Where does the desire to cheat come from? What are the consequences of cheating and is there a chance to restore trust? How will psychotherapy work with a couple after? We've asked Treatfield's psychotherapists.
Gestalt therapist Mariia Aksionova
Where does the desire or "need" to cheat on a partner in a romantic relationship come from? What are the reasons we enter into long-term "triangular" relationships?
In short, the desire to cheat stems from needs that, for various reasons, cannot be satisfied within the relationship, and at the same time, it is difficult or impossible to discuss the difficulties that have arisen or voice one's needs to the partner.
Often, the first reason that comes to mind when discussing infidelity is an unsatisfactory sex life. And indeed – the inability to realize certain fantasies with a partner, "prohibitions" on certain erotic behaviors or even on certain words within the couple can lead to thoughts of cheating. Not to mention the banal fading of sexual attraction in long-term relationships, or when there is simply not enough sex due to different sexual temperaments between partners. However, dissatisfaction with emotional needs, such as safety, acceptance, freedom to express one's emotions and desires, the need for attention and recognition, and spontaneity, often becomes the reason for infidelity. And yes, these factors strongly affect the quality and regularity of sexual life, but they are not limited to it.
People often cheat after difficult losses or against the backdrop of traumatic events, as well as during a crisis in the relationship or a personal crisis. Any crisis or loss is experienced by us as a death: the death of a part of our life, a part of ourselves, the previous version of the relationship. And then the need for betrayal is about protesting against this death, it is a need to feel alive, no matter what.
But betrayals also happen in loving couples where emotional intimacy is present. Why is that? The renowned researcher and couples therapist Esther Perel talks about our two basic needs in relationships, which by definition are in conflict with each other – the need for stability, predictability, security, clarity, on the one hand, and the need for novelty, risk, the unknown, on the other. In long-term relationships, we feel this security, warmth, and closeness, but the space for surprise and passion becomes less and less. The more responsibility in the relationship, the less excitement and spontaneity. And then it is precisely this desire to feel alive again, to rediscover some long-forgotten part of oneself, to feel what has not been felt for a very long time, that pushes us to betray. We are more likely looking not for another person, but for another version of ourselves – the self that, for one reason or another, we cannot allow ourselves to be or have ceased to be with our partner. However, cheating is not the only way out. Esther Perel studied couples in different parts of the world and asked them when or under what conditions they feel the greatest attraction to their partner. It turned out that all the answers could be divided into three conditional groups:
1. When the partner is not around, and I can think and fantasize about them, or when we have just met after being apart.
2. When my partner surprised me, I learned something new about them.
3. When I see my partner doing something they are good at and enjoy.
All of this is about a certain distance that is necessary to see your partner in a new light and as if to "want" them anew, because it is quite natural that it is difficult for us to want what we already have. That is, for truly viable relationships, it is very important to learn to dance a kind of dance of distance and closeness in the rhythm that suits a particular couple.
Long-term triangular relationships are a continuation of the story about needs that we cannot satisfy with one person or we don't even try, because we don't believe it's possible. And then our two opposite requests for relationships are realized with two different partners. Often we feel that we are held in such love triangles by the fear of hurting a loved one or the fear of radical changes in life. But somewhere deep down, we subconsciously understand that if we abandon one relationship for another (the one where we feel passion and excitement), it will cease to be so exciting and thrilling.
Gestalt therapist Ella Kotsai
How can a couple cope when infidelity by one partner that has been exposed? What does infidelity mean for a couple, and how do couples deal with this event? Is there a chance to save and restore a relationship after cheating?
Infidelity is one of the most difficult and painful experiences in a relationship. It can lead to deep emotional trauma, disappointment, and crises of trust. This phenomenon concerns not only physical infidelity but also emotional betrayals, which can also harm relationships. Infidelity not only changes the dynamics of a relationship but also raises profound questions about love, trust, and values of the partners. People choose the path of infidelity for various reasons, which can be both personal and shared by both partners.
Here are some common reasons:
- Loss of emotional intimacy: When partners feel that their emotional bonds have weakened, this can lead to seeking attention from other people.
- Dissatisfaction in the relationship: If one partner feels that their needs are not being met, they may seek them in outside relationships.
