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You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today, my guest is Terry Gaspard. Terry is a licensed therapist, college instructor, and nonfiction author specializing in divorce, remarriage, women’s issues, children, and relationships. She’s a regular contributor to the Gottman Institute blog, Huffington Post Divorce, The Good Men Project, and divorcedmoms.com. Terry coauthored the book Daughters of Divorce with her daughter Tracy. And with Sounds True, she has written a new book called The Remarriage Manual: How to Make Everything Work Better the Second Time Around. In my conversation with Terry, we talked about the hundreds of interviews she’s done with couples and what she’s learned about the skills that are required to make committed relationships work, and she shares with us the number one skill, which might not be what you expect; it has to do with the power of repair. Here’s my conversation with Terry Gaspard:
Your new book, Terry, is on remarriage, and we’re going to talk about that in just a few moments, but I wanted to begin by talking to you about committed relationships in general. And here’s where I’d love to start. I did a series once where I interviewed 13 different relationship experts, and one of the things that I learned is that relationships are really more about developing skills. If you’re going to be successful in a long-term committed relationship, then even the quality of chemistry between you and your partner—that it’s really, are both people willing to develop these what we now know are relationship skills? And I’m curious as a relationship expert how you see that.
Terry Gaspard: I agree that chemistry can only go so far; it’s important to have good chemistry to kind of pull you towards each other and make you feel alive and engaged. Not only physical chemistry and sexual, but intellectual and emotional chemistry. But no matter how good the chemistry is, if you don’t have the skills to keep the relationship positive and supportive, your risk of breaking up really increases. And those are some of the skills that I’d be happy to talk to you about today.
TS: Yes. Tell me, what do you think are the most important skills that people in committed relationships need to have?
TG: Well, I follow the work of Dr. John Gottman, and I write for the Gottman Institute blog. And when I first started studying with him many years ago, I became convinced as he is from his Love Lab studies that criticizing your partner and developing habits where you look for negative qualities and say things like, “You’re so selfish, you never think of me.” Those things can really, really crush relationships. So basically, you need to stay positive and not criticize. That’s one that I really work on with the couples that I meet with in my private practice because I am a licensed therapist.
TS: Let’s just talk about that before we even move on. So I get the idea of leading with the things that I want to appreciate, but what do I do with the complaints that I have? Because I don’t want to be like falsely positive in my most intimate relationship, I want to be real, and I have real complaints.
TG: I’m not saying that people shouldn’t have legitimate complaints, but we don’t want to start with that. And we want to bring it down to, what are the most important ones that you feel your partner is able to work on? Because sometimes people, they’re trying to make a cat into a dog, if you know what I mean.
TS: I do.
TG: Tami, they might say, “Well, I really want you to be more outgoing,” or, “I love hiking or cross-country skiing, and you just don’t go there with me.” For instance, my ex-husband, he wasn’t an outdoors person and I am. And one of the main problems that we had was I was constantly looking for him to be a person that he wasn’t. He was a homebody and wanting to be home a lot, and I’m more outgoing. So instead of criticizing, first of all, if you pick someone that has at least some similar interests, try to encourage. And if you think they might be able to join you on some of the things that you like, like going on a vacation that you might mutually agree upon, you could start with an “I” message, which was always in my case and throughout both of my marriages, but I’m particularly using it in my second marriage, very encouraging.
For instance, when I wanted to go on vacation recently with my husband, I said, “How about we consider going to the coast of Maine? We haven’t done that in a few years, what do you think about that?” and then hear his ideas. Instead of starting with “We never go on vacation,” or “We don’t seem to go the places I want to go.” So even if you do have complaints, and we all do, and you do have things that you find that are difficult to live with, try to narrow it down to some things that you feel your partner would be able to work on and stick to basically not making a big deal about small things. Focus on the things that maybe they can change, but don’t try to change their character or their personality.
TS: One of the points you make in The Remarriage Manual is how accepting the differences in your partner makes such a big difference, and it’s not about resolving differences. And I think a lot of times we have irreconcilable differences, we have these differences. And you actually offered some statistics that I thought were quite interesting in this regard. And I think that’s one of the things that’s great about the Gottman Love Lab that you mentioned is there’s a lot of data now, actually, that can be drawn on. But what does that mean, that we’re going to not try to necessarily resolve our differences? We don’t have to, we don’t have to. We can work this out without resolving some of our differences.
