A Family Divided: Marty's Confession: Erin's Thoughts

Dr. Phil talks with Marty about his honesty in his marriage and Marty confesses something he has been keeping from Erin.Marty and Erin have been married for 18 years, and their marriage has survived Marty's affairs and Erin's threats to file for divorce. Dr. Phil asks Erin how she feels about Marty's behavior and his recent interactions with their daughters.

"I'm really afraid for my children, and I'm afraid for all of us right now," she says. She doesn't think that Marty is looking far

enough inside himself to make the changes he needs to make. "There's no accountability there. He can't say, 'You know, I made a mistake here and I shouldn't have done that,'" she explains. She tells Dr. Phil that she does not want to deal with that behavior anymore. "I have allowed him to walk all over the boundaries, and what do I do now? Where do I say this is too much? We can't keep inflicting hurt on each other," she says.

Erin admits that she makes mistakes as well. "I say very mean things to him too. I know that, and I've got to change that about myself. But he doesn't even really acknowledge that he's making these mistakes," she explains.

 

Dr. Phil asks Erin, "What do you want that you're not getting?"

"I want him to be honest with me," she replies.

She directs her thoughts to Marty and says: "I want to be able to be intimate and open with you. I want to be able to open my heart and share things with you, private things that I think about. Things that I imagine. Things that I want to do. I want a soft place to land and I want it to be you Marty ... You can't be my soft place to land when you take those soft things and you stab them with me at another time. And you do it with the kids too."

Dr. Phil asks her if she thinks Marty is being honest with her.

"He's not honest with himself. How can he be honest with me?" Erin says.

"Do you trust that he is being faithful to you?"

"I think so at this point," Erin replies.

"Are you being faithful in the marriage at this point?" Dr. Phil asks Marty.

"Very faithful," Marty says.

"Are you being honest with her?"

"Yeah. I am being very honest with her," Marty says.

Dr. Phil explains to them that there are at least two ways to lie. "One is by making an active, overt, misrepresentation," he says, which is

when you say something that isn't true. The other way is when you lie by omission. "You just fail to tell somebody something that you know damn well would be material to them."

Erin says that Marty lies by omission a lot, and points to a recent incident when they received a business check that Marty cashed without telling her. "It wasn't the money," she explains. It was the fact that they didn't communicate. She says that she was embarrassed by the mix-up, and her trust in him was broken again. They received another check and Marty gave it to Erin, but he told her she needed to figure out how to pay the bills, and he took no responsibility for the money.

When Marty tries to minimize what happened, a frustrated Dr. Phil asks him, "If it matters to Erin, shouldn't it matter to you?"

"Yeah, but I don't question every little thing," Marty tells him.

Dr. Phil responds, "But you hide every little thing!"

"No I don't. That's bull crap!" a defensive Marty says, but admits that he used to lie.

Dr. Phil asks Marty, "Are you honest with her about where you go, and what you do, and

where you spend money and all those sort of things?"

"Extremely," he replies.

"Would it surprise you to know that I again have overt evidence that that is not the case?" Dr. Phil asks Marty and Erin.

Marty replies saying, "Yeah, it would totally surprise me."

Erin shakes her head no.