The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity

by Esther Perel

Affairs are an act of betrayal and they are also an expression of longing and loss.

How they metabolize the affair will shape the future of their relationship and their lives.

For me, infidelity includes one or more of these three constitutive elements: secrecy, sexual alchemy, and emotional involvement.

One of the powerful attributes of secrecy is its function as a portal for autonomy and control.

As Marcel Proust understood, it’s our imagination that is responsible for love, not the other person.

These stories make a critical point—many affairs are less about sex than about desire: the desire to feel desired, to feel special, to be seen and connected, to

compel attention. All these carry an erotic frisson that makes us feel alive, renewed, recharged. It is more energy than act, more enchantment than intercourse.

In my decades of working with couples, I’ve observed that those who are most successful in keeping the erotic spark alive are those who are comfortable with the mystery in their midst. Even if they are monogamous in their actions, they recognize that they do not own each other’s sexuality. It is precisely the elusiveness of the other that keeps them coming back to discover more.

But is sex ever really just sex? There may be no feelings attached to a random fuck, but there is plenty of meaning to the fact that it happened.

Intimacy is “into-me-see.” I am going to talk to you, my beloved, and I am going to share with you my most prized possessions, which are no longer my dowry and the fruit of my womb but my hopes, my aspirations, my fears, my longings, my feelings—in other words, my inner life. And you, my beloved, will give me eye contact. No scrolling

while I bare my soul. I need to feel your empathy and validation. My significance depends on it.

In a world where it is so easy to feel insignificant—to be laid off, disposable, deleted with a click, unfriended—being chosen has taken on an importance it never had before. Monogamy is the sacred cow of the romantic ideal, for it confirms our specialness. Infidelity says, You’re not so special after all. It shatters the grand ambition of love.

When marriage was an economic arrangement, infidelity threatened our economic security; today marriage is a romantic arrangement and infidelity threatens our emotional security.

It wasn’t just an attack on her, it was an attack on her entire belief system—a breach of some of the most dearly held assumptions about coupledom today. Marriage has become a mythical castle, designed to be everything we could want. Affairs bring it tumbling down, leaving us feeling like there is nothing to hold on to. Perhaps this goes some way toward explaining why modern infidelity is more than painful. It is traumatic.

We are willing to concede that the future is unpredictable, but we expect the past to be dependable. Betrayed by our beloved, we suffer the loss of a coherent narrative—the “internal structure that helps us predict and regulate future actions and feelings [creating] a stable sense of self,” as psychiatrist Anna Fels defines it. In an article describing the corrosive effects of all kinds of relational betrayals, she reflects, “perhaps robbing someone of his or her story is the greatest betrayal of all.”

For now, he needs to listen. This is going to take some work, because he is so invested in preserving an image of himself as not being a “sleazebag” (as he puts it) that he feels compelled to justify himself and his actions. He sees how bad she feels, but it makes him feel bad about himself (shame), which prevents him from feeling bad for her (guilt).

The shift from shame to guilt is crucial. Shame is a state of self-absorption, while guilt is an empathic, relational response, inspired by the hurt you have caused another. We know from trauma that healing begins when perpetrators acknowledge their wrongdoing. Often, when one partner insists that they don’t yet feel acknowledged, even as the one who hurt them insists they feel terrible, it is because the response is still more shame than guilt, and therefore self-focused. In the aftermath of betrayal, authentic guilt, leading to remorse, is an essential repair tool. A sincere apology signals a care for and commitment to the relationship, a sharing of the burden of suffering, and a restoration of the balance of power.

As Maria Popova writes, “The dance of anger and forgiveness,

performed to the uncontrollable rhythm of trust, is perhaps the most difficult in human life, as well as one of the oldest.”

If he volunteers information, he frees her from the constant rehashing. One time, Amanda called him. He told Gillian right away, defusing a potential source of distrust. Another time, when they were at a restaurant, he sensed that Gillian was wondering if he had been there with Amanda. He didn’t wait for her to ask—he told her, unsolicited, and made sure she was comfortable staying there. All of this, abundantly displayed, helps to restore trust, as it makes her feel that they are on the same side.

For her part, Gillian needs to begin to curb her angry outbursts—not because they are unjustified, but because they will not give her what she is really seeking. Anger may make her feel more powerful, temporarily. However, psychologist Steven Stosny observes that “if loss of power was the problem in intimate betrayal, then anger would be the solution. But the great pain in intimate betrayal has little to do with loss of power. Perceived loss of value is what causes your pain—you feel less lovable.”8 In the wake of betrayal, we need to find ways to restore our own sense of self-worth—to separate our feelings about ourselves from the way the other person has made us feel. When it seems like your entire being has been

hijacked and your self-definition rests in the hands of the person who did this to you, it is important to remember that there are other parts to who you are. You are not a reject, although part of you has been rejected. You are not a victim, although part of you has been abused. You are also loved, valued, honored, and cherished by others and even by your unfaithful partner, although you may not feel that in this moment. Realizing that she had totally disconnected from her friends after she merged her entire life with the boyfriend who had now left her, one woman made a list of five people she needed to bring back into her life. She took a two-...

Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl distills a profound truth: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any give...

Where does it hurt the most? What twisted the knife? The slight, the disloyalty, the abandonment, the breach of trust, the lies, the humiliation? Is it loss or rejection? Is it disillusion or shame? Is it relief, resignation, or indignation? What is the particular feeling or constellation of feelings around which you circle?

The mind needs coherence, so it disposes of inconsistencies that threaten the structure of our lives. This becomes more pronounced when we are betrayed by those we feel closest to and are dependent on—a testament to the lengths we will go to preserve our attachments, however fraught they may be.

I reassure Polly that her jealousy is a natural response, not something to be ashamed of. To acknowledge jealousy is to admit love, competition, and comparison—all of which expose vulnerability. And even more so when you expose yourself to the one who hurt you. The green-eyed monster taunts us at our most defenseless and puts us directly in touch with our insecurities, our fear of loss, and our lack of self-worth. This is not delusional or pathological jealousy (sometimes called the black-eyed monster), where unfounded suspicion is fed more by childhood trauma than by any current cause. It is the type of jealousy that is intrinsic to love and therefore to infidelity. Contained within this simple word are a host of intense feelings and reactions, which can run the spectrum from mourning, self-doubt, and humiliation to possessiveness and rivalry, arousal and excitement, vindictiveness and vengeance, and all the way to violence.

People often ask, What is the difference between envy and jealousy? A definition I have found helpful is that envy relates to something you want but do not have, whereas jealousy relates to something you have but are afraid of losing. Therefore, envy is a tango between two people, yet the dance of jealousy requires three. Envy and jealousy are close cousins and often become intertwined.

She was reliving multiple abandonments, some of which occurred even before she could remember, yet her body “kept the score,” as psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk puts it. Injured love sits on top of other injured loves. Like a ricochet effect across time, one breach in the present can trigger the resonance of all the breaches of the past.

I have often found that for couples in this situation, it can be a relief to finally step out of the helpless narrative of trauma and back into good old drama—the perennial story of fractured love. It’s actually a more empowering stance, more human than pathological.

My tongue will tell the anger of my heart, or else my heart, concealing it, will break. —Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew

One person chooses to have an affair, but in most cases, both people are responsible for the relational context in which it occurs. When the time is right, in the course of therapy, couples need to engage in a two-way examination. But in this process, one distinction must always be made: taking responsibility for creating conditions that may have contributed to the affair is very different from blaming oneself for the affair. In a state of shock, it’s too easy to confuse the two. Your disproportionate self-condemnation can quickly summon up everything you don’t like about yourself as being the reasons your partner strayed.

Revenge often looks petty, but I have come to respect the depth of hurt it conceals. Unable to reclaim the feelings we’ve lavished, we grab the engagement ring instead. And if that’s not enough, we can always change the wills. All are desperate attempts to repossess power, to exact compensation, to destroy the one who destroyed us as a means of self-preservation. Each dollar, each gift, each treasured book we extract from the rubble is meant to match a broken piece inside. But in the end, it’s a zero-sum game. The urge to settle the score corresponds to the intensity of the shame that eats us up. And the deepest shame is that we were stupid enough to trust all along.

No woman should ever give one man all the power to shatter her romantic ideals. There is a big difference between saying, “That one person let me down and I’m hurt,” and saying, “I’ll never love again.”

While it can at times be a positive motivator, more often, as psychologist Steven Stosny cautions, “Bouts of anger and resentment always drop you down lower than the point at which they picked you up.”

First, he needs to know how to stay with his feelings when he has no other choice, and to get away from them when he can. In moments when one is flooded with emotion, it’s important to know how to self-regulate. Breathing exercises, soothing hot showers, bracing cold lakes, walks in nature, singing and dancing to music, and active sports can all be helpful. Stillness and movement can both be sources of relief.

I ask Alexander to consider that waiting for Erin to make up her mind isn’t an abdication of pride or power—it is an expression of love. Slowly he moves from hurtfulness to hurt.

To understand America’s views on secrecy and truth-telling, we need to examine the current definition of intimacy. Modern intimacy is bathed in self-disclosure, the trustful sharing of our most personal and private material—our feelings. From an early age, our best friend is the one to whom we tell our secrets. And since our partner today is assumed to be our best friend, we believe, “I should be able to tell you anything, and I have a right to immediate and constant access to your thoughts and feelings.” This entitlement to know, and the assumption that knowing equals closeness, is a feature of modern love. Ours is a culture that reveres the ethos of absolute frankness and elevates truth-telling to moral perfection. Other cultures believe that when everything is out in the open and ambiguity is done away with, it may not increase intimacy, but compromise it.