TG: Exactly. It’s really more a matter of managing them because so many, close to 70 percent or so of differences can’t really be resolved. So many things are just unresolvable. Maybe my husband likes to go to bed early and I’m a night owl, which is actually true. I’m not going to change that. So he might every night say, “Why don’t you turn in early?” And I’ll say, “Well, why don’t you…” So basically we just try to compromise a few nights a week and try to reach a medium. So you have to put aside your resentments and realize that conflict is inevitable in all relationships. If you’re looking for that perfect soulmate that you’re never going to have differences with, you’re not going to find that.
It’s really a matter of trying to say, “OK, this is not something we’re really going to be able to resolve. You think that our child for instance should have a budget at college of $2,000 a semester, I think it should be less than that. So maybe we can compromise on that one a little bit.” Just accept—as you said, and I say in a lot of my writing and book, the differences that you have are not always going to be resolved, but hopefully you can just accept and go to bed a little less angry realizing you are not going to find a soulmate or someone that’s going to completely agree with you. Hopefully, you’re going to find someone who can be their authentic self and accept you and you can be that same accepting person.
TS: Now, I threw out this phrase, it was a strong one, “irreconcilable differences.” So when are differences workable like you’re describing, we can agree to a bigger budget for our kid in college, no big deal; And when is it like, “No I can’t live with this”? How do you know inside yourself this is something I can or can’t live with?
TG: Well, actually I call those deal breakers. It’s a very popular term out there, but I always pretty much have people, once we’re engaged in therapy, whether they be individually or as couples, what are your deal breakers? What are things that you just feel are so important that you’re not going to let go of? For instance, one couple I worked with, one of them believed that they should have an open relationship and enjoy sexual intimacy with people outside of their relationship. And the other person didn’t agree with that. So that was a deal breaker for the partner. I don’t need to state the gender because it could go either way. So you have to say, “OK, I’m not willing to compromise on that.” And if that becomes such a big issue that it leads to feelings of mistrust because you don’t feel like you can really rest easy with that one, that could lead to separation or divorce.
Certainly, some people have very strong needs for security and trust, particularly if they have attachment issues. You have to really know the person that you’re in love with and married to and say, “OK. I can be real with them, but I know this is going to be really, really hard for them.” So if a person who has trust issues, let’s say, and they’re not comfortable with their partner having an open relationship, that would probably be extremely difficult to resolve—for instance, example.
TS: OK, that makes sense to me, this personal process of examination to say, “These are my deal breakers.” But I’m interested in that listener who’s finding themselves reflecting in a fuzzy area, which is, “I don’t know if this is a deal breaker, but I really wished my partner was different. Let’s say I wished my partner was more intellectually stimulating, and it reminds me when you say I can’t turn a cat into a dog or whatever, I’m not sure if this is a deal breaker or not. I’m not going to change them, what should I do?”
TG: Well, I think it might be a matter of not necessarily settling for less than you feel you deserve, but accepting what are their other qualities that you really find attractive, appealing? Maybe you can get intellectual stimulation from other people in other ways. For instance, I have a big group of friends and they enjoy reading books, talking about the books that we read, whereas my husband is not that interested in discussing literature or film and that kind of stuff. I don’t think you can compromise too much, but sometimes you have to say, “OK, let’s say I’m physically attracted to this person, I like their values. We have a lot of shared meaning, we want the same things out of life.” I feel that’s extremely important, by the way. But they’re not really interested in politics or they’re not interested in literature and I am, so I’m going to meet some of those needs elsewhere. You can kind of sometimes compromise on some of those things without giving up too much of yourself.
TS: Now, you said something that you think is really important is wanting the same things out of life. What do you mean by that? What type of same things?
TG: [Yes.] Well, I believe that shared meaning or coming up with some basic values and goals in life with your partner should be discussed from the early stages of your relationship. That was a mistake I made early on when I was young with my ex-husband and other people I dated that I didn’t make with my current husband, because I realized how important it was. I don’t think we can really gloss over that because I think if two people are more or less on the same page with the kind of life they want to live, the lifestyle, the values. For instance, family time. That’s really important to me. I value time. I have three children, I value time with them. I value time with them and my husband, I have extended family. I like to travel, meet my family, go on vacation with them, those things. That was a source of conflict in my former marriage, but it’s not in my current marriage so I’m a lot happier because how I spend my vacation time is really important to me.
So that’s just one example. Some people spend a lot of time working excessively, for instance; they don’t devote a lot of time to spending time with their partner. Spending time with my partner is even more important to me with my husband at this point in my life to my children, because they’re launched and here I am with my husband. So what are we doing? How are we spending our time? So that’s another example of shared meaning, shared time together, enjoying some activities together. As I said, perhaps we have similar visions for the future, how do we see ourselves in 5 or 10 years?
