The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity

by Esther Perel

perfect in part because she was an escape, she seemed always to offer more.”

The affair lives in the shadow of the marriage, but the marriage also lives in the center of the affair. Without its delicious illegitimacy, can the relationship with the lover remain enticing?

Morin’s now-famous “erotic equation” states that “attraction plus obstacles equal excitement.”6 High states of arousal, he explains, flow from the tension between persistent problems and triumphant solutions. We are most intensely excited when we are a little off-balance, uncertain, “poised on the perilous edge between ecstasy and disaster.”7 This insight into our human propensities helps to shed light on why people in happy, stable relationships are lured by the charge of transgression. For Priya, the question is bewitching: What if just this once I act as if the rules don’t apply to me? While for some, breaking the rules is a long-deferred dream, for others, entitlement is a way of life. They simply assume they are above the rules. Their narcissism gives them license to breach all conventions. For them, infidelity is opportunism—they cheat with impunity, simply because they can. Their grandiosity is the master narrative.

Taking all of this into account, I hope to guide her toward a fourth option. What she is telling me, in effect, is: I need to end this, but I don’t want to. What I can see, and she has not yet grasped, is that the thing she is really afraid to lose is not him—it’s the part of herself that he awakened. “You think you had a relationship with Truck Man,” I tell her. “Actually, you had an intimate encounter with yourself, mediated by him.”

This distinction between the person and the experience is crucial in helping people to extricate themselves from their affairs. The extramarital excursion will end, but their souvenirs will go on traveling with them. “I don’t expect you to believe me right now, but you can terminate your relationship and keep what it gave you,” I tell her. “You reconnected with an energy, a youthfulness. I know that it feels as if in leaving him, you are severing a lifeline to all of that, but I want you to know that over time you will find that some of this also lives inside of you.” We discuss how to go about saying goodbye. The clean break hasn’t worked because it emphasizes only the negative aspects and does not acknowledge the depth of the experience. Priya and her lover have also tried the slow and gentle approach, spending hours discussing how they should end it. I know how that kind of conversation goes: Couples spend entire nights planning their farewells, but wind up feeling closer and more connected in the face of their impending separation. I introduce a different kind of conversation: a proper goodbye that does not deny all the positives, but holds the contradiction: “I don’t want to end this, yet that’s

what I came to do.” She should express her gratitude for what their relationship has given her and tell him she will always cherish the memory of their time together. She asks me, “I need to do it today, right?” “You’ll have to do it many days,” I tell her. “You’ll have to learn to extract yourself from him. And it won’t be easy. Sometimes it will feel like a root canal. He’s become such a presence in your life that when you don’t see him, at first you’ll walk around numb and empty. This is to be expected and it may take time.” In some situations, this process can be a matter of a single enlightening conversation; in others, it can take weeks or months before the meaning is metabolized and the affair can die a natural death, having served its purpose. For Priya, I suspect it will be the latter. “You’ll have to force yourself not to text, call, follow, or drive by his house. You may slip on ...

As the eminent sociologist Zygmunt Bauman writes, in modern life, “there is always a suspicion . . . that one is living a lie or a mistake; that something crucially important has been overlooked, missed, neglected, left untried, and unexplored; that a vital obligation to one’s own authentic self has not been met or that some chances of unknown happiness completely different from any happiness experienced before have not been taken up in time and are bound to be lost forever if they continue to be neglected.”8 He speaks directly to our nostalgia for unlived lives, unexplored identities, and roads not taken.

As children we have the opportunity to play at other roles; as adults we often find ourselves confined by the ones we’ve been assigned or the ones we have chosen. When we select a partner, we commit to a story. Yet we remain forever curious: What other stories could we have been part of? Affairs offer us a window into those other lives, a peek at the stranger within. Adultery is often the revenge of the deserted possibilities.

In the past decade, it seems to me that affairs with exes have proliferated, thanks to social media. These retrospective encounters occupy a place somewhere between the known and the unknown—bringing together the familiarity of someone you once knew with the freshness created by the passage of time. The flicker with an old flame offers a unique combination of built-in trust, risk-taking, and vulnerability. In addition, it is a magnet for our lingering nostalgia. The person I once was, but lost, is the person you once knew. We all have multiple selves, but in our intimate relationships, over time, we tend to reduce our complexity to a shrunken version of ourselves. One of the essential components of recovery is finding ways to reintroduce the many pieces that were abandoned or exiled along the way.

