TThe problem with romantic betrayal — aside from the obvious pain — is that it’s the sly lifeblood of everything from tabloid headlines and box sets to true-crime podcasts. Because of this, there is a tendency to view it in highly dramatic terms. It’s fine when we’re curled up on the couch watching other people’s grief from a distance, but less helpful when it hits closer to home.
“He’s a cheater,” one friend recently quipped about a mutual acquaintance’s partner. “She should throw him out and change the locks.” Well, maybe. But the man in question is a soft-spoken accountant who lost his mother and his job in the space of six months. Could it have been a temporary blip?
“Many people believe that only ‘bad’ characters are capable of infidelity,” says Dr. Kathy Nickersona relationship psychologist and the author of The courage to stay. “I know for sure that is not true. I met many, many lovely people, who you would think had wonderful characters, who made this very complicated, nuanced, poor decision and were traumatized by what they did.”
Often the reason someone has an affair is because they don’t know how to talk to their partner about the state of their relationship and the problems they’re experiencing, Nickerson explains. “They would typically be people who never had a healthy model of talking about feelings growing up. They just don’t know how to bring up difficult conversations.” Nickerson also points to individuals who developed an avoidant attachment style in childhood, through which they learned that it is not safe to share their feelings with others.
“Although sex addiction affects some individuals, most people have affairs because it’s a pain reliever,” she says. “They suffer, they don’t know how to fix it and they hold on to someone – says a co-worker – with whom they can talk about their problems in a low-stakes way. For most of us, being listened to and being validated feels like love. You begin to believe that this is your person. Eventually you realize it’s just a fantasy. For the most part. There are of course exceptions.”
However, all may not be lost. “Couples can survive repeated betrayals and couples can also be broken by a thousand little paper cuts,” says the psychotherapist Charlotte Fox Weber. “In therapy we talk about the concept of rupture and repair. Sometimes after a relationship it can break a kind of stalemate in a struggling relationship; it does not necessarily spell the end. Without condoning infidelity, with the mutual desire to stay together, it can actually create space for growth, recovery and renewed commitment.”
Fox Weber says the reasons for betrayal are complex and varied. “There are situations where people are unfaithful because they have been tempted, or because they are repeating a pattern, or because they feel ignored, overlooked or inadequate. There is rarely just one cause. Sometimes infidelity is just one’s way of driving the plot forward.”
So how can a couple begin to navigate back to the way things were before? “Infidelity leaves us in a place where we feel like we’ve lost control of our lives,” says Luke Shillingsa life coach and the host of the podcast After the Affair. “It can feel like you’ve had the rug pulled from under your feet.”
From my own experience, this is exactly how it feels. You have to rewind several chapters and see life through a different lens. Nora Ephron, enter her semi-autobiographical novel Heartburnsummed it up wonderfully: “The infidelity itself is small potatoes compared to the low-level brain damage that occurs when an entire part of your life turns out to be completely different from what you thought it was.”
Shillings says: “If this has happened to you, start by clarifying the facts of the matter, even if they are not details you want to hear from your partner. Then recognize the things you can control versus those you can’t. Take responsibility for what your current situation is. By that I mean working on building your own resilience and self-care. Ask yourself: how can I embrace this discomfort and use it as a catalyst for growth and change? How can I move forward through this otherwise undesirable situation?”
He also strongly advises people who have decided to work through things with their partner to examine their reasons for doing so. “It is very easy to stay for the children, or the money, or the house, or the social life and family support. Cultural and religious expectations can also play a role. Forget about it for now and make it very clear that you want to be in the relationship regardless. Then go back to the externals, because they do exist. It’s about knowing your motivations in your own mind.”
The biggest challenge is to restore trust. “It’s very, very difficult,” says Shillings. “It’s not just that the other person’s behavior fell short of what was expected; we can lose faith in our own judgment. Learn to pay attention to your intuition and notice the times you ignored your gut instincts and when it paid off.”
Counterintuitively, rather than feeling 100% certain that your partner will never cheat again, Shillings suggests getting comfortable with the small possibility that trust might be broken in the future. “If you can, relax into the possibility that you actually choose to trust this person because of all the good and wonderful things that come from a relationship with them. Are you willing to throw it away because of a sliver of concern or possibility that they can betray you?”
Something rarely addressed in advice columns is the afterlife of the cheater who stays. “I always advise them to grieve the loss of the person they were entangled with,” says Fox Weber. “It’s not just the pain of having something end suddenly, but also the sense of self that came with it. It can be a slow, difficult process to rekindle a sense of self that doesn’t feed the intoxication of a relationship.
“Even if you’ve made a healthy choice, life can feel dreary and beige afterwards. You did the right thing, but it’s not going to be as flashy and exciting as this secret thing. You have to find fascination again in ordinary life.”
Talking about what happened – and why – is extremely important, but it needs to be done at regular times. “If you don’t block off time for these difficult discussions, you end up talking about them every minute of the day, which overwhelms the nervous system,” says Nickerson.
“The other very important thing, if you’ve been cheated on, is to remind yourself that it had absolutely nothing to do with you,” she concludes. “It was [the psychotherapist] Esther Perel who came up with the line: ‘People have affairs to become another person, not to be with another person.’ And if you find yourself dwelling on the qualities of the other woman or the other man, remember this: supermodels and Hollywood stars cheat all the time.”