TS: It’s so interesting, Terry, because as you’re talking, I’m reflecting on how people may say, “These are what I believe my values are,” but then over time their actions could prove something different. Sometimes we don’t really know ourselves that well. “Yes, sure, yes, I value family time. And then as it turns out, I actually put my work first,” or something like that. It’s just interesting especially as people are looking at remarriage and saying, “God, I don’t want to make the same mistakes I made in my first marriage.” What process do people need to go through to really be clear in themselves about, this is the sort of shared meaning structure that really matters to me?
TG: Well, I think waiting until you’re a little older to make a commitment is extremely helpful. I think in the 21st century we finally got to the point where we realized it’s better to wait and not jump headlong into committed relationships when we’re probably prior to late 20s, early 30s, so that you do know yourself better. When I was young, you thought of yourself as an old maid or over the hill if you weren’t engaged by the time you were 23. So knowing yourself and certainly finding your niche in life and figuring out what your hobbies are and joining clubs or having social activities or whatever kind of lifestyle you want to claim for yourself. And then if you meet somebody in the process of that, that’s really a bonus. So already you’re starting out with similar values, similar orientations. If you know yourself fairly well before you make that commitment and you don’t marry someone or start living with them even when you’re on the rebound, when you’re fresh out of a relationship and you’re not really healed and ready, that’s extremely helpful.
I know with my husband, we met actually at a folk dance, believe it or not—I write about this in a lot of my articles—through a mutual friend who knew we were both Unitarians. We’re Unitarians and we belonged to different branches of the same church, and we loved to dance. And so we had a lot of values that were similar, and we started talking about those things and spending time doing some of the things that we both enjoyed. But it’s best if you don’t rush into a relationship when you’re not healed, and you don’t really know what you want.
TS: Yes. One of the things I wanted to talk to you about was this idea of being healed enough to enter a new relationship and whether that’s feeling like, yes, I’m ready to remarry after an initial divorce or being ready to enter a third marriage, or whatever it might be, or somebody who’s just coming out not necessarily of a marriage, but of a committed relationship of some kind and asking themselves, “Am I ready? How do I know? How do I know if I’m healed enough?”
TG: Well, I think one of the primary ways that you know is that you feel more content and trusting of the person that you’re spending time with in the new relationship. If you start feeling uneasy and really having a lot of doubts about the other person, that’s a huge red flag. You should be able to be yourself, not walk on eggshells, not worry too much about what they’re going to say, what they’re going to think. And try not to sweep things under the rug too much. Not saying we should be an open book, but if you start feeling like, “I can’t really be myself, I don’t feel comfortable sharing this or that” and you feel mistrustful on top of that, you start questioning their intentions, keeping secrets—I talk a lot about that in chapter four of my book, either about your finances or about certain things that are going on. That’s really problematic. You can’t totally ditch the baggage, as I say in chapter three, from other relationships, that’s unrealistic. But if you’ve dealt with a lot of it and you’re aware of what your baggage is, then you’re better able to own it when issues come up.
As an example, I have some trust issues as a result of being raised in a very, I would say high-conflict, divorce family as a child, then my own divorce. So going into my second marriage, I was aware of those trust issues and able to put them out there for my husband and let him know there were certain things that made me feel uneasy, like his tendency to run late when we were supposed to meet somewhere or coming home in the evening and so on. So he knew that those were patterns, behavior patterns that he could work on, and he could change and modify and text me or call me when he was running late so that I could feel more comfortable.
So that’s an example of baggage that maybe it’s not completely healed, but is acknowledged and is worked through enough that the person can actually admit it and then deal with it. Because if you’re not aware of what your baggage is, you’re not going to really be able to successfully move beyond much of it.
TS: You’re talking about the baggage that by the time you remarried was a baggage you were aware of—we could say it was a light baggage, it wasn’t a heavy baggage, but it had to do around trust. How were you able in the relationship to share what was going on with you such that it didn’t blow up your second marriage?
TG: Well, for one thing, one thing I’ve learned through the years is try to pause, take a deep breath, not get into the frenzy of constantly calling, texting, confronting a person, but just give it time to settle in. Let your partner know that you have something important that you want to talk about. Find a good place in a good time, which is definitely not around other people and especially if you have children. And then let them know that you feel, in my case, sometimes mistrustful. And in my husband’s case, he wasn’t aware when we were dating, for instance, that him running 20, 30, 40 minutes late was going to be very difficult for me. So I had to let him know I understand people do run late, but my mind was going to a not very good place. And if he could just call me—we didn’t text way back then, but if you could just call me and let me know that he was running late, I’d feel better.
