Rebuild Trust Through Sharing

`I haven’t spoken more than a few words to Ursula since I caught her kissing Glenn, our next-door neighbor,” says Sam, 28, an advertising salesman for a local cable station. “We haven’t even been married two years. Now my friendship with Glenn is ruined, and so is my marriage. I never thought I’d be living `Eyes Wide Shut’ for real. I feel hurt and betrayed.”

Shortly after their honeymoon, when they moved into their suburban Detroit home, Ursula and Sam met Glenn and his wife, Tracy. “I think they were so happy to have some peers in the neighborhood,” says Ursula, a 29-year-old college admissions officer. “Our other neighbors are nice enough but most of them are either retired, or else they’re parents who socialize during their kids’ play dates.”

Glenn and Sam quickly got to know each other as they washed their cars and mowed the lawn. Tracy and Ursula became fast friends, too, getting together for coffee or a trip to the mall. As she got to know her new pal, Ursula confided that Sam could be a bit of a tight wad, and that their sex life wasn’t always satisfying for her. But, she says, she never realized their neighbors were hiding a secret about their own marriage.

Then, one summer Saturday, Glenn and Tracy invited their neighbors over for a backyard barbecue. Sam went into the kitchen for a beer and was shocked to find Ursula and Glenn kissing. “I went ballistic,” he says. “I lunged at him and yelled, `Keep your hands off her, or I’ll punch your lights out!’ ” Sam marched Ursula out of the house, and they haven’t spoken to their neighbors since then.

Ursula insists Sam is jumping to conclusions. “Glenn was telling me that he and Tracy had an `open’ marriage,” she says. “He told me he’d always found me attractive, then asked if Sam and I were interested in wife-swapping. Yes, I let Glenn kiss me, which was a huge mistake, but I’d had a few too many wine coolers at the barbecue. It was a momentary lapse of judgment. I certainly wasn’t going to jump into bed with him. I tried to explain this to Sam, but he’s so pig-headed, he thinks I made up the whole story.”

“I’m tired of the way my wife acts around other men,” Sam says. “At every party we go to, Ursula shamelessly laughs and flips her hair at other guys.”

“The kiss from Glenn is merely a symptom of other unresolved problems in this couple’s marriage. It’s been damaging because any trust between Sam and Ursula has dissolved,” says Shari Kirkland, Ph.D., and Lorel Lindstrom, Ph.D., authors of “Red Hot Relationships: How to Diffuse the Anger and Keep the Romance” (New Horizon Press, 1999) and psychologists in Alameda and Danville, Calif., respectively.

Ursula, say Kirkland and Lindstrom, needs to understand that Sam is hurt and needs time to wade through his emotions. “She has to agree to be in the doghouse for awhile and tolerate it if she’s interested in salvaging the marriage,” they say. “Sam is allowed to be angry, but not forever - that’s not OK either. Their problems aren’t going to disappear unless they learn to talk about them.”

Their counselor concluded that Ursula and Sam’s swinging neighbors touched off an explosion that brought the real problems in their marriage to the surface. Both felt wronged and misunderstood, and neither was willing to listen to the other’s point of view. Ursula and Sam said they wanted to repair their marriage, but to do that, they needed to be able to share their emotions in a safe, supportive manner and to listen to each other without getting defensive.

Sam admitted that he was terrified of losing his wife to another man, and his fear had made him shut down, emotionally and physically. Once he was assured that Ursula had never had any interest in Glenn, Sam promised to end his raging cold war at home.

The therapist had them practice saying “I” phrases. Instead of accusing his wife, Sam would say, “When you flirted with Glenn, I felt insecure.” Through these exercises, Ursula realized that she hadn’t been listening to her husband carefully enough, and that her actions had made him feel unloved and unappreciated.

Ursula made it a point to spend time every day talking with Sam in a nonconfrontational way about what was on her mind. She also spent less time talking to other men at parties and flirted with Sam instead. As they relaxed and enjoyed each other’s company again, their sex life naturally became more passionate and fulfilling.

“This is even better than our honeymoon,” Ursula said.