Experience in the study of adultery

Family counseling is faced with the following types of destruction of family relationships: quarrel, conflict, crisis, divorce. Each type of destruction can be characterized by such parameters as the scale of the violation, their reversibility, severity. So, the quarrel is shallow, covering only one aspect of family life, an easily reversible frustration of relationships. Conflict seizes a number of aspects of family life, is more profound and less likely to pass without a trace. The crisis captures almost all the important aspects of family relations, calls for their cardinal restructuring, and is marked by considerable depth. Divorce is the actual disintegration of a relationship. At the same time, the formal dissolution of marriage does not matter, it is important that the state of marriage, when the relationship is completely violated, the probability of their recovery is problematic.

Treason as a variant of violation of marital life stands apart in the proposed series of types of family destruction, since it differs qualitatively from any of them. Adultery infidelity can occur in practically healthy families, may be absent in the destroyed. The sphere of its operation is the sexual-love relations of the spouses, while quarrels, conflicts, crises of such qualitative certainty do not exist and can develop in the sphere of household, leisure, economic and other relations.

Thus, infidelity is one of the types of conjugal destruction that captures the area of ​​conjugal feelings.love for a modern family is an important foundation of marriage, often acting as the only motive for his conclusion and existence. Therefore, treason can lead to the breakdown of marriage or a serious crisis. Note that the betrayal does not concern family relations, but only marital relations, since its participants are only marital partners, but not any members of the family. Involvement in the experience of betrayal of other households does not change anything in its essence.

In our family counseling practice, adultery is quite common - about every fourth case. Helping a family with adultery is especially difficult and delicate, since the treason of

1) threatens the integrity of the family;

2) touches on important family foundations - marital feelings;

3) is transferred to other aspects of family life, destroying household, economic, leisure and other relationships;

4) is accompanied by the experience of jealousy, which brings to the family drama profound affects, destructive in themselves;

5) affects the sense of honor and personal dignity, which makes betrayal not only interpersonal, but also an individual-personal phenomenon.

Adultery infidelity can be analyzed from the point of view of the causes, dynamics, circumstances of the accomplishment, the psychology of the participants, the attitude of public opinion to it, the consequences for the family, the experience of her spouses, etc. Let us consider some of them. As for the reasons for treason, we managed to identify the following.

1. New love. As a rule, such a cause of change is characteristic of marriages, in which initially love was insignificant or absent altogether: rational, rational or forced marriages based on gain, tradition, fear of loneliness or other motivations.

2. Retribution. A number of adultery is based on the desire to avenge the infidelity of a spouse to restore self-esteem.

3. Scolded love. Treason is found in marriages with a non-reciprocal feeling. One of the spouses suffers from rejection of his love, unrequited feelings. This encourages to satisfy him in another partnership, where reciprocity is possible. Sometimes changing himself does not like the new partner, but responds to his feeling, sympathizing with the man who loves him unrequitedly. Search for new love experiences. This type of change is characteristic of spouses with significant experience of joint life, when feelings faded. He is also found in families with hedonistic morality, when everything possible is taken from life. This variant of change can happen under the influence of foreign models of "beautiful life", as imitation of sexual freedom.

5. Replenishment. In this type of change a person compensates for the lack of love relationships, which arises from long separations, illness of the spouse and other restrictions on the completeness of love in marriage.

6. Total disintegration of the family. In this case, treason - this is actually the creation of a new family, when the former for one reason or another is perceived as not viable.

7. Random communication. As a rule, such a betrayal is not characterized by regularity, it is provoked by certain circumstances( intoxication, opportunity, perseverance of a partner, etc.).

Experience of betrayal can be combined into a single syndrome of mental reactions, the basis of which is jealousy. In our literature, jealousy is seen within psychiatry as a pathological phenomenon. However, we are convinced that it is a fairly common phenomenon of friendly, conjugal, love relationships - those that can be called partnership. Unlike business, hierarchical and public, partnerships are personal, these are people's equal relationships. Partnership is characterized by a high degree of intimacy, selectivity, personal significance. For partners, their relationship has a deep sense of life, they are unique, irreplaceable by other relationships, because they are associated with satisfying deep needs, individual life plans, strong mental dependence on each other.

Jealousy arises as a reaction to the threat of the disintegration of partnership in a situation of rivalry. The threat is one of the conditions of jealousy, as, according to E. Lindemann, with the real breakdown of partnership, there are grief reactions. The threat can be real when there is an opponent pretending to a partner and having a chance to win it, and imaginary, when the presence of a rival is based on assumptions caused by the cooling of feelings in the partnership, or the conflicting, suspicious behavior of the partner, or the lack of partnership information about the nature of the relationshipfor example, during separation).

Advice on betrayal with a real opponent is much easier, because you can influence the relationships in the triangle, you can involve the opponent in the analysis of the situation. With an imaginary competitor, jealousy becomes easily pathological, delusional. However, we note that an imaginary or real rival is the second important condition for jealousy, since competing with him for the right to possess a partner is the essence of jealousy.

Reactions of jealousy can be classified for several reasons: according to the criterion of the norm, the reactions are normal and pathological, the content criterion is affective, cognitive, behavioral, by type of experience, active and passive, intensity - moderate and deep, severe.

Normal, non-pathological reactions of jealousy differ in the adequacy of the situation, are understandable to many people, accountable to the subject, often he can control them. Pathological jealousy has opposite characteristics.

In each specific case, cognitive, affective or behavioral reactions, as well as their combinations, may predominate in jealousy.

Cognitive reactions are expressed in the desire to analyze the fact of infidelity, to search for its cause, to search for the guilty party( i-he( she) -contender), to build the forecast of the situation, to trace the background, ie, to create a picture of the event. In acute cases, personal history is transferred to a general plan, overgrown with homegrown theories about manners, historical roots of infidelity, male and female psychology, etc. Cognitive reactions are more pronounced in individuals asthenicheskogo warehouse, intellectuals.