- Seeking new experiences: People may cheat to get new emotions, adrenaline, or sense of variety, especially when the relationship has become dull.
- Influence of the environment: The social environment can influence the decision to cheat, as in certain circles there may be an acceptance of infidelity as something acceptable or normal.
- Crises in life: Stress, work problems, personal crises, or other difficult situations can prompt a search for emotional release outside the relationship.
- Problems with self-esteem: Some people may cheat to confirm their attractiveness or self-respect through recognition from others.
- Incorrect ideas about relationships: Some people may believe that infidelity is not a serious problem or do not see an ethical conflict in it.
Infidelity often affects the dynamics of a relationship. It requires open communication from the couple, work on problems, and often also professional help to restore trust and the relationship. A couple can stay together after infidelity, but this requires significant effort from both sides. It is a very complex process. But if the couple manages to restore trust, the partners support each other during the difficult process, manage to determine their shared values in the relationship to restore the emotional connection, understand the reason for the infidelity, and if both partners have the opportunity to freely express their feelings, experiences, and needs, there is a high probability that the couple will stay together. Couples who have survived infidelity and have been able to strengthen their relationships mostly become closer. Success depends on the willingness of both partners to work on rebuilding the relationship. Communication is an important aspect in a couple where both partners can understand each other and provide support during a difficult life process.
Gestalt therapist Masha Tsukanova
If I am the person who cheated in a couple, how do I cope with the overwhelming emotions, and what strategy should I choose to minimize the harm to the person I betrayed?
First, I have bad news for all of us: infidelity is part of our nature. The fact is that the human brain was formed and developed over long thousands of years. New, more evolutionarily advantageous programs were subsequently superimposed on old biological programs, but the old ones did not disappear; they still remain there and compete with the new ones. Hence, such a mess in our feelings and needs.
This is exactly what happened with the programs of polygamy and fidelity. The Old Testament, so to speak, program tells a person to diversify and increase the number of partners. And the new program requires maintaining fidelity to one person (at least for a certain time).
It must be said that the new program generally wins, for which there are biological markers. In human females, for example, ovulation is hidden – the woman's body does not announce a bright casting for the role of the best male every month, which means that this role is assumed to be performed by one specific man. Naturally, the socio-cultural norms of Western civilization also support monogamy or at least serial monogamy. Therefore, we read fidelity as the norm.
But, again, bad news: if a love union exists long enough, then the phase of passionate romantic love, a kind of fixation on the beloved (the ancient Greeks called this love eros), is replaced by the phase of warm love-attachment (storge). So, the inability to think about anyone else and the fervent desire to remain faithful to one single object are characteristic of a person only in the eros phase. After that, we cease to be blindly deaf and dumb and again notice attractive people around us – and this means that the battle of needs is turned on anew. So, nature by no means helps us to remain virtuous.
And this trivial "I am human, and nothing human is alien to me" (including crooked biological programs) is worth remembering if shame or guilt overwhelms you after betrayal. This is, of course, not the whole truth, and far from everything that can be done, but normalization and at least some validation of what is happening can help. Being a warm and faithful friend to yourself is the best strategy in any crisis situation.
By the way, normalization and validation are universal helpers. They work both when the author of the betrayal fell into affect from their actions, and when they are simply moderately suffering.
But let's consider these two cases separately: affect and remorse. If we are dealing with affect, that is, an explosive, turbulent reaction of a landslide of feelings, then we have one and only one task: to calm ourselves down, to relieve the affect. Any actions in this state are dangerous: in a person in affect, the thinking process practically does not work, the emotional picture is greatly exaggerated and distorted – and the probability of harming oneself or others with impulsive actions is very, very high, even if at that moment these actions seem totally reasonable. No, it is not so. A person in affect is a monkey with a grenade.
Therefore, we breathe, drink water, solve mathematical problems, hit a punching bag, walk, shout (but not at people – in a field, into a pillow, into a bucket of water), notice our body and the space around us, flop onto the shoulder of a good mother, a faithful friend, or a therapist, or, God forgive me, we smoke – in a nutshell, we do everything possible and appropriate to return ourselves to relative sobriety. Only after that does a real opportunity arise to experience and comprehend the event and make healthy choices.
