It’s the first day of my blog tour, and so far, I’m liking it. It doesn’t involve travel like a regular book tour, which means it doesn’t involve a fear of airline malfunctions or of bookstores with rows of empty seats. Mostly, it involves being reviewed on various blogs. Sometimes, it involved me writing a guest post or answering some questions about the book as well as taking questions from readers about their own relationships (I especially loved that part and would be happy to do more of it. Just invite me over to your blog. It’s the best way to have guests. You don’t have to clean up or feed them.) Anyway, I figured I’d go ahead and reprint one of my guest posts as well as some of the questions for your reading pleasure.
From the Printed Page blog:
In my new novel, Love and Other Natural Disasters, Eve is 8 months pregnant when she discovers her husband has been having an emotional affair for the past year. While she’s devastated, the people around her have more mixed emotions. Some wonder if she’s taking it all too hard; after all, he didn’t sleep with the other woman. So what’s the big deal?
It’s a legitimate question. What is an emotional affair, and what’s the big deal? In addition to being a writer, I’m also a marriage and family therapist so it’s a question I’ve helped couples confront. One person is in my office saying, “But I didn’t sleep with her (or him)” and feeling truly misunderstood, and the other is saying, “It doesn’t matter! You shared everything else!” and feeling truly misunderstood. With sexual affairs, we all know where the line is; with emotional affairs, it’s much fuzzier.
Here’s my definition of an emotional affair: It’s having a relationship with someone outside of your committed relationship that involves some degree of secrecy (i.e. your partner doesn’t know how much time you spend talking to, e-mailing, or thinking about that other person), and the level of intimacy is high enough to threaten the connection with your partner. It doesn’t necessarily involve sexual attraction, though usually it does. Even if the other person didn’t initially seem that attractive, all those long talks and the feeling that you’ve met someone who “really gets you” can push it into the arena of fantasy. The other person starts to seem like a respite from any issues or problems in your committed relationship. One of the biggest dangers is that because all that energy is going into someone else, things in the primary relationship never get resolved. Instead of going back to a partner and saying, “You know, I’m unhappy about x, y, and z, let’s work on that,” the attention is going to someone else so the problems just fester; disconnection grows and the relationship falls further into disrepair. Emotional affairs, like sexual affairs, distract people from the hard work of a long-term commitment.
And this is when I answered readers’ questions over at A Bookworm’s World:
Q: What would be the warning sign of a spouse having an ‘emotional affair’? the same or different from regular flavor affair? I think maybe it would be harder to detect since there wouldn’t be ‘physical’ evidence.
A: That’s a really good point. There is a lack of the traditional, film-noir kind of evidence (lipstick on the collar, the smell of perfume, etc.) I think that’s part of why the person who’s having an emotional affair can deny to himself or herself that anything is going on. They can point to other people and say, “Now that’s an affair.” But I think some of the more subtle signs are the same: Your partner seems unusually distracted, and it’s gone quieter between you. There might be changes in your sex life—either more sex, because the other person might be nursing a fantasy of someone else, or less sex, because there’s a sense of disconnection between you. There’s just a different level of intimacy. Intimacy is hard to define, but you know it when you feel it (or when you’ve stopped feeling it.) It’s important to go with your gut, and be communicative.
Q: I seem to be terribly critical of lots of things hubby does that are really petty. For example, how he loads the dishwasher. What should I do to get over these incredibly stupid things?
A: Start by asking yourself if the stupid things are an indicator of some bigger complaint you have about him. Does the way he loads the dishwasher remind you of something about his character that’s really bothersome to you? (Just as an example, if he’s sloppy with that, do you feel he’s often sloppy about things that are truly important to you?) If that’s the case, you’d want to address the underlying stuff with him, figure out what he needs to change and what you need to accept (it’ll usually be some of both, but acceptance comes easier when you see the other person trying.)
If a dishwasher really is just a dishwasher, then you’d have to look within yourself. Do you feel a strong desire to control your environment, or the people in it? Or are you dissatisfied with other things about your life and you’re just taking them out on him? It seems like you need to dig around for the root cause so that you can decide what to do about it.
Q: What are the most effective communication tools/skills in a marriage?