Affective reactions are expressed in the emotional experience of betrayal. The most characteristic emotions are despair, fear, anger, hatred and contempt for oneself and a partner, feelings of inferiority, love and hope. Depending on the type of personality, affective reactions occur against a background of melancholic depression or angry agitation. The predominance of affective reactions is observed in persons with an artistic, hysteroid, emotionally labile storehouse.

Behavioral reactions are in the form of struggle or failure. The struggle is expressed in attempts to restore relations( explanations), to keep a partner( requests, persuasion, threats, pressure, blackmail), to eliminate the opponent, to make it difficult to meet with him, to attract attention to himself( evoking pity, sympathy, sometimes coquetry).In case of refusal to restore the relationship, communication with the partner breaks off or acquires the character of a distant, official one.

In the process of counseling, it is necessary to identify the repertory responses of jealousy, since the essence of the correction is the destruction of the client's scenario.

By type of experience, the reactions of jealousy are divided into active and passive. With active reactions characteristic of the sthenic and extraverted personalities, the subject searches for the necessary information, expresses his feelings openly, seeks to return the partner, competes with the rival. With passive reactions, asthenic and introverted individuals do not make successive attempts to influence relationships, jealousy reactions take place in the internal plane. In these cases, it is important to cause an active response of a person to the problem that he has encountered and his awareness.

This characteristic of jealousy, as its intensity( depth and duration), depends on a number of circumstances. First, we can note the impact of the nature of the relationship with the partner. If the betrayal occurs against a background of severe and conflictual relations, it is subjectively perceived as a natural consequence. Sharp and profound reactions of jealousy are also the result of a complete surprise of betrayal, suddenness against the background of a successful marriage. The experience of betrayal depends on how often such situations were encountered in the subject's experience: they are hard at the betrayal of the person who first encountered it. Betrayal hurts a more credulous and devoted person, from whom it does not fit into the pattern of morality of relations. Jealousy becomes protracted, if the situation is not resolved, the partner behaves inconsistently, without giving a definite solution. For a number of people, the repentance of a partner is very important, a frank explanation. If the third stakeholders become aware of the treason and they interfere in the course of events, this complicates and deepens the situation, making it no longer an interpersonal, but a socio-psychological phenomenon.

However, most of all the reaction to treason depends on the identity of the jealous person. Since the reactions of jealousy are based on the love of a partner and the fear of losing it, they depend on the power of love and the depth of fear. The influence of undifferentiated fear is especially great, when the loss of a partner is perceived as a violation of all life, even those of its spheres that do not depend on the partner. Strengthening the reaction of jealousy is characteristic of the following personal characteristics:

1) inert mental processes that complicate awareness, response and action in this situation;

2) idealistic attitude, especially in the field of interpersonal relations, in which the individual does not allow any compromise in the love life;

3) a pronounced proprietary attitude to things and persons;in this case, betrayal not only undermines the relationship with the partner, but threatens the permanence and stability of the real world, undermines the desire for possession;

4) Overestimated or underestimated self-esteem. Treason always touches one's self-esteem. With an overestimated self-esteem, a despotic variant of experiencing jealousy is observed, with an underestimated - the personality sharply experiences its own inferiority;

5) loneliness, the paucity of interpersonal relationships, in which the partner has no one to replace;

6) the sensitivity of the individual to betrayals of various kinds in other partnerships;

7) Strong dependence on the partner in achieving any vital goals( career, material security, etc.)

Therapy of jealousy is complex, as it is a profoundly personal reaction caused by the collapse of the important foundations of human life. The choice of direction and methods of therapy depends on the type of person who is jealous, the repertoire of reactions of jealousy and the outcome of betrayal. Treason as a situation can be resolved by the restoration of partnership, lead to its disintegration and may remain unresolved. The experience of jealousy is not necessarily adequate to the outcome of betrayal, may be an independent phenomenon. So, in our practice there is a case of unquenchable re-actions of jealousy for treason 35 years ago. It is easier to treat the solved situations of treason - the restoration or disintegration of partnership. With the dissolution of the partnership, therapy should be directed towards building a new way of life and overcoming the reactions of grief. When restoring a partnership, an important task is to overcome the reactions of jealousy.

In normal cases, the following ways of overcoming jealousy are found in the behavior of customers:

1) distraction for anything significant for the individual( study, caring for children, work, hobbies);

2) eradication, the development of a new view of things, the formation of the morality of forgiveness, conscious control over the reactions of jealousy;

3) learning lessons, finding your own mistakes, building a new relationship with a partner - perhaps a different kind of relationship;

4) depreciation of the partner and the situation of treason - their comparison with other values, attitudes;

5) in the event of the disintegration of the partnership - the search for a new partner, a change in the way of life, the formation of other interpersonal relationships.

In case of pathological or excessive reactions, jealousy becomes chronic, the situation of betrayal is not allowed, the spouses can not withdraw their conflict, get rid of treason. There is a great probability of serious violations of marriage, perversion of marital feelings, neuroticism and psychopathization of the person.

In our work we use the following scheme for advising adultery:

1. Formation of the picture of betrayal. In the picture of treason, the following are superficial: a rival( real or imaginary), a type of jealousy( normal or pathological reactions), a type of jealous behavior( active or passive), predominant reactions of jealousy( cognitive, affective, behavioral), intensity of reactions( moderate or severe)outcomes of betrayal( restoration of partnership, its destruction or unresolved).

2. Investigation of personal characteristics of participants in the situation of infidelity, especially jealous.

3. Choice of methods of therapy. In our practice, we used only individual methods, but we can assume that group therapies can also be useful.