infidelity

 Infidelity

Why do we cheat and why do Happy People Cheat and when we say infidelity what exactly do you mean is it a Hook-Up, a Love Story paid sex, a chat room, a message with happy endings. 

Why do we think that men cheat out of boredom and fear of intimacy but women cheat out of loneliness and hunger for intimacy & is an affair always the end of a relationship for the past 10 years 

I have come across tens of couples who have been shattered by infidelity there is one simple act of transgression that can rob a couple from their relationship their happiness and their very identity an affair and yet this extremely common act is so poorly understood so this talk is for anyone who has ever loved

Adultery has existed since marriage was invented & so too the Taboo against it. In fact, infidelity has the tenacity that marriage can only envy so much so, that this is the only Commandment that is repeated twice in the Bible, once for doing it and once for just thinking about.

So how do we reconcile what is universally Forbidden yet universally practised now throughout history men practically have the licence to cheat with Little consequence and supported by a host of biological & evolutionary theories that justify their need to roam? 

So the double standard  is as old as adultery itself

But who knows what’s really  going on under the sheets their right because when it comes to sex the pressure for man is to boast & to  exaggerate but the pressure for women is to hide minimize and deny which isn’t surprising

when you consider that there are still 9 countries where women can be killed for straying.

 now monogamy used to be one person  for life today monogamy is one person at a time

I mean many of you probably have said I am monogamist in all my relationships

we used to marry and had sex for the first time but now we marry and we stop having sex with others, the fact is that monogamy had nothing to do with love, men rely on women's fidelity in order to know whose children these are & who gets the cows when I die.

Now everyone wants to know what percentage of people cheat I've been asked that questions since I arrived at this conference it applies to you but the definition of infidelity keeps on expanding sex-texting watching p*** staying secretly active on dating apps so because there is no universally agreed-upon definition of what even constitutes infidelity estimates vary widely from 26 % to 75% but on top of it we are walking contradictions so 95% of us will say that it is terribly wrong for our partner to lie about having an affair but just about the same amount of us will say that's exactly what we would do if we were having one

now.

I like this definition of an affair it brings together the three key elements a secretive relationship which is the core structure of an affair and emotional connection to 1 Degree or another and a sexual Alchemy an Alchemy is a keyword here because of the erotic frizome is such that the kiss that you only imagine giving can be as powerful & as enchanting as hours of actual lovemaking. 

As Marcel Proust said it’s our imagination that is responsible for love, not the other person so it's never been easier to cheat and it's never been more difficult to keep a secret and never has infidelity exact of such a psychological torm when marriage was economic enterprise infidelity threatened our economic security.

But not that marriage is romantic arrangement infidelity threatens our emotional security ironically we used to turn to adultery that was the space where we sought pure love but now that we seek love in marriage adultery destroys it.

Now there are  3 ways that I think infidelity hurts differently today we have a romantic ideal in which we turn to one person 2 fulfil an endless list of needs to be my greatest lover my best friend the best parent my trusted confidant my emotional companion my intellectual equal and I am it  I am chosen I am unique I am indispensable and irreplaceable I am the one and  infidelity tells me I am not it is the ultimate betrayal infidelity shatters the Grand ambition of love

But If throughout history infidelity has always been painful today it is often traumatic because it threatens our sense of self so my patient Ronaldo he is plagued he goes on I told I know my life I thought I Knew who You Were who we were as a couple who I was now I question everything infidelity a violation of trust a crisis of Identity can I ever trust you again he asks can I never trust anyone again.  

This is also one Mrs Kavia Bruce is telling when she is talking to me about her story with Aaron married two kids, Aaron just left on a business trip and Kavia is playing on his iPad with the Boys when she sees a message appear on the screen can't wait to see you strange she thinks we just saw each other and then another message can't wait to hold you in my arms And Kavia realizes these are not for her.

She also tells me that her father had affairs but her mother she found one little receipt in the pocket & a Little bit of lipstick on the collar, Kavia goes digging and she finds hundreds of messages and photos exchanged in desires expressed the vivid details of mixed two-year affair unfold in front of her in real-time. And it made me think affairs in the digital age at death by A Thousand Cuts

But then we have another paradox that we are dealing with these days because of this romantic ideal we are relying on our partner's fidelity with a unique Ferver but we also have never been more inclined to stray and not because we have new desire’s today but because we live in an era where we feel that we are entitled to pursue our desires because this is the culture where I deserve to be happy and if we used to divorce because we were unhappy today we divorce because we could be happier and if divorce carried all the shame today choosing to stay when you can leave is a new shame.

So Kavia she can't talk to her friends because she's afraid that they will Judge her for still loving Aaron and everywhere she turns she get’s the same advice leave him to throw the dog on the curb and if the situation was reverse Aaron would be in the same situation staying is a new shame so if we can divorce why do we still have affairs.

Now the typical assumption is that if someone cheats & if there is something wrong in your relationship or wrong with you but millions of people can’t all be pathological the logic goes like this if you have everything you need at home then there is no need to go looking elsewhere assuming that there is such a thing as a perfect marriage that will inoculate us against wanderlust but what if passion has a finite shelf life what if there are things that even a good relationship can never provide.

If even Happy People cheat what is it about the vast majority of people that I actually work with are not at all chronic philanderers they are often people who are deeply monogamist in their beliefs and at least for the partner but they find themselves in a conflict between their values and their behaviour they often are people who actually being faithful for decades.

