thank you for teaching me how to do this.

I want to just carry through this theme that we've been talking a little bit about today. It's interesting as we're talking about the patterns that we pick up from our childhood. And I want to make really clear that we're also talking about stopping those patterns and changing those patterns. Because if I've gone through just the disclosure process and if I'm learning these tools and I'm building these tools, what that means is I'm modeling those healthy tools for my children and for future generations. And that is a gift. So I heard you say, like, if I can give this, you know, if I can do one thing to create change, here it is. This is something that goes forward. This is a ripple effect that can have such a profound impact on our children, on our future. So this isn't just, oh, our relationship gets better. It's, oh, it teaches my children and the people around me. It models something different that maybe hasn't been seen before, that, oh, there's a different way to do this. I hope—

Marianne, I always applaud the people in my office. And I especially, I've done, looked at their history. I've looked at their parents, grandparents, looked at what they learned growing up. And I applaud them because at some point we need the chain breakers. We need those who change the pattern. And I applaud them because they're paying a price. And I often think that the therapy that I do is actually generational. It's not just these people in my office, it's generational because the skills, what they're learning— again, where do we learn? Again, I want to applaud those who are listening because I know you're taking time. You're trying to figure out how to live a better life.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. We all need that. And if you don't know where to go and you don't know where to turn because you're like, I want this, read books, continue to learn about relationship podcasts. And if you really, really want more, join us in one of our intensives where we talk about these skills, role-play them, get couples how to talk about it. We'd love to have you join us. We'll give you more information on that about upcoming intensives. But the reality is is don't settle for mediocrity. You don't have to.

And I think one of the beauties of an intensive, when you're doing it, when there's other couples there, when you're connecting with other couples and individuals, so it's not just me. Oh, I can see there are other people that are struggling with this. And oh, I can see it doesn't have to be me and my partner working through our stuff. We can watch somebody else work through their stuff and go, oh, That's how you do that. Oh my goodness. Did you just see that vulnerability? I can be vulnerable too because they were.

That's right.

So much power that comes from learning. Talk about learning to be relational and healing in a relational way.

Yeah. All right. So today, Marianne, if I could just summarize, you know, we think we're done. I will tell you, I'm still learning. I'm trying to figure out how to be better in relationships. I'm still learning. Right? There is no end game with how to be relational. It is a continuous process. So I encourage everybody, develop the skills, take the time to develop those. And that's my key goal today is take the time to learn how to be relational. Your final thoughts?

My final thoughts is you're worth it. Your relationship is worth it. And it's okay if you feel like I don't know how to do this. There are tools, there are resources, and I encourage you to do the hard work, take the time to do the hard work because it is worth it. And, and I love, as you said, life is learning. It's a continuum and we're always progressing. We're iterating, moving upward slowly, and it's worth it. So thanks for the conversation today, Dr. Skinner.

Thank you, Marianne, for being with us. To our listeners, thank you so much for being with us. We genuinely appreciate your time. May you be blessed in finding and creating the intimacy you desire in your life. Thank you so much.