I really strongly believe in using “I” messages—”I feel uncomfortable, it makes me feel uneasy when you run late.” Whereas a lot of people go into, “You’re so unthoughtful, you don’t think of me.” So I think if we own our own issues and express our feelings in a way that’s assuming the best of your partner. I didn’t really believe that he was intentionally trying to piss me off or make me mistrustful or I probably wouldn’t have chosen him as a partner. But yet his behavior, the actions that he was doing still had that effect.
So I tried to pick times to let him know. We’d have a lot of discussions about these things early on. And then when we ended up in a step-family with three kids, of course other things came up with them. But try to not talk too much in the heat of the moment, let things simmer down a little bit. Not when you’re are already revved up and upset, and then just acknowledge what your issues are and try to own them and express them in a way that the other person can respond, listening to what their response is. And hopefully you can come up with some different ideas so that both people can feel more trusting and engaged.
TS: I want to make sure that we’re covering the most important relationship skills. But before we do, Terry, just to let our listeners get to know you a little bit more, why did you move into this area of being an expert in committed relationships? Why was that the path for you professionally as a person?
TG: Well, I knew fairly early on in my life that I wanted to be a therapist. So in the course of being a therapist, I became very interested in personal development, self-help. Truth be told, my mom was a self-help junkie. She wasn’t a therapist, but I always remember Erica Jong and all these self-help books around my house, and I think I was drawn to them. So I was always interested in finding out more about myself and relationships. And then when I was in college, both undergraduate and graduate school studying psychology and I became a licensed clinical social worker, it hit me like a lightning bolt, “Oh my God, I’m an adult child of divorce. I have issues with commitment and trust. I think I need to get into therapy here.” So that was a process that it’s kind of ongoing, realizing what some of my own issues were.
And then with my grown daughter, Tracy, I wrote the book Daughters of Divorce, and I interviewed hundreds of women about commitment issues and different issues that they were dealing with. So I got very much entrenched in the self-help literature, just read and really enjoyed thousands of books. I started, as I said, studying with John Gottman and all these other wonderful people like Sue Johnson.
I would say I’m very passionate about relationships because it helps me help myself, but also in my career, it really gives me so much information that I can use when I’m working with clients. It doesn’t have to be all dire and negative, it can be a lot of fun too, helping couples feeling more sexually compatible. There’s a lot of good things that can be found in self-help books, but I just really enjoy learning more about what makes people tick and relationships.
TS: Now, in creating your new book, The Remarriage Manual, you interviewed 100 different people, 100 different couples on getting remarried. Tell me a little bit about that process and what you learned that you didn’t know before you did all of those interviews.
TG: What I learned was basically what I wished I had known 23 years ago prior to my current marriage, my own remarriage. And that is that love may be sweeter the second or third time around, but once the bliss wears off and the reality sets in, it can be a lot more challenging than a lot of people think to be in a remarriage. So I was myself so swept off my feet by my husband because as I said, we have a lot in common and we met through mutual friends, had similar backgrounds. He had been divorced, I had been divorced. He didn’t have kids, and I did. But nonetheless, I really thought things were going to run on automatic and be a lot smoother than they were.
So in interviewing these couples, it really validated my own experience, which was there were some really tough patches in our own marriage. And we ended up going into therapy as a couple and realizing we really want to work through these. A lot of our issues had to do with the kids after we had a third child and finances and so on. And a lot of the couples that I’ve met with were struggling with keeping their marriage on a solid footing, keeping the flame burning and being intimate and loving. It’s a balance when you’re in a second marriage because you had the baggage that we mentioned, we talked about a few minutes ago, and you also have more financial stresses, especially when you have children and you have issues like the conflict that comes up and you have to figure out, “OK, how am I going to deal with this?”
So basically by interviewing all these couples, I decided that there were 10 really salient issues, which became the 10 chapters in my book that were important for couples to really focus on to be successful. And I end the book with chapter 10, “Say You’re Sorry and Mean It,” because in the end what it came down to for me and many of the couples is being able to forgive your partner and yourself, accept, give apologies that are very sincere, and move on and not hold on to a lot of the resentment. The book really fell into place rather nicely after I came up with the idea of interviewing all these couples, which was an idea that my agent and I had talked about. The data was there, the survey was easy to develop, all the questions that I asked them. And I loved all of that, I loved interviewing people. So the process ran pretty smoothly.