Experiencing what happened in its entirety is good for the psyche, even if it is a painful process. This is a prevention against the nagging anxiety that can haunt the author of the betrayal. And this is a way not to split, to keep your soul whole, albeit changed from this time on.
For this, it is good to identify, unstick, name, and experience the entire spectrum of feelings generated by the betrayal. Perhaps there will be fear: how to live anew now; what if they find out? Most likely there will be shame (and it's good if there is, it means we are not dealing with a psychopath): so this is what kind of person I turn out to be. And yes, this new knowledge about oneself needs to be somehow put on, because there is no way to resist reality.
I suspect there will also be guilt: I don't like the act I committed. And with guilt in the case of betrayal, you need to deal very carefully. The unconscious guilt is terrible: in order not to experience it, a person can get angry and attack their partner. And the meaning in this defensive anger can be very different: from "Look what you drove me to" to "When you look at me, I remember what I did, and it becomes unbearable to be with you."
In ordinary life, guilt is the easiest and most pleasant feeling, because there is a simple antidote against it – atonement. For example, verbal – apology. Or atonement by action, reparations – gifts, money, help, affection, attention, etc. In extreme cases, atonement by punishment: one walks around sullen, snarls, ignores, and the other endures until the first one calms down.
But in the case of betrayal, atonement becomes a slippery slope. Because here it can bring the partner not only and not so much peace, but also potential pain. If the partner did not know about the betrayal, lived in blissful ignorance, I should think ten times about why or for whom I want to confess. Am I doing this for them, my partner, so that they are not deceived and can choose me or reject me with open eyes if I, the betrayer, do not suit them? Am I doing this for us, because I see a wobble in the relationship and want to get the trash out from under the rug so that we have a chance to cope in a new way? Or am I doing this simply for my own need to remain good: I can't cope with my anxiety, guilt, and responsibility, I don't want to carry this burden – and therefore I simply hand my anxiety to my partner to shift it onto their shoulders. "Phew! I'm no longer a bad one here, I confessed everything. And how are you going to deal with this knowledge now, figure it out yourself"
Here, for example, is what Othello thought about unsolicited confessions:
«He that is robbed, not wanting what is stol’n,
Let him not know ’t, and he’s not robbed at all.
…
I had been happy if the general camp,
Pioners and all, had tasted her sweet body,
So I had nothing known».
What am I getting at? Confession is not a confession in a vacuum. It is a figure against a certain background. It has a context: the partner's needs, values, and feelings; the betrayer's needs, values, and feelings; the form and circumstances for confession. All this must be taken into account to make a choice.
The person who betrayed may feel disgust, loneliness, and anger at how many feelings they now have to endure. But there is also room for satisfaction and joy – after all, some need was still satisfied in this. And gratitude, for example, for the fact that, albeit in such a way, I learned something important about myself. And these pleasant feelings are just as important to notice and experience as the difficult ones, so that no part of reality or personality is split off again, and the gestalt can truly close, and not remain an open tab in the psyche.
It would be good to process what happened also through meanings, because after betrayal, a person discovers many new things about themselves and the world. That they are not who they imagined themselves to be. That their relationship is not what they thought. That love itself is not what they believed in. And these news need to be identified and assimilated.
It is important to understand whether we are talking about cheating as a one-time breakdown, or whether it is a marker of chronic tension in life. If the story is chronic, and the author of the cheating does not like it this way, wants to change it, it makes sense to detach from the problem of cheating as such and pay attention to where the roots grow from – to the way of life as a whole. Betrayals can turn out to be anything: from an addiction like gambling to a way to balance burnout from a hated job. It can be a way to react to some chronic tension in the relationship. Moreover, it can be quite real, for example, caused by sexual mismatch of partners or general interpersonal misunderstanding. And it can also be purely projective: some feelings that we remembered a long time ago in childhood may arise next to a partner who has almost no relation to them. There is, for example, a theory that love triangles grow from the age of three to five, when a child needs to go through triangulation in the I-mother-father relationship.
In short, we do not know where this research will lead. It is quite possible that the symptom will disappear and the cheating will stop. But it may turn out that in terms of cost-effectiveness, this is currently the most optimal way. After all, in some cases, even fidelity can be a form of passive aggression.