But one day they cross the line that never thought they would cross & at the risk of losing everything but for a glimmer of what affairs are an act of betrayal and them are also an expression of longing and loss at a heart of an affair you will often find a longing & a yearning for an emotional connection for Novelty for freedom for autonomy for sexual intensity a wish to recapture lost parts of ourselves or an attempt to bring back vitality in the face of loss and tragedy and thinking about 

Another patient of mine Priya who is blissfully married & loves her husband and would never want to hurt that man but she also tells me that she is always done what was expected from her good girl good wife good mother taking care of her immigrant parents.

Priya she fell for the arborist who removes the tree from her yard after Hurricane Sandy and with his truck and his tattoos he is quite the opposite of her but at 47 Priyas affairs is about the other lessons that she never had &  her story highlights for me that when we seek the gaze of another it isn't always our partner that we are turning away from but the person that we have ourselves become and it isn't so much that we are looking for another person as much as we are looking for another self now.

All over the world there is one word that people who have affairs always tell me they feel alive and they often will tell me stories of recent losses of a parent who died & a friend that went too soon and bad news at a doctor death and mortality often live in the shadow of an affair because they raised these questions is this it is there more my going on for another 25 years like this will I ever feel that thing again and it has led me to think that perhaps these questions are the ones that propel people to cross the line & that some affairs are an attempt to beat back deadness and an antidote to death.  

And contrary to what you may think affairs are way  less about sex a lot more about the desire for attention desire to feel special desire to feel important and the very structure of an affair the fact that you can never have your lover keeps you wanting  that in itself is a desire machine because the incompleteness the ambiguity keeps you wanting that which you can't have 

Now some of you would be probably thinking  that affairs don't happen in an open relationship but they do  first of all the  conversation about monogamy is not the same as the conversation about infidelity but the fact is that it seems that even when we have the freedom to have other sexual partners we still seem to be lured by the power of the forbidden that if we do that which we are not supposed to do then we feel like we are really doing what we want to

And I was also told quite a few of my patient that if they could bring into their relationships one-tenth of the boldness the imagination and the verve that they put into their affairs they probably would never need to see me.

So how do we heal from an affair dzire Runs deep betrayal runs deep but it can be healed and some affairs are deaths for a relationship that were already dying on the vine but others will jolt us into new possibilities the fact is that the majority of couples who had experienced affair stay together but some of them will merely survive & others will actually be able to turn a crisis into an opportunity

They will be able to turn this into a generative experience and I'm actually thinking even more so for the deceived partner who will often say do you think I didn't want more but I'm not the one who did it now that the affair is exposed they too get to play more and they no longer have to uphold the status quo that may not have been working for them that will either.

I've noticed that a lot of couples in the immediate aftermath of an affair because of this new disorder that may actually lead to a new order will have depths of conversations with honesty and openness that they haven’t had in decades and partners who were sexually in-different find themselves suddenly so lustfully voracious they don’t know suddenly where It is coming from something about the fear of loss will rekindle desire and make way for an entirely new kind of truth.

So when an affair is exposed what are some of the specific things that couples can do we know from the trauma that healing begins when the perpetrator acknowledges the wrongdoing so for the partner who had the affair, for Aaron one thing is 2 end the affair the other is the essence of the important acts of expressing guilt  And remorse for hurting his wife but the truth is that I have noticed that quite a lot of people who have affairs may feel terribly guilty for hurting their partner but they don't feel guilty for the experience of the affair itself and that distinction is important

And Aaron he needs to hold vigil for the relationship he needs to become for a while to the protector of the boundaries it's his responsibility to bring it up because if he thinks about it he can relieve Kavia from the obsession & from heaven to make sure that the affair isn’t forgotten and that in itself begins to restore trust but Kavia or deceived partners.

It is essential to do things that bring back a sense of self-worth to surround oneself with love and with friends and activities that give back joy and meaning and identity but even more important is to curb the curiosity to mind for the so did details where were you where did you do it how often is she better than me in bed questions that only inflict more pain and keep you awake at night and instead switch to what I call the investigative questions the ones that mind the meaning and the motives what did this affair mean for you what were you able to express or experience that you could no longer do with me what was it like for you when you came home what is it about us that you value are you pleased that this is over Every affair will redefine a relationship and every couple will determine.

What The Legacy of the affair will be but affairs are here to stay and they are not going away and the dilemma of love and Desire they don't yield just simple answers of black and white and good and bad and the victim and perpetrator betrayal in a relationship comes in many forms there are many ways that we betray our partners with content with neglect with indifference with violence sexual betrayal is only one way to hurt our partner.

In other words, the victim of an affair is not always the victim of the marriage now you listen to me and I know what you're thinking I have all these lined up and I must be pro affair so you're wrong I have nothing lined up and I am not a pro affair but because I think that good can come out of an affair I have often been asked is very strange question would I ever recommended nor would no more recommend you to have an affair then I would recommend you to have cancer and yet we know that people who have been ill often talk about how their illness had yielded them a new perspective.

I look at affairs from a dual perspective hearth and betrayal on one side growth and self Discovery on the other what did it to you and what is meant for me & so when a couple comes to me in the aftermath of an affair that has been revealed I will often tell them this today in the West most of us are going to have two or three relationships on marriages and some of us are going to do it with the same person your first marriage is over would you like to create a second one together.

thank you

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