“Fair enough. And I’m not suggesting you impose a harem on her. But the point is, she didn’t sign up for the lying either. You never gave her a choice. By definition, if you go behind someone’s back, you’re acting in a unilateral fashion.”

So often, in the wake of an infidelity, I hear repentant partners promise never to be attracted to another again. This simply engenders more fibs. It would be more realistic to say, “Yes, I may feel attractions, but because I love you and I respect you, and I don’t want to hurt you again, I will choose not to act on it.” That’s a more honest—and more trustworthy—statement.

Others feel a need to gorge themselves on detail. In an effort to protect them from information overload, I remind them that once we know, we have to deal with the consequences of knowing. I often ask, Do you really want the answer to your question, or do you want your partner to know that you have the question? I make a distinction between two kinds of inquiry—the detective questions, which mine the sordid details, and the investigative questions, which mine the meanings and the motives. Detective questions include: How many times did you sleep with him? Did you do it in our bed? Does she scream when she comes? How old did you say she was?

Did you suck his cock? Was she shaved? Did she let you do anal? Detective questions add further scarring and are often retraumatizing, inviting comparisons in which you are always the loser. Yes, you need to know if he protected himself or if you should get tested. You need to know if you should worry about your bank account. But maybe you don’t need to know if she was blond or brunette, if her breasts were real, if he had a bigger penis. The interrogations, the injunctions, and even the forensic evidence fail to assuage your fundamental fears. Moreover, they make reconciliation much more difficult, and if you choose to separate, they will be fodder for the legal proceedings. Another line of inquiry may be more conducive to rebuilding trust. Investigative questions recognize that the truth often lies beyond the facts. They include: Help me understand what the affair has meant for you. Were you looking for it, or did it just happen? Why now? What was it like when you would come home? What did you experience there that you don’t have with me? Did you feel entitled to your affair? Did you want me to find out? Would you have ended it if I hadn’t found out? Are you relieved it’s all in the open, or would you have preferred if it stayed

hush-hush? Were you trying to leave me? Do you think that you should be forgiven? Would you respect me less if I were to forgive you? Did you hope I would leave so you wouldn’t have to feel responsible for breaking up the family? The investigative approach asks more enlightening questions that probe the meaning of the affair, and focuses on analysis rather than facts. Sometimes we ask one question while the real question hides behind it. “What kind of sex did you have with him?” is often a stand-in for “Don’t you like the sex we have?” What you want to know is legitimate, but how you go about asking it makes all the difference to your peace of mind. My colleague Steven Andreas suggests that to transform a detective into an investigative question, it is helpful to ask yourself: If I knew all the ans...

Steering our questions toward what the affair means—the longings, the fears, the lusts, the hopes—offers an alternative role to that of the victim turned police officer. Authentic curiosity creates a bridge—a first step toward renewed intimacy. We become collaborators in understanding and mending. Affairs are solo enterprises; making meaning is a joint venture.

Sometimes I can feel my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I’m not living. —Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

To doggedly look for marital causes in cases like these is an example of what’s known as the “streetlight effect,” where the drunken man is searching for his missing keys not where he dropped them but where the light is. Human beings have a tendency to look for things in the places where it is easiest to search for them rather than in the places where the truth is more likely to be found.

Perhaps this explains why many couples therapists overwhelmingly subscribe to the symptom theory. This way, they can focus on the familiar territory of the relationship rather than submerge themselves in the quagmire of transgression. It’s easier to put the blame on a failed marriage than to grapple with the existential imponderables of our ambitions, our longings, and our ennui. The problem is that unlike the drunkard, whose search is futile, therapists can always find problems in a marriage. These just may not be the right keys to unlock the meaning of the affair.

The fact that a couple has “issues” doesn’t mean that these issues led to the affair.

Priya’s affair is neither a symptom nor a pathology; it’s a crisis of identity, an internal rearrangement of her personality. In our sessions, we talk about duty and desire, about age and youth.

Because we cannot have the lover, it ensures that we keep wanting, for we always want that which we cannot have. It is this just-out-of-reach quality that lends affairs their erotic mystique and ensures that the flame of desire keeps burning.

Infidelity promises “lives that could never be mine,” as journalist Anna Pulley writes in a beautiful essay about her affair with a married woman. “I was,” she writes, “a road she would never take. . . . Ours was a love that hinged on possibility—what we could offer each other was infinite potential. Reality never stood a chance against that kind of promise. . . . She represented a singular perfection, she had to because she contained none of the trappings of a real relationship. . . . She was