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.

Fire Needs Air

By Mary Claire Schibelka

“I went through his phone.”  “I hacked her Facebook.” “Give me your Instagram password so I know I can trust you.”  “Share your location with me.” If you haven’t been on the giving or receiving end of one of these statements, I’m willing to bet that you know or have heard of someone who has.

In the digital age, cheating seems easier than ever.  Twenty years ago, infidelity meant risking being seen in public together or, at the very least, calling the house phone, never knowing who might answer.  Now, we have the ability to silently converse through text messages, dating apps, Instagram DMs, and Snapchats. We no longer share phones and other devices with each other.  Instead, we keep them tucked away in our pockets and often protected by passwords.

For some who fear betrayal, the antidote to their anxiety is total access.  If they can see their partner’s activity, then they can prevent cheating, or at least eliminate the opportunity for it.  This goes hand in hand with the belief that if two people are really in love, they are completely transparent with each other, and doing so increases trust and intimacy.  But what if just the opposite were true?

Esther Perel, famous Belgian psychotherapist and relationship researcher, asserts that in order for desire to endure, partners must maintain a certain degree of independence and privacy.  In fact, the ability for members of a couple to be both autonomous and connected is one of the trademarks of intimacy. Without mystery, novelty, and some elusiveness, the flame of desire can very quickly burn out, thus creating the exact relationship problems we all wish to avoid.

Knowing every detail of your counterpart’s digital activity might not be helpful, anyways.  Typically, when we look for trouble, we are likely to find it, even in things that might not otherwise upset us.  A harmless text message could be misinterpreted by a snooping partner who is hyperaware of any threat to the relationship.  The discovery of a mindlessly “liked” photo might lead to undue suspicions and heartache. While these things are often meaningless, discovering them might feel like a betrayal.

Rather than demanding control and total entry into your partner’s online world, have a discussion and negotiate what is appropriate and what is not.  Is liking pictures posted by the opposite sex okay? A “happy birthday” text to an ex? What about deleting a dating app from your phone but not deleting your account altogether?  The answers to these questions will be different for everyone.

Once boundary lines have been drawn, the next step is to allow room for trust to grow.  Having a hard time trusting your partner? That is a different conversation. Just remember, eliminating privacy is not the answer.  Intimacy and desire need space, or in the words of Esther Perel, “Fire needs air.”