TS: Now, you mentioned that you ended The Remarriage Manual on this note of forgiveness and repairing wounds. And one of the statistics that you offer in the book, you say that the number one—so that’s what I mean by a statistic, it’s a number—the number one skill that people need to learn is how to repair, how to repair after a dispute. I don’t think most people would say, what’s the number one skill? I don’t know if they would say it’s learning how to repair. Why is that the most important skill we need to know in relationship?
TG: Well, I think your relationship and my relationships, all of them, all of us as humans are going to be so much healthier and successful if we can have a way of dealing with our differences that as we discussed is accepting, is open, is being vulnerable with what’s going on, not sweeping things under the rug a lot. Being able to just say, “Hey, I’m really sorry I hurt your feelings when I said that in front of your friend. I didn’t mean it, and I’ll really work on not doing that again.” Just like, little grievances that add up during the day and during the week, and bigger grievances.
I’m guilty of those myself. I kept a lot of financial secrets from my husband for a while, and I finally realized that was doing a lot of damage to our relationship, and I had to come to terms with that and not only repair it by stopping it and not hiding a lot of issues about credit card debt and borrowing money from my mom when she was alive and stuff like that. It wasn’t authentic, it wasn’t honest. I thought I was doing it because it needed to be done, because I didn’t want to trouble my husband with it. And in the end, I realized that we could come to terms with it, we could discuss it and come up with something that was a workable plan to move forward.
That was during the difficult time that we had many years ago prior to me writing the book, when I myself realized, repairing my relationship with my husband is key. I don’t want to get a divorce, this is a person that I do love. And I’m just repeating the cycle over and over again if I don’t really have the skills to own my own issues, assume the best of him. And fortunately, we did have a good therapist to help us through that difficult time.
TS: You introduce in The Remarriage Manual a term “financial infidelity,” and that 41 percent of couples have experienced some form of financial infidelity. How do you define that term?
TG: Well, it’s interesting, because I didn’t really realize that I was guilty of that myself till I started listening to the couples that I interviewed and realizing how many of them hid financial information from their partners. Financial infidelity is definitely the same as lying and being dishonest. It’s not being honest and upfront about financial issues. So it’s not just a matter of, oh, well, you have to come home and tell your partner that you bought a new dress for $110, it’s not that. It’s often a pattern of hiding information either about your past finances. For instance, I interviewed one couple where one partner had over $50,000 of debt when he met his second wife, and he never told her about it even after they got married. And she found out by reading an email when she walked by his computer screen.
So financial infidelity breeds mistrust, it’s very unhealthy, and it’s quite common. And I think a lot of people do it because they feel insecure, they don’t feel comfortable sharing financial matters. They just believe, “Well, my partner’s not going to understand this,” or, “It’s going to go away.” And when the other person, the person who is being betrayed finds out about it, it can be extremely hurtful. And it’s become more acknowledged as a central problem in a lot of relationships in the 21st century, you’re seeing more and more blogs about it. And that’s why I decided because it was prominent in many of the couples I interviewed, I decided it would really be important to write a chapter about it.
TS: And what would you say to that person who’s listening right now and thinking to themselves, “God, I probably need to tell my partner about X, Y, Z, but I don’t want to”?
TG: I would say it’s really a good idea to be vulnerable even though it’s hard. And it’s going to get worse, it’s not going to get better if you don’t deal with it. If you need to find a therapist to help you to come to terms with it, that’s a good idea. If you don’t want to do therapy, perhaps a close friend who knows you really well who can talk you through it. But it really is the same as lying, as being extremely dishonest, if you can’t share the information; and it just builds up, builds up, and you just dig yourself into a deeper hole of dishonesty to the point where it gets virtually impossible because—in my case, the debts were just adding up. And I felt uncomfortable when my mom was around because I was afraid she was going to share with my husband that she had lent me some money. Stuff like that. You just can’t bury it, it’s too important. So I decided that it was a key issue, and I really appreciate you mentioning it.
TS: Now, I want to circle back to the previous topic we were discussing, which was this importance of repairing and forgiving and not holding onto grievances. And I want to go back and underscore it because I realized as you were describing that that as a person, I can hold a grudge. There you go, I said it. I can hold a grudge, goes along in my family. Jesus, my mother could really hold a grudge. I’ve made some progress, I think a lot. But anyway, my point being that part of us that just holds on to that thing, like, “OK, I’m willing to forgive 90 percent of the way, but that last 10 percent, I’m not letting go of that, I’m not letting go of that. I’m not, I’m not stupid. Blah, blah, blah, I’m holding on.” What would you say to that?
