Getting Cheated on May Have Nothing to Do with You or Your Relationship: So What’s the Problem?
By Mary Claire Schibelka, LPC
Imagine that you’re in a relationship, and one day, you discover that your partner was unfaithful. You might immediately ask yourself, “Am I not good enough?” or “What’s missing in this relationship that they had to go somewhere else to find?” Many people believe that if their partner cheats, it must be due to a shortcoming either in the relationship, sex, or worse- in themselves. But what if I told you that it’s possible none of those things were the problem?
Esther Perel, Belgian researcher, therapist, and relationship expert, describes in her book on infidelity, The State of Affairs, as well as in her viral TED Talk, “Rethinking Infidelity,” that there is much more to cheating than often meets the eye. Societally, we tend to think that only people who are unhappy in their relationships turn to infidelity. The truth is that even those in the happiest of relationships cheat, and it’s often for one of these two reasons:
Lost Identity
Perel tells a story in both The State of Affairs and her TED Talk about “Priya,” a woman who cheated on her husband with an arborist who came to remove a tree from her yard after Hurricane Sandy. Priya was happy. She had a good husband and a good marriage. That was the problem. Priya had always been good. She had always done what was expected of her. Sleeping with the tattooed arborist wasn’t about escaping her happy life. It was about escaping herself and her pristine identity, thus reclaiming the adolescence she felt she never had.
The same is true for many others in happy marriages. The rebellion of an affair feels youthful and free when the white picket fence goes from feeling comfortable to confining. In these cases, cheating isn’t as much about finding someone else as it is being someone else.
Life and Death
Perel also points out that many of her clients report cheating after experiencing some kind of loss, such as the death of a parent or a terminal diagnosis. Once satisfied with lives made up of dinner with the inlaws and children’s soccer games, an encounter with death leaves many asking, “Is this really all there is? Am I really going to live the rest of my life without the excitement of being with someone new again?”
When Perel asks her clients what it was like for them to stray, she often hears the same response: “I felt so alive.” The secrecy, desire, and danger of an affair create a recipe for adrenaline. The rush is one that years of marriage can only envy. When reminded of our own mortality, an affair seemingly grants access to life at its fullest and even feelings of transcendence. For many, infidelity appears to be what Perel calls “an antidote to deadness.”
I’ve Been Cheated On. What Do I Do?
As devastating as affairs can be, recovery is possible. Perel recommends avoiding the surface level questions many ask after being betrayed, such as, “Was she better in bed than me?” or, “Did he look like me?” Instead, get to the root of the affair by asking questions like, “What did this affair mean to you?”, “How did you feel while it was going on?”, and, “Who were you able to be in that relationship that you felt you could not be with me?”
The answers to these questions can shed light on the underlying feelings and motivations of the partner who cheated. They also open the door for you, the betrayed, to express how your identity is affected by the relationship, any grievances you may have been keeping secret, and what it takes for you to feel alive and invested in your relationship. While I would never recommend infidelity to a couple, exploring the causes of it after the fact can lead to new understandings of each other and even deeper levels of intimacy than ever before.