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we expect our partners’ erotic
selves to belong entirely to us?
But some people view everything sexual as a domain that must be shared. Discovering that their partner masturbates or still has feelings for an ex is tantamount to betrayal.
Even if they are monogamous in their actions, they recognize that they do not own each other’s sexuality.
Every couple has to negotiate each other’s erotic independence as part of the larger conversation about our individuality and our connection.
And we run the risk of unknowingly eradicating the very space between us that keeps desire alive. Fire needs air.
an inappropriate emotional closeness that should be reserved for one’s partner and that is depleting the primary relationship.
On the other hand, deep emotional relationships with others are legitimate outlets for feelings and needs that can’t all be met in the marriage.
such a long process, and I couldn’t figure out what would be a satisfying landmark in time for me.”
For ourselves, we focus on the mitigating circumstances; for others, we blame character.
household.” It was a system in which gender inequality was etched in the law and encoded in the cultural DNA. When
worth remembering that until recently, marital fidelity and monogamy
mainstay of patriarchy, imposed on women, to ensure patrimony and lineage—whose children are mine and who gets the cows (or the goats or the camels) when I die. Pregnancy confirms maternity, but without paternity tests, a father could be tormented for life when his only son and heir was blond and his entire family had not one light hair among them.
The double standard is as old as adultery itself.
Thanks to no-fault divorce laws, passed in California in 1969 and in many more states soon thereafter, leaving an unhappy union was now part of a woman’s menu of choices.
but no one we can ask to feed the cat. We are a lot more free than
Marital intimacy has become the sovereign antidote for lives of growing atomization.
We want our chosen one to offer stability, safety, predictability, and dependability—all the anchoring experiences. And we want that very same person to supply awe, mystery, adventure, and risk. Give me comfort and give me edge. Give me familiarity and give me
novelty. Give me continuity and give me surprise. Lovers today seek to bring under one roof desires that have forever had separate dwellings.
The perfection we long to experience in earthly love used to be sought only in the sanctuary of the divine.
We expect one person to give us what once an entire village used to provide, and we live twice as long. It’s a tall order for a party of two.
novelty
For many, love is no longer a verb, but a noun describing a constant state of enthusiasm, infatuation, and desire. The quality of the relationship is now synonymous with the quality of the experience.
Their value, and therefore their longevity, is commensurate with how well they continue to satisfy our experiential thirst.
Some refer to this cohabitation period as “beta testing” a relationship.
inoculation
We used to get married and have sex for the first time. Now we get married and we stop having sex with
Miraculously, our desire for others is supposed to evaporate, vanquished by the power of this singular attraction. In a world where it is so easy to feel insignificant—to be
It is betrayal on so many levels: deceit, abandonment, rejection, humiliation—all the things love promised to protect us from.
are unleashed in the wake of an affair is so overwhelming that many contemporary psychologists borrow from the field of trauma to explain the symptoms: obsessive rumination, hypervigilance, numbness and dissociation, inexplicable rages and uncontrollable panic.
galvanizes
often caution couples to separate their feelings about the affair from their decisions about the relationship. Too often their impulsive responses, while meant to be protective, can destroy years of positive marital capital in an instant.
Infidelity is a direct attack on one of our most important psychic structures: our memory of the past. It not only hijacks a couple’s hopes and plans but also draws a question mark over their history.
Ironically, their belief about men underscores their ongoing oppression but protects their sense of identity.
Gillian may be socially more emancipated, but her identity and self-worth have been mortgaged to romantic love. And when love calls in its debts, it can be a ruthless creditor.
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.
Holding space for her pain is important, and physically holding her is equally so.
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.”
Expressing guilt and empathy is crucial for the hurt but insufficient for healing damaged self-worth.
Some people are able to express their feelings immediately. Their emotional literacy enables them to recognize, name, and own the particulars of their suffering. But I also encounter many who have shut down without ever identifying their emotional pain points. They live haunted by unnamed feelings, which are no less powerful for their anonymity.
Psychologists refer to these as screen memories—when we fixate on specific details in order to conceal the more distressing emotional aspects of the experience, making the trauma more tolerable.
hermetically
Its emotional trajectory tends to intersect with many other relationships—friends, family, and colleagues. After nine years, Mo will no longer go on his annual kayak trip with his best buddies. He has just learned that one had been his wife’s friend with benefits; the other the provider of the Airbnb; the third, a silent witness. Betrayed on all sides, he asks, “Who am I supposed to talk to now?”
FYI, what Stuart doesn’t realize is that we may try to hide our jealous feelings, but the one who inspires them always knows—and sometimes even enjoys stoking the embers into maddening flames.
In the new age of free choice and egalitarianism, jealousy lost legitimacy and became something to be ashamed of. “If I have freely chosen you as the one, forsaking all others, and you have freely chosen me, I shouldn’t need to feel possessive.”
To acknowledge jealousy is to admit love, competition, and comparison—all of which expose vulnerability.
own and control is at once an
intrinsic part of the hunger in love and also a perversion of love.
infidelity is not just about broken contracts, it is about broken hearts.