Gestalt therapist Kateryna Rozhkova
How does therapy work with couples where infidelity has occurred, or with people who have cheated/been cheated on?
To answer this question, it is worth defining the very concept of infidelity in relationships. Often people have different ideas about it, sometimes quite not obvious ones. And in fact, this is a huge range of requests. For example, for one person, infidelity will be the emergence of a sexual connection with a third party or adultery, for another – it is the workaholism of a partner when they "cheat with work," for a third – ignoring and humiliation in relationships, lack of respect. This list can go on.
Therefore, I will use this concept in a broad context and call certain actions or inaction that violate the norms and agreements agreed upon between partners infidelity. When a couple seeks therapy, we will clarify the concept of infidelity with the partners individually.
Infidelity can be not only a signal to break off a relationship, but also a signal for changes in the relationship, a review of values and the formation of new rules and agreements, or even an opportunity to get closer, as paradoxical as it may sound.
Infidelity violates emotional security (sometimes physical as well), causes pain and evokes many complex feelings that will require validation and acceptance in therapy. The betrayed person may experience shame and guilt, asking themselves "what's wrong with me? why was I treated this way?" (self-directed victim-blaming), panic and fear, as well as anger and disgust. The betrayer may feel shame and guilt, sometimes impulses to get rid of them quickly, and anger at the partner precisely because they have to feel this way in front of them, experiencing disgust. At the same time, the partners also have warm feelings for each other.
Therefore, in couples therapy, among other questions, the following will be raised: "Are the partner's experiences important to me, and can I accept them? Or is it important for me to get relief as soon as possible?"
In general, therapeutic work will in one way or another concern the broad context of the couple's life, the ways partners communicate to highlight those moments where disconnection occurs. It will include work with boundaries and meanings and the restoration of trust, and this is quite a long and painstaking joint effort.
A fairly common question in couples therapy is, "How long will this last?"
And first of all, it is worth saying that therapy will last as long as you feel the need for it. And the effectiveness and speed will be influenced by the personality structure of the partners, their emotional maturity, the level of traumatization from infidelity, the ways of building communication, the level of resistance of all participants in the process, the individual speed of integrating the changes that have occurred and will occur in the relationship.
Usually, the most significant changes begin when the guilty party acknowledges their own responsibility for causing pain to the partner. And the injured party can sincerely accept the apology without sabotaging the process.
What is better – to choose individual or couples psychotherapy? How will therapy take place, what will we work on?
The answer to this question will depend on the specific request that needs to be resolved.
In couples therapy, the client is the couple. The voluntary consent of both partners to therapy is important. It is wonderful when the partners have an agreed-upon request. For example, both want to save the relationship. If this is not the case, be prepared for the fact that in therapy you will have to spend some time clarifying and agreeing on the request. This can happen at the first meeting, or it may take several meetings.
If one partner goes to therapy voluntarily, and the other at the request / out of guilt or obligation, does not see the point in couples therapy – it is better to choose individual therapy.
It also happens that couples therapy raises issues for individual therapy. And in parallel, a person can find a specialist and seek individual therapy.
Individual therapy will be aimed at supporting the experience of infidelity and the complex feelings associated with it. For the person who was betrayed, it also involves restoring self-esteem. For the person who betrayed, therapy will include working with feelings of guilt and shame, exploring the personal changes that prompted the betrayal or manifested after it. And in both roles, there will be some work related to the identity crisis that arises as a result of infidelity. The issue of the conflict of values with behavior may also be relevant for individual work.
If you go deeper, certain nuances of therapeutic work will differ depending on the individual characteristics of each person.
The topic of infidelity in individual therapy can also sound in another aspect – how not to betray oneself. This actually involves the reconstruction / building of trust in oneself and one's feelings. Or there is a need to find oneself again – as someone valuable, desired, alive, happy, etc.
I want to draw attention to the fact that couples therapy (just like individual therapy) implies that you will have to work out certain skills outside the therapeutic session.
And also be patient, because sometimes therapy works like retinol for acne: it "pulls" everything to the surface and causes an "exacerbation [of rashes]". In dermatology, this is the so-called "cleansing period," after which improvement will gradually occur. And similar processes also take place in psychotherapy.