TG: I would say that’s grievance story, and that’s a term that I’m coining from a famous writer, Dr. Fred Luskin. And it’s basically a story that we create around a grievance or a grudge that becomes self-perpetuating. And I would just really look at, OK, what are you getting out of holding on to that? You’re not really benefiting yourself or the relationship. And I know about those grievance stories, I’ve had them too. But they’re really self-defeating and they become so negative and self-perpetuating, the other person feels it. They feel that they are not trusted and accepted for who they are. So it’s extremely challenging, but it’s important to try to work through the steps that you need to do to forgive them, which I discuss in depth in chapter 10. And basically realize, simplistic as this sounds, no one’s perfect. Often people do not do bad things on purpose. Even like in the case of financial infidelity, we rationalize, we justify.
So it’s important to not hold on because one of the main problems of holding on to a grievance is that it puts all the blame on the other person, and it also causes you to lose your personal power.
TS: Tell me more about that.
TG: Well, this one couple that I interviewed for chapter 10, I decided to put them in chapter 10. That was a tough decision—who do I want to put in the last chapter of the book? All these names are fictitious, of course. Leo and Jeanette, who I talk about earlier in the book, and they were a blended family. She had a child when they met, and he had—she had one child, they had two together. So they ended up with three children. And she had a grievance story about the way that he interacted with one of her biological kids, his stepchild. And she held on to it so bad that he ended up moving out of their house and talking about separating.
And she asked him when I was interviewing them because they weren’t in therapy with me, “Is it OK if I share with Terry what happened, how you moved out of the house in anger and were thinking about separating from me?” And she became very distraught because they’d had a pretty loving marriage for over 20 years. And she said, “I just can’t let go of the fact that you were treating my son differently,” than his two biological children. And she identified with her own biological son’s anger when they argued. And it just became a constant source of bitterness. She began to feel really negative towards her husband, towards Leo. And she really kind of pushed him away a lot. And once she realized that she was making too big of an issue out of it and holding on to this grievance story, she invited him to gradually start coming back to the house and mend a lot of the wounds and realizing that she needed to let go of it to restore their marriage.
And he also had to ask for forgiveness. She asked for forgiveness for over-identifying with her son and not seeing her husband’s part in it, or his view of it, I guess you would say, his own mindset. And he apologized and really meant it that it really wasn’t the best thing that he moved out very suddenly, that he didn’t give the relationship a chance to heal. So those were some things that came up and really have to do with offering a sincere apology, owning your own issues, not blaming the other person and letting go of grievances.
TS: Now, you mentioned that when we hold onto a grudge that we’re keeping ourselves from our full empowerment. Can you explain that a little more?
TG: Most of us can be self-defeating at times. But if we take responsibility for our part in an issue, whatever it is, and realize that most relationships have certain dynamics—just real quickly, it was easy for me to blame my ex-husband for a lot of our problems for many years until I realized certainly I added to it. I wasn’t really sure about what I wanted. We married when I was quite young, and I was trying to always change him and make him into something that he wasn’t. So once I realized that that “fix it” mentality that I had just drove him away, it became like a distancer, pursuer kind of dynamic. And I wasn’t really aware of it or interested in changing it, I just was chronically unhappy and criticizing him. I’m sure it was not easy for him.
In other words, taking responsibility and not holding onto a grudge for me meant … It really takes two people to tango in most cases. So OK, I accept my part in it, and that person contributed to it. And I’ve got to work on whatever issues that I have. For instance, that distancer-pursuer syndrome, which I talk about in the chapter on sexual intimacy, is one of the main causes of divorce. And I realized through my own therapy that I have a tendency to fall right into that without even realizing it. I don’t have the bitterness and grudge pattern that I used to have, which has freed me up to be, I believe, a lot, just a lot happier as a person.
TS: Now, explain to our listeners why the distance-pursuer pattern is one of the main causes of divorce?
TG: Well, it becomes so ingrained, basically, that one person kind of retreats a little bit, usually wants less emotional, sexual, physical intimacy. The other partner becomes more the one who is seeking them out and chronically unhappy, as I said. And it becomes a way of living a lifestyle where both people become actually pretty dissatisfied. And because they’re not communicating and often lose sexual intimacy, it really does cause a lot of people to separate or divorce because there’s very little that’s positive in the relationship. The pursuer is often not aware that if they could just step back a little bit and see it from their partner’s viewpoint and back off, that would work a lot better. And the distancer, the one that tends to retreat, needs to move a little more towards the center, if you know what I mean, and kind of meet their partner at least some of the time halfway.