It is real-life dramas like these that highlight for me the limitations of the symptom theory. Infidelity needs to be seen not simply as a pathology or a dysfunction. We must lend a careful ear to the emotional resonance of transgressive experiences as well as to their fallout; otherwise we perpetuate the compartmentalization that undergirded the affair itself. We leave the couple at risk of sinking back into the status quo. Untangling the meanings of the affair sets the stage for all the decisions

that will follow. Too much is at stake to spend precious time searching for our keys in all the wrong places.

Today I am a woman torn between the terror that everything might change and the equal terror that everything might carry on exactly the same for the rest of my days. —Paulo Coelho, Adultery

At its best monogamy may be the wish to find someone to die with; at its worst it is a cure for the terrors of aliveness. They are easily confused. —Adam Phillips, Monogamy

When I ask people what “being alive” means, they lay out a multifaceted experience. Power, validation, confidence, and freedom are the most common flavors. Add to these the elixir of love, and you have an intoxicating cocktail. There is the sexual awakening or reawakening, of course, but it doesn’t stop there. The awakened describe a sense of movement when they had felt constricted, an opening up of possibilities in a life that had narrowed down to a single predictable path, a surge of emotional intensity where everything seemed bland. I have come to think of encounters like these as existential affairs, because they cut deep to the essence of life itself.

However we may judge their consequences, these liaisons are not frivolous. Their power is often as mystifying to the person involved in the secret as they are to the spouse who uncovers it. But having heard the same story so many times, I know that there is a method to the madness—an underlying riddle of human nature that leads people to unexpected trespasses. I often feel like part therapist, part philosopher—explaining to couples the existential paradoxes that make what seems inconceivable also quite logical.

An Antidote to Death In a surprising number of these cases, a direct line can be traced from an extramarital adventure back to our most basic human fear—the confrontation with mortality. I frequently witness affairs occurring on the heels of loss or tragedy. When the grim reaper knocks at the door—a parent passes, a friend goes too soon, a baby is lost—the jolt of love and sex delivers a vital affirmation of life. Then there are other more symbolic losses. Bad news at the doctor can trample our sense of youth and

robustness in an instant. I’ve seen quite a few men and women with a cancer diagnosis in hand who were escaping their death anxiety in the arms of a new love. Infertility puts us face-to-face with the inability to create life. Unyielding unemployment saps our confidence and makes us feel worthless. Depression robs us of hope and joy. Dangerous circumstances like wars or disaster zones incite us to take unusual emotional risks. In the face of the helplessness and vulnerability we feel at such moments, infidelity can be an act of defiance. Freud described eros as the life instinct, doing battle with thanatos, the death instinct.

The historian and essayist Pamela Haag has written a whole book about marriages like Danica and Stefan’s, which she calls “melancholy marriages.” Analyzing the plight of these “semi-happy couples,” she explains: A marriage adds things to your life, and it also takes things away. Constancy kills joy; joy kills security; security kills desire; desire kills stability; stability kills lust. Something gives; some part of you recedes. It’s something you can live without, or it’s not. And maybe it’s hard to know before the marriage which part of the self is expendable . . . and which is part of your spirit.

The wife can’t wait for sex to be over. The lover wishes it would never end. It’s easy to think that it’s the men who make the difference. But the context matters more. And by context I mean the story she weaves for herself and the character she gets to play within it. Home, marriage, and motherhood have forever been the pursuit of many women, but also the place where women cease to feel like women.

“Erotic silence” is the term psychotherapist and author Dalma Heyn uses to describe this predicament—an “unexpected, in-articulable deadening of pleasure and vitality”8 that happens to some women after they tie the knot. “A woman’s sexuality depends on her authenticity and self-nurturance,” she writes. Yet marriage and motherhood demand a level of selflessness that is at odds with the inherent selfishness of desire. Being responsible for others makes it harder for women to focus on their own needs, to feel spontaneous, sexually expressive, and carefree. For many, finding at home the kind of self-absorption that is essential to erotic pleasure proves a challenge. The burdens of caretaking are indeed a powerful anti-aphrodisiac.

Meana’s research with fellow psychologist Karen E. Sims confirms the erotic fate of so many otherwise happily married women. Their findings identify three core themes that “represent dragging forces on sexual desire.” First, the institutionalization of relationships—a passage from freedom and independence to commitment and responsibility. Second, the overfamiliarity that develops when intimacy and closeness replace individuality and mystery. And lastly, the desexualizing nature of certain roles—mother, wife, and house manager all promote the de-eroticization of the self.

