It is said that one in three couples experience a sexual desire gap, a difference that often wrecks havoc in every aspect of marital life. When you add to this the compelling statistic that one out of ten couples has a sexless marriage, it's easy to understand why so many couples are losing tough both literally and figuratively. A marriage that is void of healthy intimacy and physical connection risks divorce and/or infidelity. Learn what you can do to help couples bridge the desire gap and bring passion back to marriage, and also help couples heal from infidelity.
One in three couples experience a sexual desire gap, a difference leads to infidelity or divorce. Additionally, the compelling statistic that one out of ten couples has a sexless marriage makes it apparent why so many couples are losing touch. Learn how to help couples bring passion back into marriage. Also, learn how to help couples heal from infidelity.
BT10 Workshop 14 - The State of Affairs: Rethinking our Clinical Attitudes Towards Infidelity - Esther Perel, MA, LMFT
Infidelity is generally regarded as a symptom of a troubled relationship, and the revelation of an affair triggers a crisis of trust and connection. In this workshop, we'll explore the multiple motives and meanings behind affairs against the complexities of marriage, sex, intimacy, and monogamy. We’ll examine the benefits and costs of truth-telling and transparency, how couples can rebuild trust and intimacy, and why affairs can actually stabilize a marriage and prevent its dissolution. In particular, we will focus on how couples can turn the crisis into an opportunity. Combining didactic material, case studies and video vignettes, we will lay out a nuanced and multicultural therapeutic approach for working with extramarital relations secret or revealed.
BT12 Conversation Hour 10 – Rethinking Couples Therapy: A Radical Approach to Love, Sex, and Infidelity – Esther Perel, MA, LMFT
Educational Objectives:
Learn the philosophies of various practitioners and theorists.
BT12 Dialogue 12 - Infidelity - Ellyn Bader, PhD, Esther Perel, MA, LMFT, Janis Abrahms Spring, PhD
Educational Objectives:
Given a topic, describe the differing approaches to psychotherapy, and identify the strengths and weaknesses of each approach.
BT12 Workshop 21 – John Weakland’s Brief Therapy with a Husband Suspected of Infidelity – Wendel Ray, PhD
John Weakland’s MRI Brief Therapy is among the most effective & influential models in use today. Video recordings of Weakland working successfully with a husband suspected of infidelity will be reviewed and discussed to demonstrate the MRI Brief Therapy conceptual framework and clinical techniques for competency based brief therapy.
BT12 Workshop 32 – Rethinking Couples Therapy: A Radical Approach to Love, Sex and Infidelity – Esther Perel, MA, LMFT
Couples therapists are typically discouraged from seeing partners separately lest power imbalances, allegiances, or secrets further divide the couple. What’s lost in this approach? Through case examples, Esther Perel will show how to effectively engage such issues as intimacy, sexuality and infidelity by creating separate spaces where each partner can explore his/her feelings and experiences along with larger relationship dynamics. We will show how to navigate privacy and secrecy, honesty and transparency, stage interventions around sexual impasses, and structure a safe and flexible environment to work creatively with infidelity.
BT12 Workshop 44 – Betrayed: Helping Couples to Heal from Infidelity – Michele Weiner-Davis, MSW, LCSW
If you work with couples, you’re no stranger to infidelity. And because healing from infidelity is challenging, it behooves us to have a clear roadmap of the territory. In this workshop, we’ll go over an array of post-affair issues, including ways to deal with intense emotions, whether to discuss the details of the betrayal, how to begin rebuilding trust in the aftermath of the discovery, whether to have clinical ultimatums about ending affairs, how to handle setbacks, and how to deal with residual feelings for the affair partner.
Through case examples, Esther Perel, MA, LMFT will show how to effectively engage such issues as intimacy, sexuality and infidelity by creating separate spaces where each partner can explore his/her feelings and experiences along with larger relationship dynamics. We will show how to navigate privacy and secrecy, honesty and transparency, stage interventions around sexual impasses, and structure a safe and flexible therapeutic environment to work effectively with infidelity. Provide a multicultural perspective on differing notions of love, marriage and sexual behaviors, and to highlight the relationship between culture and sexuality.