So you can’t really be in an intimate relationship for the most part if you’re not joining and having some intimacy emotionally and physically and sexually. So often that pattern of distancer-pursuer leads to pretty long stretches without sexual intimacy, which also can be problematic for a lot of couples. And just not sharing things emotionally and feeling pretty disconnected emotionally.
TS: Now, one of the interesting statistics that I learned in reading The Remarriage Manual is first part, something I knew, that 50 percent of most marriages end in divorce. But that a higher percentage, 60-plus percent of second marriages end in divorce. That surprised me because I think I had assumed that you learn a lot in your “failed first marriage.” You learn a lot, you learn about what you need, “Next time I get married, I’ll do this differently,” blah, blah, blah. So why is it that second marriages are even more likely to not work long-term, stay together long-term?
TG: Well, it kind of gets back to one of the comments I made earlier in the interview. One of the reasons is because so many couples remarry on the rebound when they really haven’t had time to heal some of those wounds or deal with the baggage. It’s sort of becomes like, oops, this is a very familiar pattern here. And if you know what I’m referring to, it’s like you’re kind of reenacting the past, probably believe that we unconsciously do that. We pick patterns partners to kind of work through a lot of issues that we’ve had throughout our life, and we’re just trying to resolve them. We’re trying to heal them. You realize, hmm, that person has some similar traits. So that’s one issue.
And then the other very common theme with a lot of the couples I interviewed is not being able to repair, which you and I have talked about, when conflicts do arise. People just holding on to their anger and resentment and not really being able to let it go and not being willing apologize in an authentic way and accept apologies. And then of course, children. You add children to the mix—and stepchildren, especially if there’s a blended family, but even in a step like my own, you’re going to have rivalries, you’re going to have jealousies. There often feels like there’s just not enough time for everyone just spend together.
And then of course financial, as I said. For instance, I talk in my chapter about money, chapter four, you know, being married statistically improves your financial well-being. But when you marry someone that has children and then you have more children, you add that to the mix—they call those the “mutual children.” Then all of a sudden you realize you’re paying for a lot of college expenses, tuition. A blended or step-family or even a remarriage without children can be a lot more complex.
TS: One of the things you mentioned is that stepparents can have unrealistic expectations of what it’s going to be like to be a stepparent. What do you think are realistic expectations as someone enters stepparenthood?
TG: Expect a lot of bumps in the road. Don’t try to be your stepchild’s disciplinarian, and don’t try to be their parent. And be respectful of the fact that they’re never going to, most likely are not going to feel the same way about you as they do their biological parents. So know that there are going to be a lot of concessions that you’re going to have to make, and you’re really going to go through quite a few different phases. I talk about that in the beginning of the book, chapter one particularly, developing tolerance and understanding that your stepfamily is going to take time to bond and be comfortable with each other. You’re complete strangers, you’re joining in to a family situation. And then you have kids coming and going from different houses. You have to coordinate with your ex-partners or spouses.
So you have to be really aware that it’s not, as I said earlier, going to run on automatic and be great all the time. It’s going to be a matter of deciding it’s worth it, and you really want this remarriage and stepfamily. And you’re going to be willing to go through some tough times and make a commitment to work it through. For instance, I recommend that remarried couples don’t really bring up the issue of divorcing or separating, unless of course there’s some kind of abuse. They make a commitment to work through their issues and realize it takes at least four years for a remarried or stepfamily to blend. It’s not a quick process, and you can’t skip over it and bypass it.
TS: And why are stepmothers especially often given such a hard time, we have the archetype of the evil stepmother or whatever? Why is it so hard for stepmoms?
TG: That’s an interesting topic. I could write a whole book about that, I might someday. I grew up with a stepmother myself. And I can honestly tell you, I’ve interviewed my own sisters about it. They had some very negative ideas about her. She walked into a family with basically four stepdaughters, and she had her own child. So it’s not an easy role as a society. Talk about unrealistic expectations. We’re really, really hard on stepmothers, like you said, all the archetypes and everything. And they have to share their time with their partner, with all these other people and feel comfortable with that. And a lot of stepchildren are not very kind to stepmothers, and they get blamed for a lot of things.