I often say to my patients that if they could bring into their relationships even a tenth of the boldness, the playfulness, and the verve that they bring to their affairs, their home life would feel quite different. Our creative imagination seems to be richer when it comes to our transgressions than to our commitments. Yet while I say this, I also think back to a poignant scene in the movie A Walk on the Moon. Pearl (Diane Lane) has been having an affair with a free-spirited blouse salesman. Alison, her teenage daughter, asks, “Do you love the blouseman more than all of us?” “No,” her mother replies. “But sometimes it’s easier to be different with a different person.”

Reconciling the erotic and the domestic is not a problem to solve; it is a paradox to manage.

His last comment is not so strange to me—it’s an important clue to his impasse. It’s one thing to lose interest; there are plenty of people for whom voraciousness mellows into tenderness. But what he describes is more visceral—an aversive sexual response to his partner, almost as though it would mean crossing a forbidden line. This sense of taboo alerts me to the possible presence of what therapist Jack Morin calls a “love-lust split.” “One of the key challenges of erotic life is to develop a comfortable interaction between our lusty urges and our desire for an affectionate bond with a lover,” 1 Morin writes. I suspect that Garth’s quest for sex on the outside is a manifestation of his inability to integrate closeness and sexual passion. Men in his predicament are not just bored, looking for novelty, ready to move on.

I explain to Garth that desire needs a certain degree of aggression—not violence, but an assertive, striving energy. It’s what allows you to pursue, to want, to take, and even to sexualize your partner. The prominent sexuality researcher Robert Stoller describes this kind of objectification as an essential ingredient of sexuality—not treating the other as an object, but seeing the other as an independent sexual being. It creates the healthy distance that allows you to eroticize your partner, which is essential if you want to remain sexual with a person who becomes family.

For men who are afraid of their own aggression and seek to segregate it, desire becomes alienated from love. For them, the greater the emotional intimacy, the greater

the sexual reticence. Men with extreme versions of this split often end up affectionate but sexless with their partners, while avidly consuming hard-core porn or engaging in various forms of transactional sex. In these emotionless contexts, their desire can manifest freely without the fear of hurting a loved one. Some may associate the love-lust split with Freud’s madonna-whore complex, and they are certainly related. However, the way I conceptualize the divide is not only about how the woman is perceived but also about a split in the man’s identity. The part that loves, that feels intensely attached and responsible, is the good boy. The part that lusts becomes the bad boy—ruthless, subversive, irresponsible. I could sum it up as follows: They can say “fuck me” sexually only when they have said “fuck you” emotionally. Callous as that may sound, every man who has lived with this relational framework recognizes it on the spot. When I talk with the partner...

our conversations is not her looks but her attitude. Her act presents a woman who is anything but fragile. She is sexually assertive, even demanding, and never reminds him of his victimized mother or his overwhelmed wife. Her confidence and availability are a turn-on that frees him from any caretaking responsibilities. As psychoanalyst Michael Bader has written, her lustfulness allays the fear that he’s imposing his primitive, even predatory, urges on her. Hence, his inner conflict around his own aggression is temporarily lifted. He can safely let go in ways that he is unable to do with the wife that he loves and respects. Love-lust splits come in many forms. For some, it occurs when the partner is enlisted—willingly or not—in a parental role. This may be the classic “I married someone like my mommy/daddy,” or it may be quite the opposite: “I married someone who could be the mommy/daddy I never had.” It may simply be the role of motherh...

repulsed. By the time baby number three came along, she filled the vacancy with a lover who delighted in the erotics of fertility. However it occurs, the over-familialization of an intimate partner spells disaster for sex. The person becomes divested of his or her erotic identity. The relationship may be very loving, affectionate, and tender, but it is devoid of desire. The love-lust split is one of the most challenging infidelity scenarios I confront. It’s easy to think that if these men didn’t have their side action, they would simply bring their libidos home. But I’ve seen many who extinguish their parallel flames only to find themselves shut down and unable to reignite the home fires. For some, the divide is so vast that it’s difficult to help them find a way out. More often, there’s a lurking trap. One of the roving husband’s flings turns more serious. He falls in love and thinks he’s found the holy gra...

predicament a short while later. Garth is on his t...

When it comes to desire, men and women are in fact more similar than they are different. Nothing in Scott’s sexual blueprint makes me think that his sexuality is any less complicated or less emotional than the female version. Nor is it less relational. When I hear the pressure Scott puts on himself to please his girlfriend, the way he grades himself by the number of her orgasms, and his fear that she liked it better with previous boyfriends, I hear shame, performance anxiety, and fear of rejection. “What else should we call these emotions if not relational?” I ask him.

