I have been a psychotherapist and marriage and family counselor for over fifty years. I feel blessed to have a career where I can help men and women live more authentic lives, love deeply, and make a positive difference in the world. However, the truth is much more personal and complicated.
I was born into deception, a story I never learned until I was an adult and had gone through two divorces and written a book about my conflicted love life — Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: Overcoming Romantic and Sexual Addictions.
My mother and father met in 1928 in Greenwich Village, New York. He was twenty-two years old and an aspiring actor. He had just turned twenty and longed to write the great American novel.
I was told stories of The Village when it arrived as a center for artists, writers and musicians. The area was alive with progressive ideas and radical politics, attracting artists and intellectuals of all stripes. Like mine growing up in San Francisco in the 1960s, experimental lifestyles and free love were in the air.
My mother told me that there was another man in her life at the time, a young journalist who worked for the New York Times. Long after my father and she divorced, she admitted that she had several lovers that she kept secret.
When people visit me on MenAlive they see my welcome video, “Confessions of a Divorced Marriage Counselor”. In my book, Looking for love in all the wrong placesI share the ways cheating and addictions have affected my love life. In my book, The Illuminated Marriage: The 5 Transformational Stages of Relationships and Why the Best Are Yet to Come I am sharing my healing journey.
The Crisis of Honesty: Preserving Our Most Valuable Virtue in an Increasingly Dishonest World
I recently had the opportunity Christian B. Miller interviewauthor of the book The Crisis of Honesty: Preserving Our Most Valuable Virtue in an Increasingly Dishonest World. I asked him to give me a little background on himself and his work. Here’s what he told me:
“I live in Winston-Salem, North Carolina with my amazing wife and three children. I have been incredibly fortunate to spend the last twenty years at Wake Forest University, where I am now the AC Reid Professor of Philosophy. My research is mainly on virtue and moral character, and for ten years I was the leader of THE Character work and The Honesty Projecttwo of the world’s largest research programs on these topics.
In addition to my academic writing, I have a new popular book coming out in May, The Crisis of Honesty: Preserving Our Most Valuable Virtue in an Increasingly Dishonest World to keep up with a previous transaction book, The Character Gap: How Good Are We? I was a research associate for Forbesand have written about The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Dallas Morning News, Slate, The Conversation, Newsweek, Aeon, and Christianity Today.”
I found Christian Miller’s book and work timely and important. He says honesty is eroding at an alarming rate in many areas of society today as we face a series of crises of honesty:
- The frequency of deepfakes has skyrocketed, now that they are simply in construction and undetectable.
- In education, many students use artificial intelligence to complete their written assignments with little chance of detection.
- In politics, social media helps spread fake news, and polarization reduces our tendency to condemn political dishonesty if it aligns with our own views.
- In public spaces, it is easier to become a celebrity than at any time in human history, and yet celebrity encourages greater dishonesty.
- In religion, religious leaders are increasingly faced with temptations to plagiarize sermon material from the Internet and artificial intelligence.
- In our relationships, with the easy availability of online pornography, anonymous chat rooms, and cheating sites like Ashley Madison, cheating in a relationship has never been easier.
The section on relationships was particularly relevant to the work I do with clients. Miller says,
“If there’s one thing discussed in this book that’s been around forever, it’s infidelity, both sexual and emotional. Where there are exclusive romantic relationships, there’s the threat of cheating. But the rise of the Internet has changed things for the worse here.”
People yearn to have relationships that last over time, but they are becoming more and more difficult. I feel lucky to have learned what makes relationships last and how to keep them alive and well. My wife, Carlin, and I shared what we learned in my book, The Enlightened Marriage: The 5 Transformational Stages of Relationships and Why the Best Is Yet to Come.
You can learn more about The Crisis of Honesty and Christian Miller’s work by visiting his website:
You can watch mine interview with Christian Miller here.
If you would like to receive more information about my own work helping men and the women who love them, visit me at