Stepdads not so much so. In the research I did, I read a lot of books and read a lot of research articles. Stepfathers for many reasons, they have a little bit of an easier time of it. They can be more playful, kind of like a mentor, kind of a friend, which is an easier role to play than the one that’s a disciplinarian, cooking meals. A lot of the stepmothers that I interviewed had husbands that were away, they work late, they were doing a lot of day-to-day care with their stepchildren—driving, picking up from sporting events, whatever, school activities, not feeling often very appreciated. So it’s a tough role being a stepmom. And in general stepparents should just really try to be that friend, try to be that adult mentor and not try to expect what I call instant love from a stepchild.
TS: Makes sense. Now, Terry, here’s a note that I wanted to end our conversation on, which is once again, just to bring myself forward for a moment and say that I, in my own life, feel just so invested and positive about being in a committed relationship. It’s such an important part of my life. And I noticed that I have, if anything, such a strong bias. Recently I was talking to two people who had been in marriages and both of those marriages ended in divorce, and now they’re in a relationship together. And I said, “So are you two going to get married?” And they were like, “No way, we’re not going to get married. Marriage isn’t sexy.” And I thought to myself, “Hmm, that’s interesting.” So what I wanted to hear from you is, do you have a bias towards marriage? And by marriage, I really just mean relationships. Well, what I mean is relationships that are built on fidelity. That’s what I mean, marriages. So do you have a bias towards that? And if so, why? And if not, why not?
TG: I definitely do have a bias towards that because I think that going through your years and growing more emotionally connected to a partner really enriches a person’s life. I think it can really help us develop, you know, whatever talents and skills that we have and bring us a lot of love. I have quite a few single clients on my caseload as a therapist who are very lonely and unhappy. They haven’t been willing to make a commitment or they just haven’t met the right person.
So I think making a commitment to live with a person, and some people agree to live apart, but I think for sure making a commitment to become more intimate with another human being is very, very rewarding and helps you to just have a much richer, fuller life, and ultimately end up giving more to other people in whatever fashion that is. Not everybody wants to write a book or two books like I’ve done, but to share with other people, to give back to the community. I think relationships strengthen us and they give us a lot more reason to just really thrive and have a better quality of life. That is my bias.
TS: And we began our conversation by talking about developing skills. And I was curious here as we end, do you think it’s … I mean, does somebody get to be like, “Oh my God, I’m like an Olympic athlete, I’m so good at this”? Or for everybody, is it always challenging? How would you frame that? Like, “Yes, I’m going to learn these skills but it’s always going to have some element of challenge, that’s just how it goes.” Or “No, I’m going to be like, wow, this becomes smooth and easy, woo, I got it”?
TG: [Laughs] I wish that were true. I don’t think that relationships are ever completely easy. I think that we all have our challenges. I know I currently still have some challenges with my husband on certain key issues. And then I’m always reminded that to love and be loved is really about being real, and that real love really starts with me and owning who I am. So I don’t see it as an easy path, but I see it as a very rewarding one. And accepting those inevitable ups and downs is realistic. I think things have gotten smoother for me as I’ve done that basically, and that I don’t blow things out of proportion like I used to and see that if we go through tough periods of a day or a few days, it’s usually not more than a day, that we’re necessarily doomed to fail.
So a lot of it I think too is your mindset and having a more positive view, that you don’t have to dig your heels in as I like to say and say, “Oh wow, it has to be my way or this is the way it has to be.” You can just really be more accepting of your partner’s views and spend more time listening than talking. And as I said earlier, try to assume the best in the people that you choose to spend most of your time with, because when you do that, you realize we’re truly human and we’re going to have our missteps, and hopefully we’re going to be there to pick each other up.
TS: I’ve been speaking with Terry Gaspard. She’s written a book on the 10 keys to successful remarriage, it’s called The Remarriage Manual: How to Make Everything Work Better the Second Time Around. Terry, thank you so much. Thank you for being so straightforward and sharing with us both from your own life and what you’ve learned interviewing people and the skills that we can each develop. Thank you, thank you so much.
TG: You’re welcome.
TS: Thank you for listening to Insights at the Edge. You can read a full transcript of today’s interview at SoundsTrue.com/podcast. And if you’re interested, hit the subscribe button in your podcast app. And also if you feel inspired, head to iTunes and leave Insights at the Edge a review. I love getting your feedback, being in connection with you, and learning how we can continue to evolve and improve our program. Working together I believe we can create a kinder and wiser world. SoundsTrue.com: waking up the world.