Men’s sexuality is dependent on their inner life. It’s more than just a biological urge. Sex, gender, and identity are deeply interrelated for men. If a man has low self-esteem or feels depressed, anxious, insecure, ashamed, guilty, or alone, it has a direct effect on how he feels about himself sexually. If he feels dissed in his job, too small, too short, too fat, too poor, it can directly impact his ability to become aroused.

This is where men and women differ. Men are much more likely to soothe their inner rumblings by turning to less emotionally complicated forms of sex, including solitary pleasures and paid ones. In fact, I can imagine that the level of dissociation that they bring to their sexual fixes is a direct response

seduce her and she never rejects him. Neither does she make him feel inadequate, and her moans assure him that she is having the best of times. Porn entices with a momentary promise to shield men from their basic sexual vulnerabilities. A lot can be said about the differences between prostitutes, strip clubs, full body massage, and porn, but in this sense they all yield common emotional dividends. They put men at the center of the woman’s attention, relieved of any pressure to perform and in a position where they can fully receive. After listening to the stories of men, I’ve come to understand the following: In light of the multiple emotional transactions involved in marital lovemaking, the simple equation of a few bucks for an anonymous fuck starts to seem like a better deal. When he prefers to pay to play or opts for a solo porn session, he buys simplicity and a seemingly uncomplicated identity. He purchases the right to be selfish—a brief hour of psychological freedom before hopping on the commuter train home. As more than one man has said to me, you don’t pay the hooker to come—you pay her to leave.

Even so, can we really call it “just sex” when the entire enterprise is set up to avoid certain emotional pitfalls and fulfill a host of unspoken emotional needs? When a man feels lonely or unloved; when he’s depressed, stressed, or disabled; when he’s caged by intimacy or unable to connect, is it sex he buys or is it kindness, warmth, friendship, escape, control, and validation all delivered in a sexual transaction? Sexuality is the sanctioned language through which men can access a range of forbidden emotions. Tenderness, softness, vulnerability, and nurturance have not traditionally been encouraged for men. The body is the place where they have sought to satisfy these needs disguised in a sexualized language. When we say about men that all they want is sex, maybe we shouldn’t take this literally. Sex is the entrance to their emotional antechamber. Interestingly, the opposite may be true of women. Their sexual needs have not been culturally sanctioned, but their emotional needs are well acknowledged. Perhaps hidden in women’s pursuit of love lies a host of physical yearnings that can be justified only when wrapped in an emotional package. This turns the old

adage that “men use love to get sex, while women use sex to get love” on its head. Both men and women turn up in the therapist’s office when their disavowed desires lead them to the wrong bed. But if we take their behavior at face value and label them with the old tags—men as cheaters, sex addicts, or worse; women as lo...

If the first question that such scenarios typically provoke is “Why didn’t they leave?” the next predictable question is “Did they try talking about it?” In the era of democratic couples communication, we believe in the talking cure. And to be sure, there’s nothing like a good heart-to-heart to make us feel heard. But when our lamentations fall on deaf ears, the loneliness is worse than being alone. It’s less painful to eat by ourselves than to sit across the table from someone who has tuned us out.

culture tends to minimize the importance of sex for the well-being of a couple. It is seen as optional. Companionate coupledom has many merits, and there are plenty of people who nurture affectionate relationships without suffering sexual agony. But when sex is woefully lacking, and not by mutual agreement, it can leave a gap in an otherwise satisfying relationship that is unbearable. And when we haven’t been touched in years, we are more vulnerable to the kindness of strangers.

For most people, the mention of sexually open relationships sets red lights flashing. Few subjects within the realm of committed love evoke such a visceral response. What if she never comes back? Can’t he appreciate the good we have and accept that he can’t have it all? What if she falls in love? Marriage is compromise! The idea that one can love one person and have sex with another makes some of us shudder. We fear that transgressing one limit leads to the potential breach of all limits. That may be so. But as too many people discover, closed marriage is hardly a bulwark against disaster. Furthermore, I resist colluding with false premises. Too many people pretend they are working on rekindling their desire. They like the idea, but they actually don’t want the reality. They want the family, the companionship, or the life they’ve built together; they don’t really want to get down and dirty with each other. When that writing is on the wall, might nonmonogamy be a more propitious outcome than divorce? The unwillingness to even entertain the possibility ends up

demolishing too many caring partnerships and happy, stable families.