A: I think trust is an often overlooked aspect of communication. When we trust our partner to take us seriously and to have our best interest at heart, we speak and listen differently. It’s the foundation for a productive conversation. So that’s the first thing to consider. The best tool in my mind is a classic: the “I” message. Instead of saying, “You did x wrong,” you say, “I felt x when you did y.” That way, you take responsibility for your reaction, instead of just blaming. Good skills to practice are: being able to articulate feelings besides just anger (beneath the anger is usually disappointment, hurt, or some other pain), not backing down from something you really care about or pretending it’s okay when it isn’t, and truly listening and not just waiting for your chance to talk again. So much of effective communication comes down to owning our feelings, stating them respectfully, and respecting the other person’s perspective. Easy to say, sometimes hard to do. But it gets easier the more you practice.
And finally, for the Books in Every Room blog:
1. When you begin to write, do you have an idea about the characters or storyline? Or do you put down on paper whatever is in your head at the time and go from there?
With my first two books (Five Things I Can’t Live Without and now, Love and Other Natural Disasters), I had a sense of the first scene and the voice of the main character. With Love and…, I knew Eve would discover something on Thanksgiving that would threaten her marriage, but I hadn’t yet decided it would be her husband’s emotional affair.
2. On your blog, you talked about emotional intimacy and fidelity as being issues close to your heart. Did you set out to write your second novel based on these issues?
I did, actually. An emotional affair seemed like a great vehicle to explore those themes. There have been a lot of novels about sexual affairs, but I’ve only really seen non-fiction about emotional affairs.
3. What type of research did you do on the subject before or during the writing process?
I felt like I had a pretty good handle on this subject, and how my particular main character would respond to the discovery. I’d previously read books on how to do therapy with couples where there’s been a sexual affair, and have practiced therapy with couples where there have been breaches of trust and betrayal. So I didn’t do any specific research, though I have more recently read infidelity expert Shirley Glass’ book Not Just Friends and was happy to see that my fiction fit so many of her findings.
4. This quote: “If you’re doing it right, fiction should absolutely resemble actual people, both living and dead. It should remind all of us of us, in at least some small way,” hits the nail right on the head! To me, it makes perfect sense. I wonder, if someone were to ever sue you because he or she thought you were writing about his or her personal issues…do you think that this quote would help your case?
Wow, I don’t know. I’m a therapist and a writer, not a lawyer! I’m hoping that the fact that I made up my characters, their thoughts, and their actions would be all the defense I’d need.
5. At any point in your novel, did the therapist side of you want to take one (or more) of the characters by the collar and say, “Come on! What the hell were you THINKING!?”
The good thing about the therapist side of me is that it’s pretty non-judgmental. It understands people’s intentions and their pain more than their actions. So that’s a part of me that’s very present when I’m writing my fiction. That said, I don’t always agree with what Eve does or what Jonathon does; they wouldn’t necessarily be my choices. But as a writer, you create your characters and then to a certain extent, you let them loose: good, bad, and ugly. That’s where the fun is.
6. What was the biggest challenge for you when writing this novel?
The biggest challenge came in the first few months, when I was trying to write alternating points of view (one chapter would be from Jonathon, the next from Eve, and so on.) I realized I wasn’t doing justice to either of them, and the feedback I was getting from my writing groups confirmed that. Once it was just Eve, it moved along a lot smoother.
7. I have known people who have been involved in emotional affairs, and I can see HOW they happen, although I’m not sure I personally believe that JUSTIFIES the behavior. After writing this book, and in your practice, what is your professional take on emotional affairs? Do people REALLY get involved in these affairs simply because they perceive something lacking in their own relationship? Do you see a trend in “Why” emotional affairs occur?
I don’t think there is just one reason why people do anything, including having emotional affairs. A trend I see is that emotional affairs generally have less premeditation than sexual affairs, and people have a lot more trouble seeing when it’s become more than just friendship. They’re also more likely to deny that it is more than just friendship, even when they’re being secretive and feeling more connected and possibly attracted to that other person than to their partner. Often, they don’t actually perceive something lacking in their relationship until they’re feeling like another person really “gets” them. With sexual affairs, there’s a clear line that’s been crossed; with emotional affairs, the line is blurry. For me, it’s not about condoning or justifying but understanding.