A Quick Relationship Lesson from Ben Affleck
Not communicating true things you think and feel may not be as 'bad' as lying, but it's probably just as harmful
For the second time in 20 years, celebrities Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez have called it quits. J.Lo filed for divorce a couple of weeks ago.
Celebrities getting divorced isn’t uncommon. I don’t have data on this, but I’m open to the idea that their relationships end in an unpleasant split more often than the rest of ours.
Amid the divorce, celebrity gossip outlets and news organizations like Buzzfeed dug up some 25-year-old comments Affleck made in a Playboy interview once upon a time.
I’m not even almost the same person I was when my marriage was falling apart 12+ years ago, so I’m not going to pawn off Affleck’s 1999 commentary as insight into why this second go-round with J.Lo didn’t last, but it nonetheless provides a valuable lesson for people (mostly men, in my estimation) if they’re interested in making their marriages and committed partnerships the best they can be.
“I think what happens is, I end up wanting to be out of the relationship,” Affleck said.
“During the course of a relationship, if you get dissatisfied and unhappy and don’t say something, if you don’t deal with it right then, it just festers and stays there. So instead of saying ‘Look, don’t do that, please don’t act this way,’ I go along with it until I just don’t want to be in the relationship at all,” he said.
“Then I create some incident or do something or just don’t call. And then she’s pissed. And I can’t necessarily blame her at that point since I’ve developed such a passive-aggressive rage that I have no sympathy and tell her, ‘Well of course I didn’t call you. If you weren’t such a nagging, shrewish harpy I’d call you.’ But that hopefully is something I’m growing out of.”
‘My Husband isn’t Honest with Me’
I hear this often from women in my coaching work.
“My husband isn’t honest with me.”
Usually I respond with: “You mean, he lies?”
“No, no,” she says. “I think when he does speak that he’s telling the truth. It’s just that I know that he has thoughts about me and our marriage, and he has feelings about me and our marriage, and he often doesn’t share those with me. There are all of these true things affecting him and us, and I don’t have access to them.”
It’s not just lies and betrayal that erode trust in relationships.
The absence of truth can be just as harmful.
Imagine an invisible bullet-point list of everything in your life that really matters to you. Imagine that every person you encounter has one. The list, of course, varies from person to person. We all have differing values.
Most of the time, this doesn’t matter.
In our closest interpersonal relationships, it matters a lot. The most common trust-eroding behavior in marriage and relationships in general is doing or saying something that communicates to your partner that you do not share their values, and that you can’t be relied upon to treat their values with the same level of importance that you treat your own.
It always seems like when what they want or need comes into conflict with what I want or need, that they will reliably choose themselves over me. I can’t trust them to care about the things I care about. I can’t trust them to even pay attention to the things that I repeatedly say matter to me.
These are the quiet, oft-unshared thoughts and feelings of a person who generally feels hurt, lonely, and afraid in their relationship.
These are the ideas that routinely destroy trust and love and connection in relationships.
This isn’t the work of a bunch of overtly abusive assholes doing overtly asshole things. They can simply be the result of a person who feels really busy with work or school or parenting or preoccupied with their own individual stresses to be fully, reliably attuned to the experiences of their relationship partner.
Doing meaningful relationship work can be hard, but it’s not overly complicated.
Notice. Pay attention. Ask questions. Learn what matters to your partner, and why. Don’t judge it. Seek to understand.
And then spend the rest of your life trying to align your actions and words with the idea that I will handle with care the things that are important to my spouse/partner just as reliably as I will handle with care the things that matter most to me.
Do this, and your love-life outcomes will be so much better than Gigli.
Matthew Fray is the author of “This is How Your Marriage Ends: A Hopeful Approach to Saving Relationships”, a relationship coach, and formerly the blogger at Must Be This Tall To Ride.
P.S. - I know these things can present really small to some of you in your busy lives and marriages/partnerships. But that’s exactly why developing mindfulness and communication habits around these domestic scenarios is so critical to maintaining peaceful, loving relationships. If you have trust erosion, and/or pain points and frustrations around things like this at home, consider working with me as your relationship coach to develop these skills and habits. This stuff matters. Book your next appointment here. - MF
My personal experience has been that when I have been fully open and honest about a subject (whatever it is), what I have been told is that my thinking is off-center, I don't know what I'm talking about, or the way I said it was wrong (whether it was words, tone, or body language). It's never "why do you think or feel that way?" and have a deep discussion. So if a married woman feels like her husband is holding back from being brutally honest, maybe she should reflect on how her past interactions have been with her husband and see why he should have any reason to be so. Her feelings are not the only important thing in the relationship.
Another great article from you, Matt.
I'm having a few issues with my marriage and I'm wondering if you've ever touched on these specific things in any of your articles and if so if you can point me to them.
I'm married to a man whom I've never seen get angry. I'm the one in the relationship with all the emotions. I often say I have enough emotions for the both of us. Because of this, I'm always seen as automatically in the wrong and the abusive one because my husband is never the one to bring up anything negative but I do. But I feel like I'm angry and act the way I do due to built up resentment from the way I feel emotionally neglected. I'm not the innocent victim in all of this but he thinks it's all me. I don't think I was always this angry but it's come from years of dealing with stuff from him.
Also, when I bring up something for the 1000th time that's bothering me he will say things like "I'm learning" "Be patient with me" "I'd never get mad at you like you get mad at me" and I don't know how many years you can claim to be "working on it" and be patient. It drives me crazy.
I can't even get him to watch your videos or read your book. I tell him it's important to me to at least watch your videos and he says he will but then tells me he's been busy with work and hasn't gotten to it and I tell him that's like literally the problem. I'm never a priority and I feel like I'm on the back burner to deal with when he's not busy with something.