Couples like Matt and Mercedes may decide to separate—maybe now, maybe later, maybe never. But I would hope whatever they choose will be the result of a thoughtful reflection on their respective needs and whether they can draw a circle that is big enough to encompass both of them with integrity. I’m sure that for all involved, this would be preferable to adulterous recidivism. When a second infidelity occurs, people are quick to say, “once a cheater, always a cheater,” as if it were confirmation of a character flaw. But sometimes a more accurate explanation is that the core issue was never worked through. Wholesale condemnation of an affair too easily distracts us from the real matters behind it. It also creates a fixed hierarchy of relational offenses. To this day, emotional and sexual rejection don’t g...

There is no easy answer to Lia’s conundrum. Although her current situation feels fraught with uncertainty, one thing is certain: Her lover will never give her what she longs for. Ending the relationship will propel her into a real uncertainty, but also into choice and potential. She needs to break out of the sense of helplessness and reclaim her personal power and agency. There will be pain, but there will also be pride and the possibility of a better future.

Whether the ending is done in person or in writing, it must be responsible, mature, caring, and clear. I coach Jim in great detail on what to say, working through several iterations. He needs to acknowledge the reciprocity of their feelings, appreciate the depth of what they shared, apologize for the false promises, set clear boundaries, and give her closure. These are the essential elements of a goodbye. It is not that he doesn’t love her, but rather, that because he loves her he is leaving her. And once it is done, it needs to be definitive; he can’t leave her any threads of hope to grab on to. There is no way for this not to be painful, but it makes a world

of difference if Lauren knows that she’s not the only one feeling heartbroken. This approach is different from that of many therapists, who counsel a more abrupt ending. Typically, the advice is to cease all communication, delete her contact details, unfriend her on Facebook, and not mention her name. But seeing the fallout of this practice has made me seek more humane interventions. I’ve comforted many women who were “ghosted,” to use the contemporary term, by men whose therapists (or wives) insisted that they walk away from long-standing love stories with not so much as a goodbye.

If the affair needs to be ended so the marriage can survive, it should be done with care and respect. If the lover needs to break it off to regain her own self-esteem and integrity, she needs support, not judgment. If the marriage is to end and the hidden love is to come out of the shadows, it will need help to go through the awkward transition to legitimacy. Without the perspective of the third, we can never have more than a partial understanding of the way that love carves its twisting course through the landscape of our lives.

Cheating and lying aside, I see the conversation about ethical nonmonogamy as a valiant attempt to tackle the core existential paradoxes that every couple wrestles with—security and adventure, togetherness and autonomy, stability and novelty. The debate over monogamy often appears to be about sex. To me, it asks a more fundamental question: Can a new configuration of commitment help us to achieve what French philosopher Pascal Bruckner calls “the improbable union of belonging and independence”?

Today’s romantic pluralists have done more thinking about the meaning of fidelity, sexuality, love, and commitment than many monogamous couples ever do, and are often closer to each other as a result. What strikes me about many of their alternative renderings of relatedness is that they are anything but frivolous. Contrary to the stereotypes of bored, immature, commitment-phobic people engaging in a licentious romp, these experiments in living are built on thoughtful communication and careful consideration. If there’s anything they’ve taught me, it’s that there is tremendous merit in having open discussions about the subject of monogamy and the nature of fidelity, whether they result in open marriage or not.

Reserving sexual attentions for each other is not the only way to tighten a bond. But when we decide that sex will not be the boundary that secludes us from others, it behooves us to think about alternative markers of specialness. Philosopher Aaron Ben-Ze’ev makes a distinction between two relationship models, one defined by exclusiveness, the other by uniqueness. The first one focuses on what is forbidden with another, whereas the second one centers on what is special about the beloved. One emphasizes the negative consequences;

the other, the positive possibilities.10 I ask Xavier and Phil to consider: “If sex is something you share with others, what is exceptional to the two of you?” Exploring this question together helps them reclaim their common ground without giving up their freedom.

Whereas borders are constructed as unquestionably right . . . boundaries are what is right at the time, for particular people involved in a particular situation. . . . Whereas borders claim the unquestionable and rigid authority of law, boundaries have a fluidity, and openness to change; more a riverbank, less a stone canal. Borders demand respect, boundaries invite it. Borders divide desirables from undesirables, boundaries respect the diversity of desires.