Breaking Up—Can we stay Friends?

            Reader:         My lover and I are breaking up a 16-month-long relationship.  I want to hang onto this as a friendship, but he says it can’t be done.  If not, why not, and if so, how?

            Dr. Schmidt:            Nobody tells you that when you start to fall in love physically and emotionally, your friendship is passing a point of no return.  The heat of romantic passion welds you together like two metals.  After this, your friendship and your romance, just like the two of you, are welded together.  And though the heat of disagreement can separate you just like two metals coming out of weld, you can never separate the two cleanly again.

            The reason breakup just ruins the friendship is that romance and lovemaking set up desires for exclusive, frequent, and permanent access to each other, and these desires just can never be satisfied outside of marriage.

            The only kind of friendship you could salvage is one where you can’t talk about your romantic loneliness, your interest in going out with people, or your feelings for each other.  That’s just not much of friendship, is it?  Yet open up any of those topics, and the love cat jumps right back out of the bag.  But it’s no longer just a friendship--out jumps the mongrel dogs of jealousy, self-pity, frustration, and unfulfilled longing, and these savagely eat the friendship alive.

            Being friends later on down the road only works when you’ve both found somebody else to satisfy your romantic longings, and those new lovers just happen to be OK with the old flame as a friendship, usually because they’ve got one they’d like to keep around too.  But don’t hold your breath.  That happens about once in a hundred years. 

GOODBYE LETTER

This letter is a model, a starter kit for writing a letter that will properly terminate an extramarital affair.  (This is written as if the lover is a female.)  To anyone brave and wise enough to write such a letter, “take what you need and leave the rest”:  use whichever words apply, leaving out or adding whatever seems right.  I only suggest you run it by me first to see if I might suggest any improvements you would be pleased to include.                  

To ____________:                                                                        (include the date)

            I have made a very difficult decision.  The closeness we have felt was somewhat artificial.  We met without the family, time and money pressures of a marriage, or for that matter, of a real life.  The nature of our love affair made it temporary.  Without marriage, all love relationships are temporary.  But a good marriage requires that both parties give their whole selves to it, and that is what I want. 

            My wife and I have covenanted to do everything we can to repair and rebuild our life together.  She knows all about us, and she has forgiven us both.  We are well along the way of rebuilding the love, respect, understanding and trust between us that has been there deep down all along.  We are even going deeper still to create a better-than-ever marriage.  We will continue to follow a carefully constructed reconciliation plan designed by Dr. Paul Schmidt, doing everything we can to heal and deepen our relationship.  I will discipline myself in whatever way is necessary to succeed.

            You deserve the chance to pursue a relationship with someone who can partner fully with you in making your two lives one.  I am not that person, so I am releasing you to find your fulfillment in reality with an available man.

            From now on, I will not respond to any kind of contact you may try to make with me.  This letter is the only explanation you will need or receive as to why.  If you do try to contact me in any way, it would only show your disrespect for the institution of marriage, for all three of us as individuals, and for our families.

            I realize I have led us both to think that I would never close us out this way.  If I’d only known then what I know now about love and marriage, I would never have indulged the feelings we aroused in each other.  I know that this may bring quite the load of heartache, confusion, insecurity, loneliness, resentment and guilt for you to work through.  I will be doing the same with all of my feelings, which are similar.  They are making me go to my faith, family, friends and counselor for strength and guidance.  For your sake, I hope you’ll do the same with yours.

            I am forgiving us both for what we did and failed to do.  Again for your sake, I hope you do so as well.  I am not sorry we met and got to know each other, but I do regret I allowed out friendship to become romanticized and sexualized.

            Remember that I do care about you as a wonderful human being, and I trust you to take care of yourself.  When I think about you, I will always pray for your healing.

                                                            Goodbye,

EMOTIONAL INFIDELITY vs. EXCESSIVE JEALOUSY

            Of all the columns I’ve written, this is the one I’ve had the most requests to send out, and to expand and revise.  The following is a 60% longer version of a column I wrote three years ago.  Though it will talk about marriage, it is also meant for those in long-term committed love relationships.

