A Close Confiding Relationship and Dr. Lydgate's Enhancing Marital Intimacy Therapy Manual

By Edward Waring

This book begins with an imaginary marital assessment interview by Dr Lydgate, a flawed psychiatrist with three failed marriages. He interviews imaginary couples from the literary world of relationships like Adam and Eve and Romeo and Juliet to offer the reader insight into marital intimacy. A narrator offers a psychological view of the process. Part two offers information on how to interview couples, assess couples and treat couples by helping them disclose their ideas about relationships from their parents and past experience.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jul 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9781398408371

Edward Waring

Edward Waring is a retired Psychiatrist. He was the Professor and Head of the Department at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario. He is the author of “Enhancing Marital Intimacy”, and the creator of the Waring Intimacy Questionnaire. He has published two novels with AM, “soul Bruises” and “Riverview”.

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About the Author

Edward Waring is a retired Psychiatrist. He was the Professor and Head of the Department at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario. He is the author of Enhancing Marital Intimacy, and the creator of the Waring Intimacy Questionnaire. He has published two novels with AM, soul Bruises and Riverview.

Dedication

Dedicated to the many couples who participated in my research and therapy.

Copyright Information ©

Edward Waring 2022

The right of Edward Waring to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398408364 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398408371 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2022

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

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E14 5AA

Part One

A Close Confiding Relationship

Chapter One

"To have end to hold from this day forward,

For better or worse, for richer or poorer,

In sickness and health…

To love and to cherish, till death do us part"

The book of common prayer

The waiting room was painted green. The couple sat in silence. They were expecting the worst. They stared at a poster of an apple. A small tree hung above his desk and couch.

"Make yourselves comfortable. The interview will last from about forty-five minutes to an hour. I hope you will find it interesting.

Dr. Lydgate had repeated this welcome once or twice a day for twenty-five years. The couple avoided Smell talk…they might disclose the naked truth.

The secretary said, Mr. , and Mrs. Adams will you follow me please? they followed obediently. Dr Lydgate felt the introduction was repetitious, having been spoken so often. Sometimes he thought he sounded like a robot. His first wife, Daisy, had accused him of being a robot. This memory amused him and he began to smile. The couple believing the smile was professional courtesy, smiled back. The doctor began daydreaming about creating a robot. He would program the robot to be a lean, mean marital cool assessment machine, all this pondering about artificial intelligence made him think of his first wife and the couple’s discomfort reminded of his second.

Dr. Lydgate was observing the Adams as well as day dreaming. He was observing this couple whose great beginning seemed irredeemably lost in the thorns and thistles of the marital wilderness. He had wandered this path himself.

Dr. Lydgate was now pondering the bible story of Adam and Eve. He was wondering if the story was God’s way of warning us about close relationships. Adam certainly had no idea of what to expect from a relationship. Apparently he had no choice in the selection of his partner. Adam had no premarital counselling and no sexual education. Eve fared no better. The story of her being created from Adam’s rib fueled the issue of the battle of the sexes. Still they seemed to have a close relationship in the Garden of Eden until a third party came between them and disclosed a secret. The serpent made Eve aware of her sexuality with the resulting loss of innocence. Their suffering began as trust was eroded. Adam and Eve were cast out of paradise having tasted the forbidden fruit of psychological awareness. The story continues with the birth of two sons out in the wilderness. Tragically one son murdered the other. Dr. Lydgate wondered if God was warning us about the consequences of the failure to develop a close, confiding relationship. Did Adam and Eve’s story doom the modern family to violence? He smiled a perplexed smile. The couple thought he was being polite. He was again thinking about being an assessment machine. Dr. Lydgate could go golfing during the day and consult his robot at night. That thought reminded that he better pay more attention to the matter at hand.’

I on the other hand, observe these couples who visit Dr. Lydgate with a naive perspective prepared to be amazed. One couple may ask him where to sit as if the seating arrangements hold the secret to marital bliss. Another couple might compliment him about his lovely office. This might amuse him as he was too cheap to buy decent office furnishings. Some couples commented on the lovely view from the tenth floor. Where he sat he could almost see the spot where his third wife met her lover every Thursday afternoon.

Sometimes a wife will blurt out that her husband is cheating on her. Occasionally a husband will announce that he was forced to come by a threat of divorce or even jail. I wonder how Dr. Lydgate will respond to these outbursts of feelings. Still other couples will ask him about his training, about his qualifications, about his personal life even his marriage. Sometimes Dr. Lydgate is tempted to react, " which specific marriage did you have in mind’: Each couples story of pain is different, but each couples suffering is the same. They all have their unique approach to getting acquainted with Dr. Lydgate.

How did you feel about coming to talk to me about your relationship? asks Dr. Lydgate.

He always initiates the interview by asking about feelings. People expect psychiatrists to be interested in feelings. Dr. Lydgate empathizes with these feelings that couples have about disclosing their miserable marriages. He still remembers the therapist that DAISY dragged him to see when she discovered his affair. He felt like a fool. Daisy laid out the evidence. She pronounced the verdict. Guilty! All that was left for the therapist was to hand out the punishment. He was sentenced to attend never - ending therapy sessions in which Daisy would castigate him for his many flaws. He would endure, like Job, a weekly whipping by character analysis. He felt helpless. Now he listened while this couple disclosed their feelings about the interview. He was more interested in what they thought, but his professional training forced him to ask about these feelings. Ventilate the negative affect to create a therapeutic alliance. Anyway he usually knew how they felt - MISERABLE - just by looking at them.

While Dr. Lydgate’s intuition may or may not be accurate as we shall see, I am fascinated by how different each couple is when they disclose their feelings about their marital discord.

The most common feeling expressed ae couples is NERVOUSNESS. Ever since George beard wrote that the people of the Northeastern United States suffered from NEURASTHENIA, nervous exhaustion, everybody has been nervous. Beard suggested neurasthenia was caused by the complexity of modern society - being under a lot of stress! Next came Hans Selye who tossed rats without whiskers, who couldn’t swim, into huge water tanks. Now that is stress. But at the end of the day words like nervous and stressed mean feelings which can’t be experienced or expressed. Imagine a spouse saying, I feel joy knowing that when I disclose my true feelings that my partner will go to pieces in your office. So they say,I feel nervous because I don’t know what to expect. "

Dr. Lydgate tells these nervous couples what to expect. He tells them he is briefly going to ask them about their concerns about their marriage. Brief because these make them feel upset. He will ask about how they met which often made them feel good. He will tell them he will ask about their parents’ marriage, previous relationships and about how they function as a couple. Dr. Lydgate had not always offered this lengthy explanation. With experience he learned that spending more time describing what was to happen seemed to help the nervous couples to relax. This allowed them to experience and express their true feelings.

Dr. Lydgate wondered if these couples were disclosing their fears that if the tree of knowledge was consulted, paradise would be lost.

Second only to nervous couples are couples who feel angry. They are mad that they have to reveal their private hell to a stranger. They may feel furious that they have been emotionally blackmailed into disclosing their human weakness. They may feel bitter that one little sin has led them to a marital therapist. Dr. Lydgate had learned from painful experience to always ask these angry spouses if they wished to continue with the interview. Ventilate the negative affect first. Sometimes the anger exploded, sometimes the rage poured out, bitterness spilled out like a serpent’s venom. Ventilate negative transference. That was the advice that Freud gave. Freud was no expert on close, confiding relationships. He developed a therapy for unhappy spouses to reveal their unconscious conflicts to an analyst. Often this resulted in the revelation that they were abused in the past and had a miserable marriage in the present. Divorce was seen as a positive outcome. Ventilate the negative feelings first. That was