The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity

by Esther Perel

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. If we can’t look back with any certainty and we can’t know what will happen tomorrow, where does that leave us? Psychologist Peter Fraenkel emphasizes how the betrayed partner is “rigidly stuck in the present, overwhelmed by the relentless progression of disturbing facts about the affair.” 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,”