            The opportunity to have a healthy friendship with the opposite sex comes often to married people—at work, at church, at family gatherings, in the neighborhood, at parties and on vacations with friends, and talking with other parents at children’s school and sporting events, just to name a few. 

I am continually amazed at how many people fall into sexual infidelity and divorce from enjoying too much of what seemed to them at first like a perfectly normal opposite-sexed friendship (OSF).  They are like the frog in the kettle of slowly warming water—they don’t jump out, because the temperature rises so slowly they don’t know they’re being cooked.  Here are some meat thermometers for you.

            Emotional infidelity does indeed damage a marriage, and every couple needs to agree on where to draw the line.  As a suggestion, I have seen certain guidelines that will enable OSF’s to remain just friends, and that will at the same time enhance and preserve a marriage.  When OSF’s get too close and personal, either the friendship or the marriage will get destroyed.  The following guidelines aren’t widely observed, but they need to be.

            1.  Avoid discussing your or your Friend’s love-life or marriage, past or present, good or bad.  That would set up strong desires to meet each other’s needs.  Tell them they can assume your marriage is good, and that if it wasn’t, to protect your friendship, you wouldn’t tell them so.

            2.  Don’t discuss your “relationship”, or even your feelings for each other.  Even in your own mind, don’t compare the feelings you have toward your Friend with feelings you have toward your Spouse.  The two different kinds of relationships, settings and conversational topics naturally would bring out different emotions, regardless of the personalities.

            3.  Don’t touch or make glances at your Friend in any way you wouldn’t do in front of your Spouse.

            4.  Don’t go alone with your Friend into any place that has a bed.

            5.  Get a same-sexed Buddy who’s well married, and who knows and likes your Spouse.  When you’re tempted to violate these guidelines, or if you have overstepped your bounds, promptly talk it over with this person, and do what your Buddy says to make your marriage healthy.

6.  Avoid spontaneous getaways.  Before being alone with your Friend even in public, especially over a meal or beverage, and especially at any time you aren’t working and your family is available, give your spouse prior knowledge of your intentions, including the time, place, and agenda, before you set it up.  Give your spouse veto power, and the power to suggest modifications of your plan, such as your Spouse planning to join you.  If this veto or revision privilege is in your opinion abused, you all need to have given in advance to your Buddy the power to mediate and propose compromises.

7.  Don’t hassle, argue or go on and on about temptations.  Thoughts and feelings should be confessed to Spouse only if Spouse agrees to it, and agrees not to bring it back up once the temptation has been discussed.  Questions can be asked and answered if they are not angry, panicky, accusatory or repetitive.  Why? 

Because if Spouse is not able to gracefully handle the truth about your temptations, that is if they don’t take responsibility for getting over the feelings the confessions produce, if they can’t help pressuring you to say certain things, he or she is making it harder for you to be honest, and is undermining their own need to trust you.  People cannot take full responsibility for their partner’s feelings without compromising their capacity to be honest.  Honesty is a more important need.

8.  Finally, about things covered and not covered above, establish in advance what your Spouse would want to know, when, and then confess faithfully as agreed.  If this seems to you impossible or unwise, consult your Buddy, or a counselor.  Then you can enjoy life within your revised boundaries.

The guidelines above for emotional infidelity are the same ones you should use for excessive jealousy.  When a spouse insists on stricter guidelines than above, his or her jealousy has probably become overprotective and harmful to the relationship.  As harmful as emotional infidelity is to a marriage, excessive jealousy (called irrational by many men and possessive by many women) can do just as much harm.  Overly jealous spouses will be miserable until they get themselves some help.

DO TRY THIS AT HOME:  Copy this column and make a list of what changes you’d suggest making in the guidelines I have given you here, to suit your marriage or relationship.  Ask your partner to do the same.  Then exchange lists, think about it silently for ten minutes, and combine them again into one set of guidelines you can both agree to abide by.